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This Labour Government have announced that they intend to remove Sport England—alongside the Gardens Trust and the Theatres Trust—as a statutory consultee in planning decisions, putting playing fields across the country at risk. The Conservatives oppose this move. Can the Minister explain how first scrapping the £57 million opening school facilities fund and now allowing developers to concrete over playing fields will increase access to sports facilities?
Not much of an answer there, but hopefully another U-turn will be coming soon. Over the previous Parliament, the Conservative Government invested more than £1 billion in grassroots and school sports. On this side of the House, we are also absolutely clear that girls’ and women’s sports must be protected to ensure fairness, competition and safety. Will the Sport Minister confirm today what action she is taking to ensure the Supreme Court’s ruling on biological sex is applied in leisure and sports facilities across the UK?
Ofwat has thankfully moved from being “concerned” about repeated and widespread water outages in Sussex and Kent to taking action. Once again, this has significantly affected my constituents for the last five days in East Grinstead, Ashurst Wood and many Wealden villages. My constituents have seen this repeated failing, shambolic performance from South East Water previously. They want action and accountability. I respectfully ask the Leader of the House to make Government time available to discuss the impacts on the community, business, vulnerable people and livestock, as well as the challenges around compensation and performance for those affected. Some 2.3 million customers are “served” by this atrocious organisation.
(Urgent Question): To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster if he will make a statement on mandatory digital ID.
The Minister read his speech beautifully, and with a straight face. In September, the Prime Minister tossed this mandatory digital ID on to the table as a classic dead cat distraction, purely to keep Andy Burnham off the front pages as the Labour party conference started. Now it is left to a junior Minister to come to Parliament to explain why the policy that the Prime Minister spent months saying was absolutely vital is being hollowed out. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his appointment to his new position last Friday, but I suspect he is quickly learning that the price of his red box is to have to go out on a very thin limb and put his own credibility on the line, only for those higher up in Government to rev the chainsaw, leaving him exposed, with only the flimsiest of pretences to protect his dignity—the pretence that this policy is still a going concern. In less than four months, the policy has gone from dead cat to dead parrot. Like Monty Python’s pet shop owner, the Minister is asking us all to deny what we can see clearly with our own eyes. He does everything short of inviting us to admire its beautiful plumage, but this policy has passed on. My questions for the Minister are: do the Government still expect digital ID, in this new form, to cost £1.8 billion? Is it going to be mandatory or not? What on earth does the taxpayer get for that money if people do not even have to have it? Above all, when is he going to finally face facts, stop spending billions on this zombie boondoggle that is wandering aimlessly in search of a problem to solve, and save taxpayers’ money? This is a dead policy.
Yesterday, Open Doors held its annual event here in Westminster and published its world watch list. Thanks to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) in particular, we have often had debates about religious persecution, but can the Leader of the House find time for a debate in Government time in the Chamber to consider the latest Open Doors list and the persecution that exists across the world?
As ever, it is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dame Siobhain. I thank the hon. Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West) for securing the debate. For many people across the country, rising food prices are one of the most concrete ways in which the cost of living crisis impacts their lives. Thanks to rising costs, many families simply do not have enough money left at the end of the month to save for a home, plan a holiday or even send their children on a school trip. In general, prices rise because of three things. First, they can rise because too many people want too few goods. If the demand for something grows faster than the supply, the price will of course rise. We saw that in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The supply of Ukrainian wheat fell, demand stayed the same and global food prices rose. Secondly, prices can rise because it becomes more expensive to produce goods in the first place. To keep earning enough to survive, the people who produce those goods will need to increase their prices to cover their growing costs. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) mentioned, we see that today, as this Government’s energy policies create the highest industrial energy prices in the developed world. Higher energy prices for businesses mean higher production costs, causing prices to rise. The same is true of higher taxes or greater regulatory costs, both of which this Government have imposed on businesses of all kinds. Thirdly, prices can rise because of external factors, which can also be in response to Government policy. If the Government increase the supply of money, say, or keep interest rates too low, people will be more likely to spend, reducing the relative value of the pound in their pocket and, again, causing prices to rise. If we talk to anybody involved in producing food in this country, we will hear a lot about the second cause. Costs are rising and prices are rising with them. As I mentioned, that is due partly to energy costs, but also partly to the vast sums food producers must spend to comply with the regulations they need to navigate if they ever want to sell their products. Let us take dairy farms as just one example. What hurdles must a dairy farmer in Kent, in my constituency, clear if they want to sell milk, cheese or butter? To even begin the process, all dairy farmers must register with the Food Standards Agency as a dairy producer. If they want to turn some of their milk into cheese or butter, they must also get a separate approval as a food business establishment. Cows must be kept according to regulations set out under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and the Welfare of Farmed Animals (England) Regulations 2007, which include rules on space, housing and veterinary care. The herd must be regularly tested by the Animal and Plant Health Agency for tuberculosis and brucellosis. They must be specifically protected to minimise contact with badgers, with the construction of specific fences and feeding facilities. Farmers must also create and implement a hazard analysis and critical contact point plan identifying all potential contamination hazards and setting out plans to minimise them. They must test for certain bacteria and must be prepared for unannounced inspections by the Food Standards Agency. If farmers want to sell milk, they must comply with the Drinking Milk (England) Regulations 2008, which define the appropriate fat content for different sorts of milk and sets out specific rules on pasteurisation. If they want to turn the milk into cheese, they must comply with certain compositional standards, including rules on protected designations for specific regional varieties. If they want to turn the milk into butter, they must comply with the Spreadable Fats (Marketing Standards) and the Milk Products (Protection of Designations) (England) Regulations 2008, including rules on additives and fat percentage. Then there are rules on labelling and marketing, on mandatory written contracts on milk sales to regulate pricing, and on manure spreading and waste management. If farmers want to adapt their buildings or extend them, they need to navigate the labyrinth of our planning system. Then and only then are they allowed to sell their milk, butter or cheese, and the price in the shops will need to reflect all the costs I have just mentioned if they want to keep the farm running.
