Showing every spoken contribution, including 5,731 under 12 words. Hide short remarks

1. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Priti Patel

   Violence against Women and Girls

   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?

   Hansard source
2. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Priti Patel

   Topical Questions

   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?

   Hansard source
3. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Priti Patel

   Topical Questions

   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?

   Hansard source
4. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Peter Fortune

   Draft Immigration (Leave to Enter and Remain) (Amendment) Order 2026

   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.

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5. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Peter Fortune

   Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill

   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?

   Hansard source
6. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Peter Fortune

   Isle of Wight Dementia Patients: Discharge to Mainland Care Homes

   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?

   Hansard source
7. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Ms Nusrat Ghani

   Isle of Wight Dementia Patients: Discharge to Mainland Care Homes

   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.

   Hansard source
8. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Mr Louie French

   Thames Water

   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?

   Hansard source
9. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Mr Andrew Snowden

   Russian Oil Sales

   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?

   Hansard source
10. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Mr Andrew Snowden

    Russian Oil Sales

    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?

    Hansard source
11. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Martin Vickers

    Topical Questions

    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?

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12. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Mark Garnier

    Draft Pensions (Abolition of Lifetime Allowance Charge etc) Regulations 2026

    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.

    Hansard source
13. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Julia Lopez

    Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill

    I thank Members across the House for their contributions to this Bill over many months and for their relentless scrutiny. I have never known a Minister to be in such a rush, with three hours of protected time left. I am grateful to officials both in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and in Parliament for their hard work in getting this legislation to its final stage. I particularly recognise the hard work of my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer) and his team in providing such top-notch scrutiny of the Bill during its passage through the House. The Opposition have remained at all times supportive of the principles behind the Bill. It was the previous Government who recognised the need to increase cyber-resilience standards for critical digital infrastructure and services, including managed service providers and data centres. It is welcome that those entities—which are so vital to the functioning of the economy, public services and our daily lives—are now covered. However, I said on Second Reading that opportunities to legislate in this area are few and far between, and we need to ask two questions to assess whether this law is fit for purpose: will it work, and is it enough? There was already an urgent need to strengthen our cyber-defences. However, AI is equipping hostile states, criminal gangs and opportunists alike with tools capable of eroding our national defences at speed and at scale, in ways that will affect businesses, the public sector and our infrastructure. It is right that Parliament legislates to raise the collective security bar, but the nature of the cyber-security risks that necessitated this Bill have developed rapidly as we have been taking it through this House. That demonstrates the difficulties we all face as legislators in dealing with the constantly shifting sands of the digital age. We may need to be ready to return to this subject sooner than we had hoped. It is right that critical digital infrastructure such as data centres will fall within the scope of regulation, but we need to recognise that no security measures or standards are 100% effective. Government and businesses need to ensure that essential data and workloads are stored and processed in a way that keeps them secure and operational even when they are under attack. Resilience is key—the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ apparent targeting of Amazon Web Services sites in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain earlier this year has shown that digital infrastructure is becoming a prime target in times of conflict. It would be irresponsible to assume that these facilities will not also be targets for cyber-warfare, which is why we have to look closely at concentration of risk, our overall resilience, and any leverage we can build in maintaining access to the best technology going forward. From work on the security of our telecoms infrastructure to scrutiny of the platforms on which critical Government services run, we must now be thinking extremely carefully about our procurement of digital technology. A further significant development since this Bill was introduced is the rapid advance of AI systems capable of identifying cyber-vulnerabilities, particularly in poorly protected legacy IT across Government and public services, including the NHS. It highlights the urgent need to address the Government’s extensive legacy estate, which is especially exposed to exploitation. Nothing in the Bill addresses that need, yet the Government are creating a broader digital architecture for hackers to attack through their plan for Government-issued digital IDs. If public trust is to be restored, especially after the Government’s abortive attempt to introduce mandatory ID last year—still, I fear, a risk by the back door—such systems must always remain both optional and secure. It is therefore concerning that the Public Accounts Committee felt compelled to write to the permanent secretary at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology in April to criticise the lack of urgency in reviewing legacy IT equipment, given both the sensitivity of the data involved and the scale of the cyber-risk. Earlier, my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge set out one of the most significant threats that this Bill fails to address: the intensifying cyber-security risk posed by the Chinese Communist party and its affiliates. It is regrettable that the Government have, for a second time, voted down amendments that would have compelled the Secretary of State to create a register of hostile state actors threatening the cyber-security of essential networks and information systems. Those concerns are not restricted to Conservative Members, which is why the amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) attracted cross-party support. The risks posed by cellular IOT modules have been set out expertly in the Chamber today. IOT modules supplied by Chinese manufacturers are now embedded in nearly all internet-connectable products and devices, from smart TVs to electric cars. They can be used to intercept data and track locations, and can even be controlled remotely. The scale of the cyber and physical security threat from IOT modules is the tip of the iceberg, with components that can be used for espionage or cyber-attacks or disabled remotely woven into countless aspects of our critical national infrastructure. This is an issue that is not going away. In summary, although this Bill is necessary and goes some way towards enhancing our cyber-resilience in critical areas, it will not be enough in isolation. It heaps all the burden on the private sector, yet it would have been insufficient to prevent the Jaguar Land Rover incident. It does not address public sector vulnerabilities, and it falls far short of meeting the moment that the now former Defence Secretary, the right hon. Member for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough (John Healey), lamented that this Government were missing in their approach to our collective defence and security. It speaks to this Government’s continued inability to grapple with and address the red lights that are now flashing on the national dashboard. The “corrosive complacency” that Lord Robertson called out in the Government’s approach to investment in defence can also be seen here, in the Government’s ongoing refusal to address the urgent threat to our national cyber-security caused by our reliance on technology and components from nations that have demonstrably malign intent. We are living with the uncomfortable reality that the end of history was a dangerous illusion; one that has led to us gradually outsourcing our critical industries to our geopolitical rivals and competitors, only to have their wares sold back to us in the form of latent time bombs. That is why this legislation, which we support, can only be a discrete tool in addressing a much wider challenge. Cyber-security is no longer a niche compliance exercise; it is about protecting the fundamental economic and defence interests of our nation. That is why I suspect we will be returning to cyber issues in this House before too long, and with greater urgency.

