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I have some sympathy with what the hon. Member is seeking to do, but I am slightly concerned that perhaps he rolled over before he even rose to his feet, and will not press his amendment to a Division.
I appreciate that we have a situation where one of the Minister’s Back Benchers is seeking assurances in this Committee, but does she accept that is not the equivalent of having something written into the Bill? With the greatest respect, if it is not in the Bill, her assurances here on what she expects from the football regulator is only her expectation—it is nothing more certain.
It is a fundamental principle of lawmaking that, when interpreting the law, judges or anyone else do not go and look at what a Minister might have said in Hansard. I appreciate that she may have a long career, but the Minister will change at some point, and the law has to stand, potentially, for a very long time.
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Butler. The shadow Minister, as ever, is a strong advocate for the fans and has set out a compelling case for supporting the amendment. I will not rehash all the arguments, but it is about transparency and reporting—indeed, the clause that the amendment seeks to change is about reporting. Clearly, the Government believe that an annual report should be made or that would not be provided for in the Bill. The report must include a “summary of the activities” undertaken by the regulator, with reference to a financial year, and yet there is nothing about that report’s including the financial impact, which would be fairly usual in a report by any organisation compelled to do one year on year in the interests of transparency. We debated amendment 122 earlier, and that was more specifically about the impact of the regulator’s activity on match ticket prices. I recall that one of the Liberal Democrat Members did not support that on the basis that the cost of administering the regulator would, if divided up as on his fag packet between match tickets and clubs, add up to a small amount. Amendment 134 is much more compelling because it is about the cumulative impact of the costs of complying with the regulatory regime. It could be the case that the actual budget of the regulator remained reasonably contained, while the regulation that the regulator creates and its obligations on football clubs could balloon. In my view, that is why the regulator should be compelled each year to include in the report the financial impact of its regulation and the full range of its activities, in so far as they have an implication for football clubs. If it creates a regulatory burden and hence a cost burden on clubs, there will always be the worry that that will be passed on to fans. Whether an individual member of the Committee believes that the regulator is a good thing, or that the cost is bearable, and whatever their view on how much cost is bearable, at the very least the regulator should be reporting this each year, so that the public and Members in this place in the future can form their views. This is a basic argument about transparency, and no one should seek to assist the regulator in not being transparent in financial matters. For that reason, I will back the amendment.
The shadow Minister has already set out in great but necessary detail the reasons why amendments 99 and 100 have been tabled and should be supported. The issue is that subsections (3)(c) and (5)(b) of clause 16 provide a catch-all that allows the regulator to include such other information and documentation as it may specify when a club applies for a provisional operating licence. I support these amendments because I think those two provisions open the floodgates unnecessarily, and clause 16 already sets out the things that the regulator wants to see football clubs submit. To have that completely open floodgate is a problem for the reasons given. If the Government were keen to have some flexibility here, they could have allowed the Secretary of State to specify any other such information in the future. At least there would then be some accountability via the Secretary of State’s being an elected person and ultimately accountable to Parliament. The particular issue here is that the regulator, once set up, does not have direct accountability, and therefore it would be easy for it to start stipulating all sorts of things. I support the amendments and I think that it should be tight, but the Government could have steered a halfway course here by retaining some powers for the Secretary of State, rather than the unelected regulator.
I welcome the Minister’s words on wanting a more joined-up Government, but I have concerns that the Department for Transport and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government are not working well enough together both generally and specifically on cross-Solent transport to the Isle of Wight. Will he encourage better joint working between those Departments, both generally and specifically for that most important issue for my constituents where clearly Local Government and Transport need to work together to create regulation to improve passenger experience?
Will the Leader of the House give us the business for next week?