What is important here, and what I am trying to set out, is how many costs farmers have to meet even just to get their produce out of the door. When we talk about food prices, it is inevitable that we will talk about why those prices rise, what the costs are and how they might be going up. Many of my farmers work incredibly hard to put food on people’s tables, and my aim is to talk through the costs they face even just to be able legally to sell their produce. It is important for constituents who are listening to this debate to understand what goes into the pint of milk that they buy. Dairy farmers live an extremely difficult lifestyle. They work long hours and can never afford to take a day off—the cows will, after all, always need milking. Thanks to farmers’ hard work, we are able to enjoy some of the finest dairy products anywhere in the world. Given the difficulties they face, we should not be making their lives harder by forcing them to navigate mountains of paperwork and endless regulatory compliance. It is bad for them and bad for those who want to buy their products at an affordable price.
I am so sorry; I am running out of time. The same is true across every other type of farming or food production, from vegetables to vineyards. For the sake of those who put food on our plates and of families working hard to make ends meet, will the Minister—who I notice is wearing our favourite suit jacket again today, as am I—please explain what steps the Government are taking to reduce costs for food producers and, in turn, for producers across this country? Finally, those Government hurdles are due not just to legislation. Peter Hall at Little Mill Farm in Marden in my constituency does incredible work with the Felix Project. He gives away thousands of apples and pears from his orchards to be eaten by children who would otherwise not be able to eat them. He would happily sell them to local schools at cost price or lower, but the tangled bureaucracy of procurement makes that impossible. Addressing that issue would be a win for everyone. It would mean healthier food being provided cheaply for local children, supporting our farmers, tackling food waste, and preventing orchards from having to be grubbed up, which releases a lot of carbon into the atmosphere. Will the Minister please set out any plans she might have to make it easier for local farmers to sell their produce to state institutions nearby?
I congratulate the Minister on his new position, or poisoned chalice, whatever the case may be. Given that the Government have now realised that mandatory ID cards were never going to stop small boat crossings, as they claimed, will the Minister confirm when the Prime Minister will complete his U-turn and abandon this pointless and costly project that the British people do not want?
I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate. She is right to highlight the issue of inflation, especially food inflation, but does she also recognise that although the price of food is going up, the food producers, predominantly farmers, are not seeing a similar rise in the income they get for producing that valuable food?
During this debate, much discussion has been about food banks. It is important that we also recognise food larders—I have a number in my constituency —where large shops and supermarkets donate their food at the end of the day or before the sell-by date. They minimise food waste and enable people to access low-cost or free food that they would otherwise have to pay for.
7. What assessment the Commission has made of whether the New Palace Yard project will be completed within its budget.
Frankly, a cost of £62 million for the New Palace Yard project is eye-watering. Most of our constituents will find that outrageous, particularly given that it is not fit for purpose—staff are having to queue for long times when leaving Parliament at the end of the day. What was the original budget for the project, who approved it and who designed it? Does the hon. Member think that there has been sufficient political oversight of that project and similar work in Parliament?
Oh! Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. We do not want digital ID. It will cost billions of pounds and it should be scrapped completely. Despite what the Minister said, I am concerned that digital ID will not be technically compulsory, but people will be blocked from accessing services if they do not have it. In response to other questions, the Minister alluded to childcare. Can he confirm whether accessing childcare will be dependent on having a digital ID card?
The Scottish Borders are being inundated with new energy infrastructure projects. SNP Ministers in Edinburgh blame the Labour Government here, and the Labour Government here blame the SNP Government in Scotland—frankly, it has become ridiculous. Ultimately, responsibility rests with the Scottish Government’s planning framework, which allows those energy projects to be imposed on local communities, even if there are concerns about grid capacity or the local council strongly objects. I would be very grateful to the Leader of the House if he facilitated a meeting between the UK Government Energy Minister, the Scottish Government and me, so that we can provide local communities and the environment the protection that they deserve.
