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I absolutely agree, because the value of farmland in Northern Ireland is far greater than the average rate per acre in England or, dare I say, anywhere else in Great Britain. That is why Northern Ireland farmers are going to be absolutely decimated as a result of the changes that this Labour Government are bringing in.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Indeed, I was in Dumfries and Galloway just last week to speak to farming businesses that will be impacted by the changes that this Labour Government are bringing in. He hits on a very important point, because the NFU, the Country Land and Business Association, the Tenant Farmers Association and the Central Association of Agricultural Valuers have over the past year continually tried to put forward progressive options for this Government to listen to and engage with, but they have not listened. That just shows the naivety associated with this Government. Indeed, at the Liaison Committee yesterday, the Prime Minister himself acknowledged that he was aware of farmers who have worked all their lives within the farming community and who are considering taking their own lives. Despite that knowledge, he wanted to crack on with this policy regardless. It is callous and heartless, and it just shows what this Government are about.
Absolutely. All I advocate, as I am sure my right hon. Friend does, is that this Government simply engage with and listen to our farming community. It is not just our farming community that is hit by the IHT changes; it is family businesses more widely.
The hon. Member makes an excellent point, and not only Cornish farmers, but those right across the country are being impacted by this Government’s decisions. He also makes the excellent point that many of our farming businesses are incredibly highly geared, given the level of debt associated with their businesses, and are not returning a level of income to even contribute towards paying an IHT liability at 20% over and above the £1 million threshold. They will therefore be subject to a death tax that they will simply be unable to pay.
The point to make quite clearly is that every single farming business will, in one way or another, be impacted by the £1 million threshold kicking in. Why? Because for an arable farm in Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire or wherever it is, the price of feed wheat is still at about the same price it was 20 years ago, but the costs of all the inputs have been rising. Not only are such businesses subject to cash-flow challenges as a result of this Government removing the delinked payments —dramatically dropping them to £600—as well as removing the sustainable farming incentive and bringing in the fertiliser tax or the double cab pick-up tax, but they will be impacted by the changes to inheritance tax. That impact will be felt by hill farmers in Keighley and Ilkley; arable farmers in Lincolnshire or, dare I say it, down in Cornwall; and farmers wherever there are, even those subject to high land values in Northern Ireland. This Government must listen to our farming community right now, because whether farmers come down today or tomorrow to make noise with their tractors outside, I hope they continue coming to make sure that this Government listen. It is not just our farming community that is impacted by the IHT changes. This has an impact on our family businesses, our hospitality businesses, our breweries and our manufacturing and engineering businesses. That is why I simply cannot understand why we have not heard from Back-Bench Labour MPs representing urban constituencies, who may be representing a manufacturing or engineering business, a hospitality business or a hotelier. Why on earth have those with such family businesses in their constituencies not been loud and proud in making noises to the Chancellor about the negative impacts these IHT changes will have on our many family businesses?
I do agree with the hon. Member that the Government must get their own house in order before implementing strategies that are impacting many of our hard-working businesses. The changes to BPR are detrimental. Why? I would use the example of a business in my constituency that has already worked out that its liability after the changes to BPR is about £800,000. The business is owned by the fourth generation, who are in their late 80s. They have been told that the only way to pay a BPR liability, should a death occur after April 2026, is to sell plant or machinery, or to sell shares in their business, either way losing control of their business or not being able to keep their business productive. That demonstrates how uninformed the Government are about the changes they will be making. I think I have made my point. [Interruption.] The Minister sits on the Front Bench laughing away, but had she had the time to go outside and engage with our farming community, or at least get around the table with Back-Bench Labour MPs and Opposition Members who have been consistently raising this issue over the last year, she might not be sitting there smiling away; she might be able to come to the Dispatch Box in her winding-up speech to give some sort of positive conclusion and hope to those many businesses who will be impacted by this disastrous Labour Government.
The NHS has finally issued a call for evidence regarding a clinical pathway for adults who wish to detransition. Does the hon. Lady agree that that is a welcome and long-overdue first step, and that the NHS must continue making serious efforts to improve care for detransitioners?
