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The Minister is very kind. I have a very specific question. That annex does not mention nuclear weapons. We have asked about this repeatedly throughout the debate today. It is a matter of critical national security. The Deputy Prime Minister of Mauritius has clearly stated that nuclear weapons cannot be stored on the base. Is that correct—yes or no?
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I thank the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster) for securing this important debate, and for his powerful and thoughtful contribution, particularly in relation to the tragic case of Sara Sharif. We have heard thoughtful contributions from right across the House this morning. The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) spoke passionately about her city, about sharing best practice and about the importance of the first 1,001 days of a child’s life, which are critical. The hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) talked about the variation in children’s services around the country and how it is a postcode lottery, and in particular about the difference between London and the south-west. It is heartening to hear that services in his Devon constituency are improving. There were calls for joined-up thinking from right across the House, led by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell). The hon. Member for Guildford (Zöe Franklin) supported the hon. Member for Woking by raising concerns on behalf of her constituents regarding the quality of care from Surrey county council. I was particularly moved by the personal commitment to looked-after children by the hon. Member for Derbyshire Dales (John Whitby), who brought his experience to bear. Themes we have heard from right across the House include support for kinship carers, the need for long-term funding, the lack of places, and the fact that we need processes in order to learn the vital lessons of the past. I associate His Majesty’s loyal Opposition with those themes and, in particular, with Members’ tributes to frontline staff. There may be systemic issues, but we know that frontline staff do their best under difficult constraints. They are overworked and underpaid, and deserve all of our support. I think the nature of need in the country is shocking. Local authorities in England are supporting around 400,000 children in need. That is roughly one in 30 children. As of the end of March last year, around 49,000 children were subject to child protection plans, and more than 80,000 were in local authority care. Those figures should give us pause; one in 30 children is the equivalent of a child in every classroom. But this debate is not about numbers; it is about children—the most vulnerable, at-risk children in our communities. It is not about statistics, but about lives—and, in the case of Sara Sharif, a life lost. Sara was living in Woking when she was murdered by her father and stepmother. The hon. Member for Woking has rightly been a passionate advocate for change, particularly since the publication of the local child safeguarding practice review. I commend him for that work. Nine of the 15 recommendations in the review were wholly or partially local, and I echo the call for Surrey county council to implement them swiftly but thoroughly. It is our responsibility in this place to ensure that where national recommendations are made, children’s services are properly equipped to meet their statutory duties. I welcome the work that has begun, but there is more to do. Nationally, the scale of pressures on children’s services is clear. According to the Local Government Association, the number of children in care is 18% higher than a decade ago. Councils now carry out more than 600 child protection investigations every single day. But despite increased budgeted spending, councils have been overspending on children’s social care by an average of 14% each year, and planned budgets for 2025-26 show a further 10% rise in costs. At the heart of this lies a fundamental problem: a shortage of high-quality placements for looked-after children. Demand continues to outstrip supply, driving up costs and putting intense pressure on social care, SEND services and care leaver support. Under the previous Conservative Government, the proportion of local authority children’s services rated good or outstanding rose from 24% in 2015 to 60% in 2024, according to the Institute for Government. That progress matters, but it is equally true that around a third of local authorities still require improvement or are judged inadequate. This is about children’s safety. Having listened to hon. Members from across the political spectrum, I hope I speak for many in saying that we all want the Government to succeed in this area. Getting children’s services right underpins so many outcomes and, most importantly, helps prevent tragedies like Sara’s from ever happening again. The hon. Member for Woking may know that part of my constituency is in the Surrey county council area. The council has committed to implementing all the local recommendations in full. I share some of his concerns about the culture in that team and the need for joined-up services, so that children do not fall between the cracks. Encouragingly, Ofsted’s most recent inspection, in 2025, highlighted some improvements at the front door of services. Inspectors noted that referrals to the children’s single point of access received “timely and proportionate” responses, and that there was effective partnership working with the police, particularly in cases of domestic abuse and missing children. Multi-agency strategy meetings were found to be “timely and well attended” leading to considered decisions. Those are vital steps forward and I welcome them. I have met the new lead member, Councillor Jonathan Hulley, to discuss this matter. I have a great deal of personal confidence in him, and he recognises the scale of change required in this area. I was heartened to see that a motion calling for an independent expert review of the improvements made at Surrey county council following Sara’s death was passed unanimously by the council last month, with cross-party support. That independent scrutiny is essential to providing confidence that reforms are effective, lasting and properly focused. I will be watching closely for its outcomes, as I know the hon. Member for Woking will be, and I hope that we can all embrace the cross-party approach of our county colleagues across Surrey and within the council to drive sustained improvement. As well as Surrey, in my constituency I also deal with children’s services delivered by the royal borough of Windsor and Maidenhead and by Slough borough council—I do not know whether I am unique in having three different children’s services. Ofsted rated the royal borough’s services as good in October 2024. By contrast, Slough has been inadequate since early 2023, although subsequent focus visits, including in July 2024, found that children in need and those on child protection plans were receiving timely and appropriate services. These neighbouring authorities illustrate a simple but uncomfortable truth: children’s services remain a postcode lottery. Where services are well led, outcomes can and do improve under the existing framework; where they struggle, the causes are often leadership, capability and delivery on the ground, not the absence of legislative powers. That is why we should be careful and cautious about assuming that more legislation on its own will necessarily lead to better outcomes for children. I wish to talk briefly about the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which continues its passage in the other place. I welcome the Government’s acceptance of several amendments responding to the recommendations from the Sara Sharif review, particularly proposals to pilot meetings with parents before deregistration from school, and the option of a visit within 15 days of a child starting home education. However, there remain serious concerns. As drafted, the Bill would not fully address the specific safeguarding loopholes identified in Sara’s case. Baroness Barran is doing excellent work in the Lords to close those gaps, and I hope that the Government will think again on some of those issues. I welcome the Government’s introduction of unique child identification, as we previously called for. More broadly, the principle of a register of children not in school, as raised by the hon. Member for Woking, has long enjoyed cross-party support. I would be interested in the Minister’s comments on that. Education matters and school attendance should be the norm, but parental choice also matters. Elective home education is a legitimate option for many families. As it stands, the Bill does not strike the right balance. I have received numerous representations from constituents concerned that the proposals would place excessive and unnecessary burdens on responsible home-educating families. The requirement to detail exact hours of education, on pain of breaking the law, is particularly intrusive and fails to reflect the reality of flexible home-based learning. Safeguarding measures must be proportionate and focused on identifying genuine risk, not on creating layers of bureaucracy that stigmatise families who are doing the right thing. I urge the Government to go further in tightening the conditions under which a local authority may withhold consent for elective home education. Government amendment 120 to the Bill, which would apply where a child has been on a child protection plan within the past five years, does not go far enough. Local authorities should also consider whether a child has ever been subject to care proceedings, even where those proceedings did not result in a care order, as tragically was the case with Sara. If the Bill is to honour its stated purpose, it must focus relentlessly on protecting children at genuine risk, not on sweeping up responsible families into an overly prescriptive system. Getting this right matters; as we have heard today, children’s lives depend on it.