The hon. Member is making an excellent speech about the importance of new towns. I was brought up just outside Kilwinning, which is part of the Irvine new town in Ayrshire. She and I are probably of a similar age, so does she remember the campaign—the iconic campaign—in the 1980s: “What’s it called? Cumbernauld”? In her view, how successful was that campaign in bringing people to the town and new employers to the area?
May I say what a pleasure it is to serve not only under your chairship, Dame Siobhain, but on the Treasury Committee with you and the hon. Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West)? I first became engaged in this subject during my first Parliament, when I joined the all-party parliamentary group on hunger and food poverty with the late Frank Field. He taught me a great deal, and we worked together on a cross-party basis to produce a report on hunger and food poverty. I was drawn to this topic by the fact that the Trussell Trust was founded in Salisbury by Paddy and Carol Henderson, who were taking food into Bulgaria at the time. In 2000, the first food bank was opened in Salisbury, and we now see food banks across the country. While I will address what the hon. Lady spoke about, it is also important that we reflect on some of the deeper challenges that exist with food inflation, which is running at a much higher rate than the prevailing level of inflation. In preparing for this debate, I examined the facts carefully and read briefings from UKHospitality, the Food and Drink Federation, the National Farmers Union and the Trussell Trust, all of which provide helpful analysis. Over the five-year period up to August 2025, food inflation was about 10% higher than the prevailing general level of inflation. As the hon. Lady set out, that has had a massive impact on the poorest in our communities, who in different ways spend a higher proportion of their income on food. We in this Chamber can all attribute different weightings to different aspects of this issue, including international global agricultural prices and the clearly significant disruption to the supply chain after the invasion of Ukraine. The Bank of England would assert that domestic labour costs and high pay growth is a key factor, particularly in sectors such as horticulture, where there is a degree of mechanisation. However, we are never going to remove the reliance—I speak as the son of a horticulturalist—on the hard work of people being paid to do a manual job. In a written answer published just last week, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury spoke about the Government’s intention to set out the food inflation gateway to examine all the different drivers of inflation. I acknowledge the work the Government are doing, and I am sure the Minister will follow up on that to reset somewhat the relationship with the EU. Business rates are also a factor, but if we look across milk, sugar, cheese and flour—some of the most basic staple foodstuffs—we see significant increases over the last five years, which range from 19% for flour up to 56% for sugar and 46% for milk. We have to be honest about all the different regulations and obligations that we put on those who supply our food and prepare it for us in restaurants. The input-cost pressures need to be carefully weighed against one another. I mentioned the significant increases in labour costs, and the agricultural sector’s reliance on labour, but it is also about energy costs. Our energy costs are 45% higher at this point in time than those in France and Germany. That is a cost that many of the food processing industries just cannot avoid. The Government will assert that they are on a transformational journey, but until that we reach the destination, the costs are incredibly high and difficult to bear. Animal welfare is an important issue for many in the Chamber and across the House. If we look at how farming works, we see that there is actually a lower density of poultry and beef, which leads to different costs for producing some of those things. We want to have it all, including the extended producer responsibility—a whole life-cycle responsibility for packaging. When we take all these things together, simultaneously, in a five-year period of global disruption, the outcome is very worrying. It would be remiss not to mention the impact of climate change on crops such as coffee, cocoa and palm oil. The net effect is that food is too expensive for the most vulnerable and the poorest in our communities. That has really difficult consequences. It is a massive part of our economy. UKHospitality covers, I think, 123,000 venues, and 10% of all UK jobs. The sector generates £54 billion in tax receipts, so the changes that we make to its input costs will have enormous consequences. We have to be honest about which changes we are prepared to prioritise and which changes we cannot afford at this point in time, because they will have an impact. I want to make a few observations about food poverty. Just last week I visited Maria Stevenson, who manages the Salisbury food bank, which used to be a Trussell Trust food bank and is now independent. She does an amazing job of analysing those who use the food bank—those who go occasionally or on a recurring basis—to try to give them additional support and make interventions, such as supporting them to secure the right benefits or helping them with other things in their lives. We have to grasp that. None of us want to see food banks grow. We should have pride in what Paddy and Carol Henderson did all those years ago, but not in seeing food banks grow as they have over the last 25 years. We have to be honest about the situations people are in. Next Monday, we will have a financial wellbeing workshop in our guildhall in Salisbury, where the Money and Pensions Service is inviting people to open up and talk about cost of living pressures, so that we can find solutions. I do not expect the Minister to be able to go through all the input costs today and give an analysis of how they are going to be reduced—although I recognise that there were some hopeful signs at the end of last year on both food inflation and general inflation, albeit from a higher base than I would have liked to have seen. We must also look into people’s wider financial wellbeing and the circumstances they find themselves in. Inflation is insidious. It removes the buying power of our constituents. One of the wealthiest countries in the world has people who do not have enough food to eat. We must all redouble our efforts to tackle that, so that we can be proud of what we have achieved by the end of our time in Parliament. My experience is that, given their complicated circumstances, those experiencing food poverty need more than just a handout.
