Conservative and Unionist Party: a sourced timeline of public activity, with filters by source type and a sidebar of tracked totals

Conservative and Unionist Party

Showing every spoken contribution, including 5,750 under 12 words. Hide short remarks

  1. ParliamentMs Nusrat Ghani

    Delegated legislation

    With the leave of the House, I will put motions 3 to 5 together. Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)), Immigration That the draft Immigration Skills Charge (Amendment) Regulations 2025, which were laid before this House on 15 October, be approved. Infrastructure Planning That the draft Infrastructure Planning (Business or Commercial Projects) (Amendment) Regulations 2025, which were laid before this House on 15 October, be approved. Contracts That the draft Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 (Permitted Disclosures) Regulations 2025, which were laid before this House on 16 October, be approved.—(Gregor Poynton.) Question agreed to.

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  2. ParliamentMs Nusrat Ghani

    Committees

    With the leave of the House, I will bundle together motions 6 to 10. Ordered, Backbench Business Committee That Jess Brown-Fuller be discharged from the Backbench Business Committee and Mr Lee Dillon be added. Culture, Media and Sport Committee That Zöe Franklin be discharged from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee and Cameron Thomas be added. Justice Committee That Josh Babarinde be discharged from the Justice Committee and Vikki Slade be added. Northern Ireland Affairs Committee That Dr Al Pinkerton be discharged from the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee and Mr Paul Kohler be added. Science, Innovation and Technology Committee That Tom Gordon be discharged from the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee and Freddie van Mierlo be added.—(Jessica Morden, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.)

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  3. ParliamentMs Nusrat Ghani

    Northern Ireland Troubles Legacy

    Before I call the Secretary of State, let me give a short reminder that we should not mention or repeat the names of individuals that are subject to proceedings.

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  4. ParliamentMr Mark Francois

  5. ParliamentMartin Vickers

    Business of the House

    The Chairman sends his apologies for his absence today. When we met on Tuesday, the Committee again had great difficulty in allocating time to the many applications that we are receiving. I make the usual plea to the Leader of the House for as much time as possible so that we can accommodate all the various applications. I welcome his acknowledgment of the need for an early debate on Ukraine, which came before the Committee on Tuesday via an application from my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin). In addition to the debates that the Leader of the House has announced in the Chamber next week, in Westminster Hall there will be a debate on Tuesday 18 November on the 80th anniversary of UNESCO, and debates on Thursday 20 November on inequalities faced by unpaid carers and World COPD—chronic obstructive lung disease—Day. I urge Members who want debates to coincide with specific events to apply early, because we are now looking to allocate time for debates in February and March. Turning to my own question to the Leader of the House, yesterday—I am sure along with many other Members—I attended the drop-in session organised by Samaritans and the Centre for Countering Digital Hate. I was shown the template letters produced by AI that, in effect, encourage particularly young and vulnerable people to consider suicide, which is an appalling state of affairs. I recognise that Ministers are looking at all aspects of the digital world and so on, but I am sure the whole House agrees that we must take urgent action to combat this. I hope the Leader of the House will arrange a statement by a Minister on how the Government intend approaching it.

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  6. ParliamentMark Garnier

    Rogue Builders

    I beg to move, That this House has considered the matter of protecting consumers from rogue builders. I am conscious that we may have to go off for multiple votes before half-past 4, so I will crack on with what was going to be 45 minutes of the most magnificent speech—I will abridge it to just 42. I am missing out the bit where I was going to be nice about builders—I am afraid I will concentrate on the nastiness of builders. I start by defining the area that I am keen to concentrate on, which is the smaller end of the market. Known as the repair, maintenance and improvement sector, or RMI, this is the area where we see many appalling stories of people’s lives being ruined by unwittingly taking on so-called dodgy builders. There are countless stories in the press, and there are TV shows specialising in these types of problems. I could turn to any number of articles in the national and regional press that talk about cowboy builders. A relatively simple search for stories of rogue and cowboy builders reveals 1,500 such stories in the last five years alone, and that is just the stories that made the press. This is a very insidious problem. Chat to almost anybody who has had any building work done to their home, and they will roll their eyes and admit that they have had trouble of one sort or another. But we do not have to rely on hearsay and the media to understand the problems and the implications. The Federation of Master Builders conducts surveys to see what the effect is on the RMI market, and a recent poll of homeowners discovered that one in three were put off having work done on their home because of the fear of being ripped off. That equates to a possible £10 billion of lost economic activity.

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  7. ParliamentMark Garnier

    Rogue Builders

    I will talk about that in my speech. The fundamental problem is that, at the moment, the only course of redress is through the court system, and it is not good enough. The FMB does a lot of work in this area, and it is worth looking at some of its statistics. Thirty-seven per cent of customers report unreliability, and many of them cite apparently unqualified operators. Nearly a quarter—that is 25%—of all customers have lost money to rogues, with losses averaging £1,760, but in many cases the amount is far higher. The national loss is horrific. The FMB estimates that, over five years, homeowners have lost an astonishing £14.3 billion to unreliable builders, putting an astonishing burden on the housing market and households. It turns out that young adults are more at risk, with 33% scammed by rogue traders found via social media. The consumer is not the only victim of rogue or cowboy builders. Within the industry, many find themselves a victim of the same problem. Subcontractors find they are not paid, and it is the same for merchants. Plant hire companies are frequently the victims of theft and abuse of equipment. Alarmingly, health and safety is a low priority among many small and medium-sized building firms operating in the RMI market.