I beg to move, That this House has considered the impact of environmental, social and governance requirements on the defence industry. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I thank the Minister and hon. Members for making time to attend what I hope will be a consequential debate. Last week, we all heard the Canadian Prime Minister speaking at Davos. He is not quite my flavour of politics, but he spoke a truth: we live in a much more dangerous world and we cannot rely on the international rules-based order to protect us. We are quickly learning an ancient truth that hard power is the most material reality. If we continue to play by imaginary rules while our enemies, and sometimes even our allies, are playing a different game altogether, we are destined to lose, with disastrous consequences for our country and for our children. Sadly, many of those old assumptions are embedded and entrenched in our financial services industry, universities and politics. In turn, that is having a deeply damaging effect on British defence companies and ultimately on our ability to defend ourselves.
The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point about Leonard, which builds helicopters in his constituency, and I am sure the Minister has heard his pointed remarks. Parties of both colours have pledged to increase defence spending. This Labour Government have committed to an uplift of 3% in the next Parliament, but when will we see it? What proportion of it will simply make up historical military pensions? How much is actually going to cutting-edge research and development? Currently, only 4% of defence spending goes to small and medium-sized enterprises, which often lead the way on innovation. What if I told the Minister that there is billions of pounds in funding waiting to be unlocked that would cost the taxpayer nothing, be a huge boost to the economy and improve our national security? It is sitting in the private sector. The importance of private investment was recognised in the strategic defence review, but we are not properly utilising it. Right now, British defence companies are deprived of much of that potential investment because funds of various descriptions prioritise sustainable investment or environmental social governance —ESG—regardless of return. Sometimes those funds actively rule out defence, explicitly or implicitly, in the rules they set.
I am delighted to correct the record; it is good to see that parties of all colours are backing increased defence spending in a more uncertain world. The ESG system implies in some sense that defence investment is unethical, but there is nothing less ethical than sending British sons and daughter into battle under-equipped. That is not a blue, red or yellow party political point; I am proud to represent the parts of Slough borough not covered by the Chairman of the Defence Select Committee, the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), we have discussed this very point, with which I understand he and his Committee all agree. Many on the Government side of the House also see the problems of ESG. In March last year, a group of 100 Labour Members of Parliament wrote to banks and fund managers urging them to prioritise defence investment and class British defence investment as ethical. I welcome the presence of the hon. Member for York Outer (Mr Charters) in the Chamber today; I know he has discussed this matter both directly and with the Financial Conduct Authority, and I look forward to his substantive contribution in the debate. I gently point out, however, that some of the ideology is pushed by some of those on the left who might take woolly views on certain conflicts, specifically Gaza. We should do what we can in this place to challenge that culture, and I suspect that there are many of those naive rules made in this place—perhaps under different geopolitical circumstances—that we should reassess. To fix this problem, we must first acknowledge just how bad things are in some instances. I am a member of the Scottish Affairs Committee, and a few weeks ago we were able to question Warrick Malcolm of ADS Scotland, which represents Scottish defence businesses, about the chilling effect that progressive authoritarianism has had on the businesses they represent. When he attempted to host a Scottish parliamentary reception to highlight science, technology, engineering and mathematics apprenticeships —broader than just defence—200 protesters shut down the Parliament, allowing no one in or out, and essentially cancelled the whole event. Those people who did squeeze through the melee outside, many of them apprentices in their young 20s, came in in tears because of the abuse they faced. Sadly, only the Scottish Conservatives supported the reception, while all others steered clear. What message does that send to those in the industry, those hard-working constituents of Members of the Scottish Parliament, when their representatives have no time for them and effectively shun them. Mr Malcolm also talked to the Committee about how a company he represented was vandalised, reducing its capacity by 75%. How will that business remain viable? We can think of careers fairs at universities being shut down, and damaging the attractiveness of defence as a sector to work in; it is a sector that keeps us safe, but it is often not one that employees feel safe to work in.