I hear what the Minister says, but does she not recognise that if the prevailing increase in the national living wage is 6.7% and inflation is about half that, and given the other costs mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), many employers will not be able to take on any casual extra staff? They may even need to release some members of staff, which surely does not help anyone.
I congratulate the Secretary of State on getting the town of culture competition to happen. I was briefly Arts Minister nine years ago, and Sir Phil Redmond did an amazing job then of setting out the distinction between city of culture and town of culture. I seek the Secretary of State’s advice about Salisbury. As it is really a town with a cathedral, should it bid for town of culture or the city of culture competition, as it celebrates its 800th year since its charter?
Duncan Grocock, a frequent commuter from Salisbury to London, came to see me about the short-forming of South Western Railway trains along the line through Andover and Basingstoke. Passengers can be compensated when trains are late, but not when they must stand for commutes of an hour and a half. Will the Leader of the House make time for a statement from one of his Department for Transport colleagues on whether compensation can be paid to commuters on that line who have to stand on three-carriage trains into London?
The best thing the Government can do to support young people is to ensure they have jobs, but in the three months to October last year, unemployment for 18 to 24-year-olds rose by 85,000. What does the Secretary of State have to say to the Chancellor, who is over-taxing jobs, including for young people?
I thank the Leader of the House for the clarity he has given us on the business of the House, and in particular for the rescheduling of the Diego Garcia Bill immediately after it was going to be debated, following the changes made to the Hillsborough law. I know the whole House will want to join me in expressing our continuing concern for the people of Iran in the face of the vicious repression that they have faced and apparently may continue to face. If I may, I want to raise two issues: one that is big and one that is small but, in its own way, also big. First, on defence and security, the Chief of the Defence Staff was in front of the Defence Committee this week. He revealed that the strategic defence review was not fully costed, despite all the assurances that were given to the Committee and to Parliament at the time. As a result, the defence investment plan has been repeatedly delayed—until March, as it appears—because the Treasury is apparently seeking to come to terms with the fact that we are in a pre-war situation and that the actual cash spending power of many of our armed forces will barely grow over the next two years. This is an enormously important topic for the whole House. I would be grateful for the assurance of the Leader of the House that he will speak to No. 10 and the Cabinet Office to ensure that my shadow Cabinet colleagues continue to receive the appropriate security briefings that they require to do their job. Secondly, the issue of pubs and hospitality has consumed so much of the power, concern and interest of the House. We are always apt to get lost in generalities. In a way, that is a condition of politics: we debate the laws and the general issues of the country. It is also important, however, to zero in on a particular factual situation from time to time and use that to get a wider sense of what is happening. I will put before the House the facts of a specific case relating to hospitality. In my constituency, the Bay Horse Inn is a great country pub that sits on the outskirts of Hereford. It supports local people and serves my constituents. From April, its business rates are scheduled to rise from £31,000 to over £51,000 a year—a 67% increase. The landlord Neil tells me that energy costs have also risen to £5,500 a month. Unlike households, there is no price cap for commercial energy. Indeed, pubs are charged risk premiums and are locked into prices of nearly 40p a unit, while domestic customers pay around 28p. The pub already pays above the minimum wage. Neil estimates that the rise in the national living wage will add £18,000 a year to his costs. Meanwhile, monthly national insurance contributions have risen by nearly 170%, and that is made worse because the higher employer contributions now exhaust the employment allowance more quickly. That is a direct tax on employing people, especially young people, and it lands hardest on small, labour-intensive businesses such as pubs. Neil has a few guest rooms at the Bay Horse, so he does not even know if he will be helped by the latest rumoured U-turn on rates support. That is the reality of the Government’s unwillingness or inability to join up policy in relation to a key set of sectors in the economy that affect hospitality. All those increases are the result of current ministerial decisions. Every Member of the House—including every Government Member—will have pubs and hospitality businesses in their constituency in the same situation. The Bay Horse is not just a business: it has raised over £60,000 for the Hereford Lions club; it installed a defibrillator at the landlord’s expense; it provides a place for supervised, responsible drinking; and it supports schools, the hospice and local causes year after year, yet Government policy treats it as expendable. When will Ministers start talking to each other? When will they put away the rhetoric of helping and actually get on with assisting small businesses? Can we have a debate in the House that goes into not just the specific issue of hospitality, but the generality of all the different Government policies across different Departments that make life so difficult for these hard-working, struggling local businesses?