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I will be brief because we are running out of time. Detransitioners are an often marginalised and misunderstood group. Ritchie Herron is a civil servant who underwent gender surgery in 2018 in order to live as a woman. That involved rearranging tissue in the genital area to create a vaginal opening. When he decided to detransition, he was concerned that specialists were unable to advise him clearly about the correct dosages of hormones that he should take during the process to avoid increasing his risk of osteoporosis. In brief, I simply ask the Minister what her Department is doing to look at how the NHS supports those who are detransitioning? That is not to say that those who are transitioning should not be able to access the support that they need, but what is the NHS doing to support those who want to detransition, especially those who experienced puberty blockers at a young age?
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs if she will make a statement on the rights of British Chagossians to access the trust fund and resettle on the Chagos archipelago.
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question. We have basically just heard from the Minister that the Government’s betrayal of the British Chagossian community continues. We have just had more details on how bad this deal is for the Chagossian community. Labour’s surrender of British sovereign territory means that future decisions on access to and resettlement on most of the archipelago, the ancestral home of Chagossians, are now left in the hands of—guess what?—a foreign Government. Can the Minister confirm if British Chagossians will need to become Mauritian citizens to have any hope of being entitled to or eligible for resettlement under the future resettlement programme? That is a simple yes or no—it sounds like the answer is an absolute yes. This is a country that, until only weeks ago, had an offence on its statute books of “misrepresenting the sovereignty of Mauritius”, and it is a country from which hundreds of Chagossians have fled to Britain in recent weeks. By the way, housing this community across the country is adding to the pressure on local authorities. Does the Minister recognise the sheer madness of this plan? The Government have confirmed that, despite this Government giving the Government of Mauritius £40 million of British taxpayers’ money for the trust fund, Britain has no proper representation on the board and no control over how the funds are spent. There will be just one UK-based Chagossian representative on the board, chosen not by the British Chagossian community, but—guess what?—by the Prime Minister of Mauritius. Can the Minister tell us if he thinks this is acceptable, and did the Government—I cannot say the Minister specifically—press for greater Chagossian and British representation on the board? Can he tell us exactly what UK delegations have been doing in Mauritius this year, who they have met and what has been discussed? On the so-called contact group, why have the Government refused to seek the views of the British Chagossian community on this surrender treaty? They have instead chosen to outsource this vital function to a House of Lords Select Committee, whose survey, as we have seen online, has been open to manipulation by and interference from the Mauritian Government. It is no wonder that the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has called the Government out for their betrayal of the Chagossian community. That is massively embarrassing, particularly when we have a Government of human rights lawyers. What is the Minister’s response to this UN committee? Will he suspend the ratification of this appalling treaty, which is what the UN calls for, and importantly, say sorry to hard-pressed taxpayers in this country, who are forking out £35 billion for this shameful betrayal?