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  8. ParliamentMark Garnier

    Rogue Builders

    The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The current system does not satisfy people in any way, shape or form. Also, there is an inequality of risk, which I will come to in my speech. Although large firms working on major commercial and civil engineering projects have embraced health and safety legislation, a blitz of small refurbishment sites by Health and Safety Executive inspectors in 2016 found that a stunning 49% of sites fell below the standards set for compliance with health and safety requirements. More alarmingly, that cavalier attitude to health and safety reveals the potential problem of cowboy builders leaving dangerous sites. When someone has an extension built, might they be risking life and limb when they climb those stairs? Poor-quality building results in not just shoddy work, but dangerous and potentially fatal work. Rogue builders have an effect beyond their own unhappy activities. By undercutting reputable, high-standard builders that make up the majority of the market, they force them to cut their margins. Price competition is fine, but not when a worthwhile and reputable SME builder is competing against someone with no care for safety, honesty or customer satisfaction. Given that the RMI market is dominated by occasional customers—we are not doing this very often—it is quite likely that the key element of choice is price. Unhealthy price competition drives down standards, even if reputable firms are unhappy being forced to cut standards to compete. In an extreme example of the problem—this is an important point—I recently met Andrew Bennett, who had engaged a local firm in Liverpool to refurbish a six-bedroom property that he owned—a job that was to be worth around £100,000. He checked out the firm and was happy with references and testimonials. He engaged the firm, but it turned out that the work was dangerously below standard. When he started to seek redress, he discovered that the company in question was not what he had been led to believe. It was a rogue builder passing off as a well-known, reputable company. Moreover, this dubious company had nine county court judgments against it and therefore had no money to pay the award to Mr Bennett when he won his case. That company was passing off as another. It was seeking to take money off an individual customer by deliberately misleading him, and it failed to deliver the work contracted by that customer under the cover of misleading him—fraud, by any other name, or by the actual name. Mr Bennett went to the police, who told him that it was a civil matter. He tried all the avenues available to him to get this individual bang to rights, but to absolutely no avail. The company continues to rip off people, in full knowledge of the local law enforcers, trading standards, the local council and planning department, and multiple victims of its activities.

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  9. ParliamentMark Garnier

    Rogue Builders

    Yes. It is shameful how these builders can get away with it—it is absolutely astonishing. By the way, this campaign has been going on for a number of years. It is very good to see, behind the Minister, the official who has worked with me in the past, although we have yet to achieve what we want to achieve. How do victims of rogue builders seek redress? The answer, as we know, is not simple. They go to trading standards in the first instance but, with a rogue builder being, by definition, a rogue, the sanctions available are weak at best. Ultimately, the homeowner or small business owner who finds themselves a victim has no recourse other than the courts. However, the reality is that contract law simply does not work for people with problems above the small claims limit but below around £1 million. The reality is that anyone can make up a fictitious bill that they want us to pay, and we have to negotiate. To challenge or defend that type of bill requires a commitment of between £100,000 and £200,000 in legal and court fees to prosecute a court case, and in professional fees to demonstrate the loss. I spoke to any number of friends and colleagues with very senior legal experience, and everyone said that this type of problem has absolutely nothing to do with justice and everything to do with negotiation. One even said that it is like being mugged and then being charged for the knife, with the backing of the law. For many reasons, our legal system is so clogged up that it serves no one properly, allowing it to be abused by rogue traders.

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  10. ParliamentMark Garnier

    Rogue Builders

    The hon. Gentleman has probably read my speech, as that is the core of it. The legal problem is bigger than just failing to support victims through the court system. Rogue builders know the legal system works in their favour. There are builders who create fictitious bills or charge fictitious costs for work not carried out—I have seen that as a victim myself. I contracted a builder to renovate a much-loved family home, and they failed to do the work in time, which was a breach of contract. They rattled on for far too long, they did not do the whole work and, at the end, they put in a massive, fictitious bill. Our quantity surveyor reckoned there was an outstanding balance to pay of perhaps £6,000, but they put in a bill for £100,000. In the end, everybody said, “You have to negotiate.” We negotiated a final settlement, which was multiple times in excess. This is a fundamental problem. We do not get redress, and we have to negotiate even if we know the negotiation is bogus.