    Hansard source
14. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Joe Robertson

    Health Bill (First sitting)

    Q HSSIB is obviously an investigator and CQC is obviously a regulator—two different roles. I suspect there was a good reason why you were asked how the CQC can be investigated by a body that becomes part of it. Are you aware that the Air Accidents Investigation Branch and the UK Civil Aviation Authority are separate? If you are, why should that fundamental separation, which benefits air passenger safety, not apply to the safety of patients in the NHS? Dr Dash: Yes, I am aware. The analogy is continually made—and it has been made several times—and to be honest, 20 years ago, I would have shared the view that healthcare was similar to airlines. Indeed, I did quite a lot of talks about that at the time. However, the more I have looked into it, the more I think there are limits to that analogy. We are running out of time and this is a much longer conversation, but if I look at the specific examples that people bring up from the airline industry, it is about spotting some very specific things. An example was used at the Health and Social Care Committee about spotting a bolt that is not working properly. The equivalent of that within the NHS is actually something like the MHRA, which is separate. If we spot a drug, an anaesthetic machine or a cardiac device that is not working properly, that is for the MHRA, which is separate from the CQC. The CQC is there to be the independent regulator of the quality of care more generally, which is more the space that HSSIB has been in. HSSIB has been looking at things like the use of digital triage in general practice and corridor care, and it has done some work on surgical safety and so on. All of that is part of a bigger landscape of quality of care, which the CQC is responsible for. The more that I looked at this issue and the more I spoke to people, I became less sure that it is analogous to the airline industry. It is much broader and more complex, and certainly the airline industry does not have 150 different regulators and quasi-regulators.

    Hansard source
15. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Joe Robertson

    Health Bill (First sitting)

    Q If responsibility for managing and safeguarding the single patient record is to sit with general practice, if that is what the Government want, can you tell us, Kay Keane, as chair of the Institute of General Practice Management, what the implication would be for workload, and particularly workforce, in practice management? Kay Keane: I think it is impossible, really, for me to understand that. It is a large part of our job already. As Dr Dickson said, we act as a small business. We do all the things that any other small business does, so being able to manage that record on top of that would take a huge amount of investment into general practice. I would argue that maybe the investment into general practice should not be on data, but should be in the wider workforce. We are really good at looking after our data now. We care about it, we hold it close to the care of the patient and we share it only when appropriate, but in our view to then be the data controller of other information is too much and is unmanageable for a general practice to do. Equally, our data is very personal to us, and we want to keep hold of that. We do not want our patients worrying about the stories that they tell us, so a model where we feed into something else and have responsibility for the bit that it is fed into sits more comfortably with the Institute of General Practice Management. Dr Dickson: I do not have much to add to that. The devil is in the detail of where it sits and how we reassure patients that we are trusted with their data—that we are sharing what they have given us appropriately for their health, but not for spurious reasons. I think people’s understanding is that we share an awful lot more than we do, so there is a gap. People perceive that we are going to overshare, whereas actually this will allow us to come up to the level that we should be at.

    Hansard source
16. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Joe Robertson

    Health Bill (First sitting)

    Q The safe space principle is arguably under threat by the merging of HSSIB and the CQC. From the evidence you gave to the Health and Social Care Committee, I understand your argument that if you get rid of the independence of HSSIB, staff members who have witnessed wrongdoing and unsafe practices will not feel there is anywhere they can go, when they feel compelled to disclose things they see, where there is no consequence to them. Can you just comment on that? Sir Jeremy Hunt: Maybe I should just clarify, because I think Dr Dash referred to those comments. The CQC is incredibly important to hospitals and GP surgeries because it gives them a rating—“outstanding”, “good”, “requires improvement” or “inadequate”—and they really care about that. If a staff member is talking openly to HSSIB about a failure of governance in their organisation, and that is the same organisation that could decide whether they get stripped of their “outstanding” rating and downgraded to “good” or “requires improvement”, my concern is that some people may worry and say, “Maybe I shouldn’t be open, because this could affect my hospital’s rating.” Obviously, I would always want staff members to be completely open with HSSIB, but we have to be really careful that people still have confidence in the safe space function if this merger goes ahead.

