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1. 13 Oct 2026·Parliament·Blake Stephenson

   Immigration and Asylum Bill (Fourth sitting)

   I beg to move amendment 91, in clause 11, page 8, line 36, at end insert— “(7A) Where the recipient of a claim notice provides any reasons or grounds after the claim notice deadline, those reasons or grounds may not be relied on in any appeal before the IIAA or the Upper Tribunal unless the IIAA is satisfied that they arise from a material change of circumstances occurring after the claim notice deadline.” This amendment would require people served with a claim notice to raise all their grounds by the deadline, so that grounds raised later could not be relied on in an appeal unless they arise from a material change of circumstances.

   Hansard source
2. 13 Oct 2026·Parliament·Blake Stephenson

   Immigration and Asylum Bill (Fourth sitting)

   Clause 11 tackles one of the most damaging features of the current system: claims raised at the last minute to prevent removal. It allows the Home Office to serve a claim notice on anyone liable to removal or deportation, requiring them to set out every reason they should be allowed to stay, including any modern slavery information, by a deadline. Clause 12 gives teeth to clause 11. Where someone ignores a claim notice and raises new grounds only once they are detained or given removal directions, their appeals will be fast-tracked and the late claim will count against them when bail is considered. The Opposition support that approach, but there is a problem. The Minister told the Committee during the oral evidence sessions: “More than a third of our charter returns that fail to go ahead have involved a modern slavery referral raised after the return arrangements have been made.”––[Official Report, Immigration and Asylum Public Bill Committee, 15 September 2026; c. 5, Q3.] That is exactly the gaming of the system that the public will no longer tolerate. Our plan would require applicants to submit their claim in one go, with later claims disregarded unless there has been a material change in their home country. Clause 11 moves in that direction but stops short: a late claim goes into the late claims process and damages credibility, but it can still be heard and can still succeed. How long will people have to respond? Where will that be set? Who will be served? Beyond clauses 12 and 36, what are the consequences of failing to comply? Can late grounds still succeed on appeal? Amendment 91 would close the gap: reasons or grounds raised after the claim notice deadline could not be relied on in an appeal before the appeal authority or the upper tribunal unless the appeal authority is satisfied that they arise from a material change of circumstances after the deadline. That is the principle of our plan: claims must be made in one go, and later claims disregarded unless something has genuinely changed. Will the Government accept that approach and therefore our amendment? Clause 11(10) repeals a large part of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, including provisions on late evidence in section 26 and accelerated detained appeals in section 27. Why repeal them rather than bring them into force? What will replace them? The Immigration Law Practitioners Association points out that the priority removal notice regime gave recipients a period to access legal advice and clause 11 does not. We do not support the ILPA’s proposed legal advice precondition, but the Government should explain their answer to that point, because if they do not, it will be litigated. Government amendment 38 goes further, repealing section 19(2) of the 2022 Act on credibility statements, which is replaced by new clauses 3 and 4. We do not oppose that approach. The risk is legal. Justice and the Bar Council remind us that, in the Detention Action case, the Court of Appeal quashed the detained fast-track rules because they were systematically unfair, and that the Court took comfort from specialist judges hearing those cases, which will not be true of the appeal authority. A fast track that is quashed delivers nothing. What timetable will apply? Justice reports that the Home Office intends decisions “within a week”. What legal advice do the Government have that this process will survive legal challenge? How many cases are expected and what will happen to other appeals pushed back in the queue? What effect will the new bail conditions have on detention numbers and capacity? Will these cases, which often feature detention and are often complex, be decided by senior adjudicators? Government amendments 39 and 42 mean that a person who gives modern-day slavery information late, after detention or after removal directions, will not go into the late claims process. I understand the reasoning, which responds to concerns from anti-trafficking organisations, but the Minister told the Committee that more than a third of failed charter returns involved a modern slavery referral raised after return arrangements were made. Does this change not reopen exactly that gap? New clause 3 requires adjudicators in late claims cases to treat late information and late evidence as damaging credibility unless there are good reasons, and new clause 4 does the same for the Special Immigration Appeals Commission. We support them, but everything turns on “good reasons”. If that phrase is read generously, the rule will be swallowed up by the exception. Will the Government look to define it in the Bill or in guidance? The written evidence adds two points to ILPA’s concern about legal advice. First, ILPA notes that nothing in clause 11 exempts under-18s from the credibility consequences of missing a claim notice deadline. Will children be exempt or protected by guidance? Secondly, Women for Refugee Women says that the Home Office’s guidance on gender-based claims “recognises that late disclosure is common among survivors of trauma.” The organisation After Exploitation and a coalition led by Hibiscus call a requirement to disclose everything at the outset “highly unrealistic”. How will the claim notice regime be applied consistently with the Home Office’s own guidance? Will trauma-related late disclosure count as a good reason? We want grounds raised early, but a regime that the Home Office’s own guidance contradicts will not survive its first test case. Justice adds a point on Detention Action that the Minister should look to answer. When the Court of Appeal considered the fast-track rules, it took into account that independent specialist tribunal judges were hearing the cases. That will not be the case with the appeal authority. Has the Government’s legal advice taken that into account? We support clauses 11 and 12 and the Government’s amendments, and we oppose attempts to weaken them. One notice, one deadline and one claim: that is the principle, and the Bill should apply it fully. I will seek to press amendment 91 to a Division.