I congratulate the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) for securing this important urgent question. May I say that I do not think it is acceptable for the Minister to just regurgitate the written ministerial statement from yesterday? There are some fundamental issues about what should be the Government’s strategy. First and foremost, it was wrong to simply say that the approach that the Government inherited was wrong. I should know that, having recapitalised the Commonwealth Development Corporation, with British International Investment now having a huge amount of annual investment and reinvestment every single year on economic development in Africa. Fundamentally, whether it is from Gavi, the Global Fund or the sustainable development goals, these are founding principles that are now being advanced across Africa, and the Government really should do much more to stand up and defend them. In the written ministerial statement yesterday there was no reference to China’s belt and road debt traps, Russia’s nefarious activities or the Wagner Group in Africa. Yet before our eyes, we see the axis of authoritarian states pillaging African countries for its natural resources. Where is the substance for a plan of action to counter the growing influence of that axis? As we have already heard, there is also scant regard in the Government’s plan for the Commonwealth and its role in upholding democracy, capacity building and freedoms. Why is that the case? Are the Government working with the new secretary-general on her economic vision, which would clearly benefit the UK and Africa? We do not know how the Government intend to support the African Union or rise to the challenges in the continent, and sadly, we are seeing so much conflict right now. Can the Minister explain what the UK will do to leverage our conflict resolution expertise to good effect? Finally, on illegal migration, can I remind the Minister and the Government that they intentionally tore up engagement with a key Commonwealth partner? Rwanda sought to provide leadership on illegal migration and stop young men leaving the continent at great risk because it wanted to create an economic development partnership with the UK. That surely speaks to some of the serious challenges that this Government now need to pick up and confront.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa) on securing the debate, which is vital to me and my constituents. Over the past six years, since being elected in 2019, I have been fighting against a proposal for an aggregate quarry down Hamble Lane in my constituency, which was recently given permission by the planning inspectorate on appeal. In the four minutes that I have to speak, I want to get across to the Minister that the planning system is fractured, disjointed and weighted against local communities. It does not take into account the true nature of quarries or the stuff that they produce; it does not take into account air quality or water run-off that will go into the River Hamble. The Planning Inspectorate is also culpable in not looking at regulations set down by locally elected planning authorities. In my case, it has been acknowledged in local planning authority notices that the Hamble Lane highway—which has one lane going in and out that 200 lorries a day will have to use—is already oversaturated and at capacity, and yet the minerals and waste authority has granted that permission. We have a slightly strange process in Hamble that I want to outline briefly. As I said, we will have 200 lorries a day, but there has been a lack of consultation by Cemex, the company proposing the quarry. I will go as far as to say that Cemex are cowboys and bullies of local communities. There was not one physical consultation with people during covid, the company treats the community with utter disdain, and it treats the planning process as one of its personal toys that it can afford to challenge and manufacture. The Minister needs to be aware of that. The quarry in Hamble is being proposed 50 metres from a primary school and 100 metres from a secondary school. That was not taken into account at all by the planning system. Physical highways data has not been taken account of since covid, but since then hundreds of houses have been built on Hamble Lane. That was not taken into account. Even more concerning is what happened after the regulatory committee of the minerals and waste authority refused the quarry: when 300 of my constituents turned up to attend the final meeting, the minerals and highways authority chose not to defend the reasons for refusal of democratically elected councillors without telling me or a single person in the community. That meant it went to an appeal. My local residents group, the Hamble peninsula residents group, has done a fantastic job in raising funds to defend the appeal, but it was based on flawed data. At no time in my six years as an MP have I been consulted and no one on my local council—I have been working very closely with the Liberal Democrat administration on Eastleigh borough council—has been consulted. That is not good enough.
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. His situation sounds very similar to mine. I do not blame the Minister, as she has inherited a system that has been in place for decades, but what confidence can local people have in maintaining high standards when they are not in the guidance? What confidence can local people have in challenging the impact of quarries if the democratic body that refused permission in the first place is overturned by an unelected inspector, with the rug pulled out from under the local authority? Will the Minister commit to meet me to discuss the circumstances of this case? There is a clear democratic deficit in the way in which this has been granted. It was handled by officers who superseded locally elected councillors. We are going to seek a statutory review, but that is now at the cost of the local community. That is not good for local people. People feel absolutely let down in Hamble, as they do across the country. I would be grateful if the Minister would commit to meet me in the coming months to discuss this case specifically.
It is actually worse than that, is it not? In my case, the quarry is 50 metres from a local school. Parents are already talking about taking their children out of two very successful schools, which adds to the pressure on communities and the associated infrastructure.
On a point of order, Dr Murrison. I am desperately sorry, and I am not usually this kind of politician, but a number of Members have raised specific issues and contributed lived experiences, which relate directly to what the Minister is saying, yet she is not giving way. I seek your advice on how we can interact with the Minister and get some answers from her.
I thank the Minister for giving way. She will recall that in my speech I did not attack the Government at all, so I am not sure why her tone this morning is quite dismissive of other Members of Parliament. I think she should reflect on that. I asked specifically whether a Minister in the Department would meet with me about my case and she has not answered that. I wonder if she could, please.