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17. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Joe Robertson

    Health Bill (Second sitting)

    Q Professor Croisdale-Appleby, the local healthwatch on the Isle of Wight has proven invaluable in amplifying patient voice, gathering patient experience and helping those who are democratically elected—MPs and councillors—to hold health leaders to account. My concern about that function being folded into the ICB is that the ICB has often been on the sharp end of critical analysis by Healthwatch, and so the ICB will end up marking its own homework. We will lose the critical voice that has, I am sure, led to better decision making. How can we possibly resolve that fundamental issue, if Healthwatch is folded into ICBs? Professor Croisdale-Appleby: You make a pivotal and focused point. The independence is vital, not just because of the quality of what Healthwatch produces, but because of the confidence that it gives people that they are speaking to an independent organisation. In the background, some communities distrust being critical about the care that they receive in case it rebounds on them. If the same organisation is responsible for marking its own homework, as you put it, that problem will be much greater than it has been in the past. In terms of what to do about it, I think that you stick to some basic principles. If we are moving forward positively, we have got to be locally driven. We must reach out to communities. They will not reach into us; we have to reach out to those communities and the individuals within them. I mentioned the value of qualitative evidence. It is not always easy for big institutions to go through all the work of evaluating qualitative work. It is easy to look at quantitative statistics, but the patient voice must be highly visible and central to policymaking. That was the basic idea behind the Bill: it would be about the patient and the patient voice, putting the patient right at the centre of the multiple discourses. As my colleagues have said, we should be totally transparent about priorities, impact and holding people to account. If all five of those principles are followed, it will work. If they are not followed, it will not.

    Hansard source
18. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Joe Robertson

    Health Bill (Second sitting)

    Q Hospital pressures on the Isle of Wight are particularly severe, and part of the way of dealing with so-called corridor care is for the hospital and local authority to look at discharging some frail patients to the mainland, including those living with dementia, which is plainly not a solution by anyone’s normal interpretation. Is there anything in this Bill, notwithstanding that it does not deal with the fundamental problems of social care, not only that can help to resolve those sorts of situations, but that could help to resolve them if it went a little further? I am looking for opportunities to use the Bill to try to do a little more in and around discharge and social care. Sir Andrew Dilnot: That is a very good question, to which I do not have a very immediate answer. Well, I do have an immediate answer, which is that, as far as I can see, it is nothing very substantial. The single patient record offers some prospects here, and it is terribly important for people receiving social care, which again reflects how much longer we are living. There is much more multiple morbidity now. Many of the people who can and are benefiting from social care will have quite complicated medical experiences and histories. That is the kind of group that could particularly benefit from a single patient record, so that we are not having inappropriate prescription and so on. That is going to help, but it will be a second-order issue. Let me be very blunt. There are two fundamental challenges facing the social care system. The first is that the means-tested bit of it, where we say, “If you don’t have any resources of your own, the state will look after you,” must be a minimum for any humane society. Essentially every year for at least the last decade, the Treasury has announced emergency funding for that in year. That money then does not get spent well. Honestly, if you are announcing an emergency package every year for 10 years, it is not an emergency package. You should wake up, pay attention, have a mature response and fund that system properly. That is the minimum. The second is that the only big risk we all face that is not pooled is social care. Our risk of healthcare is pooled by the state, our risk of having a car accident or our house burning down is pooled by private insurance. This is the one risk that is not pooled, and the reason is that the state does not, and the private sector cannot. The reason the private sector cannot is that it is too far ahead for a private insurance market to deal with it, so only the state can pool the risk. If there is any area where the case for social insurance is absolutely clear, it is social care; the case is even more powerful in social care than it is in health. At the moment we have a situation where often people will feel that the best thing that can happen to them, if they think they might have a social care need, is that they die before too long. It is a bit like standing in the middle of the road with a lorry driving towards you and hoping that the best thing that might happen is that you die before it hits you. That is not a good way to be running any kind of society or country. Those challenges—the lack of adequate funding of the means-tested system and the lack of any risk pooling for the population as a whole—lead directly to the kind of experience that you are describing in the Isle of Wight, where there is simply excess demand and so we are trying to ship people across to the mainland. It is a reflection of the fundamental challenges that we have ignored for 35 years.

    Hansard source
19. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Jack Rankin