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  11. ParliamentMark Garnier

    Rogue Builders

    The hon. Gentleman makes exactly the right point. We need a balance of risk, and I will come to that point later. Consumers of repair, maintenance and improvement building services have no protection whatsoever. There is no practical protection for consumers to avoid the highly risky, unbelievably expensive and emotionally draining prospect of prosecuting contract law. Indeed, subcontractors working on my home were also victims of the rogue builder because they were not paid, either. It is extraordinary that consumers are unprotected. When we think about the whole process of refurbishing a home or building an extension, it looks even more astonishing. The proud homeowner seeking to improve their home will go to an architect regulated by the Architects Registration Board. They might contract a quantity surveyor regulated by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. They will probably need to borrow money, so they might approach a mortgage broker regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. They will get help with a mortgage provided by a lender—again, regulated by the FCA, and possibly the Prudential Regulation Authority—with advice from a solicitor regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The money will then be deposited in a bank, again regulated by the FCA and the PRA. The whole process is laden with consumer protection right up to the point where the money is handed over to someone with absolutely no regulation, possibly no qualifications, and no protection mechanism for consumers. As I said before, the problem gets worse, but it is worth repeating. The victim may well prosecute the case in court and win both damages and costs. But at that point the rogue builder goes bust with no assets, as pointed out by the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Rand), and starts a new business the following day to continue the process of ripping off consumers. Meanwhile, the victim’s costs are unpaid and run into hundreds of thousands of pounds. The consumer ends up winning the moral victory but losing an enormous amount of money, while the rogue builder goes on to do the same again without any consequence.

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  12. ParliamentMark Garnier

    Rogue Builders

    Absolutely. Not only that, but if we think about the consequences, those 97 emails could have been sent for any one of the 100,000 constituents that we each have. We should not be doing this, and there should be a mechanism to sort it out. The important reality of all this is that there is no disincentive at all for the cowboy builder to present fictitious bills and do bad work. While the consumer must engage in a risky legal process, the rogue builder can game the system with no jeopardy whatever. As we learned from Mr Bennett's story in Merseyside and the many other people who contacted me, the police will not investigate a case with regard to fraud and rogue builders, as they deem it a civil matter. So what is the solution? How do we protect honest builders, subcontractors, merchants and, importantly, our constituents and consumers? How do we redress the balance of risk so that it does not favour the rogue builder but gives equal weight to both consumer and builder? The builder is not always in the wrong, so the solution must be balanced. Builders may occasionally need to be protected from rogue customers. The answer must lie in a scheme of regulation and licensing. In essence, what I am seeking to do—I have had a couple of presentation Bills on this topic—is get the Government to come up with a scheme of compulsory licensing for SME building firms working in the renovation and domestic improvement space. We do not know what it will be, but we need a system in which there is an equivalence of risk on both sides. There must be something that the builder as an individual can lose if he or she is found not to be doing their job properly. My experience in this area has been with financial services and regulatory reform. Although I am not proposing anything remotely as complex as the FCA or the PRA to regulate builders, there is more than one important carry-across from financial services regulation. The first is that we do not want regulation to be a burden on the taxpayer. A licensing scheme must be self-financed through licensing fees: the building firms must pay for it. Rules for having a licence must be straightforward. Importantly, no firm or individual should be allowed to offer services directly to customers without a licence. That in itself would result in the wider building industry policing the market. If a builder knows that somebody else is a dodgy builder, it is in their interest to report them. Mortgage lenders would require evidence that money will be spent on a licensed firm. Architects and surveyors acting as project managers would need to see licences to engage a building firm in the first place, so consumer would know what they are getting. Consumers would be able to check the builder on the regulator’s website, in the same way that they can check their pension adviser on the FCA register. The regulator could be TrustMark, which already offers voluntary regulation. There should a code of conduct covering honesty, safety and quality of work. Failure to comply should have a series of sanctions, with the ultimate sanction of the loss of licence. An option could be a compensation scheme. The Financial Services Compensation Scheme is an example of how consumers who have lost out as a result of poor practice can be compensated for their loss from a scheme financed by levies placed on licence holders in the relevant sector. The double effect is that the consumer gets their losses covered while the industry as a whole is incentivised to keep an eye on each other. An ombudsman would be able to assess consumer loss without the need to engage expensive and lengthy legal and professional experts to defend against bogus builds or to challenge poor work. These proposals aim to end the decades-long history of consumers who have been ripped off in one way or another by shoddy rogue builders. I am conscious of time, Ms Furniss, but I want to acknowledge that the Government have started to resolve some of these issues. A New Homes Quality Board has been set up to ensure that new homes are built to a certain standard. That is a welcome development. The fact that it has an ombudsman demonstrates that the Government and I are probably thinking along the same lines in a broad sense, but the New Homes Quality Board is targeted specifically at the new homes market. Given the Government’s target of 1.5 million new homes, it will have its work cut out. Importantly, it is not designed for the RM&I sector, which remains wholly unregulated and unsupervised. That is what the Minister must concentrate on. Many people agree that this problem in the RM&I sector is beyond redemption. The Federation of Master Builders report on this subject in 2018 said that even construction firms themselves agree that a compulsory licensing scheme is necessary. The industry wants it too: 77% of SME builders and 78% of consumers agree with the FMB’s proposed licensing scheme. Enough is enough. I have a few more words about my engagement so far. Unfortunately, the Housing Minister is on his feet in the main Chamber talking about the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. I was looking forward to beating him up a bit, because he has been less than brilliantly helpful. None the less, it is very good to see the Minister from the Department for Business and Trade in her place. I look forward to hearing her helpful words about how the Government will introduce legislation to ensure our constituents are not ripped off endlessly by these wretched builders.