I thank the Secretary of State for giving me advance sight of his statement. Let me begin by saying that protecting the integrity of our democratic system from foreign interference is not a partisan issue. It goes to the heart of public trust in our elections. Interference in our elections by foreign actors is something that we must all be vigilant against. I concur fully with what he said about Nathan Gill, and join the Secretary of State in giving sincere thanks to the CPS and the police. Any such crime deserves full condemnation from all Members of this House. The Government announced their election strategy back in July, a strategy that affects all of us in this House. However, there was no consultation of political parties before the strategy was released. There has also been no formal consultation since it was announced. December marks the first time that the Government have engaged with the parliamentary parties panel. We do, however, welcome the announced independent review led by Philip Rycroft, and we wish him well in his work. Will the Minister commit to all parties being consulted during the new independent review’s work? Does he also accept the long-standing convention that Governments should not unilaterally impose changes to the law affecting political parties without proper consultation and cross-party engagement? On electoral resilience, last week the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission noted that the commission was not consulted at all on the cancellation of the 2026 mayoral elections. Will the Secretary of State update us on whether council elections are going ahead, or will he cancel more elections at the last minute? Will he give electoral officials plenty of notice, whatever he chooses to do? Delving into the Government’s statement, I note that the Government have signalled their intention to introduce “know your customer”-style checks on political donations, but political parties are not banks or the taxman. During the passage of the National Security Bill, the last Government committed to looking at greater powers for information sharing between relevant agencies and with political parties, precisely to identify irregular funding sources. Does the Secretary of State agree that such information sharing would help political parties to meet these new duties? I welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement on cryptocurrencies, and the clarity that they will be in scope of the independent review. The Secretary of State is absolutely right to mention Russia. The last Government legislated for a foreign influence registration scheme to stop covert foreign influence. Can the Minister explain why the Government have repeatedly refused to extend the scheme to China? What reasons are there for leaving such a gap in our national security framework, and will China be included in the scope of the independent review? Unfortunately, that decision sits uneasily alongside the Government ramming through the planning application for the Chinese embassy. How is that meant to convince Members of this House that the Government take seriously foreign interference from all malign powers across the globe? There are clear loopholes that the Government need to address. Loopholes created by the Scottish and Welsh Governments allow Chinese residents in Scotland and Wales to make donations to UK political parties and politicians. What steps are the Government taking to close those loopholes, and to ensure that safeguarding is consistent throughout the whole United Kingdom? Finally, protecting our democracy requires transparent cross-party discussion. Centralised power that bends the knee to the Chinese does not have the United Kingdom’s national interests as a priority. The Secretary of State now has an opportunity to set the record straight, and reassure the House of this Government’s commitment to taking seriously foreign interference by any malign influence. I hope that the concerns I have outlined are directly addressed today.
Order. As it is the Second Reading of a finance Bill, I cannot impose a time limit, but I can suggest that colleagues keep their remarks to around six minutes.
I cannot set a time limit, but I will ask colleagues to monitor their own timekeeping and I suggest that six minutes would be a good time.
We come to the final Back-Bench contribution. I just note that the Front Benchers wish to be on their feet by around 6.40 pm.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving notice of his point of order on points of order. I can say that his point of order was most definitely not a point of order. For clarity, and for the benefit of the hon. Member, a point of order should in principle draw the Chair’s attention to a possible breach of the House’s rules of order, which his point of order failed to do. I would not like to speculate on how many points of order actually have served this purpose—I am sure many now will—but the hon. Member raises an interesting question. Hansard can point out how many points of orders have been raised that, like his, were obviously not points of order.
8. What assessment he has made of the potential impact of the proposed ending of jury trials for certain offences on the right to a fair trial.
The Justice Secretary may have complete faith in the independence of the judiciary; sadly, I do not. We have seen a plethora of cases, particularly involving freedom of speech, where the judiciary has arguably been influenced by political correctness and the virtue signalling of bodies such as the Sentencing Council. If his proposals are designed to reduce the backlog, why do they not include a sunset clause?
