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

1. 22 Apr 2026·Parliament·Alberto Costa

   Point of Order: Rectification Procedure

   On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I would like to apologise to the House for failing to declare an interest during a debate on 16 July 2025 about the Committee on Standards’ third report of the 2024-25 Session, which concerns the Register of Interests of Members’ Staff. During the debate, I inadvertently failed to declare a relevant interest: I employ my wife, who is subject to the rules about the Register of Interests of Members’ Staff. This was in breach of the House’s rules and I apologise to the House for this error.

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2. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Wendy Morton

   Russian Federation: Financial Pressure

   In recent months, western sanctions have really been biting Putin, with the foundations of Russia’s economy failing. However, as we highlighted with the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation in December 2025, concerns have been reported that Russian crude is reaching refineries—including one part-owned by Lakshmi Mittal—via shadow fleet vessels, showing that gaps remain. Will the Government now lead efforts to crack down on those networks and press those refineries in Turkey, China and India to stop processing Russian oil?

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3. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Wendy Morton

   Gibraltar: UK-EU Treaty

   The Minister made a statement to the House on 26 February. Sadly, that has not been followed by the detail that Parliament was promised. In his most recent answers to my written parliamentary questions he says that the final treaty will be laid “As soon as possible” after EU processes conclude, yet the Government of Gibraltar have stated that it is provisionally due to come into force in July. Will the Minister set out a clear timetable for implementation and confirm when Parliament will be given proper time to scrutinise the full details? Will he guarantee that scrutiny under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act process will take place before provisional application?

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4. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Wendy Morton

   English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

   Will the Minister give way?

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5. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Wendy Morton

   English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

   I am grateful to the Minister for giving way, as I am conscious that we do not have a huge amount of time this evening. If this Labour Government were really serious about a brownfield-first approach, they would accept these amendments from the House of Lords, because they are exactly about ensuring that developers develop on that sort of land first. These amendments would protect communities and the environment in places like mine, which are coming under attack from her Government, who want to impose 20,000 homes on Walsall.

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6. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Wendy Morton

   English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

   My right hon. Friend makes a really important point. In the west midlands under the leadership of Andy Street, it was proven that we can regenerate brownfield sites—we have done it in the Walsall borough. The Government must be prepared, as we were when we were in government, to put in some funding to unlock those sites. It can be a win-win as we develop brownfield sites, regenerate our towns and cities, create the housing wanted by young people and old people, and protect the green belt and our green spaces for as long as we possibly can, allowing communities such as those I represent—600 people came out last weekend to protest against the Government’s measures—to enjoy the amenities of life that they currently do.

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7. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Wendy Morton

   English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

   The hon. Lady makes an important point, with which she knows I have a lot of sympathy. In my area, it is estimated that 5,000 homes could be unlocked if we had a proper brownfield-first approach to planning. Does she agree that the whole issue around housing is about not a lack of land but a lack of funding to regenerate some of the sites, a lack of political will from this Government and a lack of ambition? The Government should look at the brownfield sites and the empty buildings, and then look again at the housing targets that have been arbitrarily put on areas which will do nothing to protect us from urban sprawl.

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8. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Wendy Morton

   English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

   Urban sprawl is exactly why the green belt was put in place. Its purpose was to protect areas such as mine, my hon. Friend’s and many others that are on the periphery of some of the biggest conurbations and urban areas from urban sprawl. Does he agree that this Labour Government do not care about our communities? All they care about is an arbitrary housing target.

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9. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Sir Mel Stride