    Lifelong Learning: “University of the Air” White Paper

    It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I thank the hon. Member for Southport (Patrick Hurley) for securing this debate, and for sharing with us his personal journey to becoming an Open University graduate and the opportunities that higher education opened up for him. In his remarks, the passion of his political world view shone through, and though the very nature of my sitting on the Conservative Benches might mean we have some differences, I am a Lancashire man from working-class stock, and I agree with him forcibly that education should be available to all and applied with hard work—that is the most powerful action for social mobility. I pay tribute to my honourable Unionist friends from Ulster, the hon. Members for South Antrim (Robin Swann) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for their contributions. They eloquently made points about skills beyond education and the wider personal growth available to people who attend the Open University, and particularly how important the Open University is in Northern Ireland. The two examples of the women’s centres made it clear that the Open University’s accessibility has been transformational to some of those young ladies’ lives. The hon. Member for Strangford also made an interesting point about UCAS, which I was not aware of, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister says in response to that. This year marks 60 years since Harold Wilson’s Government published the “University of the Air” White Paper, which, seeking to capitalise on the advances in television and radio programme learning, set out plans for an Open University to provide higher and further education for those unable to take advantage of courses in existing colleges and universities. Envisioned as a way to tackle pressure on university and college places following the post-second world war baby boom by providing home study to university and higher technical standards, the plan for the “University of the Air” was to provide high-quality education to more adults through television and radio lectures, correspondence courses, residential courses and tutorials, and study groups at community centres. Those ideas formed the basis of what we know today as the Open University. Like the hon. Member for Southport, I pay tribute to the late Baroness Lee of Asheridge, Jennie Lee, who was instrumental in setting up the Open University, for all her work to promote lifelong learning. When it first opened to students in 1971, the Open University offered 25,000 places. Today, it has provided courses to more than 2.3 million people. It is clear that the Open University’s flexibility helps make adult education and lifelong learning a reality for thousands who might not otherwise be able to access traditional campus-based study. Last academic year, 67% of Open University students worked full or part-time during their studies. That speaks to a culture of ambition and opportunity that lifelong learning helps to cultivate. More than just statistics, we can see the real impact of the Open University and lifelong learning in the individual stories of those whose lives it has transformed. I know how transformative lifelong learning can be from my own early childhood memories. My first memories were of my parents going to night school—in their instance, further education—on alternate evenings; my father got his electrical qualifications, and my mother got her accountancy qualifications. They set up a small business that was transformational for mine and my brother’s life. Many others accessing the Open University, whether they be working parents, people with caring responsibilities or simply adults looking to grasp the opportunities that, for whatever reason, were not available or accessible to them when they left school, have benefited from the empowerment that comes from being able to take their education and their future into their own hands. I also want to recognise just how hard-working and motivated many adult learners are, and the courage it must take to return to education later in life. As we heard during the debate, the ways in which learning can change lives, and the things that many people who have sought out training or upskilling go on to achieve, are truly extraordinary. The previous Government were clear about the value of adult education. I am proud of the Conservatives’ record, which included introducing the apprenticeship levy, skills bootcamps and free courses for jobs. Together, those initiatives have helped to give adults opportunities to learn the skills that employers are looking for, which will lead them to better jobs, better wellbeing and better opportunities for the future. The Conservatives also welcome the upcoming launch of the lifelong learning entitlement, which I understand will be available for courses from January 2027. Although the Minister may wish to take some credit for it, the LLE was put forward by the previous Government to give adults a loan entitlement of up to four years of post-18 education to use over their lifetime. Crucially, the previous Government envisaged the LLE for a whole range of adult education, including full courses at higher technical and degree level, and new modular funding. I am glad that the first of the new modular courses will be launching next year. Raising awareness of the new overhaul of post-18 education funding will be crucial if we are to ensure that it can help unlock learning for as many adults as possible. I therefore ask the Minister how his Department is raising awareness of the new funding options that will soon be available for post-18 education. How does he plan to attract learners who might not have traditionally sought out lifelong learning and training opportunities? The current Government say that they are committed to increasing funding for adult education. However, since entering office, they have instead cut the adult skills budget by 6%. Industry was rightly shocked, calling it a “shortsighted” move that will undermine economic growth, set back organisations and learners, and undermine trust in the Government’s vision for the country. Key sectors in our economy are calling for growth in adult education, not cutbacks. I turn to lifelong learning in other forms, including apprenticeships. Although, as demonstrated today, we all know that a high-quality university degree can set someone on the path to success and that higher education plays an important role in lifelong learning, it would be wrong not to acknowledge that it is not the case for every course. It is frankly a scandal that too many traditional university courses do not deliver jobs in the industry that they claim to serve. Some courses will draw people in with the promise of a stable and fulfilling career but deliver nothing but mounting debt and a dead end. That is why, if we really want to support lifelong learning, we must be honest about the real issue of funnelling young people and adults into courses that do not get them the jobs that they are seeking and do not allow them to repay their loans. It is also why we must ensure that quality apprenticeships are a real choice at age 18 and beyond, and a viable, equally esteemed alternative to university. We have a serious skills shortage. Nearly half of vacancies in the construction sector and skilled trades are the result of skills shortages. As has been discussed, the Opposition are concerned by the Government’s decision to withdraw public funding for level 7 apprenticeships, cutting support for the highest-level apprenticeships that provide vital routes for adult learners into skilled careers such as nursing. It is a major blow to social mobility for adult learners, shutting out talent from disadvantaged backgrounds and taking opportunities away from adult learners. Not only will culling level 7 apprenticeships hurt employers, but it is destabilising for university providers. It will hit institutions that have tried to open up opportunities for those who traditionally do not go to university, including, of course, the Open University. Since the announcement last year, what engagement has the Minister had with institutions, including the Open University, about the impact of axing level 7 apprenticeships? For much of the last 30 years, our approach to higher education has hinged on the underlying assumption that successfully completing a traditional university degree is one of the best ways to boost a person’s opportunities in life. Young people and adults who pay tens of thousands of pounds to complete their degree, whether up front or through repayments, rightly and reasonably expect that it will boost their job prospects and income. If we really want to encourage lifelong learning, we must ensure that issues with low-quality and dead-end traditional degrees are addressed. A more flexible option may be part of the solution. Lifelong learning should be for everyone. Whether that is someone taking on a new qualification to advance their career or pursuing a high-quality university degree as an adult, the empowerment and opportunity that comes from learning is truly life changing. The Open University has played an important role in opening up opportunities for millions of adults. The Government must be prepared to address the serious issues that exist with both the current welfare system and low-value university courses to ensure that those who invest in education at whatever stage in their life are rewarded with the opportunities they deserve.