Last year, 1,600 people were killed on our roads. May we have a debate on the Government’s road safety strategy and toughening driving offence sentences, including steps to protect horses and riders such as my constituent Emma and many others in North West Norfolk and across the country who feel increasingly frightened and unsafe due to dangerous and abusive driving on our rural roads?
I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Manuela Perteghella) on securing this important debate. I thank all hon. Members who have spoken—I think more than 10 did—about what their constituents suffered and continue to suffer. They set out some very powerful examples. It is almost six years since the first cases of covid were recorded in the UK, after two Chinese nationals travelled here from Wuhan. As has been said, these were some of the most challenging times for our nation. Some 230,000 people tragically died, and there is a very powerful memorial just across the river to remind us; we see it every day. Lockdowns and restrictions were imposed. Choices were made that no Government would want to make. As a newly elected MP, I was faced with the need to vote for and support measures restricting people’s freedom—something that I did not expect to have to do when I came into this place. Clearly, not every decision taken was right. Mistakes were made, as they would be in a pandemic, but overall this unprecedented challenge was met with unprecedented action. On the economy, the subject of this debate, the actions taken by the then Conservative Government protected millions of jobs, and supported businesses and those most in need. When the pandemic struck, the Government acted swiftly. The coronavirus job retention scheme—the furlough scheme—which protected 11 million jobs at a cost of £70 billion, was announced on 20 March. Shortly afterwards, the first lockdown was announced. At its peak, nearly 9 million people were on furlough, preventing widespread unemployment. For the self-employed, a topic covered in most contributions, the self-employment income support scheme was set up and delivered nearly £30 billion, across five rounds of grants, to nearly 3 million individuals. Those schemes provided a lifeline to those whose livelihood was threatened through no fault of their own. Beyond the employment support schemes, eight grant schemes saw £23 billion paid to small businesses. They were administered by local authorities. I pay tribute to the work they did to put in place systems and mechanisms for processing those payments rapidly and getting the support to people who needed it. Through three loan schemes, nearly £80 billion-worth of loans were approved. The bounce back loan scheme supported 1.5 million businesses with nearly £50 billion of funding. It was not only loans that provided crucial support. Some £10 billion was made available in business rates relief to nearly 370,000 premises in the retail, hospitality and leisure sector, and we are now seeing the consequences of unwinding some of that support. VAT for the hospitality sector, which was particularly affected by the restrictions and rules that were put in place, was cut to 5%. I supported the campaign for that cut, as did many Members across the House. That unprecedented package supported jobs and livelihoods across the UK. The Government also acted to help certain groups who faced particular challenges. A £20-a-week uplift was put in place for people on universal credit to help those on the lowest incomes, and rules about eligibility for benefits were relaxed. Additional support for jobseekers through the kickstart and restart schemes was also rolled out. Of course, as the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon and other hon. Members have said, the support did not reach everyone. ExcludedUK was established in May 2020 to represent individuals and small business owners who fell outside the main financial support schemes. As has been set out, the group estimates that around 3.8 million people were unable to access full financial support, despite losing their income. Those individuals included the newly self-employed, company directors paid in dividends, and those whose self-employment income was less than half their overall earnings. I know the genuine hardship faced by my constituents in that situation from my time in this House, and from raising constituents’ issues with Ministers. Hon. Members from across the House will remember the constant Teams and Zoom meetings with Ministers, in which we put forward the position of those people, as well as the debates held in the House and the reports by the Treasury Committee and others drawing attention to the situation. The response that was consistently provided was about the challenges in identifying workable solutions for HMRC’s system, which, as the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover) said, was unable to differentiate dividends coming from an individual’s company from money from other sources. The cut-off points—the £50,000 threshold—for self-employed people also led to real difficulties and unfairness. The fraud risk, which has been referred to by a number of hon. Members, was one of the reasons given by the then permanent secretary to the Treasury as to why schemes put forward by the Federation of Small Businesses were cited as not being possible. There were changes through the five self-employment income support scheme grants. Frankly, though, the restrictions created the impact on the people to whom hon. Members have referred. The ongoing concerns raised by the campaign merit serious consideration—and the covid inquiry will give them that consideration during the module referred to by the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon. Looking to the future, we should ensure that if and when the next pandemic strikes, we have better data, and better systems to put in place support, if needed; Making Tax Digital may help in that regard. We should ensure that rules do not exclude people unfairly. Equally, we must learn the lessons from the pandemic, particularly around the damaging impact of lockdowns, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) said; if we do not put those restrictions in place, such huge financial firepower will not be needed. In the pandemic, the pressure for action to help people and businesses was incredibly intense. There were trade-offs relating to time and the checks that could be implemented on support schemes. I recall vividly the clamour for support for small businesses, which I was part of. That led to the bounce back loan scheme, which had limited checks, leading to consequences involving fraud. That scheme, however, enabled lots of businesses to survive that would not otherwise be here today. The Government could have spent months designing the perfect scheme while businesses collapsed and families struggled; instead, they acted to protect lives and livelihoods. Some £410 billion was spent on covid measures—an extraordinary sum that added greatly to our debt. However, predictions by the Bank of England that unemployment would reach 9% were prevented. Unemployment peaked at 5.2%, before falling back to 3.7% two years after the first lockdown. However, a lot of people clearly missed out on full financial support. While there will continue to be debate about the decisions taken and lessons to be learned, undoubtedly our country would be in a far worse place today were it not for the decisions taken at the time.