   Middle East: Economic Update

   I thank the right hon. Lady for advance sight of her statement. The UK has some of the highest energy prices in the world. That is crippling our economy and pushing up the cost of living, and it leaves us particularly exposed to energy shocks such as the one we are experiencing right now. Yet the Government seem totally unwilling to accept the scale of the problem and to shift in their dogmatic commitment to a net zero agenda, which is making us poorer. Last year, we Conservatives came forward with our cheap power plan. We said that the Government needed to scrap carbon taxes and the renewables subsidies, which are pushing up bills, and reverse the nonsensical decision to rely on imported oil and gas instead of pursuing the common-sense approach of extracting our own resources from the North sea. Under pressure from this Conservative Opposition, there has been some progress at least, but it has been made at a snail’s pace. The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero has been dragged, with oh so much reluctance, in the direction that we have set out. The action taken goes nowhere near far enough and is not fast enough. At the Budget, the Government announced they would take 75% of the cost of renewables off bills, but they did not abolish the subsidies, as we called for them to do. They are still being paid—maybe not out of people’s energy bills, but out of the pockets of hard-working taxpayers. When it comes to the vast majority of businesses in our country, this Government have done nothing for them. The proposals announced today risk locking in the costs of those subsidies by including them in the new contracts for difference, to which the Government are hoping that energy producers will sign up. Can the Chancellor confirm that this is the case—that under these arrangements, these subsidies will not only persist but will be guaranteed? The new contracts announced today are, of course, voluntary, so on what basis do the Government think these changes will lead to an overall reduction in energy bills? Presumably, generators will only sign up to these arrangements if it is in their commercial interest to do so. How will the Government ensure that companies do not simply game the system and end up being guaranteed higher prices? By how much will these announcements reduce energy bills? Has the Energy Secretary even provided the Chancellor with an estimate of the impact on bills? If there is no estimate, how can the Chancellor be confident that bills will indeed be reduced, not increased? On that point, we can put a number on our plan: it would mean £200 off household bills. Why can the Chancellor not do the same with this latest announcement? The Government have also said they will get rid of carbon price support. That is welcome, but they are not doing it until next year, and the CPS is only part of the carbon tax, which the Opposition are clear needs to be scrapped completely. It costs both households and businesses, and it needs to go. Why will the Chancellor not commit to removing these taxes completely? On taxes, the Chancellor noted the importance of keeping fuel duty down, but once again she had nothing to say about the onerous increase that she still plans to bring forward in September. Finally, we have had no meaningful action today on the issue of North sea oil and gas. The Chancellor says she wants to reduce our exposure to global energy prices, yet the Government are choosing to leave us more reliant on imported hydrocarbons. We all know that she is in a completely different place on this to the Energy Secretary. He is committed to the gradual smothering of our oil and gas sector, regardless of the cost to our economy and the loss of those jobs and tax revenues. Why does the Chancellor not urge the Prime Minister to overrule the Energy Secretary on these matters? The revenues from new oil and gas extraction are vital, given the state of our public finances. The current crisis shows how exposed we are and how damaging the Government’s net zero obsession has been to our economy, to households and to businesses. The Government are right to want to reduce that exposure, but they are doing too little, too late. We need an urgent change of course, not dither and delay. We need a proper cheap power plan to get bills down, and we need it now.

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10. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Sir Julian Lewis

    Topical Questions

    Does the Foreign Secretary accept that, as a matter of objective fact, this House was misled about the circumstances of Mandelson’s security vetting, even if that misleading was inadvertent?

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11. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Sir Julian Lewis

    Middle East: Economic Update

    May I welcome the couple of positive references that the Chancellor made a little while ago to civil nuclear power? Given that we have in this country Rolls-Royce, a world-leading specialist in the design and construction of small modular mobile nuclear reactors, what plans do the Government have to support this particular sector so that we are less dependent on the whims of Iranian dictators in future?

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12. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Sir Julian Lewis

    Points of Order

    On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance, in what I believe is truly a genuine point of order, as to how Parliament and the public should understand the terminology in “Erskine May” about inadvertently misleading the House. Yesterday, my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) pointed out: “The Prime Minister has said various things about Peter Mandelson’s vetting process…that have now turned out not to be true.” He asked: “Does he accept that he inadvertently misled the House of Commons?” The Prime Minister replied: “No, I did not mislead the House of Commons.”—[Official Report, 20 April 2026; Vol. 784, c. 51.] He then argued that other information that had been withheld from him had led to this situation. My understanding is that giving the House wrong information, but in good faith, is precisely what is meant by inadvertently misleading the House. The Prime Minister does not seem to understand that, and nor does the Foreign Secretary, to whom I asked a similar question this morning. Is it me who is misunderstanding the meaning of the term “to inadvertently mislead the House”?

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13. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Sir Julian Lewis

    Peter Mandelson: Government Appointment

    I am really surprised that the hon. Gentleman is swallowing this guff about this being a borderline case. It was quite clear that security vetting put this case in the red box, which meant “fail”. Sir Olly is being lauded to the skies now because he is the victim of ruthless prime ministerial politics, but he also has an angle on this: he massaged, shall we say, his own judgment because he knew the pressure on him from the Government. There was nothing borderline about this; he is saying that it was borderline only because he needs an excuse for having overridden it when he should not have done.