    Hansard source
20. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Gregory Stafford

    Health Bill (First sitting)

    Q I should declare that I am a member of the all-party parliamentary group on patient safety. Apologies, Dr Dash, I have questioned you on this many times, but I am going to continue to do so. When the King’s Fund, the Nuffield Trust and the Health Foundation were in front of the Health and Social Care Committee and they talked about bringing HSSIB into the CQC, all three of them said very clearly: “Don’t do it.”. In fact, I can find almost nobody apart from you and the Department who thinks that moving HSSIB into the CQC is a good idea. Does that give you any pause for thought about whether you are recommending the right thing? More specifically, if, as you said to the Health and Social Care Committee, the safe space element would be retained and HSSIB would operate as an independent organisation, how can you square the fact that it would remain independent and yet be part of the CQC? If it does remain independent, what is the need to bring it into the CQC? Dr Dash: The point of bringing it into the CQC, as I said before, is that we are trying to simplify this landscape. There are so many different organisations continually commenting and doing reviews—often replicating the same reviews that other people have done. The concern is that it is distracting rather than enabling. The hope that I had when I made the recommendation, and still have now, is that by bringing HSSIB into the CQC, you can align the work of the two. For example, if the CQC is going round the country and spotting a particular problem with the way in which anaesthesia is being given or with managing patients post-surgery, the CQC could then say to HSSIB—that team of people with specific expertise—“Can you go in and take a look at this? Can you do a detailed focus review of this particular area of care that we are spotting through our visits and which seems to be a particular challenge?” It is that bit about enabling the CQC to identify a problem and then asking HSSIB to review it in detail, and HSSIB bringing its expertise in investigations into the CQC to enable the CQC to go deeper and then come back to the NHS with particular areas, but also to supplement the work of the NHS. I would like to point out that since HSSIB was established, the NHS has established its own much more rigorous, much more robust investigatory teams and processes. Of course, I am not saying that they are perfect—we can all see that—but I encourage all colleagues here today to look at the work they are doing, the specific areas they are reviewing, the outputs of those reviews and the ways in which those are leading to improving care. That feels to me to be a much more systematic way of addressing the concerns of patients, families and staff in the place where those concerns happen, having mechanisms to escalate those through the NHS so you can bring them to regions—some investigations get done at the NHS England level—and having the CQC as an independent body that can separately review and spot if there are problems but also ensure that those investigations within the NHS are happening well.

    Hansard source
21. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Gregory Stafford

    Health Bill (First sitting)

    Q What happens if the problem is the CQC? Dr Dash: Well, we then have to deal with that as a problem. That is the same as saying, “What happens if the problem is this organisation or that one?” We have 150 organisations—150. What if the GMC is a problem? What if the Nursing and Midwifery Council is a problem?

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22. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Gregory Stafford

    Health Bill (First sitting)

    Q Sarah, when we were at the Health and Social Care Committee, you and your fellow panellists seemed to suggest that the Government could achieve what they needed to in the 10-year plan without this reorganisation. Could you delve into that a bit more and tell us why you think that is the case? Sarah Woolnough: The Government have an incredibly ambitious agenda, which is partly articulated in the 10-year plan. Our ongoing concern has been that some of the biggest-ticket items that the Government rightly want to achieve to fundamentally shift power to patients—delivering a shift towards prevention, moving care closer to home and allowing more digital enablement—do not require this kind of legislation or a reorganisation. I go back to my first answer: what is honestly the opportunity cost of doing some of this at the expense of more focus and attention on, for example, delivering care closer to home? There is a lot of energy and activity in that area, but the Government want to make really good progress over the next few years. To take that example, if you are really serious, you need to understand what the barriers are to delivering more care in the community, closer to people and patients, and wrapping services around patients. It requires you to flow money differently and to have a different incentive scheme, but that is nowhere near this piece of legislation. Our worry has been about what is not in the Bill, and what is the rightly and fantastically ambitious agenda to improve health for people and patients, versus the opportunity cost of a largely technical piece of legislation that reorganises some central functions.

