5,578 spoken contributions under 12 words (interjections such as “Will the hon. Member give way?”) are hidden. Show them
Mr Twigg, you and the Committee members will be pleased to hear that this will be the shortest speech of the day. The new clause adds the Bill, once enacted, to the list of “the Immigration Acts”. It is a technical provision, and we do not oppose it.
<Question HRSContentId="{F9C2D9DE-E8E4-49EB-9725-23BC2B7569CE}">T4. <QuestionText HRSContentId="{D09D32BA-9BEF-4482-90BC-E9BF1DFAD3FD}"></QuestionText>Last year, more than 7,500 Eritrean nationals entered the UK illegally on small boats. Following talks to persuade Eritrea to accept the return of those illegal immigrants, the Eritrean embassy dismissed threats of visa sanctions as “a perfunctory political gimmick”. Will the Minister please update the House on what she is doing to apply diplomatic pressure to countries such as Eritrea that refuse to take back illegal immigrants?</Question>
I have had a great deal of trouble getting a straight answer from the Government on this for some months now, so I will give it one more go: on what specific date in August 2024 was Jonathan Powell appointed as the Prime Minister’s special envoy to the British Indian Ocean Territory?
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. On the question I have just asked the Foreign Secretary, I have asked several times for a straight answer about the appointment of Jonathan Powell. I put in a freedom of information request on 23 June. That FOI was delayed to 22 July, then to 20 August, then to 18 September, then to 18 October and then again to 13 November. What can I do to get a straight answer from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, given that it has now been delaying a response to an FOI for five months?
Our subsea infrastructure is incredibly important; we know from recent reports that the Russians have been sniffing around it in their GUGI submarines, and that Russian trawlers have been investigating our undersea infrastructure. I am very concerned that we have only one UK-based and UK-flagged repair ship, the CS Sovereign, which is due to go out of service in 2030. Six months ago, I asked the former Department for Science, Innovation and Technology what it was doing to investigate replacing that capability. Could the Minister give us assurance <span id="198" class="column-number" data-column-number="198"></span>about the Government’s plans to ensure that we have UK-based and UK-flagged repair capability for our subsea infrastructure?
Moscow ships stalk our cables, Tehran’s agents seek to assassinate on our soil, and last week the Pentagon declared Confucius institutes a threat to our national security. In stark contrast, the powers I secured to allow these weapons of the Chinese Communist party to be closed here in the UK were scrapped by this Government. Does the Foreign Secretary think that Washington has got it wrong, and if not, will the powers be reinstated and deployed? While he is at it, will he expel every Iranian official with links to the Ministry of Intelligence and Security and <span id="153" class="column-number" data-column-number="153"></span>bring our allies together to freeze Russian and Belarusian tourist visas to protect us from their use to attack our country?
I recognise the Minister’s efforts to resolve this issue, and I am grateful to her for meeting me recently, but far too often, Capita remains completely unresponsive. Sadly, trying to get an appointment at the MPs’ surgeries is proving very difficult. Last week, I wrote to her about four outstanding cases in my constituency. Will she commit personally to reviewing those cases and securing me a detailed update, so that my constituents know what to expect and when to expect it, and when they will get the money that they are owed?
The villages of Crick and Flore in my constituency are two small rural communities with few amenities, but both have hotels housing asylum seekers. The previous Minister responsible for asylum, in fairness, recognised that they are not suitable and said that they would be temporary, but all the communication I get now says, “It will be done by 2029”. Can I invite the Minister to visit these villages and see for herself how unsuitable they are for those hotels?
I thank all my constituents who have contacted me about this vital point. Community diagnostic centres offer great resources to speed up screening. Does my hon. Friend agree that more emphasis should be put on those centres, particularly in rural areas like South Shropshire?