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14. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Sir John Whittingdale

    Peter Mandelson: Government Appointment

    This morning’s Foreign Affairs Committee session lasted for two-and-a-half hours. It was certainly one of the more remarkable sessions that I have attended, and I have been involved in a number of quite controversial Select Committee hearings over the years. It showed the Select Committee system at its best, and Members across the House worked together. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger), a fellow member of the Committee who spoke earlier. I share his view that Sir Olly Robbins, who gave us evidence, put in an impressive performance. He is clearly angry at the way in which he is being treated; he has a distinguished career that has been brought to a premature end, and he is clearly very upset by that. In his evidence, he made some extraordinary revelations. He had given evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee in November last year, when, as the Chair of the Committee suggested in her introduction, we may have heard the truth and nothing but the truth, but probably not the whole truth. This morning, we heard a lot more of the whole truth. What became absolutely clear, which had already been suggested in the previous hearing, was that No. 10 Downing Street was absolutely determined that Lord Mandelson should become the ambassador of his country to the United States. Sir Olly told us that his predecessor, Philip Barton, had strongly advised that that should not happen until after the developed vetting process had been completed. Despite that advice from the permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, he was ignored—indeed, we are told that the Cabinet Office went on to suggest that developed vetting might not even be necessary. This was not just a routine appointment, and it was not routine for two reasons. First, it was the appointment of probably the most important ambassadorial post that this country has. Secondly, and very unusually, it was a direct ministerial appointment. Most of the time, ambassadorial appointments are made from within the civil service, and people have already had the vetting procedure. This was somebody being brought in from the outside who had not been vetted and already had a track record of having had to resign from Government twice.

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15. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Sir John Whittingdale

    Peter Mandelson: Government Appointment

    I completely agree with the hon. Lady. It is somehow being suggested by Labour Members that this was about people advising the Prime Minister—I think one speaker earlier said that the Prime Minister had been persuaded to appoint Peter Mandelson. Well, I worked for a Prime Minister, and she coined a phrase: “Advisers advise; Ministers decide.” In this case, as the hon. Lady says, it was the decision of the Prime Minister. Sir Olly Robbins also pointed out that by the time he took up his position, he was essentially presented with a fait accompli. He set that out to us—he said that “I took over as PUS on 20 January”, and that due diligence had already been completed. We know that that process, which included an interview with Morgan McSweeney, had revealed the ongoing relationship between Lord Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein, but that it was ignored. We were told that approval of the appointment had already been given by the King, it had been announced publicly to the press, and agrément had been given by the United States. Sir Olly Robbins made clear that agrément is not just a formality; it was a very significant development. Lord Mandelson had also been given access to the FCDO building and IT access, and finally, he was being granted access to highly classified briefings on a case-by-case basis. I asked Sir Olly Robbins whether, given that all that was already in place, it would damage our relationship with the United States of America if he were to have the appointment withdrawn. He replied very clearly, “Yes, it would.” As my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis) set out, we already had a very good ambassador in Washington, but Downing Street had nevertheless said to the US Administration that it wanted Lord Mandelson to be appointed, and the White House had given its agreement through the agrément procedure. For Sir Olly Robbins to then withdraw the appointment would have caused real damage to our foreign policy. One can argue that if Sir Olly Robbins were told that the UKSV process had resulted in a clear recommendation of denial, he might—or perhaps even should—still have done so, but he also told us this morning that he was not told that. We were told that he did not see the UKSV report, and that he did not even know that the report has a red box saying “deny” with a tick in it. He said that he had never seen those documents before, and that that would be normal, because access is very restricted for the reasons that the hon. Member for Halesowen set out. All that Sir Olly Robbins was told was that there had been a leaning towards refusal, and that it was a borderline case. Whether or not that was an accurate reflection of what the report actually said is another matter, and we can perhaps debate at what stage, or how far, the message from Downing Street—“We want this person to be appointed”—had been transmitted, to try to make that appointment as possible as it was. However, we are told that after Sir Olly Robbins had arrived as permanent secretary, he was subjected to regular calls from No. 10 saying, “Get it done.” He also told us that the message was not, “Get it done subject to security clearance,” which in his view, it should have been. The press release announcing the appointment of Lord Mandelson did not say “subject to security clearance”—that was never mentioned. This was announced as a decision that had already been taken. Why was the decision taken? That is a matter that is open to conjecture. There is a view among some Labour Members that it was somehow a reward for services given in getting the Prime Minister his job. The leader of the Liberal Democrats said that it might have been an attempt to cosy up to President Trump, although as my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington pointed out, our previous ambassador had done a really good job in representing this country to President Trump. We may never know, but what we do know is that the Prime Minister was absolutely determined that that appointment should be made. Even after the appointment was made, when all of these things began to be revealed—in particular, the ongoing relationship between Lord Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein, which the Prime Minister said he was unaware of the closeness of and he was very angry when he was told about—inquiries had already been made. Journalists had been ringing up No. 10 and saying, “We have been told that Lord Mandelson failed his security vetting,” and No. 10 put out a denial. With journalists calling up and asking, “Is it true that he did not pass the UKSV assessment, and it recommended denial of security vetting?” one would expect that before saying, “No, that’s complete rubbish,” No. 10 might actually begin to ask questions. People in No. 10 might say to the Prime Minister, “You should be aware that we’ve had an inquiry about this.” Apparently none of that happened, or if it did, it was simply swept under the carpet. The end result of this process is that for more than a year we had someone representing this country at the most senior level in America, which is our closest ally, who the security agencies had concluded was a security risk. We do not know the full extent of the damage that may have been done during that time.