Today has a great double significance. As the House may know, it is World Environment Day, when we celebrate the natural world and recommit ourselves as a Parliament to seek to protect it; and it is also the putative date of birth of Adam Smith, one of my great heroes, who did as much as anyone has ever done to explain the world in which we live. If I may move from the sublime to the sublimely incompetent, this week has otherwise been one disaster after another for the Government. On Monday, we had to drag the Leader of the House to the Dispatch Box yet again, and she had to apologise—yet again—for the Government’s flagrant disregard for this House of Commons in briefing out the strategic defence review over the weekend. There is no more important issue than the defence of the realm. It is a UK-wide, long-term, all-party matter and has always been treated as such, yet the Government chose to share the document not only with their friends in the media, but with the industry, at least six hours before it came to this Chamber or to Opposition parties. It is a matter of deep embarrassment for the Government and raises serious questions about the private sharing of financially sensitive information. The Leader of the House and the Defence Secretary are both honourable people, and I have no doubt that she has made the case every week in Cabinet for doing such communications properly. It is just extraordinary that these two members of the Cabinet are being hung out to dry every week by the 12-year-olds in 10 Downing Street. You could have granted an urgent question every single day this week, Mr Speaker, such has been the deluge of important announcements prematurely made outside this House. Today, it is free school meals. Yesterday, it was the reannouncement of Northern Rail spending. The only mitigating factor is that the Government have been so incompetent in handling their slow-motion U-turn on the winter fuel allowance that no one has noticed anything else—though we still await a statement to the House on that issue as well. What about the strategic defence review itself? We should start by thanking the reviewers for their hard work over many months. I know everyone in this House will want to do that, but if we look at the hard substance of the review, matters become more difficult. First of all, many of the announcements largely repeat the decisions of previous Governments—for example, on submarines, on AUKUS and on warheads. Secondly, and most crucially, where is the funding? Government Ministers have tied themselves in knots over the last few days as to whether the 3% of GDP target is “an ambition”, an aim, or simply to be undertaken “when fiscal circumstances allow” or “in the next Parliament”. Luckily, General Richard Barrons, one of the SDR reviewers, was more honest, saying that the SDR’s financial profile—the assumptions against which the reviewers were working—assumed that defence will get 2.5% of GDP in financial year 2027-28 and 3% of GDP by no later than 2034. The great irony is that, not three weeks from now, we will have the NATO summit, which will call not for 3%, but for 3.5% plus 1.5%. We are light years away from that commitment. The awful truth is that real money will not begin to flow into the armed forces until the defence industrial strategy and the defence investment plan are announced later this year, hopefully in the proper way to this House. That will be 15 months after the Government took office. It is lucky that we do not have a war in Europe. Thirdly, where is the threat to our adversaries? No extra cash means no extra commitment, no commitment means no credibility and no credibility means no increased sense of threat to those we face. What do we know? We know that there is a war in Europe in which Russia is moving men and matériel not merely to push on in Ukraine, but to threaten the Baltic states. Ukraine had a glorious victory in the past few days, but we cannot rely on such victories, and we must support it in its struggle against Russia. What do we know? We know that Xi Jinping has directed the People’s Liberation Army to develop the capability to invade Taiwan by 2027, and we know that NATO allies, who have a collective responsibility to each other, in some cases have a long way to go before they are even at 2% of GDP, let alone 3.5%. Instead of giving real leadership, and putting cash on the table, our own Government are talking about readying the country for war while in reality they continue to dither and delay.
I thank the hon. Member for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery) for securing this debate. In my constituency of Farnham and Bordon, the situation is stark. Although I welcome the fact that we have secured a temporary banking hub in The Shed, in Bordon, on the Hampshire side, it rapidly needs to have a permanent location. In Liphook, there is no banking hub, no agreed plan and no clear process for securing one. Across the border in Surrey, in Haslemere, we are fortunate to have one of the 100 national hubs up and running, but in nearby Farnham, Barclays has just gone and Santander goes next month. All this means that more than 100,000 people across my constituency have not a single bank and only one building society. Constituents are right to be concerned. Link, the UK’s main cash access body, has stated that Santander’s closure will have, “no significant impact on the community”. I strongly disagree; it absolutely will. This cannot continue to be a postcode lottery. Banks were once embedded in towns and communities but now they are being erased with little left behind. Banking hubs are a partial answer, but the system needs reforms. The process is slow, the criteria too narrow and the scope of services too limited. Hubs must be located centrally, open five or six days a week, accessible to those with limited mobility and reachable without a car. They should serve both individuals and small businesses and, crucially, offer face-to-face banking, not just cash points and machines.