Of course the hon. Member is right. We have a collective responsibility to advocate for these businesses, as he just did, but as a nation we must also face down this pernicious culture. To return to the point about financial institutions, the culture we set in Parliament influences them. We do not need to look too far from ourselves to see where the problem is—our own parliamentary pension fund de facto excludes British defence companies by investing in sustainable funds. Its single largest equity holding, the BlackRock low carbon equity fund, fully excludes nuclear weapons, which in reality excludes nearly all defence. What does our pension fund invest in instead? Tencent Holdings, the parent company of WeChat, which largely considered to be part of China’s surveillance state. That is the very nub of the issue, and illuminates the great irony of the situation. The FCA will unequivocally say that there is no conflict between ESG and defence; while that might sometimes be technically true, the reality often paints a different picture. We just need to follow the money. The Devon county council pension fund—which I picked because I thought the hon. Member for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) might have been the Minister responding to the debate, and it covers his constituency—states clearly that it prioritises return on investment and does not impose ethical exclusions. However, if one follows its investment down the rabbit hole to its pool provider Brunel Pension Partnership, which handles 93% of the council’s pension funds, we find Paris-aligned pooled funds with carbon thresholds and controversial weapon screens. As we can see, the system is set up against the defence industry. In that system, smaller companies have no chance, because the filtering happens long before capital ever reaches them. It may well be that pensioners also end up short-changed, given that major British defence companies BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce and Babcock have made returns of 50%, 100% and 146% respectively this past year. This issue extends to our most sensitive areas. While I hope we never need it, I think most sensible people in this country support the backstop of our nuclear deterrent, and ESG potentially threatens that. We currently have retained EU law that adopts the Paris-aligned benchmarks that exclude nuclear as a controversial weapon. For a fund to be considered Paris-aligned, it will have to meet that benchmark and, by retaining that law, we are encouraging that. Although the Government nominally prioritise Trident, around 1,500 businesses in the supply chain are implicated and will therefore be potentially excluded from finance. As long as we continue to tolerate this madness, we are fighting with one hand behind our back. We have discussed access to capital, but that is useless for SMEs without a bank account. Defence companies in this country are being debanked. I first came across the issue when meeting a defence SME in my constituency, which had been debanked three times by high street banks. That business makes ammunition for Ukraine. Think of the message that sends to a defence start-up: an entrepreneur just would not go near it. Some of the problem is being driven by the B Corp certification, and I urge the Minister to look at that. “Know your customer” and anti-money laundering operation checks are also a huge issue that needs to be addressed. All that is downstream of the same negative approach to defence that I have described. This culture has, at least in part, been brought about by successive Government policy, and can also be reversed by it. As a start, the Government should insist that all publicly managed funds should not be investing in funds that explicitly exclude defence. That would be a clear statement of intent about the Government’s expectations, and it would encourage others to do the same. We should also have clearer rules about the exclusion of nuclear so that the SMEs vital to the Trident deterrent are not unfairly cut out. Much as it pains me to say it, perhaps we could even learn from France, which treats the defence sector as strategically vital. The Chancellor could write to the FCA today and change its remit. Just imagine the change if we were to approach defence as we have approached climate policy over the past 20 years. I am aware that the Government passed legislation in October to permit the FCA to regulate the ESG sector from 2028; although that might seem like a positive step, it could simply entrench the concept legally and say that ESG is sanctified by the Government. If we are serious about rebuilding our defence infrastructure and about national security, we must get serious about the self-harm that ESG culture has done, and is doing, and be prepared to take steps to address it.
I thank all hon. Members from across the Chamber for their considered contributions, and particularly the hon. Members for York Outer (Mr Charters), for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for North Durham (Luke Akehurst), as well as my hon. Friend the Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam). Speakers have emphasised slightly different things, but we all support a safe and confident Britain and understand that the first responsibility of His Majesty’s Britannic Government is the defence of the realm. Investment in defence is patriotic, it is necessary and it helps to make war less likely. I thank the Minister for her comments. Given the increasingly dangerous world we live in, we should take action today. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the impact of environmental, social and governance requirements on the defence industry.
I beg to move, That this House regrets that both youth unemployment and the numbers of young people not in education, employment or training are rising as a result of the Government’s policies, such as increasing the rate of employer’s National Insurance contributions, reducing business rates relief for 2025-26 for retail, leisure and hospitality businesses, and passing the Employment Rights Act 2025; notes that these policies have heavily impacted the retail, leisure and hospitality sectors where young people often have their first job; further regrets that the Government’s inability to reform the welfare system will mean that young people struggling to find work are more likely to become trapped in welfare benefits dependency; and calls on the Government to back business, scrap business rates for pubs and high street shops, and back job opportunities for young people. This afternoon we are here to talk about young people—the young people who wake up every morning with nowhere to go: no classroom, no workplace, no sense that today will be different from yesterday. It is part of our job to put ourselves in other people’s shoes. Today, those are the shoes of a young man or woman who has just left school, college or university, and is setting out on real life in the world of work. That should be a moment of liberation, trepidation and excitement because the world is at their feet, but right now, for hundreds of thousands of young people, it is not. Just a few days ago, I was with a constituent who has just finished school. She is great; she has GCSEs and A-levels, she has done work experience, and she is charming and presentable. She has been applying for jobs day after day, but can she get one? Not a squeak—and that is in the bustling and vibrant economy of the south-east of England. She told me that it can be lonely being stuck at home all day applying for jobs, but she is not alone; she is in the company of many thousands of young people. Over 700,000 young people are unemployed—more than the entire population of Sheffield—and the figures are getting worse. Our youth unemployment rate is rising faster than that of any other G7 country. Nearly 1 million young people are not in education, employment or training, and over 700,000 university graduates are on out-of-work benefits. Those are not just statistics; they are lives knocked off course—young women and men putting in hundreds of job applications and getting hundreds of rejections. They are getting knocked back again and again, and signing on to benefits because they see no other way. They are missing out on the chance to have money in their pockets that they have earned themselves, on the first step towards independence, and on the experience gained in the early years in work, on which future working lives are built. Forget saving to buy a first car or home; dreams and ambitions are being shot to pieces. These people are becoming Britain’s lost generation.
I am glad that the hon. Lady has some sympathy with the position of young people who are struggling to get jobs. My party halved unemployment; her party’s record is of unemployment going up and up. Since Labour has been in power, unemployment has gone up every single month. What is going on? What is going on is them: the Labour Government. Same old Labour—in they come and up go taxes and up goes unemployment, every single time. They put taxes up by £36 billion in their first Budget, and not just any old taxes. Their national insurance hike was specifically a tax on employment—literally a jobs tax. If you tax it, you will get less of it. That is not rocket science; it is basic economics.
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Summer and holiday jobs are important ways for young people to gain experience before they leave education and seek full-time jobs, but there has been a shocking decline in the availability of such jobs because of this Government, who have increased regulation and the cost of employment—that is exactly the problem. On exactly the point about regulation and red tape, the Employment Rights Bill is making it harder for businesses to employ people. Labour says that it wants to achieve growth, but its policies are obviously going to achieve the exact opposite. The problem is that Labour Members do not understand business. Have they any idea how hard it is to break even, let alone to make a profit; any idea how hard it is for people who have started a business to bring in enough to cover the payroll each month, never mind pay themselves; or any idea how hard it is for business owners to make their staff redundant because they cannot afford to keep paying them? Of course they do not, because how many Labour Front Benchers have worked in a business—I am not counting union officials—let alone run one?