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16. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Sir John Whittingdale

    Peter Mandelson: Government Appointment

    I am afraid that Madam Deputy Speaker is coughing at me, so I will not give way. I fear that there is still more to come. I hope that I can say on behalf of the Foreign Affairs Committee that we will continue to pursue this matter.

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17. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Sir James Cleverly

    Peter Mandelson: Government Appointment

    Sir Olly Robbins.

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18. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Sir James Cleverly

    English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

    I will begin by recognising the work that has taken place in both Houses to try to improve this legislation, which is in many ways such a curate’s egg. It has faults and flaws that their lordships in the other place have worked towards improving, and I thank them for that work. The Conservatives have been clear throughout the passage of the Bill that this is a centralising Bill. It takes decisions away from local communities and places them into the hands of Ministers, often without consent. We have already seen the consequences of this centralising of power and “Government know best” attitude. We have seen elections cancelled and then reinstated. We have seen the restructuring of local government imposed from the centre, driven by political considerations rather than the voice of the independent boundary commissions. Local leaders are being presented with plans and told to comply. It is called a devolution Bill, but it is not devolution. We welcome the improvements to this Bill put forward by the Lords. The question before the House, however, remains simple: does this Bill empower local areas, or does it continue a pattern of centralised control? I will go through the Lords amendments in turn. Lords amendment 36, which we support, would be an important and practical improvement to the Bill. It establishes the clear principle that brownfield land should be used first. That is just common sense. We want to get more houses built—of course we do—but we should start with land that has already been used rather than virgin land. The amendment protects communities while still enabling homes to be built with local approval and local consent.

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19. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Sir James Cleverly

    English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

    My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: this fundamentally betrays a lack of ambition from the Government. The Minister for Housing and Planning will know Kidbrooke in south-east London, which is a fantastic example of redeveloping previously developed land. Poor-quality post-second world war tower blocks have been redeveloped, with increased beauty and increased density, which is good for the local economy and good for the local society. The Bill does nothing to encourage more developments like that; it encourages developers to build cheap and awful in green fields around urban areas, which is the opposite of what should happen.

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20. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Sir James Cleverly

    English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

    No. Let us talk about local consent. Lords amendment 98 addresses one of the central concerns with the Bill and would ensure that changes to local governance cannot simply be imposed from the centre. That matters, because devolution must be with the consent of local people and not imposed from Whitehall. The Lords rightly scrutinises the role of mayoral commissioners, and Lords amendment 4 would strengthen transparency in their appointment. We have consistently argued that power must come with proper accountability. Following engagement with colleagues in the other place, the Government have published draft guidance on appointments and remuneration. That is welcome, but guidance is not the same as proper accountability, and there remains a real risk of expanding layers of expensive and unelected roles without sufficient scrutiny. We will continue to press for further and stronger safeguards. On governance in London, Lords amendment 13 would make a targeted change to how decisions are taken on council tax requirement. As was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune), who is sadly no longer in his place, it would lower the threshold for the London Assembly to amend those decisions, strengthening its ability to hold the mayor to account. That would be a step towards greater democratic accountability in London, and we support it. While we support those improvements, concerns do remain. On Lords Amendment 42 and land disposal, we have been clear about the need for proper safeguards. We argued that any change in this area must be preceded by a full review. The Government promised a wider review of protections for public open spaces and that they would engage widely before recommending any changes. Yet those commitments have been watered down and suddenly, we discover that a proper consultation has become an internal review. That is why we have again tabled an amendment to require a proper review of open space availability before the powers are exercised.

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21. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Sir James Cleverly

    English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

    I will, because I have a thing to say about the hon. Gentleman’s party.

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22. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Sir James Cleverly

    English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

    I completely disagree with the hon. Gentleman’s assessment. Had his party in the other place voted to keep the protections in, we would not be having this discussion at this Dispatch Box now. His party failed to do its work in the other place. I will not stand here and be lectured by his party, which failed to do its job. The pattern is familiar. The Government centralise powers first and then consider accountability later. Some amendments before us represent sensible improvements and we will support them where they do. However, the underlying concern with the Bill remains. Devolution must trust local people in local areas. In so many ways, the Bill does not. Devolution only works when there is proper transparency in decision making and proper safeguards when powers are expanded. In many ways, this Bill does not have that. That is what we will continue to press for and that is why we will continue to hold this Labour Government to account. The Bill has serious consequences, it is still deficient, and we will support the Lords amendments that improve it.