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  13. ParliamentLincoln Jopp

    Police Reform

    I thank the Minister for her statement, although it will have caused some consternation in my constituency. Spelthorne is in Surrey, which is being carved up into two unitary authorities, and recent so-called clarifications by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government have stated that there are no promises as to whether they will get a mayor. I ask the Minister to use her good offices to go to that Department and say, “I’ve taken away their PCC—it’s up to you now to make a decision as to whether or not they are going to get a mayor.”

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  14. ParliamentLewis Cocking

    Police Reform

    As a former deputy police and crime commissioner, I know the hard work that police and crime commissioners do, and I know that the Hertfordshire police and crime commissioner, Jonathan Ash-Edwards, does all he can to keep Hertfordshire residents safe. The Government’s English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill bans councils from making decisions by committee and forces them to change to a strong leader model. Can the Minister explain why the Government think it is appropriate to have police governance by committee, but not local authority governance by committee?

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  15. ParliamentKit Malthouse

    Planning and Infrastructure Bill

    I do not wish to detain the House terribly long; I just want to cover three matters, if I may. The first is Lords amendment 38, which deals with chalk streams. As the Minister knows, because I have told him before, my constituency is chalk stream central—as is yours, Madam Deputy Speaker, as my constituency neighbour. The River Test, the most celebrated of chalk streams, rises in the north of my constituency. We also have the Anton, which flows through Andover, and most famously the Bourne rivulet—about which books have been written, such is its beauty and importance. I know the Minister appreciates the importance of these incredibly rare ecological environments, which are almost unique to southern England. I heard what the Minister had to say about the appropriateness of spatial development strategies for protecting chalk streams, but he will know that those of us who are concerned about this issue have been disappointed by the seeming reduction of enthusiasm for protection of chalk streams since this Government came to power. Obviously, the chalk stream recovery pack, which had been hard-won in negotiations with the previous Government, was abandoned. In May, amendments to this Bill that sought to protect chalk streams further were voted down. The Minister is a good chap—he and I get on well—and at every stage he has reassured the House that he wants to do more for chalk streams, but we have yet to see the beef. Even today in his opening remarks, he said that he is minded to take further steps elsewhere to protect chalk streams. Given the Government’s record over the past 12 months or so, I am afraid that that is not terribly reassuring, so when he sums up, I would be very grateful if he could be a little more detailed about what exactly he intends to do.

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  16. ParliamentKit Malthouse

    Planning and Infrastructure Bill

    I completely agree with the hon. Lady. In my constituency, I have groups of volunteers who work very hard, including on the Anton river in Andover, and do a fantastic job. In fact, that river flows through part of the town centre, but gets lost, and it is about to be opened up with a new riverside park running down Western Avenue. I am pleased to say that I played a small part in that scheme obtaining a levelling-up grant from the previous Government. People in my constituency value these chalk streams almost as if they are members of their family. They are part of the identity of towns such as Whitchurch, Overton, Andover and other villages in my patch and yours, Madam Deputy Speaker. They would take the protection of those chalk streams almost as seriously as the protection of their children. Many Members—not just me—have campaigned for such statutory protection, and I would be interested in what the Minister has to say. I do not entirely accept his argument that spatial development strategies are completely inappropriate. As he knows, they can flag up areas of planning constraint and discuss corridors and green infrastructure. If there is a green infrastructure corridor, it is a chalk stream. Certainly in my part of the world, they are treasured such that a new mayor—if we have one next year—would be required to look at them as protected corridors and say as much in their plan.

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  17. ParliamentKit Malthouse

    Planning and Infrastructure Bill

    I completely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. Interestingly, he may or may not recall that when I was a Westminster councillor, we had a project in Westminster called “Hidden Rivers”, which signposted where those rivers were. If any Members find themselves on the platform at Sloane Square station, for example—just a couple of stops away—and look upwards, they will see a socking great big pipe going across the top of the platforms carrying the River Tyburn. It rises at Marble Arch, where Tyburn convent is, and where the Tyburn tree used to stand for hanging people. It flows down, across the platform and into the Thames. The same is true, I think in the right hon. Gentleman’s constituency, where the Fleet flows down towards Fleet Street and into the Thames. People value and treasure such rivers, and they should be protected. I want to hear a little more on that from the Minister. For those of us who would support new settlements, for example, SDSs might be important for the protection of chalk streams, because they can point towards the areas where new settlements should be and protect such things as river catchments. For chalk downland constituencies like mine, that is key. While I accept that the Minister will get his way and get his party to vote for the second time against protection for chalk streams in this Bill, I would like to hear a bit more detail on what he is minded to do—I take him at his word—how firm that mindedness is, and when we can expect some of the protection to come forward, because this is an urgent matter on which many of us have campaigned for many years. The second thing I lament about the Bill, and ask the Minister to clarify, is its impact on neighbourhood plans. I have asked him this question in the past, particularly in the light of new housing targets. Both my borough councils, Basingstoke and Deane, and Test Valley, have had significant increases to their housing targets. I do not mind that necessarily, but the question is where those houses go. I have encouraged villagers and communities across my constituency to take advantage of neighbourhood plans and to put them in place. The significant alarm now is that some of the local plan implications from the new housing targets that are flowing through are riding roughshod over those neighbourhood plans, some of which took years to put in place. The Minister has given me an undertaking in the past that extant neighbourhood plans would not have to be varied in the light of those new housing targets, until they came up for refresh, and that constraints, such as protected landscape, would pertain. I would be pleased if he could reassure us on that point when he sums up.