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23. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Gregory Stafford

    Health Bill (First sitting)

    Q Would you agree with that, Mr Lant? Jacob Lant: Yes. I kind of think, as the debate goes on, that—with the changes to Healthwatch in particular—you could achieve so much without legislation. You could beef up the internal functions for listening to a patient and engaging with them without legislation—there is no requirement for that. You could invest more resource in that, and you could do the same with Healthwatch. You could think about the resourcing of the structures and the support they receive, so you could make that whole system better without legislating to get rid of it. As Sarah said, the NHS changes are a distraction at a time when we should be moving on with focusing on patient care.

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24. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Gregory Stafford

    Health Bill (First sitting)

    Q I reiterate that I am a member of the all-party parliamentary group on patient safety. Dr Benneyworth and I have had many conversations about this issue. I have two questions. The first is about the safe space. We have seen written evidence, and we have heard when others have attended the Health and Social Care Committee, about the fact that if HSSIB is placed inside the CQC, you could have the farcical situation of one set of CQC lawyers, who are representing HSSIB, suing or attempting to sue another set of CQC lawyers, who are looking out for the CQC situation, because they are trying to get information out of part of their own system. Is that parody or is it a possibility and real problem? Dr Benneyworth: It is a problem and something that potentially could happen. I hope that we would work effectively to try to avoid that. Essentially, and just to reassure the Committee, if we see something of a criminal nature, if there are significant regulatory concerns, we have protocols in place to be able to escalate that. But there is a real risk that potentially, if we held information that the CQC needed in part of its regulatory function, in its enforcement function, we would not be able to share that, because of our legislation, and we would not want to share it, because we want to maintain the trust in the system. It would need to go to the High Court to be able to get hold of it.

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25. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Gregory Stafford

    Health Bill (First sitting)

    Q Just so that I am clear, you have internal protocols that would raise stuff if you saw something criminal, and if you were investigating something and potentially could not share the information, that would not prevent any of the multitude of other regulators that we have out there from investigating on their own something similar. Your investigation would not preclude them from being able to investigate as well. Dr Benneyworth: No.

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26. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Gregory Stafford

    Health Bill (First sitting)

    Q Dr Dash, in her evidence, said that—I am slightly paraphrasing, so I hope I have not got this wrong—NHS England has a number of investigatory bodies that it has established recently, and that although they were not perfect, they were much better, and they could be doing this job. What is your response to that? Dr Benneyworth: NHS England has an investigations unit that commissions regional and national investigations, sometimes from private organisations. We work very closely with the NHS England patient safety team. As I said, we have supported their work in rolling out local investigations around the patient safety incident response framework. We have been instrumental in supporting the training and education around that. We are the only safety investigator with protected disclosure. There is no other body that is like us and can do the same type of investigations in this country, and we are internationally looked at. In fact, I am doing a podcast with Canada tomorrow. Numerous countries are looking at us and saying, “We want the same thing.” There is a handful of investigators like us in Finland and Norway, and they have excellent safety outcomes for their patients, but the rest of the world is looking at us and trying to learn from us, and I am frequently asked to speak internationally about this.

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27. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Gregory Stafford

    Health Bill (First sitting)

    Q You are saying that you are a world leader. Dr Benneyworth: We are—

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28. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Gregory Stafford

    Health Bill (First sitting)

    I think the answer was, “We are.”

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29. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Gregory Stafford

    Health Bill (Second sitting)

    Q This question is to the Royal Berkshire. In response to my colleague, you talked about the benefits of your council of governors. As a foundation trust, you have significant autonomy. The Bill will allow the Government to cap your day-to-day spend, strip away your FT status and make governance changes. What impact will that have on how your boards can carry out their duties? James Blythe: With a lot of foundation trusts, as the NHS has moved into a period of increasingly tight financial control and as we have needed to recover from the covid pandemic, far closer working has been required between all NHS providers and the centre, to manage both the financial implications and the pandemic’s implications for patient access and patient quality. Having recently moved from a senior leadership, board-level role in an NHS trust to two roles as chief executive in a foundation trust, I do not feel that in the day-to-day relationship with the centre and with our local and regional representatives there is an enormous difference in how we balance quality, finance and performance now. Those foundation trust freedoms were most relevant when we were in a system in which expenditure on health could grow and we were not trying to recover from the challenges that we have had recently. Day to day, the relationship between NHS trusts and foundation trusts feels quite consistent now, so I am not sure that the changes proposed in the Bill will necessarily make a huge difference. As I said in response to an earlier question, it depends entirely on whether the provisions of the Bill are used to set a small number of priorities and let NHS organisations get on with delivering them, or whether they are used more regularly to intervene more directly in our day-to-day operations. A lot comes down to how the regime is operated.

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30. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Gregory Stafford

    Health Bill (Second sitting)

    Q On the streamlining point, you have articulated very clearly why you think it is inappropriate, as have members of this Committee, and most of the evidence we have received suggests that it is not appropriate. What do you think is the reasoning behind the Government’s real push for this, when the evidence against it is so clearly strong? Is it simply that they want to save money, in your opinion, or is there an alternative motive? Professor Croisdale-Appleby: If we talk about money— I will be quantitative here—Healthwatch England currently costs £3 million per year and the network receives £25 million per year. To people like me, £3 million and £25 million is a lot of money, but in the greater scheme of things it is not a significant amount, particularly when you think what is being produced for it. I cannot speak appropriately, in my role as chair of Healthwatch, about Government policy. It is not my job to do that; it is the Government’s job. If you want to ask me a question on a purely personal basis so I can step outside of that role, I will be happy to answer, but I always have to draw a very distinct line on anything that I say. Everything so far has been said in my formal position as chair of Healthwatch as opposed to any personal views, because I certainly do not want to comment on Government policy.