I hope you received my note, Mr Vickers, indicating that I could not be here at the start. I offer my apologies to the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley), who moved the motion, and all other colleagues. I meant no disrespect; I was chairing a Committee upstairs. Street Farm House is on a corner opposite the village shop in a quiet, rural village. During rush hour, there is a fairly high volume of traffic. There is a 30-mile-an-hour speed limit that is hardly ever adhered to during the rush-hour. The illustrious cabinet member for highways and transport, Peter Osborne, a Reform county councillor, has chosen not to take any action to introduce traffic-calming measures, despite the fact that we have warned over and over again that it is only a question of time before a child or an elderly person—I can speak with some authority on that matter—will be killed crossing that bottleneck. On a light, bright morning six weeks ago, Baxter, aged two-and-a-half, chose to cross the road. It was totally out of character because, so far as we are all aware, he had never done it before. He was hit by a car travelling, at a guesstimate, well in excess of 50 miles an hour. The driver did not stop. Five other drivers did not stop. Unfortunately, the village shop CCTV did not pick up the number plate. Afterwards, one decent human being took the trouble to pull in, look after the dying cat and make sure that the owners—not me—were aware that their desperately loved family pet had been killed on the road. I have always had some strong feelings about this issue, but this incident has inevitably sharpened my attention. I understand entirely the concerns raised by Cats Protection and others about liability. That liability applies to dogs: when a dog is out of control and causes an accident, the owner may be liable for whatever damage is caused up to and including death in that accident. Those of us who love cats and dogs must accept that it is much harder to keep a cat under control than a dog— the expression “herding kittens” is probably appropriate. Nevertheless, cats are now microchipped. The point has been made, fairly, that the person who hits and kills or maims the animal is likely to be traumatised. Patently, that was not the case for the driver who hit the cat that I referred to. They clearly could not have given a toss; they drove straight on with gay abandon. If it is difficult for people to grasp to whom they should report something after stopping, then I respectfully suggest that it is no harder than to know to whom to report hitting a dog, so I do not think that is a valid argument. I believe very strongly that to leave any animal, but particularly a family pet, dying in the road and go on without a care in the world is simply not acceptable. It is not decent behaviour. It is not what the British do, with their affection for animals.<span id="36WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="36WH"></span> I would entirely support an amendment to the Road Traffic Act or, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) suggested, taking guidance and turning it into something statutory. I do not accept the argument that it cannot be done. It can be done; we have to find a way of doing it. I want to see Baxter’s law—or something similar—on a statute book as soon as possible.
A similar campaign before 2015 provoked a similar debate in this place. I was the Minister responsible at the time, speaking from the Dispatch Box. I can tell the hon. Member—it might come as a surprise to him— that at that time I changed the guidance so that cats killed on roads must be collected, identified with their owners and notified to the Highways Agency. One of three things has occurred: the guidance has been ignored; the Department for Transport did not bring about what I announced from the Dispatch Box, which seems unlikely; or the guidance applied only to roads controlled by the then Highways Agency, which of course excludes the local roads, which are within the purview of local authorities. That guidance is on record and can be used as the basis for dealing with this excellent petition. I speak as a proud cat owner then and as a beloved cat owner now. And, by the way, they are not just companions; they are members of my family—Caterina and Gordon.
The hon. Gentleman always makes such a valuable contribution to our considerations, as I told him just the other day. The guidance that I announced in this Chamber must exist. That could be made statutory, and a mechanism could be found to apply it beyond the trunk roads, as I mentioned earlier. Surely the Minister would have a fairly straightforward job—this would not require primary legislation. He may be able to do it at a stroke, following this debate.
The asylum accommodation centre at Wethersfield has blighted the local community and made it impossible for people to sell their homes. The number of pupils in the primary school is declining, putting the school’s future in question. When I was Home Secretary there was a cap on numbers and a commitment to a closure date in spring next year. The Government have reneged on both of those. When will the asylum centre in Wethersfield close, and when will my constituents be able to get back on with their lives properly?