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  18. ParliamentKit Malthouse

    Planning and Infrastructure Bill

    I sort of agree. We should be pushing developers towards brownfield—that is absolutely right. Brownfield first was the policy of the previous Government, and it makes lots of sense. The key thing, which I am sure the Minister accepts, is that if we are to overcome this problem with the generational contract—that we who are housed will build houses for those who are not—there has to be a compromise. For me, that compromise has always been neighbourhood planning. Far too often in my constituency, villages and towns feel as if planning is something that is done to them. They dread the land promoter showing up to ram some inappropriate planning through. Some of that compromise can be about beauty, and I lament the fact that the design standards were taken out of the NPPF and that that word is not used. [Interruption.] I welcome the Minister’s nodding—that is great. I have often said that in my constituency—for Members who do not know, it is 220 square miles of beautiful chalk downland—if developers would build thatched cottages, we would have thousands of them. People would be more than happy for developers to build villages such as St Mary Bourne all over the place, if they look beautiful and fit in. Unfortunately, we get the same ersatz development that everybody else gets around the country. We need to crack that. The other thing is putting planning in the hands of local people, and I hope the Minister will try to preserve that principle in the Bill. My third point, briefly, is about an omission in the Bill that the Minister and I have discussed before, which is the problem of undeveloped consents. My concern is that the Bill will stimulate the land promotion industry and stimulate lots of applications. However, as the shadow Minister pointed out, when the housing market is flat, stamp duty is at penal rates, when interest rates remain stubbornly high because of Government borrowing, and when the development industry is crippled by taxes, we will not get the level of development that the Minister aspires to—certainly not towards the 300,000 a year target and 1.5 million by the end of the Parliament. Instead, we will see a stacking up of consents, as we have seen in some parts of the country already, where there are thousands and thousands of undeveloped consents. The industry will bank them. In the absence of a market into which it can sell, it will occupy itself by banking the land for times when hopefully things will come good. Similarly, I am afraid that we will see some of the large infrastructure projects going through the process—the Minister and I are keen to see them accelerated—but people waiting for more propitious economic times to bring them forward, notwithstanding the lack, therefore, of the facility to the British public. I urge him to consider, as he looks to the next stage of his planning reforms, what he will do on undeveloped consents. I think I have said to him before that the Government should force local plans to have a 10-year housing supply that also takes into account granted consents. Then, developers can see a 10-year horizon, as can local authorities, but they also can see that if they want a life beyond 10 years, they will have to start developing that which they already have. If we deal with that issue, we will also deal with quite a lot of the resentment people feel when they see particularly large-scale planning applications coming forward. They ask, “We’ve already got 400 down the road that haven’t been built. Why do we have to take another 400?” Of course, the local council has to put huge amounts of work into the local plan, notwithstanding the fact that it might already have a five-year supply that has been consented but does not count toward the future target. This is a problem that Governments, including my own, have struggled with for some time, and it is one I struggled with when I was Housing Minister, but I hope the Minister will give some thought to at least giving councils the option of having a 10-year supply in which granted consents count. He might well find that he gets a lot more houses built.

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  19. ParliamentKit Malthouse

    Planning and Infrastructure Bill

    I understand the undertaking the Minister is giving, but he will recognise that all of this is guidance; it does not preclude planning decisions that will impact on chalk streams. Given that he is set on his course, which we understand, and his appreciation of the fact that the amendment was proposed in the spirit of addressing the lack of any other sort of protection for chalk streams, will he reassure us that the intention in the planning guidance is to give chalk streams the same sort of protection as was put in place for, for example, veteran trees, which are deemed to be irreplaceable? That is the highest level of protection in planning guidance—I think I introduced this as Planning Minister. In that way, only in very exceptional circumstances could permission be granted for development that would impinge on chalk streams.

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  20. ParliamentJohn Lamont

    Rural Crime

    Rural and farm crime is a big problem in my constituency in the Scottish Borders which operates across the border between Scotland and England. What discussions has the Solicitor General had with authorities in Scotland to ensure higher prosecution rates for those operating cross-border?

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  21. ParliamentJohn Lamont

    Business of the House

    My constituent Evelyn Armstrong, aged 104, has recently been awarded France’s highest military honour, the Légion d’honneur, for the vital role she played as a plotter and flight controller in the second world war, when she served in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. She is truly an amazing woman. Will the Leader of the House join me in paying tribute to Evelyn, and can we have a debate on honouring the service of our wartime heroes?