The Minister has been consistent this morning both in his defence of the indefensible and in avoiding putting a price on this scheme. He did not answer the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Blake Stephenson), who asked whether the Government dispute the £1.8 billion figure from the OBR. If he will not give an overall ballpark figure of what the Treasury has sanctioned for this scheme, will he at least tell us what the consultation he is hiding behind will cost?
The hon. Lady is correct that I am familiar with the site in her constituency that is proposed as one of the new towns. I acknowledge, accept and support her argument that the DLR infrastructure would stimulate the regeneration of Thamesmead. Is it therefore a cause of regret that that site is not included in the three new towns that are scheduled to begin work before 2029?
I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this important debate, and to the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) for bringing it forward. I have been rehearsing the name of her constituency in my head for quite some time, and I have made a mess of pronouncing it right from the outset, so I apologise to her. I also thank the 16 hon. Members who have spoken in the debate. It seems that every time I return to this place, the Government have fallen further and further away from justifying their increasingly mistaken belief that they can deliver on their 1.5 million homes target. No one believes they are going to reach such a lofty, albeit much- needed, figure. We have pointed out that the Government’s efforts to reach that unrealistic target appear geared towards removing as much local input into decision making as possible, and towards shifting development from brownfield sites in cities and urban areas, where demand and infrastructure exists, to rural areas, where demand is often lower and infrastructure is far less well provided or even non-existent. That brings me to the Government’s new towns policy, about which, as it is currently framed, we have significant concerns, which I will touch on shortly. At the Labour party conference at the end of September last year, the Secretary of State pledged that the Government would go ahead with work on new towns in at least 12 locations. Since then, it has emerged that only three of those new towns will begin before the end of this Parliament, with the rest to be built after 2029. The three new towns that we will supposedly see begun before 2029 are Tempsford in Bedfordshire, Leeds South Bank, and Crews Hill and Chase Park in the London borough of Enfield. While His Majesty’s Opposition recognise the need to build new homes, we hope that the Government will work harder to listen to and address the concerns of local people living near these three sites than they have done with the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Tim Roca), whose constituency includes one of the other nine lower-priority new town sites. He highlighted some of the Opposition’s key concerns when he presented a petition to the House on 17 December last year about plans for the Adlington new town, and he did so again in his excellent speech earlier today. The concerns he outlined were about the adverse impact on the green belt and on agricultural land, strains on local infrastructure and services, and the adverse impact on local communities. We are sympathetic to those concerns, which are not restricted to Adlington. One of the first new towns earmarked for building is in the London borough of Enfield, which has 37.3% green belt and 47.6% open space. According to the CPRE, the green space of Enfield, much of which is based on the borders of the Enfield Chase heritage area of special character, gives large parts of Enfield a rural character that is comparable to Richmond park or Hampstead heath, which are areas of significant local and historical value. The site of the proposed new town currently comprises commercial horticultural nurseries, garden centres, a golf course, working farms and greenfield land. The local businesses employ around 1,000 people, and all of this is threatened by the proposal. These are not vast swathes of undeveloped potential, but important green spaces that help as much as urban centres to define an area’s character and community. Tempsford in Bedfordshire is much the same, and has been chosen as an area for a whole new stand-alone town. My hon. Friend the Member for North Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) highlighted, on behalf of his constituents, some of his concerns as the local Member of Parliament. It is vital that the Government work to fully and properly consult a local community like Tempsford—an area currently made up of small villages—rather than continue their top-down crusade against the countryside. That is why we Conservatives have repeatedly sought assurances from the Government about their plans for full and proper consultation with local people and communities. I hope the Minister will commit to that today. The impact of new towns does not stop at the boundaries of the local authority area in which they are developed. My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Lewis Cocking) has highlighted that the proposed Crews Hill development in the London borough of Enfield will be closer to the village of Goffs Oak in his constituency than to Enfield town hall. The imposition of a new town of 21,000 properties on the border of his constituency cannot avoid having a direct impact on his constituents. Will the Minister therefore commit to proper consultation of communities and councils adjacent to the local authority in which the proposed new town may be built? He is a decent man, and I hope that he will. The Opposition recognise that the country is in desperate need of not just more housing, but more housing in the right places with the right infrastructure to support it. The hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Ms Oppong-Asare) made precisely that point in her speech. Identifying where places have the right infrastructure, brownfield or urban capacity, and where new homes are most wanted, is a key factor. The Government must get serious about their failure to improve house building during their first 18 months in power. They must stop making excuses and blaming everybody else, and instead