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31. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Gregory Stafford

    Health Bill (Second sitting)

    Q Ms Higson, given that you are a director of transformation, and that this is, in a wider sense, a transformation of the NHS, if you had the money, resources and political capital that the current Government have, would you do this or would you do something else? Maria Higson: Any time we go through an NHS reorganisation, it is distracting—that is the reality of such situations. It is unfortunate that, over the past 15 months, this has been a large distraction for people who are genuinely trying to deliver the three shifts—prevention, digital and neighbourhoods. It is true that it has been a distraction. I am not sure that this Committee is the right space to go into these, as I am aware that we are here to discuss the Bill, but there are probably opportunities to go further on some elements, which may help us in future.

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32. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Gregory Stafford

    Health Bill (Second sitting)

    Q Can you give a couple of examples? Maria Higson: To take one example, I would love to see an NHS where we step away from short-term activity metrics, and towards outcomes—that is mentioned in the Bill. The constant firefight on activities is quite challenging, so how can we move that dialogue to ensure genuine transformation? That is an example of where we could potentially go further than the Bill suggests, but I am conscious that I am supposed to comment on the Bill, not give my own random thoughts.

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33. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Gregory Stafford

    Access to Dental Services: West Sussex

    It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I thank the hon. Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller) for securing this important debate, and for outlining the issues that her constituents—and, indeed, many constituents across the country—are facing. It is something of an irony that I find myself speaking on NHS dentistry for the second time in as many days, having co-sponsored yesterday’s Backbench Business debate on precisely this issue, but if anything, that underlines the scale of the issue we are dealing with. The hon. Member for Chichester will know that West Sussex borders my constituency, which spans Surrey and Hampshire. Many of my constituents in Haslemere and the surrounding villages routinely access services across that boundary, and would regard West Sussex as part of their natural health economy. I am sure the same is true vice versa, because dentistry does not respect administrative lines, and access to care either exists or it does not. Let us be clear about the scale of the problem. Oral health is not a luxury issue; as my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Alison Griffiths) set out so clearly and passionately, it is fundamental to dignity, confidence, employability and overall health, yet access to NHS dentistry has become a postcode lottery. Nearly 14 million people are struggling to access care, and in many areas more than 70% of practices are not accepting new NHS patients, including children. As far as I can tell, not a single dentist in my constituency of Farnham and Bordon is accepting new NHS patients. It is often suggested that we simply have a workforce shortage, but the issue is not that we do not have enough dentists; it is that, understandably, too few are willing to work within a contract that no longer makes sense. The 2006 NHS dental contract, introduced under the last Labour Government, is based on units of dental activity. It pays the same whether a dentist carries out one filling or six, rewards volume rather than complexity, and actively discourages preventive care. That contract is central to why the system is struggling. The Government came into office promising a dental rescue plan, including urgent appointments, contract reform, workforce expansion and a greater focus on prevention. Those commitments were clear and repeated, yet delivery has not matched the rhetoric. In practice, the additional appointments that have been rolled out amount in many cases to only a small increase in urgent capacity. According to the British Dental Association, they are equivalent to a couple of extra slots per dentist per month. At the same time, the long-promised NHS workforce plan has still not been published and, without it, there is no credible road map for how capacity will be met. Warm words about recruitment are no substitute for a clear and funded strategy that tells practices and patients what the future looks like. We also need to recognise inefficiencies within the current system. In some practices, around one in seven NHS appointments is missed, costing individual surgeries tens of thousands of pounds a year. That is not just a frustration for clinicians—it is lost capacity in a system that is already under extreme pressure. However, rather than addressing the structural incentives that contribute to this, the Government’s response has been piecemeal. The consequences of all this are not evenly distributed; rural and coastal communities are particularly badly affected, with some having as few as 10 NHS dental practices per 100,000 people. These so-called dental deserts are not accidental, but the predictable outcome of a system that does not align funding, workforce planning and local need. There is a striking example of underused capacity in my local area. In Haslemere, the hospital contains a fully equipped dental suite that remains unused despite clear local demand. That facility could serve patients across the West Sussex border, given the natural geography of where people access care. Instead, it sits idle. I think everyone in this Chamber agrees with prevention in principle, and with the need to move away from a purely treatment-based model. The challenge is delivery. Likewise, workforce expansion is essential, but announcements without a credible plan do not translate into appointments. Ultimately, what is required is straightforward in principle, but urgent in practice: a properly funded and credible workforce plan, contract reform that rewards prevention and complexity rather than volume, and a serious strategy to address dental deserts that reflects real geography and need. We should also acknowledge the previous efforts of the Conservative Government, including the dental recovery plan, which did attempt to address these issues through recruitment incentives, training expansion and support of overseas qualified dentists. I accept that some measures had limited uptake, but they were at least an attempt to respond to a growing crisis. The question now is whether this Government build on what works or continue to drift without clear direction. Patients do not care which Government designed which contract or which plan; they care about seeing a dentist when they need one. I end with three straightforward questions that I asked the Minister in yesterday’s debate, but to which I did not get an answer. When will we see a fully funded and credible NHS dental workforce plan? How many additional dentists, hygienists and therapists are required to meet demand? What is the plan to ensure that dental deserts do not become a permanent feature of our healthcare system? Patients deserve these answers not in the future, but today.