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  22. ParliamentJohn Glen

    Business of the House

    May I thank the Leader of the House for what he said about reforms to the driving test booking system? I add to what my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith) said about DEFRA questions. I wanted to raise the case of Susan Robinson and Maria La Femina, who asked me about sludge use in agriculture and what had happened with the regulations, but for the second or third DEFRA questions, I was not able to get in. It really would be worth considering whether we can extend DEFRA questions to the full hour, so that all colleagues would have the opportunity to keep trying to catch Mr Speaker’s eye.

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  23. ParliamentJohn Cooper

    Business of the House

    Since coming to this place, I have struggled to find out how much money the UK Government are putting into the A75 road, which runs right through my constituency. I was astonished to find that a Labour candidate had said on social media that the figure was £8.5 million. I asked the Secretary of State for Transport whether that figure was correct—it was not. I was also told on social media that Anas Sarwar, the leader of the Labour party in Scotland, was responsible for that figure. Can the Leader of the House help me get to the bottom of this constitutional crisis, in which someone in another Parliament pulls the strings in this one?

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  24. ParliamentJoe Robertson

    Business of the House

    Will the Leader of the House consider setting aside Government time for a debate on regenerating coastal communities, so that we can properly consider issues facing towns like Sandown on the Isle of Wight, including transport connectivity, pressure on tourism, derelict buildings and declining high streets?

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  25. ParliamentJesse Norman

    Business of the House

    Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?

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  26. ParliamentJesse Norman

    Business of the House

    I am sure I speak for many Members when I thank you, Mr Speaker, and the whole of the Speaker’s Office for the work you have put in to make this past week of remembrance so memorable. The gardens of remembrance, the projection of images from the second world war on to the Elizabeth Tower, the wreath laying in Westminster Hall and much else—all these things, I know, took a huge amount of organisation, co-ordination and hard work, so I thank you and your office. I draw colleagues’ attention to the launch of the project to build the remembrance clock at the national arboretum, and hope that they will dig deep to support that. In the spirit of exchanging news stories that have developed over the past two or three weeks, I will, if I may, set out a raft of intriguing items. Nine former four-star generals have condemned the Government’s treatment of veterans on Remembrance Day. One million more people than a year ago are now claiming universal credit without any requirement to look for a job. The Chancellor gave an unexpected early press conference—apparently to prepare people for major tax rises—and the Prime Minister acknowledged yesterday the rise in national insurance. Junior doctors have announced a five-day strike, starting tomorrow, in pursuit of a 26% pay rise, on top of the woefully inadequate—as they see it—29% received last year. No. 10 Downing Street has insisted that the Prime Minister has full confidence in Morgan McSweeney, and that he—or perhaps Mr McSweeney —will still be Prime Minister at the next election. It has rightly been said that our country has moved from being post war to being pre-war. In recent weeks, we have seen a marked escalation of the conflict in Ukraine: Russian forces have made gains in and around the city of Pokrovsk, threatening to cut transport routes and displace thousands more civilians, and missile and drone attacks on energy and transport infrastructure have intensified, with serious consequences for Ukraine’s ability to sustain its economy through the winter. These developments follow reports of a significant increase in Russian arms production and continued circumvention of sanctions through covert oil and gas shipments. At the same time, international aid flows have slowed, and Ukrainian forces are facing actual or potential shortages of money, ammunition or equipment. All that, I suggest, underlines the need for Parliament to take stock. Three years into the conflict, the nature of the war is shifting, and now demands renewed strategic co-ordination among Ukraine’s allies. In that context, I ask the Leader of the House to commit to keeping back 4 December for the Backbench debate on Ukraine requested by my brilliant hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) and agreed by the Backbench Business Committee. By my calculation, we have not had a general debate on Ukraine on the Floor of the House since February this year, and not on a substantive motion since 2023. The debate would allow the House to review the current worrying state of military preparedness and humanitarian situation, the position on frozen Russian financial assets held in Europe, the status of occupied territories that Russia wrongly claims for itself, and the Government’s approach to long-range defensive support and sanctions enforcement. Right hon. and hon. Members could examine the diplomatic context, test Government policy and cross-departmental co-ordination, and bring the diverse range of expertise and knowledge across the House to bear on a crucial issue facing the entire continent of Europe. Above all, it would allow this House of Commons, as an institution, to brief itself in full and demonstrate the strong sense of unity that exists in this country on the vital defence of our sovereign ally, Ukraine. The House has been steadfast in its support for Ukraine, and rightly so, but, as the conflict evolves, we must ensure our response evolves with it. It is possible that the Leader of the House’s genius for prognostication and intelligence-gathering may have already caused him to form a supportive view of this request, but, if not, I ask very much that he have the Government make time on 4 December for that timely and important debate.