I thank the Minister for her statement, but the situation is worse than she has outlined. We have had four PAC inquiries into Capita’s administration scheme this year, and it has missed virtually every single one of the deadlines that it set out in each of those hearings. The latest revelation I have discovered is that if Capita does not pay out the lump-sum payment due to bereaved relatives within two years, those relatives will have to pay tax at the highest rate. I wrote to the Minister about that issue; she very kindly replied and had a meeting with me, and she told me that there were not likely to be more than 10 such cases. I find that improbable, given that the scheme has 1.7 million members. Indeed, <em>The Guardian</em> has published an article saying that 1,600 members have been waiting for over 100 days, so it is likely that many of these people will get up to the two-year deadline. Can she guarantee to the House today that she will either enforce Capita paying compensation for any lost money, or change the law so that none of the people in that very vulnerable position, waiting for their payment, will be worrying about whether they will pay tax?
There is wide consensus across the House on the need to tackle modern slavery. The Modern Slavery Act 2015 went a long way towards doing that, but fails to have any real teeth to stop slave-produced goods being sold in this country. The Immigration and Asylum Bill presents this House with an opportunity to give that Act some real teeth. Will the Secretary of State or the Minister sit down with me to discuss the options to give that Act teeth?
I invite the Minister to join me on a tour of the beautiful town of Stone in my constituency. As we walk down the high street, she will see the grade II* listed Crown Hotel, which is sadly slowly degrading because the owners are not putting in the investment that is required. To me, the good growth fund sounds like a brilliant opportunity for Stafford borough council to look at compulsory purchasing that building and ensuring that the investment required to bring it back to life is put in. However, we do not have elected mayors in Staffordshire, so how can authorities such as Stafford borough council access this money to deliver growth and investment in our town centres?
Some people, including the Prime Minister, argue that the small boats crisis was caused by our leaving the EU. It started in 2018. In the two years before Brexit, only 289 small boat people were sent back under agreements. What is the solution? The only solution, surely, is to detain and deport. As the <span id="3" class="column-number" data-column-number="3"></span>Home Secretary will not leave the European convention on human rights, will she at least consider creating return hubs in a distant Council of Europe country, so that we can have a genuine deterrent?
Thank you for your chairmanship today, Dr Murrison. In passing, I thank the Government for changing their mind about the Health Services Safety Investigation Body and for keeping that body, so that it can continue working as it is. I wonder what it would make of a systemic study of the safety management risks and how they are being managed with prostate cancer and screening, because I see very different experiences across different European countries and a wide variety of methods of gathering data. Blanket screening exists in very few countries. I heard what the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Dr Prinsley) said, but my understanding is that an MRI scan followed by a needle biopsy need not necessarily have much in the way of adverse health effects. I had three MRI scans, but no needle biopsy.
Many tests for initial diagnosis of many conditions are unreliable. The problem is that the Government are telling people, “You cannot have a PSA test”, unless, of course, they buy a testing kit from some fly-by-night internet company. There is a lot of that going on, which is clogging up the health system.<span id="14WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="14WH"></span> If someone has a doubt about what is happening down there, it should be possible—indeed, it should be encouraged by GPs—for them to have a PSA test as a precaution. If the result is a false positive, let us find out that it is a false positive. That is a much cheaper option. I mean, look at the number of deaths. Each year, 64,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer and there are 12,000 deaths from it. This is a very serious health situation and we should not be tolerating it. What I see in the system is an excess of caution. Okay, we now have this Transform trial, but its effect will be to put off any further decisions until 2027. Why are we doing that? There is plenty of data and plenty of experience for the Government to make more flexible decisions. One always wonders whether the committees that make these decisions are really independent or whether they are under pressure to control costs, because, of course, if there are more PSA tests, there is a need for more people to scan and to biopsy, and there will be more false positives to deal with, and all of that has a cost. Cost alone should not be the metric; that is not how safety is run in other industries. There needs to be information, and a balanced and independent diagnosis of whether the system is generating the right data. Based on the evidence we already have, we are not testing enough people and we are not doing enough MRI scans. We should be doing much more.