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3. 13 Oct 2026·Parliament·Blake Stephenson

   Immigration and Asylum Bill (Fourth sitting)

   I beg to move amendment 92, in clause 13, page 10, line 33, at end insert— “(d) the proportion of decisions of the IIAA set aside on appeal to the Upper Tribunal; (e) the number of persons removed from the United Kingdom following the dismissal of an appeal by the IIAA.” This probing amendment would require the Chief Inspector’s reports on the IIAA to cover the outcomes of its work – decisions set aside on appeal and removals after dismissed appeals – as well as process.

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4. 13 Oct 2026·Parliament·Blake Stephenson

   Immigration and Asylum Bill (Fourth sitting)

   Clause 13 brings the authority within the remit of the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, with an annual report and the chief executive’s response laid before Parliament. The Opposition support accountability to Parliament, as we have discussed on several occasions today. Amendment 92 is another probing amendment. The inspection regime in clause 13 focuses on process: premises, technology and training. Parliament will also want to know whether the authority is working. Dr Sumption told us that the data needed to judge those reforms—what happens to refused cases and how many decisions are overturned—largely does not exist. Amendment 92 would require the chief inspector’s report to cover two outcomes: the proportion of the authority’s decisions set aside by the upper tribunal, and the number of people removed after the appeals authority dismisses their appeal. Will inspection reports cover those outcomes? What additional resources will the chief inspector receive? Is one report a year enough in the first years? When would material be omitted from published reports? New clause 28, in the name of the hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion, would require quarterly publication of data of the authority’s work on appeals, outcomes, representation, the backlog, timings, withdrawals and reviews. It overlaps with our amendment 88 on decision quality. Transparency around whether the new body is working is in everyone’s interest. I hope the Government will say whether they intend to publish data of that kind. We support clause 13. Scrutiny should measure results, not just process. If the Minister can give assurances on the outcome data, we will not press amendment 92.

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5. 13 Oct 2026·Parliament·Blake Stephenson

   Immigration and Asylum Bill (Fourth sitting)

   Given the insufficient assurance on the outcome data, I wish to press the amendment to a vote. Question put, That the amendment be made.

   Hansard source
6. 13 Oct 2026·Parliament·Blake Stephenson

   Immigration and Asylum Bill (Fourth sitting)

   This group brings together the machinery clauses of part 1: transfer schemes in clause 14, the transition in clause 15, and the consequential power in clause 16. I will speak to amendment 93 tabled in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton West and to Government amendment 43. Clause 14 is technical in nature. It allows transfer schemes to move property, rights and liabilities to the appeals authority. The Opposition support that, but it is also where the costs of the reorganisation begin to show. The impact assessment—again, the previous impact assessment, not the one that was issued yesterday—warns of significant judicial liabilities in winding down the tribunal, because full-time judges hold lifetime appointments and there are the additional costs of running two systems. What is the estimated cost of winding down the tribunal? How many staff will transfer? Why does the Lord Chancellor, as well as the Home Secretary, need this power? What will the parallel running costs be? We want the new body up to speed as quickly as possible. Will existing first-tier immigration judges be able to transfer or apply as senior adjudicators, for example, should they wish to? How many of them do the Government expect to apply and employ? The Law Society points out that the impact assessment says the implementation plans are “not yet fully developed”, which I think the Minister reflected earlier. Will a full costing of the transfer be published before any scheme is made?