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  27. ParliamentJames Wild

    Solar Farms: Food Security

    7. Whether she has made an assessment of the potential impact of solar farms on food security.

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  28. ParliamentJames Wild

    Solar Farms: Food Security

    I think the Minister’s answer was a bit tone-deaf. North West Norfolk’s farms and farmers play a vital role in our food security. My constituents are concerned about the Droves and High Grove solar farms, which will cover 7,000 acres. Why are the Government, and the Net Zero Secretary in particular, obsessed with putting solar farms on Norfolk’s agricultural land rather than on brownfield land and rooftops?

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  29. ParliamentHelen Grant

    Violence against Women and Girls

    I also welcome the right hon. Lady to her place. She is the third Solicitor General I have sat opposite in the past 12 months, and I look forward to working with her constructively where we can and to having healthy debate in this Chamber in the weeks and months to come. I associate myself with the right hon. Lady’s remarks on the sad passing of Baroness Newlove. I had the honour of working with her when I was the Victims Minister. She was a great champion of victims and she will be sadly missed. Violence against women and girls is a scourge. It wrecks families and ruins lives. One of the most sickening aspects of it is cruelty to and abuse of children. There is currently no national mechanism to track down and monitor serious child cruelty offenders after service of their sentences. The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Jake Richards), said this of the Sentencing Bill on Report: “A problem in the system has been identified, and we are determined to fix it. It simply cannot be right that some horrific child abusers can have access to children—to live with children or work with children—at the end of their sentences without any system of monitoring or notification”.—[Official Report, 29 October 2025; Vol. 774, c. 409.] The Minister went on to welcome the offer of cross-party talks and promised to work “at speed” to establish a child cruelty register. Can the Solicitor General please update the House on what concrete steps have been taken since then?

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  30. ParliamentHelen Grant

    Violence against Women and Girls

    The campaign to introduce a child cruelty register has been led tirelessly by Paula Hudgell, the adoptive mother of 11-year-old Tony Hudgell. Sadly, Paula has now been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Tony was just 41 days old when his birth parents abused him so badly that he had to have both his legs amputated. Tony will live with the consequences of those injuries for the rest of his life. Will the Solicitor General agree to work, and at speed, with her colleagues in the Ministry of Justice? They seem keen to support Paula’s campaign, hopefully with an amendment to the Sentencing Bill in the House of Lords. We must take this opportunity to close this dangerous safeguarding gap so that all our children and families can be protected from repeat abusers.

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  31. ParliamentGreg Smith

    Business of the House

    We are in a farming emergency with the family farm tax, the early cutting off of the sustainable farming incentive and the watering down of measures to prevent equipment theft from farms, yet this morning, Members across the House who wanted to question Ministers from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs were unable to do so because the Government persist in keeping DEFRA questions at just 40 minutes. Will the Leader of the House look at extending DEFRA questions to a full hour so that rural communities are not left behind?

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  32. ParliamentGreg Smith

    Police Reform

    In Thames Valley, we are fortunate enough to have a model that is working under the leadership of Matthew Barber, our police and crime commissioner. Police numbers have gone up, and he has led the creation of the country’s best rural crime taskforce and brought in other great initiatives on things such as shoplifting. Instead of throwing the whole system up in the air and scattering it back out across the country with different models for different areas, why not take the police and crime commissioner models that do work and make them the norm for everywhere, and not just in areas that are failing?

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  33. ParliamentGreg Smith

    Planning and Infrastructure Bill

    The Minister is addressing the brownfield-first approach inherent to the amendment. He opened his remarks by mentioning the Government’s target of building 1.5 million homes. The Campaign to Protect Rural England, a very respected independent charity, has identified enough brownfield land in England alone for 1.4 million homes, so why do the Government persist in rejecting their Lordships’ amendments on this matter, against the advice of the CPRE?

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  34. ParliamentGareth Davies

    Rogue Builders

    It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Furniss, and to see the Minister. This is our second interaction in a week, and, under the direction of the Chair, it will be a lot shorter than the last. I congratulate my very good and hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier), on securing this debate. I commend his commitment to this issue over many years. Many of us turn up to these debates as one-offs, but he is a consistent champion for builders and against rogue builders. My hon. Friend again raises a very fair and well-intentioned question: how can we in this place best protect our constituents from the scourge of rogue builders? He is right that the issue is caused by a minority of people and organisations in the construction industry, who exploit people’s good nature and certainly do not deliver for their customers. We all know someone who has faced this issue, whether that is homeowners or subcontractors, particularly those in the repair, maintenance and improvement sector, as my hon. Friend pointed out. We have seen the best of Westminster Hall today. I have been struck by the many excellent examples given by hon. Members from many different parties and from across the country of people who have suffered the consequences of cowboy builders. I genuinely thank hon. Members for their contributions to this debate. This issue is not simply aesthetic or material; it can and often does have very serious consequences. That is why I am pleased that, in recent years, there has been some progress to address some of the problems set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest. For example, there are various competent person schemes that allow builders to self-certify, ensuring that they follow certain rules to comply with building regulations. These schemes ensure that customers are provided with the appropriate financial protection for a minimum of six years to correct work in dwellings that are non-compliant with building regulations. For our part, the previous Conservative Government passed the Building Safety Act 2022, which introduced competence requirements on anyone doing design or building work. The legislation also brought about the creation of the Building Safety Regulator and the Industry Competence Committee, both of which help to encourage and monitor industry competence. I am nevertheless really looking forward to hearing from the Minister about what specific plans she and her Government have to build on that work to further address the concerns raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest and many other Members from both sides of the House. Another part of what we can do to push out rogue builders must surely be to encourage those builders who follow the law, play by the rules and deliver for customers. I would not be doing my job if I did not reflect the concerns of the builders I spoke to in preparation for the debate by pointing out that, unfortunately, builders feel that that is not happening under this Labour Government. Instead of backing builders who are not rogue and who work hard, the Government are determined to make sure that doing the right thing just does not pay. I have spoken many times about the impact of the national insurance hike on the construction industry, but I want to use the last moments of my speech to ask the Minister directly, on behalf of the National Federation of Builders, about the builders tax that the Chancellor is proposing in the upcoming Budget. That will add another £28,000 to the cost of building a new home and drive up the cost of critical national infrastructure, including roads, schools, factories and even nuclear power stations. It will add significant costs to construction and the building sector, and I was asked to ask the Minister what is going on with this Government if they are proposing this tax by way of a formal consultation. On behalf of the official Opposition, I want to be clear that this tax cannot go ahead. Builders and construction workers want to hear her response to that specific point. There are so many hard-working builders in this country, and so many people who make something, and we must get behind them.