I am perfectly well aware of the policy on national insurance. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point that some Labour MPs do have business experience, but if we look at Labour Front Benchers, particularly those in the Cabinet, we will see that they are few and far between. If he has been talking to businesses—he clearly knows some—he will hear them say, as they have said directly to me and many of my hon. Friends, that it is the Labour Government’s policies that are making it so hard and so expensive to employ people, particularly young people. Even if Government Members do not have business experience, they could and should listen to what businesses have been telling them. For instance, Kate Nicholls of UKHospitality said that Labour’s 2024 Budget did “unthinkable damage” to the sector. She was backed up by her colleague, Allen Simpson, who said recently that if the Government continue their approach, “we will only see job losses and business closures accelerate.” That sector has shed over 100,000 jobs under this Government. Jane Gratton, from the British Chambers of Commerce, said that Labour’s policies are “deeply worrying for employers. They will increase employment costs, complexity and risk for firms, particularly SMEs…Government needs to help not hinder businesses”. That is the crux of the matter: Labour sees businesses as a cash cow, not as the engine of the economy, and young people in particular are suffering as a result. Before businesses start letting people go, they generally stop hiring, and that is what they are doing. And when they stop hiring, who gets hit hardest? Young people. By hitting hospitality—all those pubs and cafés where people get their first jobs—the Government are hitting young people again. The simple fact is that there are fewer jobs for young people under this Government. This unemployment disaster for young people is not something that has just happened on this Labour Government’s watch—it is a disaster of their making.
My right hon. Friend makes the point so clearly. It is so obvious to the Conservatives, as the party of business, that if the Government keep taxing business, there will be fewer jobs—but they just do not seem to get it. Labour Members do know that they are in trouble, though. That is why they are talking up their youth programmes, youth hubs and youth guarantees—[Laughter.] Labour Members are laughing, but they should listen. The hon. Member for Exeter (Steve Race) says from a sedentary position that it was our programme —exactly that! Most of these things are just rebrands of programmes that the Conservatives started. We started youth hubs. Changing the name of the youth offer to the “youth guarantee” does not solve the problem. Of course there is part to play for training programmes and work placements in helping people to bridge the gap between school and work, but Government programmes are not the answer to the fundamental problem. Young people want jobs, and this Government are killing jobs.
I enjoyed the way in which the hon. Gentleman led into his question with a bit of flattery, but I will not be drawn on his attempt to make me talk about the minimum wage or down the routes that he asks me to take, as much as he may love me to do so. However, I will talk about our record in government. We halved unemployment. We got record numbers of people into work. We backed businesses to create 800 jobs for every day that we were in government. We reformed welfare to make work pay. We brought down the benefits bill. None of those things are on the cards under this Labour Government. They are crushing businesses with taxes and red tape, destroying jobs and driving up unemployment. They U-turned on welfare savings and put up taxes on working people by £26 billion at the last Budget to pay for the ballooning benefits bill. I will not argue that we got everything right. Some of the graduates struggling to get jobs have degrees that are not actually of any help to them, and they took those degrees when we were in government. Under us, through the pandemic and afterwards, the number of young people dropping out of work and on to benefits because of their mental health went up. We wanted to end the stigma around mental illness, but the consequences have been far-reaching. Our welfare system was not designed to support people with milder mental health problems or milder neurodiversity, or for a time when a quarter of people report themselves as disabled. The system is not working; instead, it is funnelling people off work and on to benefits. Now, with the Government’s failure to reform welfare, young people are stuck in a benefits trap—they are better off on benefits and fearful of losing them if they get a job. Let us add to that the stress and misery of trying and failing again and again to get a job, because jobs are fewer and farther between. Most young people I have spoken to do not want to be on benefits, but that is where they are ending up.
If the hon. Gentleman had been listening, he would have heard me say that there is a place for programmes that support young people into work, particularly if they find that they do not have the skills needed to do the jobs in their area. When we were in government, we had programmes like that, and those programmes are being continued under this Government. However, there is a fundamental problem with the idea and concept of a youth guarantee, which has wobbled a bit at different announcements and different times. The problem is that the Government are trying to guarantee somebody a job, but destroying the jobs that businesses are creating. The right way to solve the problem is to back businesses to create jobs, not take some kind of socialist, communist or even Marxist approach and create a job with taxpayers’ money so that somebody is in work. The situation is looking pretty bleak. That is a disaster for a generation of young people and our economy, but it does not have to be like this. Even in a world of artificial intelligence, there is another way. It starts with backing businesses, because they are the ones that create jobs, and cutting taxes, cutting red tape, scrapping the swathes of regulation that stop businesses giving young people a summer job or a Saturday shift, and getting government out of the way so that young people can get on. I welcome the Government’s U-turn on probation periods—many businesses told me that that policy would have deterred them from taking a chance on a young person. I also welcome the Government’s latest U-turn on business rates for pubs How many U-turns are we on? Is it 13? What about the rest of hospitality? Why not adopt our policy and scrap business rates, not just for pubs, but for high street shops too? I ask the Minister not just to send young people off on more training courses or work experience schemes. What young people want now is jobs. Why not adopt our policy to double the number of apprenticeships and end debt-trap degrees, too? We do not have to have a lost generation, but we need a Government who will make different choices—who will back businesses to create jobs, scrap degrees that do not pay back, reform welfare so that it pays to work, help this generation make their way in life, and get our country working again.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I usually respond to matters related to the Department of Health and Social Care, but it is a pleasure to be here to debate a more rural point. I represent Farnham and Bordon, which is a semi-rural seat. It will be no surprise to hon. Members that I must declare that I am a supporter of the Countryside Alliance and a member of the Conservative Rural Forum. I thank the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire) for securing this debate and for her expositions of very many tragic cases, especially her powerful remarks about the appalling case of Emma and Lettie Pattison. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) for his very practical approach to this debate; I think the Government should take on board the number of issues he raised. Likewise, my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) discussed the synergies between gun licences and other licensing regimes—in his case, for pilots. I look forward to him taking me on a trip at some point. I also thank the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) for her, as ever, interesting contributions, drawing on her rural experience. Whenever we decide to create new rules that restrict the behaviour of the many in response to the actions of the few, we must be extremely careful. Where genuine loopholes exist because of data silos, or because of how long-standing rules interact with novel cases, it is right that they are closed. As has been mentioned, while the firearms marker is not mandatory, a digital version has been rolled out to all general practices in England, with implementation completed in May 2023. The key point that the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell mentioned was that the Government must continue to monitor the efficacy of the current system to ensure that only those who are suitable are able to hold a firearms licence and, more especially, to publish the data surrounding that. As has been mentioned, many organisations are supportive of mandatory markers, and I have a lot of sympathy with that, but we must have the data to take an evidence-led approach. Protecting the integrity of the firearms licensing system is essential for public safety, but any measures must remain proportionate and avoid placing unnecessary burdens on medical professionals or responsible licence holders. As we have seen so often in recent years, the net result of successive, well-intentioned changes to the law can be a system that makes life unduly difficult for the vast majority of law-abiding people, while failing to stop the criminal minority. Unfortunately, under this Government, we have seen a renewed assault on civilian firearms ownership, which is set to directly punish those in rural communities who rely on firearms as tools of the trade. For farmers, land managers and pest controllers, firearms are part and parcel of everyday life, and access to those tools is vital. Without them, it would be impossible to protect livestock and manage the local population of certain animals, as farming communities have done for centuries. None the less, without any particular justification, and without ever proving that it would actually prevent criminals from getting hold of firearms, the Government have announced that they plan to regulate section 2 firearms, such as shotguns, under the more stringent regime that previously applied only to section 1 firearms. We have heard vague gestures in the direction of public safety, but no clear case has been made for the substantive measures proposed, and we certainly have had no indication from the Government that they have considered the particular needs of rural communities. If shotguns are to be regulated like long-range rifles, how do the Government expect farmers and pest controllers to continue their work? Given that, as we have heard, many police firearms licensing departments are overwhelmed by the volume of applications, has there been any consideration of the delays that extra work for these departments would create? One of my constituents recently submitted a renewal application within the timeframe recommended by the police, allowing more than six months for processing. The only response received was, by return of post, an extension of the existing licence, as the department acknowledged that it would be unable to issue a new licence within the six-month period. The routine use of licence extensions is concerning because it allows firearms to remain in circulation without a timely, full reassessment of suitability. Meanwhile, some of the Government’s proposals will not help with public safety, but will put additional burdens on the police force or make them more likely.
My hon. Friend is entirely right. It seems to me that this is a knee-jerk reaction from the Government, without them understanding the logistics or the mechanics of the difference between the long-range rifles and shotguns used by our rural communities—[Interruption.] And, as my hon. Friend says from a sedentary position, without actually seeing the evidence for it. Whether we are talking about medical markers or the changes to the shotgun licensing regime, the key thing is that it must be done on the basis of evidence. I therefore ask the Minister: has there been any consideration of the disruption that these delays will cause to those in rural communities who rely on firearms for work? Have these questions been asked at all within the Home Office or, as in so many other cases, have the Government simply failed to consider the needs of rural communities? It is clearly true that, wherever possible, our firearms licensing rules should prevent weapons from falling into the hands of those who wish to use them only to do harm to others, but any new changes to the law must account for the fact that life in the countryside is very different from life in our largest cities. We must afford some space for discretion and for recognising the particular needs of certain communities. We must also always be sure that new rules would actually make life more difficult for wrongdoers, instead of allowing good intentions to lead us into making life more difficult for the law-abiding majority. Far too often it is the law-abiding who are punished by rules that are created in this place, even when those rules were designed with the most sincere intention of targeting the criminal few. Can the Minister provide clarity on when we can expect the consultation on the proposed changes to shotgun licensing? Can he assure us today that the final verdict of the consultation will take full account of those across rural Britain, whose livelihoods will be rendered impossible by these proposals? Can he further assure us that, before considering any new regulations, the Government will first consider a renewed focus on enforcing the law as it already stands? I think there has been clear agreement in this debate on the need for a licensing system that protects the public, does not overburden the police or the NHS, stops and punishes wrongdoers, and recognises the special need that people in rural communities have for responsible gun ownership. Therefore, I urge the Minister to approach this issue with an evidence-based, proportionate and fair attitude, protecting the public and protecting our rural way of life.
I do not want to prolong the debate, but I do want to impress something upon the Minister. When he spoke about the uses of shotguns, he talked about target shooting and hunting. I gently say to him that these firearms are needed for far more than sport; they are used for land management and for farming. I encourage him, if he has not already, to meet the organisations that represent rural communities to understand how vital shotguns are for rural land management.
Like my right hon. Friend, I am proud of the role that Conservative peers have played in this, but can we also take a moment to pay credit to Back-Bench Labour MPs? I think it is important to note that they are not here. Practically the only Government Member present, scribbling away, is the hon. Member for Rugby (John Slinger), whom I admire a great deal, but who is loyalist to his very core. If he is the only Member prepared to speak up, the truth is that Labour MPs have voted with their feet, and they now agree with my right hon. Friend that this deal has to go.
Where are they?
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Minister said that she would address the issue of whether nuclear weapons could go to Diego Garcia, and now she says that she cannot comment. Is that—
UKHospitality says that we could be seeing the death of the great British summer job, and even Labour’s own Alan Milburn has warned that there is a long-standing decline in the number of 16 and 17-year-olds getting Saturday jobs. Previous Labour Governments always shoved up youth unemployment, but never before has Labour threatened to destroy the great British summer job. That is much to be regretted, and it is about time that the Government turned around their jobs tax and Employment Rights Bill policies.
Will the Minister give way?