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend; he makes a very convincing point. When we are dealing with something as vital as personal finances, it should not be too much to demand to see a person face to face. The legislation we rely on to manage access to banking, including the Financial Services and Markets Act, remains focused almost exclusively on access to cash, not access to banking services. That distinction matters. Depositing takings, seeking support with financial abuse and getting advice are all services that cannot be delivered by a machine. Even when residents are confident and willing to bank online, they are often held back by something much simpler: their connection. In many parts of my constituency, mobile coverage and broadband access are so poor that digital banking is unreliable, if not impossible. The digital divide is no longer just a social challenge but a financial one too. Older people, disabled people, rural residents and small businesses all deserve access to a banking system that works for them, not just for those who are already digitally fluent or living in better-connected areas. That means that physical services, in-person advice and real access to cash must remain part of the infrastructure of modern life. Will the Minister work with Link, Cash Access UK and local authorities to accelerate the roll-out of banking hubs? Will she expand the remit of the Financial Services and Markets Act to protect access to full banking services, not just to cash? Finally, will she meet me to discuss how we can support the roll-out of permanent, accessible banking hubs in Liphook and Farnham? No one should be excluded from essential financial services because of their postcode, their age, or the strength of their wi-fi signal.
The number of banks that have left my constituency has driven me mad: in the 336 square miles of Mid Buckinghamshire, only one high street bank is left standing. One of the most absurd things that I have heard multiple banks say over the years is: “Oh, but there’s a bank just a few miles away.” That might be technically true on Google Maps, but to pick somewhere close to my constituency entirely at random—I see the Economic Secretary to the Treasury in her place—in High Wycombe it takes an enormous amount of time compared with how it looks on Google Maps to get into the town centre and back again. If one bit of the criteria needs to change, it is that banks should not be able just to say, “Oh, there’s a bank a few miles away.” They need to look at the time it takes in real life to get from a village to a nearby town.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Horsham (John Milne) on bringing forward this important debate. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in it, because this is a matter of considerable concern to the many rural communities in the Mid Buckinghamshire constituency, particularly given the safety risks posed by battery energy storage systems. Let me be clear from the outset: this is a debate not about the principle of energy storage, although I am in principle opposed to such schemes taking agricultural land and challenging our food security, but about—and this is deeply concerning and the House must urgently address it—the real, growing and too often overlooked safety implications of these installations, particularly when placed in close proximity to villages and rural road networks that are ill-equipped to support them. The most pressing risk, and one that has already led to devastation elsewhere, is the danger of thermal runaway, as others have said. These are not hypothetical risks; they are documented, real-world events. In Merseyside, a fire at a battery site in 2020 caused an explosion that shook nearby homes and required a major emergency services response. In Arizona, a BESS fire led to an explosion that seriously injured eight firefighters, and in Belgium, a BESS fire burned for over a week and forced the evacuation of nearby businesses. These systems contain highly reactive lithium-ion batteries. When one cell fails—often due to manufacturing defects, overheating or damage—it can cause a chain reaction across the entire installation, releasing toxic gases, generating intense heat and creating a fire that cannot be extinguished with conventional methods. In rural areas, where response times may be slower and firefighting resources more limited, the consequences could be catastrophic. In my constituency of Mid Buckinghamshire, we are increasingly seeing applications for these industrial-scale storage sites in rural settings near homes, farms, schools, conservation areas, watercourses and rivers. These are often justified in the name of green energy, but residents rightly ask: green for whom and safe for whom? It is not just the risk of fire; the cumulative impact of associated infrastructure—substations, cabling, transformer enclosures —often means miles of narrow rural roads being torn up by heavy goods vehicles, with lasting safety implications. Roads that were never designed for such weight and volume are left with potholes, uneven surfaces and subsidence. For local motorists, cyclists, pedestrians and horse riders, or schoolchildren walking along rural lanes, this poses a daily and wholly unnecessary danger. I have received multiple reports from parish councils, residents and emergency services who are concerned that the access routes used for construction and maintenance of these sites are not fit for purpose. My constituents in the Claydons and in Little Missenden are at risk from convoys of lorries, with junction visibility reduced, verges destroyed and road surfaces degraded if BESS projects planned for those areas go ahead. Should an emergency arise at the site itself, one has to ask: would a fire engine or ambulance even be able to reach it safely and quickly? Could the fire service even attempt to deal with such a fire? That is why I am pleased that Buckinghamshire Council rejected a 500 MW site in the Claydons last year. I trust that other speculative developers, such as the one planning a site just outside Little Missenden, will take note and spare my constituents from these unacceptable fire risks and road safety risks. We must take a more precautionary approach. At the very least, the Government should introduce clear national guidelines on the siting of BESS installations, including minimum separation distances from residential properties, fire resilience standards, mandatory site-specific risk assessments, and restrictions on placing these facilities on or near rural roads. I urge the Government and local planning authorities to take these concerns seriously. Safety must never be sacrificed on the altar of speed or ideology, or the first technology that happens to be on the shelf that day. Our rural communities in particular deserve better protection.