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23. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Sir James Cleverly

    English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

    To central Government!

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24. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Sir Iain Duncan Smith

    Iran: Human Rights

    Lindsay and Craig Foreman are incarcerated in Iran in brutal circumstances, and are being tortured in many ways. They are not my constituents, but their family approached me. May I be clear to the Government, and have them be clear to us in their response? Are the Government saying publicly that they are not spies, but innocent tourists? Will they formally declare the detention to be arbitrary? What else can they do to try to draw attention to the plight of these two innocent tourists?

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25. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Sir Iain Duncan Smith

    Peter Mandelson: Government Appointment

    Did my right hon. Friend not find it astonishing that in the testimony today the ex-leader of the Foreign Office said that he was made to understand that before they had completed their clearances, Mandelson already had STRAP clearance, which gave him access to the most secure and most dangerous information held by Government?

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26. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Sir Iain Duncan Smith

    Peter Mandelson: Government Appointment

    Everybody has said pretty much everything, but I am going to say some of it again, as is my wont in this Chamber. First, I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, who laid out a powerful case against the Government, particularly against the Prime Minister and his excuses in all this. I think that something very intriguing took place today. The person who has just been sacked was brought to the Foreign Affairs Committee to give testimony about what this was all about. What we learned was that the Government wanted so much for Peter Mandelson to take over the role of ambassador that they drove everything aside in pursuit of it—bullying civil servants, essentially sacking one of them because he did not give the answers it appears that they wanted, and excusing themselves on the basis that everybody else was wrong and they were right. Well they were not, and that has now come home to roost. The essential fact is that many of us knew about Mandelson’s activities. I have a whole dossier with me here about his links to China, with hundreds of names of people he had met and given details of all sorts of things to. We know now that he lobbied the Government, including over electric vehicles and the tariff. It is outrageous, really; he continued to put pressure on them, even when he was given the job. That is the nature of a man still repaying his links to China. We have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam) about his links with Sistema in Russia. Even on that alone, there was copious evidence in the public domain about why Peter Mandelson should never have been allowed in any Government post whatsoever—that is before there was any attempt at inspection. There is no way on earth that the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) can get up and talk about faults in the system and about not getting clarity—nonsense! Everybody who wanted to know, knew. In the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, we knew about it. We had all the details and they were published. There is no excuse for the Government to say, “We waited for the Foreign Office to deliver this great thing, and it did not tell us.” They knew. Secondly, the way the Government manipulated this is absolutely shocking. The outgoing Cabinet Secretary saw what was in the Cabinet Office’s review of the due diligence—by the way, that was to have a look and give recommendations to Government, which was not the same as what the Foreign Office was doing—and it showed just how tainted this corrupt and corrupting man was and what he had been up to. Having seen that, the outgoing Cabinet Secretary advised the Government—that was his job—that they should not go ahead to appoint Peter Mandelson but wait for the full review to take place, and, one way or the other, for him to be cleared or not cleared. But the Government did not do that. That is the other question: why, despite that sensible, reasonable advice did the Government go ahead and press on—and at such speed? They put His Majesty the King in the firing line. When they approved the appointment, it went to the King—because they had declared it—even though they had not had clearance, and the agrément was given by our US partners. What in heaven’s name could have happened later on? None of the stuff to do with Epstein had yet come into the middle of the argument. The Government wanted this man, who is utterly corrupt, as our ambassador. The other bit from today that I find astonishing is the admission by the ex-permanent secretary Olly Robbins that, despite the fact that Peter Mandelson had not been cleared, he was given STRAP clearance to see documents of such importance that they could have brought the Government and the country down. I will end on this, Madam Deputy Speaker—you have been most tolerant. I simply say this: the Prime Minister is in the firing line on this one, and for very good reasons. He is in charge, and he knew what was going on. The people he sacked are still in the firing line. They cannot weasel out of this. They committed an offence in the books of anybody in the Chamber. The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister will be in the firing line, because he has been put here literally to try to tell some story about how none of this is the Prime Minister’s fault. The Prime Minister has been economical with the actualité and terminologically inexact. All I can say is, no more terminological inexactitudes, please, when the right hon. Gentleman gets to the Dispatch Box.

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27. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Sir Iain Duncan Smith

    Peter Mandelson: Government Appointment

    In Olly Robbins’ letter to the Foreign Affairs Committee today, he countermands what the right hon. Gentleman has said from the Dispatch Box. He says: “I believe the Cabinet Office (CO) raised whether Developed Vetting (DV) was actually necessary. I understand the FCDO insisted that DV was a requirement before Mandelson took up his post in Washington.” After due diligence, the Cabinet Office was insisting that it was not necessary. Surely the right hon. Gentleman needs to retract his remarks.