The Conservatives were right to abolish Whitehall-imposed mandatory housing targets, and Labour was wrong to bring them back. May I ask the Minister specifically about call-ins? Under the well-established system, the Secretary of State might have called in, on average, about 20 applications a year if they raised issues with national implications, and there was almost invariably a full public planning inquiry. Under Labour’s proposals, councils will have to notify the Secretary of State if they intend to refuse any application for more than 150 homes. The Secretary of State could then call it in before local councillors have even had a chance to vote on it. There would be no guarantee of a public inquiry, and the application could even be given to a planning inspector to deal with it behind closed doors by written representations—by letter—so that local people and their councillors would not have a chance to say anything at all. That is completely undemocratic, is it not? Why have a local plan at all?
To build on the excellent questioning by the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), how many prisoners have been mistakenly released, and how many will it take before the Justice Secretary considers his position?
12. What assessment he has made of the potential impact of short placements in open prisons on the effectiveness of rehabilitation programmes.
I agree with what the Minister just said, but through the early release programme, and given the “third, third, third” model that the Government want to introduce to split sentencing in custody, prisons such as Kirkham in my constituency in Lancashire are seeing a much higher turnover among their open prison population; prisoners are increasingly serving shorter sentences and in such prisons for much shorter periods. They are effectively becoming cat C prisons but without the walls, the security or the resources. We are concerned about the knock-on effect that that will have on the ability to run rehabilitation programmes, which are designed for significant amounts of time at the end of prisoners’ sentences. What additional resources will the Government put in place to support rehabilitation programmes in open prisons?
The Minister’s statement referenced a presumption in favour of sustainable development on certain brownfield sites. Will applications for those developments still have to undertake a traffic and environmental impact assessment? If, for example, the highway network were found to be inadequate, would the local planning authority be able to refuse that application?
As you will know, Mr Speaker, I have been calling for the Government to publish an Africa strategy for a very long time. Has it been worth the wait? No. Yesterday, we got a written ministerial statement with a new approach—a partnership. It is not a strategy. As has been said, of the 54 nations, 21 are Commonwealth nations. Many years ago, I visited the Foreign Office and met the Africa Minister. He said, “Mark, I want you to tell me about certain countries in Africa.” I said, “The first thing you need to do, Minister, is change the map behind you.” He looked round at a tiny little map—as the Minister knows, the continent is huge. This is a timid, timid, timid approach to Africa; it is rather embarrassing. The Minister and the Government should be doing better.
I welcome the Rycroft review. In an earlier reply, the Secretary of State said that the role of the Electoral Commission will be in scope. If that is the case, it needs involvement from Opposition parties across the House—earlier in his statement he said that that probably would not happen, but perhaps it should happen with this taskforce, or more widely with the defending democracy taskforce. Given that the shocking case that he refers to started off in the European Parliament, may I invite the Secretary of State and his ministerial colleagues to look at the role of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly—I believe I am the only MP in history to have served on all three, although not on the same time, I hasten to add—as well as the UK-EU Parliamentary Partnership Assembly? From my experience, all those have been subject to at least very low-level Belarusian or Russian influence operations.
This is a dark day for Shropshire’s green belt—places like Albrighton and Shifnal in my constituency—for the remaining green belt in the borough of Telford and Wrekin, in places like Preston upon the Weald Moors, Edgmond, Bratton and Church Aston. Another time in this place, the Minister referenced the number of local authority voids—both Conservative and Labour, to be fair—and voids held by social landlords. What more can be done to release those voids so that we can take the pressure off Shropshire’s green belt?
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of farmers in Parliament Square this afternoon, blasting their horns about the family farm tax. The shadow Chancellor and many other colleagues from the Opposition Benches have been out to meet the farmers to understand their concerns. Has he heard, like I have, their frustration at the Government’s failure to listen and understand the impact that the family farm tax will have on farm viability?
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Is he aware of some research done by the National Farmers’ Union of Scotland, which shows that, under the current inheritance tax rules, farmers in Scotland typically pay a £20,000 inheritance tax bill, whereas under Labour’s current proposals the figure goes up to a staggering £775,000, which will kill off most farming businesses?