In my experience, my neighbour is always a fair and credible person, so will she confirm that youth unemployment reduced over the 14 years that the Conservatives were in government, rather than focusing on some selective period over covid in order to give an entirely partisan and biased view of the statistics? The numbers went down, did they not? The only Government who put up youth unemployment by 45% were the last Labour Government.
Will the hon. Lady give way?
It is a pleasure to take part in this debate. How do we, as so many colleagues have asked this afternoon—certainly on the Opposition Benches—persuade an employer? How do we create the incentives for an employer to take a chance on a young person who may have no work experience—they may be full of ambition, fresh ideas and curiosity, but with little or no experience to offer—when that same employer could choose an older candidate who is proven, reliable and familiar with the workplace? If we can answer that question, we will help more than one person; we will help ensure that we provide the door to opportunity for people to have that dignity of work, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich (Sir Roger Gale) has just talked about. I have been a Member of Parliament for nearly 21 years, along with the Minister. In that time, she, like me, will have visited hundreds of schools—I certainly have, from Holderness academy to Withernsea high school—and asked thousands of students the same question: “What do you want to be when you leave school?” Not once has a child replied, “Unemployed”, and for good reason. Young people are ambitious. They want the dignity of work, about which my right hon. Friend spoke so passionately just now, over the indignity of welfare. They want to climb a ladder of opportunity, not fall into the trap of dependency. However, as was reflected in the Minister’s speech, study after study tells us the same hard truth. Young people who experience long-term unemployment are more likely to end up poor, sick and more isolated than their peers, with no options and no hope. No way should we be consigning our young people to that fate. Labour Governments have done this before. I never want to question anyone’s honesty, but some Labour Members have been very selective in the data that they have given. They have talked relentlessly about the 14 years, but not one of them has given youth unemployment figures for those 14 years, which anyone fair-minded would surely do rather than picking some three-year period around covid. The hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur) did make a fair statistical point. He said, “OK, youth unemployment has gone up under Labour.” He conceded that: how refreshing. However, he also said that it was going up when we came to power and we should deal with that. It was a fair point and a point well made, but in 1997 youth unemployment stood at 14%, and by 2010, under the socialists—the Labour party—it had climbed to 20%.
I will make a little more progress, and then I will happily give way. Given that I have referred to the hon. Gentleman, it is the very least I can do. By 2024, the level had been brought back to below 14%. Again and again, Conservatives have brought youth unemployment down. I have mentioned—as have others, including the Minister—just how damaging it is for young people to be unemployed. It has not just a short-term horrific impact, but a lifelong impact. I do not quite know why that is the case, but study after study shows that it is. Now, less than two years in, the figure is 16% and rising. We have seen this film before, and unless we change course—unless the Government change course—we know how it ends. So how do we change course? I think that Conservative Members have tried to indicate to Opposition Members what the answer might be. I know that Opposition Members lack experience of running businesses—so few of them have ever had to make that huge decision, that risk-filled decision, to employ someone and then to employ more people, having to find the money to pay them at the end of the month as well as paying all the taxes—but the answer is that we do it by changing incentives. As any good economist knows, the single biggest cost for almost any business is its workforce, yet this Chancellor has chosen to increase the minimum wage and so many other costs on business. In turn, the cost of employing 18 to 20 year-olds—just since July 2024—has risen not by £2,000, not by £3,000, but by a staggering £4,095, in less than two years. If we understand that behaviour is driven by incentives and we make it much more expensive to employ a young person than to employ someone older, what happens? Well, it is not a surprise: the rate of youth unemployment has gone up. Let me now give way to the hon. Gentleman.
The hon. Gentleman makes a fair and reasonable point, but if he goes back and looks through the data, he will see that youth unemployment stayed stubbornly high under the last quasi-socialist Government, and it was not just because of the 2008 crash. The truth is that, throughout that period, we had a much higher level of youth unemployment than we should have done. He says that we had austerity, but the then Government overspent. We inherited a massive deficit and slowly brought it down throughout the 2010s, but we overspent in each and every year, so the idea that we had austerity is a myth. “Austerity” means living within our means, but we did not live within our means. We overspent each and every year, but by the time we got to covid, we had managed to get our deficit right down. We showed fiscal responsibility, because we know that if Governments spend money that they do not generate, they impose a burden on the very young people on whom unemployment is now being imposed. I will deal with the minimum wage, which Labour Members have touched on. They asked whether we want to tell young people that they are not worth higher pay. Well, if they do not have the experience, and if they lose out on getting a job against an older person because they do not even have cost competitiveness, they are in trouble. Since the introduction of the development rate in 1998, there has been a lower wage for younger workers. That is deliberate, for a very sensible reason: when young people enter the workplace, they are doing exactly that—they are developing. They are developing skills, confidence, discipline and the ability to work productively alongside more experienced colleagues. Employers were explicitly permitted to pay less in order to reflect an economic reality.