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28. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Sir Bernard Jenkin

    Peter Mandelson: Government Appointment

    Will the hon. Member give way?

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29. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Sir Bernard Jenkin

    Peter Mandelson: Government Appointment

    I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman, whom I know as a friend across the House, as we have worked together positively on many things. I served on the Privileges Committee that studied the Boris case and reached a conclusion upon it. If the hon. Gentleman wants to help the Prime Minister, I would be rather wary, if I were him, about drawing parallels between Boris Johnson and the present Prime Minister.

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30. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Sir Andrew Mitchell

    Topical Questions

    Following the Minister’s answer to Question 1 on illicit finances, we still do not have publicly accessible registers of beneficial ownership in the overseas territories, nearly 10 years after this House passed the necessary legislation and made it clear that they must be set up. When will the Government put their foot down, say that there has been enough delay and obfuscation, and fully open up these registers to proper scrutiny now?

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31. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Sir Alec Shelbrooke

    Wind Farms: Protected Peatland

    Order. May I confirm that the hon. Member has informed the Members he mentioned that he was going to mention them in this debate?

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32. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Sir Alec Shelbrooke

    Wind Farms: Protected Peatland

    Order. I do not intend to put a time limit on, but hon. Members can see who is standing to request to speak. I ask them to be mindful that I will call the first Front-Bench contribution at 3.28 pm.

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33. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Sir Alec Shelbrooke

    Alternative Measures to GDP

    Before I call Dr Roz Savage to move the motion, I remind Members that, unless they have given notice to Dr Savage or the Minister, they are unable to make a speech; I have not had any indication that anybody has given such notice. They are, however, able to make an intervention.

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34. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Sir Alec Shelbrooke

    Hammersmith Bridge

    I see two hon. Members who want to speak. I shall call the Front Benchers at 5.08 pm. I will not be setting a time limit, but I am sure Members will consider each other.

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35. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Robbie Moore

    Wind Farms: Protected Peatland

    I beg to move, That this House has considered windfarm development on protected peatland. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec. I am glad to be introducing this incredibly important debate, which I have personally secured. It is particularly timely because, right now, Brontë country—a delicate mosaic of precious peatland and an historic heritage landscape, straddling Haworth and Stanbury in the Worth valley in my constituency across to Hebden Bridge in the Calder valley—is under threat like never before. There is a proposal for a huge wind farm development, and I will spend my time in this debate stating exactly why we should oppose the disastrous scheme. Before I begin, I put on record my thanks to the various local campaign groups that have been working tirelessly to oppose the Calderdale wind farm and get the proposals scrapped. There are too many to mention, but I particularly thank Lydia and Nick MacKinnon and Jenny Shepherd. Today happens to be the 110-year anniversary of the birth of Charlotte Brontë, author of several books and poems, most notably Jane Eyre. The works of Charlotte and her sisters, Emily and Anne, are world famous, as is the iconic moorland that inspired many of their stories. If approved, the Calderdale wind farm would see up to 34 200-metre-high wind turbines erected across Brontë country. This moorland is not just a site of famous literary heritage; it is also the site of irreplaceable protected peatland. I have been firmly against these proposals ever since they were first brought forward in 2023, and I have been inundated with correspondence from my constituents and local campaign groups who agree that this scheme will be hugely detrimental to our heritage landscape and our precious protected peatland. Before today’s debate, I wrote to the hon. Members for Halifax (Kate Dearden), for Shipley (Anna Dixon), for Calder Valley (Josh Fenton-Glynn), for Pendle and Clitheroe (Jonathan Hinder) and for Burnley (Oliver Ryan), inviting them to speak in today’s debate, so that we could work on a cross-party basis to strongly oppose these development proposals. Like me, I am sure that they have been inundated with correspondence from constituents concerned about these proposals, so it is disappointing not to see all of them here today. Before I outline in more detail my concerns about the Calderdale wind farm proposals, I want to be very clear that I am not against wind farm developments or renewable energy schemes. However, I am absolutely against wind farms being developed where they will have a huge impact on the environment, ecology, wildlife, heritage, flooding risk and the very carbon sequestration ability of our peat, which will be hugely negatively impacted. It is with peat—and its carbon storage ability being severely impacted—that I will start. The peat in the south Pennine moors is generally considered to be around 9,000 years old; the mosaic of blanket bogs began forming thousands of years ago from sphagnum moss. For centuries, the peat has been absorbing the carbon emissions from the mills of our industrial past, our transport and our everyday modern life. Peat is delicate and grows just a millimetre a year if we are lucky, and only when subject to a limited range of favourable environmental and climate conditions. The proposals of the Calderdale wind farm could cover approximately 2,300 hectares of protected peatland above Hebden Bridge and Haworth, and the impacts of disturbing such precious peatland will have disastrous consequences on the local area and beyond. Peatland is a natural store of carbon, capturing and storing 26 times as much carbon as our forests in the UK. Almost all our UK peatlands have at least some blanket bog, with UK uplands containing around 15% of the blanket bog in the world. The Walshaw moor alone is made up of approximately 16,000 acres of it. Healthy peatlands will absorb and store carbon, and build carbon into the peat. However, if peatlands are damaged, which is unavoidable with huge infrastructure projects such as wind farms, it can release carbon back into the atmosphere, dramatically increasing carbon dioxide emissions. The amount of infrastructure required for the Calderdale wind farm is huge. It includes the foundations associated with each turbine, the complex road network that needs to be built across the peat so that each turbine can be fixed in place, the expansive base areas next to each turbine, the vast cabling routes that need to be buried underneath the peat, the man-made drainage cut-outs that need to be installed, the sub-stations, the weather monitoring and the fencing—I could go on. All of that will have a deeply damaging impact on our protected peatland. As with any major infrastructure project, access routes will need to be created to the turbine sites, and those service roads will cut across blanket bog and seriously impact landscape hydrology. Long-established estate roads in uplands tend to avoid peatland because of the maintenance challenges, but wind farm roads simply cannot do that; they are constrained by the requirements of the turbine layout and the moorland topography. That is not just a short-term problem; once constructed, a wind farm road becomes a permanent feature of the landscape. Peat subsidence will continue indefinitely because of the need for our roads to be kept constantly dry and because of compression from the weight of roadway material. A very real example of that is the A5, which was built across peatland on the Welsh border nearly 300 years ago but continues to subside today. I know that the developers and those supporting the Calderdale wind farm proposals like to say that the benefits of producing renewable energy outweigh the carbon loss caused by the development, but the justifications they have offered have been extremely poor. In fact, Professor Richard Lindsay, a world-leading expert on peatland ecosystems, who I spoke to just last week, has described those making this argument as “clinging to the carbon calculator as a drowning man clings to a life belt”. By that, he means that the system of measuring carbon storage impact is not fit for purpose. It simply does not consider all the influencing factors, or indeed the cumulative impact of onshore wind farm developments, the vast majority of which are north of the border in Scotland and in Wales.