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I congratulate the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Andrew Lewin) on securing this important debate. His timing is excellent, because I am confident that tonight we shall witness the start of a resurgence by the England men’s cricket team, as they begin their Ashes comeback in Adelaide. Although the first two tests have not exactly gone to plan, it was fantastic to see Joe Root finally score his first test century in Australia, taking his grand total to 40. Around 2.5 million people play cricket each year, which includes 1.4 million under-16s. In 2025, 43,000 teams competed in 216,000 fixtures—passing the 200,000 mark for the first time. This popularity is reflected in the England and Wales Cricket Board’s All Stars and Dynamos youth programmes, with over 105,000 children signing up, including a record proportion of girls. The girls and women’s game is growing fastest, with the number of women’s teams up 18% and girls’ teams up 13% in 2025 compared with 2024. It is against that success and momentum that we must consider how the Government can provide support to build on the progress made. In the last four years, the ECB has awarded £55 million in grants, invested £32.2 million in 6,638 awards for recreational game projects, invested £22.8 million to create more welcoming and inclusive stadiums, invested £12.7 million in women and girls’ cricket, and invested £4.9 million in improving equality, diversity and inclusion in professional cricket. The previous Government committed £35 million to grassroots cricket in state schools, aiming to reach 930,000 young people, including 80,000 with special educational needs. That included £14 million for accessible cricket, 2,500 new pieces of cricket equipment and 16 cricket domes in cities due to host the women’s T20 world cup and the men’s T20 world cup. That investment was allocated and it sought to make a substantial impact for those who are currently underserved. The Government may say that the funding was not allocated, but that is simply not true. Will the Minister commit to reviewing the short-sighted decision to reallocate the funds elsewhere, especially given the vast benefits that cricket brings, not just to our communities but also by supporting a healthier population? The decision to backtrack is a disappointment. If all the Government can offer is warm words, that is plainly not enough. The Government must work alongside the ECB, as they still finance the hubs programme. Has the Minister considered how much further and faster the programme could go if it is delivered with the Government rather than despite the Government? We know that clubs are desperate for support. The Cash4Clubs initiative, which gives away £2,000 to 250 clubs for community sport and to drive participation, saw 1,400 applications this year, with recent cricket club winners including the Young Lions. It had hoped to double the pot this year, but the Budget and gambling tax have haltered that progress. Cricket is the only major sport that does not receive any direct funding for tournament or legacy delivery because of hosting major cricket events. Will the Minister commit to review that ahead of the 2026 and 2030 T20 competitions to be hosted here? The average age of a cricket pavilion in England and Wales is more than 70 years. Although clubs are already struggling due to rising maintenance costs, including energy, lighting and other upkeep, the Chancellor has further burdened them with increased business rates bills. Many clubs also seek to contribute to their local communities by employing locally. The increase in national insurance contributions has prohibited that. In my constituency, Ventnor cricket club is the island’s largest and highest performing club. It runs senior men’s, women’s and girls’ teams, junior disability cricket and over-50s walking cricket. The club’s facilities include a main building valued at just under £1 million, incorporating a three-lane indoor net and sports hall. Despite that success, the club faces significant challenges. The Government are failing to address the growing accessibility problems facing cricket pitches, as local authorities, particularly in urban areas, deprioritise maintenance to make savings, offloading responsibility, leading to a managed decline of sports facilities. Does the Minister not recognise that if clubs are forced to make significant savings, that will impact the positive action they take, which contributes to the communities they serve? Furthermore, the proposal to remove Sport England as a statutory consultee is deeply concerning. In the past five years, 90% of applications it reviewed resulted in pitches being improved or protected. Without its expertise, and amid local authority budget and capacity pressures, safe and sustainable cricket facilities are put at risk. I welcome the comments of the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield about Sport England and its role as a statutory consultee. Although the Minster may claim that local authorities will upskill, does she not share my concern that they may face challenges in prioritisation, budget constraints and lack of sport expertise? Does she agree that facilities planning must include schools and public leisure facilities? Before building new developments, the Government should assess the reasons why existing assets are not accessible, such as high hire costs, and should consider solutions such as local subsidised hiring. It is disappointing that the opening schools facilities fund, which aimed to do exactly that, was scrapped. Finally, the outlook is concerning and Government support must be provided at the earliest opportunity, not years down the line when the opportunities may have passed. I urge the Minister to consider what more could be done to reduce bureaucracy and get on with delivery. Sports bodies, including the ECB, are ready to provide support, as we all want the best for our communities.