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7. 13 Oct 2026·Parliament·Blake Stephenson

   Immigration and Asylum Bill (Fourth sitting)

   The Minister did not respond to my question about the projection that by the time the appeals authority gets up and running, approximately 200,000 people could be waiting for an appeal. Does that projection resonate with the Minister? Is that situation a possibility?

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8. 13 Oct 2026·Parliament·Blake Stephenson

   Immigration and Asylum Bill (Fourth sitting)

   The figure is taken from the evidence the Committee received from Refugee and Migrant Justice.

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9. 13 Oct 2026·Parliament·Blake Stephenson

   Topical Questions

   All our constituents are paying a high price for energy. It is impacting households and we all know that it is impacting small businesses. The Secretary of State said earlier that she would take any action necessary to get bills down. Does that include reducing green taxes and levies to reduce gas bills?

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10. 13 Oct 2026·Parliament·Andrew Bowie

    Energy Costs for Businesses

    Businesses are being crushed by the weight of energy costs in this country, and that is leading to the deindustrialisation of Great Britain, everywhere from the ceramics industry in Stoke to the chemicals industry in Grangemouth. Labour’s policies are making Britain poorer and more vulnerable, and are leading to thousands of job losses. Does the Minister think that is why Gary Smith of the GMB described Government energy policy as “batshit” and the Department as the “ministry for P45s”?

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11. 13 Oct 2026·Parliament·Andrew Bowie

    Topical Questions

    I welcome the Secretary of State and congratulate her on her new post; I look forward to working collaboratively with her on issues on which we agree—I am sure we will find some at some point. In the last 20 minutes, The Daily Telegraph has reported that, in an act of extreme irony, the former Secretary of State for Energy, the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Ed Miliband), has signed off on drilling for new oil in the South Atlantic, off the Falkland Islands. Why is drilling for new oil and gas okay in the south Atlantic but not in the North sea?

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12. 13 Oct 2026·Parliament·Andrew Bowie

    Topical Questions

    Oil and gas workers in Scotland will be feeling cold fury. The Labour party is creating jobs in oil and gas in Port Stanley while killing them in Aberdeen. Why does the unusual pragmatism that the former Secretary of State for Energy has applied in the south Atlantic not apply to the North sea oil and gas industry?

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13. 13 Oct 2026·Parliament·Alicia Kearns

    Topical Questions

    As the Secretary of State says, the Falkland Islands are independent, but she seems to gloss over the fact that the Foreign Secretary still has to give approval to oil drilling. Will she therefore give her full-throated support to the decision today and support the Falkland Islands in this important venture? Will she also tell us when she was consulted on the decision?

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14. 13 Oct 2026·Parliament·Alicia Kearns

    Topical Questions

    On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am sure the Minister did not mean to, but one might say he seemed keen to misrepresent the relationship between the Falkland Islands and the UK Government. The Falkland Islands are independent, but the Foreign Secretary has a responsibility to sign off any such decision on oil drilling, which is not what the Minister said. It was also a surprise that when I directly asked the Secretary of State my question, she chose not to give her support and directly answer the question. How might I get Ministers to ensure that they accurately represent the relationship between the overseas territories and ourselves?

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15. 13 Oct 2026·Parliament·Alex Burghart

    Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over Extension)

    Could the Secretary of State set out in greater detail for us what the word “essential” will mean in law?