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I declare an interest as an ambassador for Prostate Cancer Research. In the work that I do for that charity I have spent a lot of time in the community talking to people affected by prostate cancer and those organising drives, and I am humbled by the many men I have met for whom diagnosis has come far too late to make a difference to their life, but who have chosen to dedicate themselves to this issue and to raising awareness. I think that is extraordinary of them and, as I said, humbling. The most important thing we can do to honour them is to make sure no one else loses a father, grandfather or brother to this cruel disease. I, like many other campaigners, was disappointed with the decision of the National Screening Committee. The Budget is not until Wednesday, but colleagues know I like numbers, so I dove into the model behind that decision and found a few issues that I hope the Minister will go back and have a look at. The model assumed treatment costs of around £27,000, but most independent estimates are far higher. The model assumed that only about a quarter of men received the most advanced drugs—again, audit figures suggest that twice as many do—and that they would not receive that treatment for more than three years, when the evidence is that they receive it for longer. All those gaps understate the positive case for screening that has been verified by the independent York Health Economics Consortium. Further to that, we heard about the concern regarding overtreatment, but modern diagnostic pathways offer ways to reduce unnecessary treatment and diagnosis. Given the time available to us, we do not need to go into all the details, but the evidence this year from the Cochrane review that looked at 800,000 men’s experience, and from the Swedish study into the success of the new Stockholm3 trial, indicated that the evidence is moving faster than the committee is moving. I am delighted that the Government have committed to a living model. Will the Minister commit to publishing the workflow perhaps by January, so that we know when the model will be updated with the new evidence and what the workstreams are for that, particularly on the new survival assumptions and costs? Will she also open up the model, as National Institute for Health and Care Excellence does, to independent experts, because then we can have real scrutiny and debate the assumptions.
I too thank the Minister for her considered response. As she can see from the attendance for this debate, there is enormous interest in the timetable for updating the model with new evidence, some of which has been published already. Does my hon. Friend agree that time is of the essence, and that we would appreciate some clarity on timelines?
<Question HRSContentId="{2FF56203-6F94-40A0-86AD-9E90384B306B}">T5. <QuestionText HRSContentId="{A86FF517-136C-4F42-A184-A8B85F379784}"></QuestionText>I recently met hard-working gamekeepers and farmers in the Yorkshire dales concerned about the recent uptick in antisocial behaviour and criminality. I am grateful to the North Yorkshire chief constable for his support and responsiveness in addressing these concerns. However, does the Minister agree with me about the importance of tackling crime in remote rural areas and of effective cross-border policing to tackle criminals who are crossing police boundaries?</Question>
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. Some 310 of my constituents signed the petition, placing South West Devon eighth out of all constituencies in the country. One constituent said: “At 73 I have lost many friends, at least 8, to this disease—and I have a few, three I know of, who were treated and survived due to early diagnosis.” Tina wrote: “Prostate cancer screening saved my brother-in-law; he went to the doctor for depression and was offered a routine Prostate screening test, it saved his life thankfully.” Another constituent asked me how it is possible to have reached the age of 69 without having had a PSA check from the GP, and that person was no one other than my predecessor, Sir Gary Streeter. When he was feeling unwell for a while, he went to be tested and had a PSA of 251. He has benefited from the NHS gym scheme and specifically wanted me to ask the Minister this: what work will happen to ensure that the scheme happens right across the country, and is not a postcode lottery? He is aware that, although he has benefited from the scheme, not everybody can. Ultimately, he is doing well—just to reassure everyone. Finally, I want to mention the Chestnut Appeal for Men’s Health, which is a local charity that works with men who are suffering from or living with prostate cancer and their families. It has done some fantastic work with Plymouth Argyle recently.
Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating Plymouth Argyle football club on its commitment to work with the Chestnut Appeal by running community diagnostic events annually before football matches?
Last year there was unanimous objection in Parliament and across the country to plans for aligning section 1 and section 2 forms for gun licences, mostly because it would make shotgun ownership more onerous for farmers. The Home Office has still not ruled out making those changes. Will the Home Secretary guarantee to this House now that she will not make life any harder for farmers by changing the way that we license gun ownership?
We have heard several times today about the importance of making informed decisions, but we cannot make informed decisions unless we are properly informed in the first place. Therefore, while there are some valid concerns about risk, the most important duty we and the Government have is to do everything we can to raise awareness so that people can make important, informed decisions. That is our duty, and I commit to doing so on behalf of my 357 constituents who signed the petition.