I beg to move, That this House has considered the impact of the Autumn Budget 2025 on graduates. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I thank the Minister for taking time from his busy schedule to attend the debate today. I will start by painting a picture of two graduates at two different points in their lives—both taxed to death. Let us start with Nick, now 30. He has done all the right things. He got his GCSEs and A-levels, went to a Russell Group university, secured a place on a decent graduate scheme—in London and the south-east perhaps—and has even got himself a lovely girlfriend. Yet Labour’s most recent Budget will see his student loan repayments increase. His rent will go up. He will end up paying more tax because of the freeze on income tax thresholds. At work, his company is making redundancies and blaming rising employer’s national insurance. He cannot buy a house. His finances are pushed to the edge every month, yet a family on his road receiving benefits seem to enjoy the same quality of life without ever leaving the house. The Centre for Social Justice found that someone would need pre-tax earnings of £71,000 a year to match the disposable income of a family with three children and receiving benefits. Even if Nick earns more, as a headline figure, than someone on benefits, he faces so many extra costs—for commuting, council tax, rent and suits for work—that his disposable income will end up being very similar to, if not less than, that of someone who sits at home. In my view, Nick has every right to feel aggrieved. Writing in the Telegraph at the weekend, I estimated that a young person earning £40,000 a year and renting in my constituency is left with less than £500 a month in disposable income after reasonable expenses. Then there is Henry, or Henrietta—a high earner, not rich yet—who is perhaps slightly older, and might have excelled working in engineering or a tech start-up. Yes, they may have more disposable income, but often they are still far from financially free. We are seeing a bubble in the data for younger professionals earning just under £100,000, because crossing that threshold, for a parent of two, could well mean a £20,000 tax hit due to the high income child benefit charge and the withdrawal of child support.
I intend to get to the implications of plan 2 loans—both the freeze in the threshold for repayment and the freezing of the interest rates in a falling-interest-rates environment. I think the hon. Gentleman will find in the Budget papers that that raises about as much money as the mansion tax does, for example. I think that is deeply unfair. More broadly, what is the incentive structure here? Are we not punishing some of our most productive people? Of course many people across the country have it worse, but the point is that Nick, Henry or Henrietta should not have to apologise for striving and being ambitious. After all, it is their tax money that is used to prop up the welfare state, whether that involves benefits, pensions or housing illegal migrants. But they are the lucky ones; we now have about 1 million young people not in work, education or training. Worse still, we have 400,000 graduates claiming out-of-work benefits. I hear from graduates in my constituency who have applied for hundreds of jobs but get rejected or hear nothing at all. At the end of 2024, the Institute of Student Employers found that, on average, organisations were receiving 140 applications per job.