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16. 13 Oct 2026·Parliament·Alex Burghart

    Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over Extension)

    I thank the Secretary of State for his comments and the briefing that his team gave mine at the start of this week. At the outset, I want to acknowledge that he and his team have worked hard to try to make improvements to this Bill. I am afraid, however, that the Bill is a mess. That mess is attested to by the fact that we are still debating it when it was introduced a year ago tomorrow and we have yet to breach Committee of the whole House. The mess is attested to by the fact that we are debating a carry-over motion for the second time. It is attested to by the fact that the Government told us in April that they were going to submit their amendments after six months of delay, but published them only yesterday after another six months. We have 144 Government amendments making up a pack of about 300 amendments over 119 pages. This is a mess in the process of becoming a bigger mess. The Secretary of State has been handed this mess. I know it is not of his making, but he has been given the unenviable task of fixing it. Yet this Bill cannot be fixed, because the fundamentals are wrong. However much one scrubs off some of the worst corners and the worst excesses, the fundamentals are still there. Next week, we will have a chance to debate this legislation and its many amendments, but the amount of time set aside is wholly unequal to the task. For reasons I cannot understand, the Government have effectively denied the House the Report stage. Only an hour has been set aside for Report, and it is inevitable that the Committee of the whole House will eat that away entirely. As a Back Bencher, the Secretary of State was a defender of this House’s role in scrutiny. It is upsetting that we will not be able to give this Bill proper treatment in the Commons and that it will only get proper scrutiny in the Lords. That, though, is only a minor quibble in the face of the problems in the Bill itself. In simple terms, we cannot support this legislation because it reopens the door to vexatious litigation against those who served in Northern Ireland during the troubles. In the long time in which this Bill has been in the Table Office, a number of cases have come to public attention that illustrate both the problem that requires fixing and the inadequacy of the Government’s response. In November last year, we debated the findings in the case against soldier F from Bloody Sunday.

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17. 13 Oct 2026·Parliament·Alex Burghart

    Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over Extension)

    Soldier F was found not guilty after the longest and most detailed inquiry in British legal history. Judge Patrick Lynch told Belfast Crown court that even after such an investigation, the evidence fell well short of the standard required.

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18. 13 Oct 2026·Parliament·Alex Burghart

    Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over Extension)

    The judge said: “A 53 year old statement cannot be cross examined”—

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19. 13 Oct 2026·Parliament·Alex Burghart

    Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over Extension)

    I will give way to the hon. Gentleman in a moment, but I will finish my sentence.

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20. 13 Oct 2026·Parliament·Alex Burghart

    Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over Extension)

    Because I was in the middle of speaking. The judge said: “A 53 year old statement cannot be cross examined, nor can I assess the demeanour of a sheet of A4 paper.” It is becoming vanishingly difficult to get convictions.

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21. 13 Oct 2026·Parliament·Alex Burghart

    Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over Extension)

    The hon. Gentleman, if he had waited a moment, would have heard me talk about the victims. The victims, who suffered so much, are being given the promise of convictions that will never come. Even when we have the most detailed inquiry in British legal history, no conviction comes, yet this House is now expected to believe that the legislation before us will open the road to all these convictions. It will not happen. It is a promise that will not be fulfilled, but that does not mean that soldiers who did nothing but their duty will not be pulled through the courts time and time again. In February last year, this House debated the terrible ruling in the Clonoe case from 1992. On that occasion, four men—known terrorists—armed with semi-automatic weapons and a Dushka machine gun attacked an RUC police station and then moved on to commit further crimes. They called themselves an army. They carried weapons of war, they sought to kill and they operated entirely outside the bounds of the law, and yet we were asked to believe that the use of lethal force against them was not justified. The men will now be subject to unjust and unfair scrutiny of the decisions that they had to make in exceptionally difficult circumstances, decades ago. The case of soldier B, a former SAS officer, has been raised repeatedly in the House. In 2024 a coroner ruled that he had been justified in using lethal force in Coagh in 1991. Then, in 2025, the case was taken to the High Court in Belfast, where it was thrown out by a judge who described it as “ludicrous” and said that it should never have come to court. Despite that, in April this year the case went to the Court of Appeal, where it was again thrown out. Last month an attempt was mounted to take it to the Supreme Court, and that attempt is ongoing. Soldier B has been dragged through the courts for five and a half years, when the legal system in this country admits that the case against him is ludicrous.