Order. We have a number of people wishing to contribute. To get as many people in as possible, there will be a speaking limit of four-and-a-half minutes.
Order. We have had a few people withdraw, so we have a few more minutes on the clock; Back-Bench MPs now have six minutes. I call Sadik Al-Hassan.
Order. I am not experiencing these issues—well, obviously my constituency is, but I am talking about this debate—so I ask Members not to say “You” or “Yours” please.
I call Andrew Ranger to make the final Back-Bench contribution. Other Back Benchers who have contributed to the debate should make their way back to the Chamber.
With the leave of the House, I will group the following motions together, unless there are any objections. <em>Ordered,</em> Business, innovation, Science and Trade Committee That Justin Madders be discharged from the Business, Innovation, Science and Trade Committee and Nesil Caliskan be added.<span id="137" class="column-number" data-column-number="137"></span> Defence Committee That Calvin Bailey be discharged from the Defence Committee and Graeme Downie be added. Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee That Vicky Foxcroft, Natasha Irons, Anneliese Midgley and Jo Platt be discharged from the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee and Gill German, Alison Hume, Tom Rutland and Jo Stevens be added. Energy Security and Net Zero Committee That Ms Polly Billington be discharged from the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee and Catherine Fookes be added. Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee That Juliet Campbell be discharged from the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee and Helena Dollimore be added. Foreign Affairs Committee That Alan Gemmell and Uma Kumaran be discharged from the Foreign Affairs Committee and Dr Zubir Ahmed and Jessica Toale be added. Health and Social Care Committee That Dr Beccy Cooper and Alex McIntyre be discharged from the Health and Social Care Committee and Sadik Al-Hassan and Dr Allison Gardner be added. Home Affairs Committee That Chris Murray and Jo White be discharged from the Home Affairs Committee and Matt Bishop and Preet Kaur Gill be added. Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee That Maya Ellis and Sarah Smith be discharged from the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee and Sagal Abdi-Wali and Alan Strickland be added. International Development Committee That Janet Daby be discharged from the International Development Committee and Tulip Siddiq be added. Justice Committee That Pam Cox be discharged from the Justice Committee and Jon Pearce be added. Scottish Affairs Committee That Elaine Stewart be discharged from the Scottish Affairs Committee and Kenneth Stevenson be added. Transport Committee That Mrs Elsie Blundell be discharged from the Transport Committee and Samantha Dixon be added. Treasury Committee That John Grady and Yuan Yang be discharged from the Treasury Committee and Andrew Lewin and Seema Malhotra be added. Work and Pensions Committee That David Baines be discharged from the Work and Pensions Committee and Andrew Pakes be added.<em>—(Jessica Morden, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.)</em>
I declare an interest: my wife, Olivia, works as a radiographer in the national health service. The thrust of the Government information given to all our constituents is about catching cancer as early as possible; part of the dilemma is that the Government position on prostate cancer screening seems to run against that. Over the weekend, I had a dozen emails from constituents who either have had prostate cancer or have family members who have been touched by it. Does my hon. Friend agree that, given that dichotomy, the Government should perhaps play it a little safe and be prepared to look at this again?
I thank the Minister for her statement. Elizabeth from Carpenders Park served as a Ministry of Justice usher for 23 years before retiring in January. Months later, she has still not received a single pension payment. That is despite spending more than two hours sitting in queues on the phone while simultaneously being prevented from using the pensions portal due to the high volume of inquiries. I am conscious that the Minister is encouraging casework to be brought to her via her good offices, but I am mindful that there will be a lot of casework across the House. What effort is she putting forward so that both Capita and the Cabinet Office increase capacity to deal with the backlog, as well as new cases?