look at how to get the country building in the right places. That is why the Opposition have called for a brownfield-first approach to be properly actioned, not just paid lip service to, as it is by the Government. According to the CPRE, in a large number of local authorities there is enough brownfield land with planning permission to meet the targets set by the Government’s standard method for calculating housing need for at least the next five years. The same report shows that England’s brownfield sites increased in number, land area and minimum net dwellings by up to 54%, 6% and 34%, respectively, between 2018 and 2024. The Government will no doubt point to their brownfield passport policy in response to that criticism, but it should be noted that this policy, if actioned, is not without risk. It could result in bypassing crucial local input, minimising local community power in their own local neighbourhoods and rushing through developments despite legitimate local objections, which will do nothing for people’s faith in democracy. Even if that proves to be a misplaced concern, brownfield passports do not deal with some of the deep-seated causes of brownfield delays. After all, we know that there are already hundreds of thousands of planning permissions on sites that have not yet been built, and it is a lazy generalisation and an inadequate explanation simply to blame all of that on the land banking of greedy developers, because the causes are more complex. Funding, complexity, increasing regulatory burdens, delays and other factors all play their part. If the Government do nothing to address those factors, all they will succeed in is achieving more undeveloped planning permissions. As we all know, people need real buildings to live in, not unexecuted planning permissions.
I agree. It would be a great tragedy if the Government push on with their new towns policy and simply think that their brownfield passport will solve everything, because by having fewer developments on brownfield sites and some developments on greenfield sites, we will end up losing the precious green belt and still not delivering the amount of housing we need. That would be an own goal from the Government, so I hope they will take this point away and do something about it. The Government need to look further and faster at the proper development of brownfield land, rather than ripping up the green belt and steamrolling over local democracy, local voices and local communities. Recent history shows that this approach works. If the Government want to see urban regeneration or densification done right, they can follow Conservative examples and pursue brownfield first, not greenfield first, as the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Sir James Cleverly), highlighted at the Conservative party conference. The Government need look no further than the Olympic Park in east London—a brownfield site transformed into a superbly connected hub of housing, business, retail and leisure that was completed under Boris Johnson as the Conservative Mayor of London. It was the same with Canary Wharf under Margaret Thatcher and Michael Heseltine, when the old, dilapidated docks were completely regenerated, revitalised and reborn. Finally, as the Opposition mentioned in the final stages of the passage of the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, the Government should add to their growing pile of U-turns and reverse the damaging blows the Chancellor and the former Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), dealt to the housing market and the construction market through their unholy trinity of economic decline, tax hikes and cuts to demand-side housing policies. Only through a genuine brownfield-first approach and a reversal of the damage inflicted by No. 11 and the former Secretary of State will the Government succeed in protecting our countryside and get on to building real homes properly connected with the right facilities that people actually want.
I thank the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Manuela Perteghella) for securing the debate and the Backbench Business Committee for granting it. There is no doubt that the hardship affecting families, businesses and communities as a result of covid-19 policies is ongoing. The depth of suffering is hard to read about. People have been pushed to their limits, mentally and financially, and have had to endure indignity and injustice through no fault of their own. I hope that we can now all agree that it should never have happened. It is something that we never want to see happen again. The various Government financial support schemes that were set up helped many people, but for the forgotten businesses and individuals who, for one bureaucratic reason or another, were deemed ineligible, the situation was patently unfair and unjust. Some 3.8 million UK taxpayers were excluded from support, while the rest of the working population were paid to stay at home. Why were they excluded? The reasons were arbitrary. Financial support was not forthcoming if a person was newly self-employed, a PAYE freelancer, a director paid in dividends, starting a new job—the list goes on. The rules were random and confusing, and they pushed so many people into desperate situations. Sadly, we should not have been surprised that that happened. Although some marvelled at the speedy roll-out of the Government’s schemes, the reality was that they were patchy, poorly thought out and full of gaps—of course they were. How could we ever expect to shut down our society and economy and be able to cover the gigantic financial cost of doing so while ensuring that every person was properly looked after? It was unrealistic —an unprecedented state intervention that was doomed to fail. I totally agree with Members present who are pushing for assurances that that will never happen again, but if we cannot look back with honesty and clarity about what was done, we are doomed to make the same mistakes again. Lockdown was the mistake from which all that injustice and suffering flowed. It was an unknown and unevidenced imposition that should never have been inflicted upon the British people. Many experts predicted from the start that it would cause misery and, horrifically, cost hundreds of thousands of lives through unintended but very real collateral damage.