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22. 13 Oct 2026·Parliament·Alex Burghart

    Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over Extension)

    I am giving the Secretary of State an example of the things that will not be stopped by his legislation. This will continue. The Bill does not solve the problem.

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23. 13 Oct 2026·Parliament·Alex Burghart

    Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over Extension)

    The hon. Lady says that it is our problem. Our legislation drew a line in the sand which meant that things like that would never happen again. That case had already started, and if the hon. Lady were familiar with the legacy Act, she would know where the line in the sand was drawn.

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24. 13 Oct 2026·Parliament·Alex Burghart

    Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over Extension)

    My apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was pointing out to the hon. Lady and the Minister for Veterans and People exactly the sort of problems that the legacy Act was designed to solve. There was obviously a cut-off point—[Interruption.] As I am sure the hon. Members know, the legacy Act had a cut-off point, and cases that had already started were not caught by that. I am giving an example of similar cases that will now come about because of their legislation. As Philip Barden KC wrote in The Spectator this week, the Government’s attempts to solve this issue, and the Government's proposed protections, are wholly inadequate to the task. They fail on their own test, because the Bill and the Government’s amendments “will permit repeat investigations.” Earlier, the Secretary of State raised the use of the word “essential”, and talked about new evidence. As Philip Barden pointed out, “Any lawyer worth their salt can find new evidence.” This might sound like a high bar, but it is an extremely low bar. All the while—throughout the year and more in which we have been dealing with this legislation—the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery, set up by the legacy Act, has been doing its work. A few weeks ago, ICRIR published its first report, which laid out the details of Mr Rory O’Kelly’s murder by the IRA in 1977. That was an information-recovery exercise which concluded that no perpetrators were ever likely to be identified, but it still provided answers to questions that have haunted Mr O’Kelly’s family for half a century. His daughter described, in extremely moving terms, how the report had moved the family into a “space of serenity and light, all anger taken away”. Yet just as ICRIR has started working as intended, the Government are to reprogramme it into what two generals have described today as essentially a criminal investigations body, charged with collecting evidence to a criminal standard, although we know that the chance of prosecutions is incredibly unlikely. Those who work in ICRIR are desperately concerned that that will lead to a massive increase in their workload, with no increase in funding, and that it will inevitably mean long delays and distraction from the core information-recovery exercise, which was intended to be their central function. Those on the Government Benches may not want to take from me the case that I am making against this Bill, and I understand that, but they should take it from the retired generals and soldiers who have repeatedly spoken out.

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25. 13 Oct 2026·Parliament·Alex Burghart

    Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over Extension)

    The hon. Lady speaks powerfully on this point, and she is absolutely right to say that many victims were people who served. I was talking about the way in which ICRIR works and is now being seen to work. Regardless of who was killed, it can be used by victims’ families in order to assist in the information-recovery process, and one of the advantages of ICRIR is that it is a non-adversarial system that has already started to enable families to find out things they did not know before. The hon. Lady is absolutely right: that process is very valuable, which is why it was put in the legacy Act by the previous Government. I hope that Labour Members, and anybody in the House who is thinking of supporting the continuation of this legislation, will listen to the two retired generals who wrote today that the Government should stop pretending that their amendments offer veterans meaningful protections. The consequence of continuing down this route will be that some men who served decades ago, like soldier B—not soldier B himself, but men like him—will spend years in the jaws of vexatious litigation, that victims will not receive the justice that they are being promised by this legislation, and that many more veterans will continue to live with the nagging sense that those using lawfare may come for them. They are already being punished by the idea of this legislation.

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26. 13 Oct 2026·Parliament·Alex Burghart

    Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over Extension)

    The hon. Lady will know that her Government, when they came in, did not appeal against that case. We have a human rights framework that is wholly inadequate for dealing with cases from decades ago, and it is clear that the current Government would rather protect that framework than protect people from that period. The failings of this Bill, should it be passed, will be quickly seen and long felt. The House has the power to stop it tonight. If we do not and the Government persist, the next Conservative Administration will repeal it and once again draw a line under the troubles.