I do not doubt the good intentions of the Labour party, the Cabinet and the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham), who I may allow to intervene in a moment, but good intentions do not disguise the truth. They have not run businesses, and it shows. They do not understand how employers make decisions or how behaviour is incentivised. By abolishing the development rate, the Chancellor wanted to signal that she is on the side of young people in order to put in place a political divide: “You Tories don’t want to pay young people a fair and decent wage!” Of course we do, but we want them to have jobs. This is the insider-outsider issue that my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) touched on earlier. The effect that the Chancellor has had is the opposite of what she desired, and she is not helping young people. Many have received a short-term pay rise, but hundreds of thousands have received the ultimate kick in the teeth. They have received not a pay cut, but no pay at all, because the jobs they should have been offered have disappeared in a puff of the Chancellor’s smoke. After the Government’s first Budget, a survey by the Beverley and District chamber of trade found that 88% of its members said they would be less likely to employ young people because of the rise in the minimum wage. Despite that warning, the Chancellor returned with a second Budget and destroyed even more opportunities with another £26 billion tax raid. We can but pray that she is out the door before she completes her tax-taking trilogy. If the Chancellor changes nothing, we need to change the Chancellor. What would the Conservatives do differently? We would start with a simple truth: jobs are created by employers—by not Ministers, schemes or programmes. Private employers are the ones who generate wealth. The ladder of opportunity is not built by ministerial good intentions; it is built by creating incentives for the behaviours we want. The behaviour we want from employers is for them to take a risk, and to feel that it is worth their while for their family to invest in and give an opportunity to a young person. But under this Government, the first rung of the ladder is being sawn off. Young people do not begin at the top; they begin with a Saturday job or a summer shift, and their first payslip. That is where confidence is built, habits are formed and futures are forged. When those jobs disappear, the ladder does not get longer; it just gets shorter and steeper. A Conservative Government will abolish business rates for retail, hospitality and leisure—not 10% of them, but 100%. Those are the sectors in which so many young people take their first step. Cutting costs gives businesses the freedom to grow and hire, and we do not need a vast number of people to administer a scheme. When we simply lower the costs for employers, they get on with it. That will create real opportunities for young people to learn, earn and prove themselves. Under Labour, businesses face another three years of higher and higher costs, heavier regulation and constant uncertainty, leaving young people blocked, frustrated and struggling to get a foothold in the job market. We will repeal Labour’s job-destroying Employment Rights Act, because we cannot regulate our way to prosperity. The Act introduced 28 major reforms—count them—placing significant new requirements on businesses. By the Government’s own estimate, it will lead to £5 billion in costs. The planned changes to zero-hours contracts are perhaps the most damaging to young people, because employees will require guaranteed hours and compensation for cancelled shifts. I fully accept that these measures are well-intentioned, but they will reduce the flexibility that employers value, and that young people also value because they can balance their studies with gaining experience. Businesses will hire fewer young workers, leaving a generation without the chance to learn, earn and prove themselves.
I hope the hon. Lady will say now on the Floor of the House that if the youth unemployment rate continues to go up, as it did under previous Labour Governments, from the 14% inherited from the Conservatives to 20%—if that were to be the terrible outcome, with its scarring impact on young people—she would not seek to stand for the Labour party at the next election, because she would recognise that she had failed us.
The differential has been eroded, but the hon. Lady is quite right to mention that. What we are talking about is balance. None of us is talking about a total free-for-all for employers. We are looking at getting balance, and it looks as though that balance has gone wrong, as the hon. Lady must know. What have been the great external economic shocks over the last year and a half? There have not really been any. There is no reason, other than the policies of this Government, for this increase in youth unemployment, with the loss of nearly 100,000 jobs in hospitality. This is about getting the balance right, and this Government have not done so. The Conservatives will align incentives, cut costs and free businesses to hire—to get the balance right—and in doing so, we will give them the freedom to give young people a chance to prove themselves, because Conservative Governments stand for work, not welfare, and for opportunity, not dependency.
My hon. Friend is picking out remarkable contributions to this debate. Was she particularly struck by the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone), who is not in his seat, saying that the Conservatives should apologise for not having any mention in their motion of transport to help young people get to work, when the much longer Liberal Democrat amendment, ironically, has no mention of transport either?
Does my hon. Friend look forward to the Minister’s reply, as I do? Youth unemployment has already gone up from 14% to 16%. Does she want to hear from the Minister at the Dispatch Box a commitment that this Government will reduce it back down, so that they can for once end their time in power—in 2029—however short-lived it may have been, with a lower rate of youth unemployment than they started with?
The Minister knows that youth unemployment was at 20% when the Conservatives came into power, and at 14% when we left. Can he commit that his Government, with their vast array of programmes, will bring youth unemployment back below the level that his Government inherited? Previous Labour Governments have failed to do that, and shoved up youth unemployment, with all the damage that goes with that. Will his Government ensure that the numbers come down, and if they do not, will the Government put their hands up and admit their failure?
I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision about the responsibilities and duties of certain authorities and agencies in respect of inland flood prevention; to make provision about the powers of local flood authorities and Internal Drainage Boards; to require the Secretary of State to report to Parliament on the funding of local flood authorities and Internal Drainage Boards; to provide for the designation of Internal Drainage Board pumps as critical national infrastructure; to require the Secretary of State to prepare and publish a report on the potential merits of establishing a Flood Compensation Fund to support homeowners whose primary residence has become unsaleable as a direct result of flooding; to make provision about flood reinsurance schemes; to make provision about the responsibilities of developers and water companies in respect of the provision of drainage for new housing developments; to make water companies statutory consultees for certain planning applications; to place a duty on fire and rescue services to respond to flood events; to make provision about national and local digital mapping of flood incidence and risk; and for connected purposes. Mr Speaker, when you hear “Norfolk” and “floods”, I imagine that, like most, you think of coastal flooding, salt marsh flooding, storm tides eroding our cliffs, river flooding and the broads, but not inland flooding from surface water run-off overloading drains and sewers, which is all too often overlooked, and which is why I am introducing this Bill. Like many, Mr Speaker, you are probably wondering why Mid Norfolk is flooding. It is Breckland; it is dry, sandy, and inland—the clue is in the name—and it should not be flooding, but over the last decade or so we have seen a spate of inland surface flooding in 23 of my 130 villages, and the problem is increasing every year. Why? Yes, climate change. In 2022-23, we had the wettest October, November, December, January, February and March on record, but there is also a lack of maintenance of council highway culverts, a lack of maintenance of farm ditches, inadequate funding of internal drainage