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  35. ParliamentEsther McVey

    Business of the House

    Will the Leader of the House encourage the Health Secretary to break off from his leadership bid to come to the House for a few minutes to explain what progress is being made on ensuring that Knutsford gets the new medical centre that health professionals, the public and I believe is essential?

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  36. ParliamentDr Neil Hudson

    Solar Farms: Food Security

    Food security is national security, and we are in the middle of a food and farming emergency created by this Labour Government’s policies. From their heartless family farm tax to the closure of vital support schemes, they are damaging farming’s ability to thrive and harming rural mental health. That is only being made worse nationwide, including in my constituency of Epping Forest, by plans for excessive solar development that risk prime food-producing land being taken away. When will the Government stop this senseless assault on our green belt and countryside, and start putting solar in the right places, such as on brownfield sites and rooftops? When will they start to reverse these damaging policies so that our fantastic farming sector has a fighting chance of being preserved for future generations?

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  37. ParliamentDr Luke Evans

    Business of the House

    I wonder if the Leader of the House could help me. We have heard of the concerns about special education needs from Members across the House. My constituency has them, too—the issue fills my inbox. He mentioned that there will be a consultation and a White Paper; the problem is that there is anxiety because they have been delayed. Will he write to the Department to ask for a timetable to be set out, because in my constituency we are seeing an increase in education, health and care plans owing to people’s concern that they may go. There is real anxiety at the moment, and I urge him to help.

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  38. ParliamentDr Andrew Murrison

    Business of the House

    The Northern Ireland Troubles Bill is in the business statement. Does the Leader of the House accept that that will cause concern for many members of the armed forces and the veterans community, who are worried that in years to come they may be judged by the standards of the day rather than the standards that applied when they were engaged in doing the state’s business? Does he further recognise that there is good evidence now that people are leaving the armed forces, and certain parts of the armed forces in particular, because of those concerns? Will he also ensure that adequate time is provided on Second Reading and in Committee to assure the House that steps are being taken to remove that threat to national security?

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  39. ParliamentDr Andrew Murrison

    Police Reform

    Will the Minister pay tribute to Philip Wilkinson, Wiltshire’s PCC, who has realigned policing in my county with the priorities of my constituents? Will she account for the difference between the £100 million that she says in her statement this measure will save, and the £20 million she cited in response to an earlier question? Will she do all she can to ensure that the new formation is less bureaucratic than that which preceded it? At the moment, it rather looks like it will be much the same but without the PCC.

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  40. ParliamentDavid Simmonds

    Planning and Infrastructure Bill

    The Opposition join the Minister in thanking our colleagues in the other place for their sterling work. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes), who has been our shadow Minister and contributed enormously to the debate in Committee. I welcome the Minister back to the Dispatch Box for a further discussion on planning and infrastructure, and congratulate him on being the last man standing from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government team that was appointed in Labour’s golden summer of 2024. As he surveys the bombed-out wreckage of that ministerial team and knows that he is the only one not to have succumbed to friendly fire, I am sure that he shares my sense of disappointment that, after a year of debate and discussion, we have not made the progress that the British people expect from us in the delivery of planning and infrastructure. The Opposition have three fairly simply tests to apply to the amendments and the Bill as a whole. First, does this deliver the required reform of our administrative state—the planning process, statutory undertakers, decision makers and all those who play a part—to ensure the swift delivery of infrastructure? Secondly, does this create the necessary incentives for host communities to support and embrace the opportunities that development offers? Thirdly—and most critically, we think, having undertaken many planning reforms during our time in office—does this get the market building the 1.5 million new homes that already have planning permission? The entirety of the Government’s target already has consent, with no further loss of green belt or environmental impacts.

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