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27. 12 Oct 2026·Parliament·Sir Roger Gale

    State Pension Changes: Women Born in the 1950s

    It is several years since the ombudsman reported on this matter. As I recall, the last Government agreed to accept the recommendations of the ombudsman. To echo the point made by the hon. Member for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman), many of these ladies will be dead before they see any money at all. When will the Government stop messing around and do something?

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28. 12 Oct 2026·Parliament·Sir Roger Gale

    International Update

    I am quite sure that the whole House will applaud the Prime Minister’s reaffirmation of this country’s support for Ukraine and will support the additional sanctions that we are seeking to impose. President Trump has effectively driven a coach and horses through those sanctions, has torn up the bill that he himself signed in the White House and, for the sake of his domestic audience, is seeking to blame President Zelensky and Ukraine for the oil shortages that the United States is now facing, rather than placing that blame where it truly lies, which is with his disastrous expedition in Iran. The Prime Minister did not answer the question from the leader of the Liberal Democrats. Will he answer it now? Will he join my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition in unequivocally condemning this act of treachery by the President of the United States?

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29. 12 Oct 2026·Parliament·Sir Oliver Dowden

    International Update

    Iran clearly views this country as its enemy, and I fear that it smells weakness. It has attempted to attack Diego Garcia, Akrotiri and now Fairford. Does the Prime Minister agree that this demands a robust response, and will he confirm that if Iran is successful in attacking one of our bases, we will use direct action against it in legitimate self-defence? Will he provide enhanced support and assistance to our friends and allies who are under constant attack from Iran and its proxies—not just Saudi Arabia, but the United Arab Emirates and Israel?

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30. 12 Oct 2026·Parliament·Sir Julian Lewis

    International Update

    As the Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee who oversaw the publication of the Russia report as soon as the Committee was reconstituted, may I ask the Prime Minister to explain to the House exactly how he thinks Russia was able to alter the result of the referendum?

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31. 12 Oct 2026·Parliament·Sir Jeremy Hunt

    Baby Loss Awareness Week

    I thank the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) for that excellent opening speech. I also thank him and the hon. Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) for co-sponsoring the debate with me. Most of all, however, I thank the parents who have lost children, and who took me on a journey on this issue when I was Health Secretary. I am thinking of James Titcombe, who lost his son Joshua at Morecambe Bay; of Carl Hendrickson, who lost his wife Nittaya and his son Chester at Morecambe Bay; of Richard Stanton and Rhiannon Davies, who lost their daughter Kate at Shrewsbury and Telford; of Derek Richford, who lost his grandson Harry at East Kent. They, and many others, are watching this debate and can see that the Health Secretary is here. I thank her for being here for this Backbench Business debate; it means an awful lot, and I know that she cares about the issue. I start by recognising that some progress has been made. Since I first stood at the Dispatch Box in 2014 with the Morecambe Bay inquiry, which was the first of many maternity safety inquiries, the neonatal deathrate has fallen by 21%—about 700 fewer deaths a year—but that is not good enough. The fall in death rates plateaued in 2020 and has not got much better, and since then we have had a worrying rise in maternal deaths. The 2025 target to halve neonatal deaths that I set in 2017 was missed. There are three problems behind our lack of progress. First—and this is something for which I am partially responsible—there are too many recommendations. Earlier this year, Baroness Amos counted 748 maternity safety recommendations, mainly since 2015. The NHS is a world champion at doing reports into maternity safety, but sadly not a world champion at implementing the recommendations made. It is encouraging that the Health Secretary says that there will be a recommendations hub, but could she give it real teeth, so that there is a timescale within which the NHS will decide if it is going to adopt a recommendation and, if it is going to, a person responsible for implementing it within the vast labyrinth that is the NHS? Could she give a timescale so that we and our constituents all know that something really is going to happen?

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32. 12 Oct 2026·Parliament·Sir Jeremy Hunt

    Baby Loss Awareness Week

    I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman, and his point closely links to the second of my three reasons, which is that we have still not, after all this time, implemented proper continuity of care. That should mean that every mother, from the moment she is told that she is pregnant, is assigned one team of doctors and midwives to be with her throughout pregnancy, birth and even after the birth. Clinical teams that know their patients are much more likely to identify risk when it happens and to avoid tragedies. That lack of continuity of care sits behind the feeling that we heard about in the speech by the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen: parents saying time after time that they feel forgotten in the system.