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34. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Gregory Stafford

    Russian Oil Sales

    4. What diplomatic steps she is taking with international partners to help prevent the sale of Russian oil to companies in China, Turkey and India.

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35. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Gregory Stafford

    Russian Oil Sales

    While diplomatic pressure on China, India and Turkey is essential, we must also do more militarily to disrupt the shadow fleet carrying Putin’s oil. I pay tribute to our armed forces who, this weekend, boarded a Russia-linked tanker in UK waters under new Government powers. Since those powers were announced in March, 184 sanctioned shadow fleet vessels have made 238 journeys through UK waters, including 94 journeys into territorial waters, without a single interdiction until now. What is the Department doing with the Ministry of Defence and international partners to ensure that this is a sustained approach, rather than a one-off?

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36. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Greg Smith

    Topical Questions

    My right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary rightly challenged the Government on the use of Chinese slave labour in the manufacture of solar panels. Chinese companies also dominate the mining companies using slave labour to extract cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, so how much more needs to happen for the Government to challenge this evil use of slave labour, particularly by the Chinese state?

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37. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Greg Smith

    Thames Water

    I have a huge list of complaints about Thames Water across Mid Buckinghamshire, and I am sure it is identical to that of the Secretary of State next door in Wycombe, so I add my voice to my hon. Friends’ calls for real detail about the plan, rather than just ambition. In the meantime, there is something that is causing Thames Water and every other water company to chase their tails: their inability to have a proper voice in the planning system. When a village such as Ickford in my constituency, which already has its sewage pumped away by road in tankers because the system just cannot cope, is told that it has to connect another 90, 100 or 150 properties, it is never going to work. Given the huge demand for house building and data centres in Buckinghamshire, what action will the Secretary of State take to ensure that the water companies can have their say and say no when they cannot connect areas?

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38. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Gareth Bacon

    Topical Questions

    I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. The Government have previously stated that Hamas must voluntarily disarm in accordance with the 20-point peace plan, but that is clearly not happening. What is the Government’s practical strategy to ensure that Hamas is compelled to give up its weapons, cannot rebuild its military capabilities, and does not divert humanitarian aid?

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39. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Edward Argar

    Health Bill (First sitting)

    Q In her evidence earlier, Dr Dash said that one of the reasons for her recommendations in her second review of changes to the regulatory and investigatory landscape is that it is a problem for the provider landscape that there are so many different organisations making so many recommendations. You have just said that HSSIB makes very few recommendations. Will the merging or folding—however you wish to characterise it—of HSSIB into the CQC lead to any meaningful reduction in the number of recommendations that organisations have to cope with? Dr Benneyworth: No, we do not make recommendations to provider organisations at all. All our recommendations go to national organisations. I completely agree with Dr Dash that there are too many recommendations. In fact, HSSIB raised that concern through our work two years ago and flagged it to Dr Dash. We wrote a report called “Recommendations but no action”. We are very concerned about the plethora of recommendations going to providers, which create a huge amount of noise but, distressingly for the families involved, do not lead to the changes needed. I completely agree that there are far too many recommendations. I am leading some work to address that—we are setting up a recommendations hub with the Department of Health and Social Care—but we are not that problem. We have made 39 recommendations since investigations launched and HSSIB started three years ago, and they are all to national bodies. We might reduce the burden on national bodies by taking that away, but it will not have any impact on providers.

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40. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Edward Argar

    Health Bill (Second sitting)

    Q I know that in this conversation some have highlighted that patients have stated that their experience has worsened or not improved, but I would argue that is not a Healthwatch failure; it is actually down to the NHS or ICBs not acting on Healthwatch recommendations. It seems to me perverse to give that voice to the organisations that are actually part of the problem through not acting. As a Minister, I was on the receiving end of some quite sharp recommendations from Healthwatch, but they were always constructive. Whether right or wrong, my fear is that this measure risks a perception among patients that it will be down to NHS managers and ICBs essentially to make recommendations that reflect their priorities, rather than the priorities and voices of patients. Professor, even if the principles that you have enunciated that might mitigate that risk were applied to the new model, are you really confident that they could mitigate the risk to patients’ confidence that their voice is genuinely and independently heard, loud and clear, however unhelpful it is perceived to be by bits of the NHS? Professor Croisdale-Appleby: I cannot be confident of that, because we are in the foothills, not up the slope, and the details have not been given. ICBs have received something approaching a 50% cut in their running costs. I will not comment on the appropriateness or otherwise of that, but one has to be realistic and think about how high a really informed patient voice—particularly one that seeks out the views of both communities and individuals where the health inequalities are the greatest—will be on the priority list. I would question that, but I will leave it there.

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