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36. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Robbie Moore

    Wind Farms: Protected Peatland

    My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He makes an excellent point: the developers have failed to ascertain that the positives of the project outweigh its negative impacts, including the impact on the ability of the peatland to sequester and store carbon. That is before even considering all the negative impacts on highways, the impacts of the infrastructure that has to be developed and the impact on local communities. The renewable energy scheme will be incredibly detrimental; the peatland will hold more carbon. That is why I am firmly opposed to the development. Another huge risk with the development of wind farms on sites of protected peatland such as Walshaw moor is the impact on both water quality and flooding. Peatland is 95% to 98% water—it has the same percentage of solid content as a jellyfish. Disturbing it through the construction of wind turbines on Walshaw moor will increase flood risk and damage water quality in Calder Valley towns and surrounding communities. Studies have shown that putting any kind of hard infrastructure on peatland has a direct negative impact on how peat interacts with itself; it prevents peat bogs from absorbing rainwater, which ultimately increases flood risk downstream and increases the likelihood of serious slipping incidents. Peatland also plays a key role in regulating water quality. Around 72% of the UK’s reservoirs are fed from peat, and over 28 million people consume water from peaty catchments. Degradation and disturbance of peat is often accompanied by increases in dissolved and particulate organic carbon loads, which increases the treatment costs required to make water drinkable. Another additional environmental risk associated with the Calderdale wind farm proposal is the risk to local wildlife. Walshaw moor is home to a number of protected bird species, including the lapwing, golden plover, merlin, short-eared owl and the curlew—today, in fact, is World Curlew Day. Those species use Walshaw moor as breeding grounds, and organisations such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds have warned that disturbing such populations with the installation of wind turbines will significantly damage overall numbers of the birds. I return to the specifics of the Calderdale wind farm’s impact on local heritage and culture. Rebecca Yorke and her team at the Brontë Society, who look after the Brontë parsonage in Haworth in my constituency, do incredible work. Understandably, our much-loved Brontë Society is firmly against the proposed wind farm development across our heritage landscape, which encompasses Top Withens, believed to be the inspiration for the setting of “Wuthering Heights”. That landscape, I might add, has a live application worked up right now for UNESCO world heritage status, along with listed status for Top Withens. All that has widespread community support. Our literary landscape offering to the world, which inspired the Brontës’ imaginations in their renowned novels and poetry, is under threat. If this wind farm proposal goes ahead, that landscape will be blighted forever. We know that because, even after the decommissioning stage of the wind farm, none of the infrastructure is proposed to be removed, apart from the turbines themselves. The road infrastructure, all that cabling and those deep foundations that sit beneath the turbines are not proposed to be removed once the wind farm comes to the end of its life, blighting our heritage landscape and the peat forever.