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33. 12 Oct 2026·Parliament·Sir Jeremy Hunt

    Baby Loss Awareness Week

    I thank my hon. Friend for that very powerful personal experience. I am concerned about this idea of women being moved from having no team to a high-risk team, because it cannot always be known in advance if someone is high risk. It is knowing every woman’s situation continuously that enables a team to understand whether she is deteriorating and whether, therefore, she is in need of specialist help. The third reason we still have this problem after all this time is the one I really want to focus on: the ideological obsession that still exists in some parts of the NHS with so-called natural or normal birth. That leads to the promotion of vaginal birth over and above C-sections in a way that, all too often, sees interventions and escalations happen too late, and mothers and babies die. I do not ask the House to take my word for it, as some of the reports have commented on this issue. Bill Kirkup, who did the Morecambe Bay report, said that maternity services at Furness general hospital “became strongly influenced by a small number of dominant individuals whose over-zealous pursuit of the natural childbirth approach led at times to inappropriate and unsafe care.” Donna Ockenden told the Select Committee about Shrewsbury and Telford: “We have spoken to hundreds of women who said to us that they felt pressured to have a normal birth. My clinical team said they have seen examples, even in situations where a normal birth in their own hospital would be contraindicated, of women being pressured”. She said there was “a multi-professional…focus on normal birth at pretty much any cost.” Again, at the launch of the Nottingham inquiry, Donna Ockenden said there were hundreds of cases where “the quest for normal birth continued. And avoidance of intervention persisted”. Finally, in Leeds, Fiona Winser-Ramm told The Times she was convinced that “normal birth” ideology played a part in the death of her daughter, Aliona.

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34. 12 Oct 2026·Parliament·Sir Jeremy Hunt

    Baby Loss Awareness Week

    I defer to the hon. Gentleman’s clinical experience, but I absolutely agree with him. He has hit the nail on the head. Before I come on to my solutions, I want to say why I think this is still a problem. Very senior voices are still promoting “normal birth” ideology, including a former president of the Royal College of Midwives who told LBC in June: “Doctors have taken over maternity, and they’re not doing it very well.” It really is time to stop denying the problem and start solving it. Never again should the promotion of an ideology about a so-called preferable type of birth lead to a mother or baby being put at risk.

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35. 12 Oct 2026·Parliament·Sir Jeremy Hunt

    Baby Loss Awareness Week

    I thank my hon. Friend for her courage in talking about her personal experience, which says it better than I ever could. That leads me to my conclusion and what I think are the solutions. First, bringing together the points made by my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Dr Prinsley), we need a total overhaul of midwifery education to make it clear that there has to be teamwork around every birth. It is not midwives versus doctors; it is midwives and doctors working together for the safe delivery of every single child. Secondly, we need a shared agreement across both professions about what risk is, and about when escalation is required—total agreement about the moment for intervention—so that something such as my hon. Friend describes never happens again. Finally, we need to rehumanise the whole process through which the NHS takes care of pregnant mothers and newly born babies so that from the moment of pregnancy, every mother is assigned one team of doctors and midwives who are responsible for that mother and child right the way through pregnancy and after birth. No one should ever be turned into a number or a type of care. Everyone is a human being and should always treated that way by the NHS. This week we are here to remember the babies and mothers who should be here but are not. We recognise the progress that has been made in their name, but we also have a duty to the families to be humble about the failures as well.

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36. 12 Oct 2026·Parliament·Sir Edward Leigh

    Rejoining the EU

    Order. Mr Vaughan, a very large number of people want to take part in the debate, and I am endeavouring to get in everybody who wants to give a speech. Perhaps you might bear that in mind before taking too many interventions.