I thank the Minister for the briefing she gave last week to me and the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart), and for early sight of her statement. I note that it arrived in unusually good time and hope that other ministerial offices will learn from her good example. The latest figures in the Government’s 5 October update are deeply concerning. As of the end of last month, more than 1,900 cases in four priority categories were more than 100 days old. Of those, just over 1,500 were labelled non-workable, with a further two death-in-service cases in data triage. That includes 1,049 bereavement cases and eight ill-health retirement cases, all classified as non-workable. That is not acceptable. Recent reporting also raised the prospect of bereaved families facing severe tax consequences because of delays to death-in-service benefits. Reports have suggested that the Government plan to make those bereaved families claw back this money via the Pensions Ombudsman, rather than preventing His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs from taxing delayed claims. To make matters worse, the Pensions Ombudsman itself estimates an 18-month wait to resolve cases. Will the Minister reassure the House and all those watching outside that this is not the case and that bereaved families will not have to proactively claw back that tax?<span id="32" class="column-number" data-column-number="32"></span> The Minister mentioned the delivery of surgeries to many Members of this House. Last month, my casework team had a surgery with a member of Capita staff. They were expecting to come away with updates to pass on to affected constituents, but for all the cases that were discussed, there were no updates whatsoever, leaving them feeling that the surgery was a total waste of time. I know that other hon. Members have reported similar experiences. What hope do affected constituents have when reaching out to Capita if it is prepared to tell our teams that nothing has been done on their cases? The warnings about Capita were there in black and white, and not only from earlier this year, as the Minister suggested. The contract of Capita’s predecessor, MyCSP, was extended to December 2025 to allow a two-year transition nearly 18 months of which was under the current Government. There were several milestones during those 18 months that Capita failed, but the new Government chose not to act. The National Audit Office’s June 2025 report identified many missed milestones and risks around operational readiness and data transfer. The Public Accounts Committee subsequently warned of further missed milestones and the need for contingency plans, but still the new Government chose to allow the new contract to go ahead and gave it that final go-ahead. Issues with Capita have been reported across several Government contracts. Under the new provisions in the Procurement Act 2023, the Government could refer Capita to the Debarment Review Service for investigation to prevent it from winning further similar contracts. Does the Minister plan to do so? The people affected by these failings did everything asked of them. They paid into the scheme, and they served this country as civil servants. They should not have to chase their own pensions, borrow for basic bills or wait months for basic updates. I ask the Minister to give the House clear deadlines and to set out how every affected member will receive their payments, and to explain why she is so confident that the assurances that Capita now gives her will deliver results when the assurances of improvements so repeatedly given to this House by her predecessor have amounted to so very little for those retired public servants, who cannot wait any longer. Finally, I agree with the Minister that Capita should be made to put things right. Cancelling the contract would result in more disruption, but surely there is only so long for which she will put up with failed targets and broken promises of improvements, so what preparations and contingencies will her Department put in place if it is necessary to cancel this contract, and what criteria will she use for deciding when we reach that point?
I think that all Members will support these proposals and hope that they succeed, but in order for new plans to be successful, it helps to understand why previous schemes might not have been. Given that last year the national homelessness strategy promised to halve rough sleeping over the course of this Parliament, with an uplift in funding, why does the Minister think that in the year to June this year homelessness was up compared to the previous year, and why is she confident that her plan will do better?
My hon. Friend refers to significant penalties. Ofcom has levied fines over the past few years, but that is clearly not leading to improvements in the service. Does my hon. Friend agree that it feels as though Royal Mail is treating these fines as part of the cost of doing business, and seeing it as cheaper to pay the fine than to address the problem?
It has been an incredibly hard few months for Cleveland. Local people are not interested in point scoring, but they do want answers. Cleveland has the highest recorded crime rate in the country, yet the latest Home Office data reveals that it has 17 fewer police officers than it had a year ago. Can the Minister explain why?
Illegal car cruising is a real blight on communities, causing noise pollution and terrifying local communities, including pedestrians and legal road users alike, on private and public roads. Will the Minister look again at the legislation to see whether this particular crime—it is a crime—can be penalised in a different way? At the moment, the generic legislation for antisocial behaviour is not catching enough people and is not a deterrent.