I do not believe the evidence proves that. We can look to other parts of the world where that was not the case. This policy had unwavering and enthusiastic support from across the House, with just a few of us in this House —too few—raising valid concerns, but we were shut down. It should be obvious that some people cannot be damaged in the name of protecting others with interventions such as lockdowns that we do not even know will work. The moral mathematics never added up. And now we must live with the consequences of what we did. We spent in the region of £400 billion on the covid-19 response—a vast sum that will be clawed back through increased taxation and hardship for generations to come. Of course, the Conservative party had to put up taxes to pay for that £400 billion, and it was voted for by pretty much every Member in the House. For me, such a statist, socialist intervention would never work, and that is proving to be the case. Those businesses that did manage to survive after everything that was thrown at them in the name of covid are now having to face more gloom and doom from this socialist Government in charge of our country, with their two tax-rising Budgets and their removal of business rates relief without understanding it—
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I added on that sentence because I felt it was very relevant that those who did manage to survive the pandemic are now not surviving, because of the extra taxes that are being put upon them and the removal of business rates relief that was introduced during covid, and it seems that the Chancellor does not even know how that works. Those businesses are suffering twofold, because some of that covid benefit is now being removed. It is no wonder Labour MPs are being banned from pubs, as we see mass closures of pubs. I simply ask that we examine the bigger picture. Those 3.8 million people who were excluded from financial support suffered a terrible injustice, but so too did those who received support, because lockdown took from everyone: children denied education; mothers forced to give birth alone; people suffering heart attacks, strokes and sepsis but too frightened to burden the NHS; bereaved families unable to mourn the dead—the list of injustices goes on and on. None of it should ever have happened. The costs were always going to be too high, and worse, there appears to be no evidence that lockdown prevented covid infections. The covid inquiry recently made two incredible assertions. One was that lockdowns were harmful but should have started earlier, and the other was that the modelling should not have been used to justify major policy but simultaneously proved that 23,000 lives could have been saved. Finally, lockdown was, as Professor Sunetra Gupta from the University of Oxford said—
I am concluding my remarks. I am pleased to have been able to speak today as one of a handful of 650 MPs who stood by “the Forgotten Ltd” and by many of our constituents whose businesses went out of business. I was one of the few in the House who stood up for them. Finally, as Professor Sunetra Gupta said, this was like taking a hammer to a fly on a pane of glass: you might or might not kill the fly, but you definitely shatter the window. It will take us a long time to pick up the pieces. Next time we face a similar crisis, let us not panic and reach for the hammer.
Many of my constituents will be watching these proceedings agog, because this is just another example of the chaotic approach to policymaking by this Government. Given the contentious nature of this issue, why did the Government not consult before announcing the proposals, and why did they not consult before then reversing on the policy in the next instance?
Does the hon. Gentleman share my deep disappointment and concern about the position that the Ministry of Justice finds itself in? The research and development phase for counter-drone activity has not been strengthened, and we have frequent episodes of drones bypassing prison security.
To obtain funding, most small organisations require a bank account. Is the Secretary of State aware that many organisations are struggling to get a bank account? Some banks do not offer those services to small and voluntary organisations, or a huge amount of bureaucracy needs to be entered into in order to get an account. Will the Secretary of State speak with her colleagues in the Treasury to get to the bottom of why it is so difficult for small and voluntary organisations to get a bank account?
May I add my congratulations to my long-time Scottish Conservative and Unionist colleague, Lord Forsyth, on his election as Lord Speaker? In the pre-recess debate, I highlighted the exciting prospects for the redevelopment of the Chapelcross nuclear power station site in my constituency. For that redevelopment to go ahead, it will require an additional extensive connection to the grid, but at the moment the National Energy System Operator, which is in charge of managing the electricity network, is conducting a review, and no large-scale connections are going ahead. Could the Leader of the House ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero to make a statement on when NESO’s review will be concluded and these important connections can proceed?
When it comes to AI, as with so many other things, this Government are all smoke and mirrors. In response to the Grok AI outrage this week, the Secretary of State for Science and Tech announced with a flourish that she would be banning intimate image abuse with immediate effect. In reality, this meant triggering legislation that had to be forced through by Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge against the Government’s will and that received Royal Assent last summer. Imagine how many women could have had their trauma prevented if the Government had just got a grip. Every day, our creative industries are having their work scraped. Intellectual property is being stolen every day, and still the Government sit on their hands, promising the world and delivering nothing. When will we see the AI Bill promised in the last King’s Speech, and when is that legislation likely to be brought forward?
T4. My local county football association has contacted me, deeply concerned about plans to remove Sport England as a statutory consultee on planning, a point raised earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Droitwich and Evesham (Nigel Huddleston). I am not entirely sure that he got a full response, so in the spirit of charity may I ask once again what protections will be put in place to ensure that we do not lose our sports facilities?
I must congratulate the Minister on doing an excellent job as a human shield for the Prime Minister. He says that this scheme will bring down the number of people crossing the channel on boats, but that is clearly a farce. You have just said that you will be able to access—