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37. 12 Oct 2026·Parliament·Sir Edward Leigh

    Rejoining the EU

    Order. A large number of colleagues wish to take part in the debate—I see very many Labour MPs—and I want to accommodate you all, so I am afraid that I will have to impose a four-minute limit on speeches. I remind you that we have worked that out so that everybody can get in, so the more interventions you take, the more likely you are to be stopping a colleague getting in and giving a speech that they have written so carefully.

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38. 12 Oct 2026·Parliament·Sir Edward Leigh

    International Update

    Will the Prime Minister forgive me if I put some words in his mouth? Does he think this is a reasonable statement: “Look, I have been elected by my MPs to serve a full term of government. I am going to get on with bread-and-butter issues, such as the care system, pensions and asylum. Of course, we like a good, close relationship with our partners on security in Europe, but”—this is the Prime Minister speaking—“I say this to the people: I am very wary about reopening the whole Brexit wars. There were years of harrowing negotiations and an even worse deal. I give an absolute commitment that I will not seek to join the EU unless there is a general election first and I offer the British people a full referendum”?

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39. 12 Oct 2026·Parliament·Sir Bernard Jenkin

    Rejoining the EU

    Listening to this debate is amusing, but rather depressing in other ways. There is a heartfelt hope among a great many people here that rejoining the EU would somehow be transformative for the British economy, which they think has done much worse as a result of being outside the EU. [Interruption.] That is the thesis, isn’t it? Let’s look at the facts. The UK economy has outgrown France and Germany since we left the EU in 2021. In fact, some of our economic growth is a direct result of leaving the EU. We have not over-regulated our tech sector in the way that the EU has, so we are getting the lion’s share of inward investment and far greater gross value added in that sector than France or Germany. Interestingly, the tech sector has been excluded from the EU reset talks. Before covid, the City of London employed some 500,000 people. Today, over 680,000 people are employed in the City. The financial services sector is booming outside the EU because we have scrapped MiFID II, the bonus cap and regulations on derivatives trading, and all the people who left because of the fear campaign are coming back. What is the basis for saying the EU has damaged our economy except for these two forecasts, which are conjectural projections and not things that have happened? They are not facts. They are quoted by the OBR and the Treasury and the Prime Minister believes them, and I am sure there is sincere belief in those figures across Westminster Hall today, but they are not facts. The only facts are that the UK economy has grown by 7.9% over that period, while France’s economy has grown by 6.8% and Germany’s economy has grown by only 1.1%. I was not aware that Germany or France had left the EU and that their economies had been damaged by their leaving, but that is the basis on which we are being told that we have damaged our economy.

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40. 12 Oct 2026·Parliament·Sir Bernard Jenkin

    Rejoining the EU

    No, I will not give way; I am going to be very brief. Services exports to the EU have rocketed, because there is no single market in services and we export a huge amount to the EU, as we do to the rest of the world. Overall, our trade has boomed since Brexit; our trade with the EU and the rest of the world combined has grown very substantially. Does anybody know what proportion of GDP is represented by goods exports to the EU? Hon. Members are quoting all these businesses from their constituencies, but how representative are they of the economy as a whole? The EU may be our single biggest export market, but it represents only 6% of our GDP. Hon. Members are looking very puzzled, because people have brainwashed themselves. They think that trade is the entire economy, but it is not; trade is only a proportion of the economy. Our trade with the rest of the world has expanded much more in comparison with our period in the single market. For example, between 1997 and 2019, when we were in the single market, goods exports to non-EU countries grew by 85%, but goods exports to the EU fell from 10% to 7.8%. Our exports to the EU were already declining. Why was that? It was because the internal market is a failure. The countries that form the internal market today represented 30% of global GDP when we joined the single market in 1992. These are Library figures that I am citing, by the way; Members can go and check them out. Today, the EU represents 17.3% of global GDP. It is declining; it is losing global share. The United States had 25% of global GDP in 1992 and it still has 25% of global GDP. Why is that? It is because its economy is much less regulated, it has much lower taxes, it rewards enterprise and risk, and it is not mired in the Code Napoléon and the way of cautiously regulating everything that the EU is. If the EU could deregulate, it would possibly be in our economic interests to join it, but it is incapable of deregulating. Therefore, the case for joining the single market has collapsed in the few minutes in which I have been speaking.

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