Let us not sugar-coat this: the contract has been a complete flop. Yes, it was awarded under a past Government, but now it is under the current Government—but of course the Prime Minister is setting the standard of not playing the blame game, although I have heard a lot of that today. What my constituents want to hear is when this will be sorted out. Ministers have talked about a recovery plan in April—fail. They talked about a recovery plan in June—fail. They talked about a recovery plan in September —fail. There has been failure after failure after failure. Will the Minister answer the question put by my hon. <span id="41" class="column-number" data-column-number="41"></span>Friend the Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire (Mike Wood), and tell us whether Capita will be given any other Government contracts? Will my constituents be compensated? This Government wanted to be in government, so now that they are, may I ask when the Minister and the Government will take responsibility for this, take control of the contract, and get it sorted out, because my constituents are suffering?
I thank the Minister for advance sight of the statement. Over the weekend, we heard yet another policy announcement made through the media, with the Prime Minister taking time out of his very busy reality TV schedule to brief the press that he will apparently end rough sleeping by Christmas. That is a laudable aim, which I think will be shared across the House by parties of all colours—I am sure everyone in this country wants to see rough sleeping fixed as an issue once and for all—but the pledge reminds me of a similar one, made almost a decade ago, in 2017, by the then Mayor of Greater Manchester, to end rough sleeping in that city region by 2020. Again, it was a nice idea, sold in a nice, upbeat way, but sadly it did not reflect the reality. Rough sleeping still exists in Greater Manchester; in fact, the numbers have risen from 2021, and the rate even doubled in 2025-26. The Prime Minister may be in his new job—and perhaps he took inspiration from another reality TV programme, “The Traitors”, to kick out his predecessor with the help of his new Chancellor—but the Labour party is not new in government. It has been in charge now for well over two years, exactly the same period during which rough sleeping has continued to rise in Greater Manchester. The Prime Minister asked us to judge him on his record as the Mayor of Greater Manchester, so that is precisely what we are doing. Failure in Manchester is one thing, but on a national scale the numbers are even bigger. So far, the Prime Minister has said that he will put another £432 million of taxpayers’ cash towards this approach, bringing the total commitment to £874 million. The Government themselves estimate that there are around 4,000 rough sleepers on an average night, which means the policy will cost in the region of £200,000 per rough sleeper. Will the Minister confirm that and tell us where all the money will go? At the same time, the Prime Minister refuses to rule out tax rises or to upset his left-wing Back Benchers by cutting benefits, so the Government need to be honest about where all this money will come from. He has talked about bringing hope, he talks about positivity, and we all know his fondness for “good vibes”, but what really matters is the delivery and the detail. In the past, the Prime Minister has failed to deliver on this issue precisely. He talked a good talk, he made the grand promises, <span id="54" class="column-number" data-column-number="54"></span>but he could not keep them on rough sleeping. We see this time and again from Labour Members, because they believe they can solve a problem just by throwing more money at it, as if money grows on a magic money tree. They need to accept that it is not their money; it is taxpayers’ money—taxpayers who are increasingly being squeezed for all that they have; taxpayers who deserve to know where their hard-earned cash is being spent and that it is being spent wisely. I am sorry, but taxpayers are being completely let down by this Labour Government. The deficit is out of control, and rather than making the necessary cuts, they are coming back with even more spending commitments. We have a Budget later this week, and the Conservative party has been clear that the Chancellor must use it as an opportunity to properly deliver for working people across the United Kingdom. The benefits bill has to be cut, the tax burden needs to be eased on businesses and workers, and the net zero nonsense that makes our electricity and heating more expensive has to go. Of course, all of us on this side of the House want to see rough sleeping ended, but that will only be achieved through action, not through empty promises made by a Prime Minister with a track record of failure on this issue. We need to see delivery. When this Labour Government pledge to deliver, they fail to deliver. Perhaps the Minister can remind me how they are getting on with building the 1.5 million new homes they promised to build, as housing supply and rough sleeping are clearly linked. Why should anyone believe that they can deliver when the Prime Minister has repeatedly failed on this precise issue? When the Labour party fails—as it always does, every time it is in government—it is always someone else’s fault. It is always someone else’s money. Labour Members can come out with all the pledges and promises they want, but at the end of the day it is the British people who have to pay for their repeated failures.