boards—who, by the way, have been doing a really good job since about 1560, when they were created—and local flood authorities, and the relinquishing of riparian rights. I am sorry to say that I think the Environment Agency is rather more focused on rivers as habitats, than as channels for getting water off the land. However, these issues are happening in many areas. Why is there a problem in Mid Norfolk? The big factor in Mid Norfolk is new housing. Along the A11 corridor, in the last 10 or 15 years, we have seen 5,000 houses built at Thetford, 5,000 at Attleborough, 3,000 at Wymondham, and 1,000 at Silfield. A 5,000-house new town is planned at Snetterton, and in commuter villages like Yaxham, Mattishall and Ellingham, big national developers and their agents like Gladman are using—or abusing—the five-year land supply to land-bank, and then to dump massive commuter housing estates on the outskirts of towns and villages without making proper infrastructure investment, against the wishes of the local council, the local plan and communities, who are too often powerless. I want to make it clear that I am not against house building, or all developers. We have excellent local developers in Norfolk, like Abel Homes, which builds excellent homes and estates in many of my towns and villages. They are not the problem. The problem is the rush to dump massive commuter estates on the outskirts of towns and villages, and the scale of new housing without adequate infrastructure investment. In 2020, my eyes were fully opened to the scale of the issue. I spent Christmas week helping residents in my villages to clear out sewage water from their houses, and on the telephone lines to try to get Anglian Water to send tankers to pump out the villages. The problems continued, and in 2023, Mill Lane, Attleborough, was hit by a significant flooding event affecting 100 homes. Spare a thought, please, for Lynn and Hans Short, who live next to the culvert, which was, by the way, wrongly installed by Anglian Water before it handed over the riparian responsibilities. Lynn and Hans have been flooded in four out of the last five years. That is why I have set up the Mid Norfolk Flood Partnership, worked with the county council to set up the Norfolk Strategic Flood Alliance, ably led by Henry Cator and Fiona Johnston, convened our first Norfolk flood summit last year, and established and supported local flood action groups. My first instinct was not to come to Parliament or Government for help, but to lead locally. Something has become very clear, not least through the case study of Mill Lane, Attleborough, where a culvert was built under the river, inappropriately blocked with a grille that was never properly checked, and is at the wrong angle, so that it piles up waste, flooding the houses next to it. We ended up having to put together a multi-agency taskforce. We removed 30 tonnes of debris from the whole river. There was an illegal housing development lower down the watercourse, inappropriate development, and a lack of catchment work all the way through. It was a huge multi-agency project, but this is happening all over the country. Norfolk is only sixth in the top 10 inland flood counties, and that is why there are, I think, four new flooding all-party parliamentary groups in this Parliament. MPs across the House recognise the issue, and given the new house building target of 1.5 million homes in the next three years, it will only get more serious. I pay tribute to the new flood Minister, the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy), who is present, and Peter Bonfield for his flood review. I welcome the comprehensive spending review funding announcement of £2.6 billion for flood and coastal erosion management to protect 65,000 homes. The insurance sector tells us that 18 million homes will be at risk—one in four—over the next 10 to 15 years, and flooding is costing £66 billion a year to the economy.[Official Report, 29 January 2026; Vol. 779, c. 10WC.] (Correction) We will not solve the problem unless we really deal with the fundamental, structural, systemic problems causing misery and chaos around the country. Inland flooding is often overlooked, as funding goes to the higher-profile coastal areas, rivers, towns and cities. There is a serious lack of clear responsibility; there are over 30 agencies in Norfolk alone that have responsibility for flooding. We must deal with the disempowering of local bodies, such as internal drainage boards. Local flood authorities have no power or funding. There is continued building on floodplains without adequate infrastructure. There is no enforceable requirement to upgrade existing drainage, and no funding for drainage upgrades because most section 106 money goes on important local services. Residents in district council areas where there is an IDB are seeing funding for flood services cut. There is tonnes of data, but no proper mapping of where and when floods are likely to happen. We have the technology and the data to do that mapping, but we do not use it. The vital Flood Re scheme is limited in time and scope, and is set to expire. There is also an insurance, mortgage and saleability time-bomb in our housing market. Sadly, there was nothing to deal with those issues in the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, despite multiple amendments being tabled, including in the other place. The Bill that I am introducing has been designed with and around the advice of frontline bodies, and deals with the practical reality of flood prevention in four key areas: responsibilities, funding, planning, and national and local data and flood mapping. I developed it in a spirit of non-partisan, practical politics, to embolden the Minister to take this opportunity to make the key reforms that are essential if we are to avoid a growing crisis worsening to calamitous levels. I thank the many agencies and organisations in the water sector that have helped—in particular, local residents Liz Witcher in Watton, Hans and Lynn in Attleborough, and others too numerous to mention. I thank my councillors, agencies such as the Norfolk Strategic Flooding Alliance, and Aviva, a great local Norfolk insurance business on the frontline of this crisis. Most of all, the Bill is shaped by and for those poor people, up and down this country, who, like Hans and Lynn Short at Mill Lane, Attleborough, live in fear of going through the hell of their homes being flooded, not through any fault of their own, but because the system has failed them. The planning, drainage, sewerage, insurance and flood-prevention system has evolved without design. No single body or person is responsible; that is the problem. The system is not fit for purpose today, let alone for three years’ time, when 1.5 million new homes are set to be built. We were all sent here to make the system work for the people who pay their taxes, pay our wages and expect us to deliver. We owe it to them and to the next generation to fix this. That is how we repair public trust in our politics and in this Parliament. The Bill is designed to help the Minister do just that. I commend it to the House. Question put and agreed to. Ordered, That George Freeman, Nick Timothy, Jerome Mayhew, James Wild, Lee Pitcher, Helen Morgan, Dr Roz Savage, Steff Aquarone, Adrian Ramsay, Blake Stephenson and Dr Ben Spencer present the Bill. George Freeman accordingly presented the Bill. Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 10 July, and to be printed (Bill 368).
I remind Members to bob if they wish to be called. We will go to the Front-Bench speakers at about 3.30 pm. I am aware we are expecting a vote, which might come as early as 3.30 pm; I will obviously suspend the sitting when that happens.
I will call Amanda Hack to move the motion and I will then call the Minister to respond. I remind other Members that they may make a speech only with the prior permission of both the Member in charge of the debate and the Minister. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention with a 30-minute debate.
Order. I remind Members to bob if they wish to be called in the debate.
Negotiations may well be ongoing, but the key question is whether the UK can make a unilateral decision to give away sovereignty without the blessing of the US. This question was posed three times on Monday, and the Minister simply said it is under discussion. Ministers need to answer directly today, so I pose this question now: can this be done unilaterally or not?
rose—
Specifically on that point, the 2021 judgment did not have any British representation and rested on the UN’s non-binding judgment. We also know from the 2015 ruling that that court cannot preside over sovereignty, so how does it stand up to scrutiny that the Minister is saying that there is a dire need to hand the islands over?