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37. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Robbie Moore

    Wind Farms: Protected Peatland

    The right hon. Member makes an excellent point. He is absolutely right, because the decommissioning costs are not necessarily built into what the impact will be on our environment, our protected peat or our wildlife. I know that because the developers themselves say that once the site finishes its usage, parts of the development will not be removed—such as the piles, the infrastructure for the road, the foundations—but simply remain in situ. Worse than that, however, should an additional wind farm come down the line, it will use the infrastructure that is already in place, but is likely to have to be expanded. A further real live concern is because when the application came before us, the initial proposal was for 65 wind turbines, although that has been reduced to 35 wind turbines now. That creates the real worry of it potentially being only phase 1 of a much bigger wind farm coming down the line. Therefore, once the precedent is set of an application being approved by the Government —it will be the Secretary of State who determines it—stage 2 will therefore come down the line. That deeply worries me. I am grateful that, last week, I had the opportunity to speak with peat experts, Dr Andreas Heinemeyer, Professor Richard Lindsay, Dr Emma Hinchcliffe and Jessica Fìor-Berry, all of whom pointed to the complete lack of research and evidence about the impact of wind farm development on protected peatland. I therefore ask the Labour Government why the Minister is in favour of pushing through development on protected peatland such as Walshaw moor despite the hugely damaging impacts I have outlined in this speech. The proposals for the Calderdale wind farm demonstrate a glaringly obvious hypocrisy that this Government show when it comes to protecting our protected, precious peatland. The Government were elected on a manifesto that committed to expanding nature-rich habitats such as peatlands. The Minister for Nature herself has repeatedly called our peatlands “this country’s Amazon rainforest”, so why do the Labour Government continue to support completely destroying them—when other options are available—given the scale of this development? The development is being considered a nationally significant infrastructure project, so it will be the Secretary of State who determines the application. I ask the Minister, however, why have this Government permitted the developer to undertake its statutory consultation right now, during a period when the two local councils, Bradford council and Calderdale council, are in the middle of all-out local elections and cannot comment because of purdah? Will the Minister seek to extend the statutory consultation period, as I have requested of the Secretary of State? I ask all watching this debate who agree that this development will be catastrophic to participate in the consultation, which is open right now. For the reasons I have set out, I am clear that this wind farm development must not be approved. My fellow Worth Valley Conservative councillors do not want it, my constituents do not want it, world-leading peat experts do not want it and I suspect the Nature Minister does not want it either, so why is the Minister enabling this proposal to continue under this Labour Government? What I am less clear on is the positions of my neighbouring Members of Parliament: the hon. Members for Halifax, for Shipley, for Calder Valley, for Pendle and Clitheroe and for Burnley. I urge them to join me in opposing this disastrous scheme.

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38. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Robbie Moore

    Wind Farms: Protected Peatland

    Perfect intervention there, but we have had an intervention from only one of the five neighbouring Labour Members of Parliament I invited to this debate, of which only two turned up. I wrote to all those Members of Parliament—crikey, it must have been about seven months ago—inviting them to join me in a cross-party consensus so that we could join forces in opposing this scheme. Despite the hon. Member for Shipley’s intervention, I am yet to hear that she is opposed to this scheme. I invite her, and the hon. Members for Halifax, for Calder Valley, for Pendle and Clitheroe and for Burnley, to join me in opposing this scheme.

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39. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Robbie Moore

    Wind Farms: Protected Peatland

    Sir Alec, not only did I inform them today to remind them to come to this debate, I wrote to them last week inviting them to come to this debate and I wrote to them maybe six months ago asking them to join me. They are well aware that this debate is taking place. It is very disappointing that they did not turn up to stand up and speak on behalf of their constituents. Renewable energy could be an essential part of our future, but not like this—not here, and not at the cost of everything the Brontë country represents. This scheme must be stopped.

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40. 21 Apr 2026·Parliament·Robbie Moore

    Wind Farms: Protected Peatland

    The hon. Member seems to be dancing around the edges. This debate is on the matter of “windfarm development on protected peatland” but she has not mentioned anything to do with wind farms yet. I am keen to understand whether she is for or against the Calderdale wind farm.

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