I am not sure that I agree 100% with the hon. Member. I suspect that, in this country, we are sending too many people to university, and we should have a higher focus on higher quality courses and courses that add economic value, while investing some of the money saved in apprenticeships. But I take the hon. Member’s point, which he makes well. There are hundreds of people, like Nick, who have done everything the right way—just as the system told them to—but who are not seeing the results in their lives. We have a huge disenfranchised cohort of young people, ranging from Gen Zers who have just graduated to millennial young professionals who are trying to get on and start a family. I am afraid that many are now voting with their feet. In the last year to March, 176,000 people aged 16 to 34 left Britain. Net migration may be down, but that is only because young Brits are fleeing the country under this Government. This is a national crisis, and it is really a question about the future of our country. If young people do not think they can thrive, they will not put down roots and have families, and there will be no next generation to fund the pensions and public services of the future that we will all rely on. That feeling of disillusionment has not come around by accident. I would not pretend to the Minister, who gives as good as he gets, that my party delivered in some of these areas, particularly in house building and the intergenerational compact, but the past two Budgets have made things demonstrably worse. The increase to employer’s national insurance in the first Budget created a freeze on hiring, and saw vacancies down and unemployment up. The Office for Budget Responsibility has shown that this could cost almost 50,000 jobs, and stats out today show that unemployment has risen to 5.1%. Increasing the national minimum wage has an impact on hiring and it further squeezes those on middle incomes. It could mean that baristas and shop assistants are dragged into paying back their student loans despite seeing no benefit from the so-called graduate premium. At this year’s Budget, the Government raised £26 billion on the backs of working people. If the Minister will not take it from me, maybe he will take it from the Resolution Foundation, which found that a worker on £35,000 a year will be £1,400 poorer because of the freeze. It also raised concerns about the negative impact of increasing the minimum wage on levels of employment. The most directly damaging policy is the latest changes to student loans, which have largely gone under the radar. Freezing the threshold for repayment will mean that as graduates’ starting salaries increase with inflation, they will end up paying more and earlier. There are also the perverse disincentives whereby those on plan 2 loans who earn more than £50,270 per year will pay a higher interest rate of 6% RPI—retail prices index—plus 3%. This means that they will have to earn up to £65,000 before they start paying off the actual loan, rather than simply the interest accumulating on it. They are being punished for success. That interest rate freeze, in an environment where rates are falling, is unjustifiable. Even the New Statesman has been critical of the grad tax, making the point that it will raise roughly the same amount as the mansion tax. Do the Government really see graduate workers as rich or as having the broadest shoulders? They are not being asked to chip in; they are being bled out. Moreover, the Minister and I may have different political perspectives, but an idiot he is not. He knows that national insurance for landlords will be passed straight on to rents, walloping exactly the same people. All those choices will affect recent graduates: the Intergenerational Foundation estimate that they will pay an extra £24,500 on average as a result of this year’s Budget. But young people everywhere still want what young people everywhere have always wanted—the chance to own a home, start a family, be productive and get on in life. I want to articulate a centre-right approach where we reform welfare, saving £23 billion, and cut anti-growth taxes such as stamp duty to galvanise the housing market. I have also been pushing for the liberalisation of planning reform and a bonfire of regulation to give young people a future to believe in. In the light of that, I have several questions to put to the Minister on behalf of all the Nicks, Henrys and Henriettas out there. What message does it send to graduates when their taxes and student loan repayments increase while those on benefits get more? How can the Government explain record low house building in London while some on benefits live in council properties in London worth more than £2 million? What would he say to the young people who are considering leaving these shores because they do not feel that they can get on in life, buy a home and start a family here in Britain? And what risks does he perceive in the impact of the anti-graduate approach on future productivity, and really, the future financial stability of this country?
My right hon. Friend makes a good case for Conservative economics. Does he agree that the Government have made some wrong-footed changes to non-dom status in their two years in office so far, and that they will damage investment and growth? Not only is that a development that Conservative Members do not want to see, but the Government’s forecasts rely on £34 billion of revenue from these people. Does my hon. Friend agree that they should think again about the wisdom of these changes?
T2. The Justice Secretary’s plan to slash jury trials without any guarantee that the backlog of cases will fall has not survived first contact with Labour Back Benchers. The backlash has forced No. 10 to reassure Labour Members that legislation will not be introduced until October next year, but the Justice Secretary’s team insist that it will come in February. They cannot both be right. Can the Justice Secretary confirm at the Dispatch Box when the legislation is coming forward?
If the Minister is serious about, in his words, “doubling down” on brownfield first, will he look again at the Campaign to Protect Rural England report, which was put together with academic rigour, which identified enough land in England alone for 1.4 million homes on brownfield sites? If he looks again at that seriously, he will find that it is right and will mandate to build on those sites first before a single farm, field or piece of green-belt land is built on.