When the Minister is moving civil service jobs outside London, may I remind him that there is much more to the north than just Manchester and Leeds? Why are the Government moving the Information Commissioner’s Office away from Wilmslow to Manchester, and what assessment has been done of the impact of that move on the economy of Wilmslow?
I thank the hon. Member for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery) for his persistence, for securing this debate and for the work he has done and is doing to get banks back on the high street. Perhaps we should be grateful to the bankers, because, by their actions, they are the only group of people less popular than politicians. Unfortunately, in their endeavour to become the most unpopular people in the country, they are doing huge damage to our local communities. To put that in context, since 2010 more than 10,000 banks have closed across the country, and there are now only 3,000 bank branches left open in this country. In fact, we have more chance of finding a Labour voter on a farm than we have of seeing a bank in a rural community. The hon. Member for Blyth and Ashington rightly pointed out that the loss of banking facilities has left vulnerable groups, such as the elderly and the disabled, particularly affected and financially excluded. So too are residents in rural areas, where internet access is poor and unreliable. People struggle to get on to the internet to do transactions or for any customer assistance, yet banks continue to withdraw physical services from their customers. When we walk down most high streets, we see that banks have become cafés, bars and pubs. I will focus my attention on Tatton and my local high streets, because the scale of the closures there is stark. In Knutsford, we have lost Santander, Barclays, NatWest, Lloyds and HSBC since 2018, and only Nationwide building society remains. Knutsford is a prosperous town with more than 1,000 businesses operating locally; there is high demand for banking services, yet they have closed their doors. In Wilmslow, the Royal Bank of Scotland and TSB have closed, with only Halifax and NatWest remaining, which are also going to close. That means that only Santander and Nationwide will remain. In Alderley Edge and Handforth, there are no branches at all, forcing residents to travel long distances.
I agree—the lack of banks is a disgrace. Where do people go for their banking needs? The reality is that the banks that are closing have entered into an agreement with businesses and individuals; when they opened their bank account, they opened it with the bank on the high street. The business was there because it expected a certain amount of customer service—that is why they went there in the first place. Face-to-face banking offers confidence, security and efficiency, especially for businesses handing over cash and making significant financial decisions. Without those services, it just will not work. In 2022, the Federation of Small Businesses found that four in 10 small businesses still relied on cash as a primary payment, and six in 10 needed to make regular cash deposits. I regularly hear from businesses in Tatton that they simply cannot deposit cash or access the basic services needed. Why? Well, that is because 64% of bank branches have closed in the last decade and 65% of cashpoints have gone. That is reducing the ability of businesses to deposit cash in the local area. The shift to online poses risks from technical failures and cyber-attacks. We have heard that through this monopoly and lack of access, there is a squeeze, and commission is being charged for the transactions of these businesses. Our high streets are at the heart of our communities, but without access to banking services, our high streets, which are already under pressure, have become even harder places to trade, grow and thrive. If we are serious about supporting small businesses and seeing investment on our local high streets and in our town centres, we must stop the decline in banking infrastructure. Some may argue that closures would be reasonable if banks were losing money and needed to take cost-cutting measures, but that is simply not the case. Banks are not struggling institutions. Last year, HSBC reported nearly $25 billion in post-tax profits. Barclays made $6.4 billion. Lloyds made $4.5 billion. NatWest made $4.8 billion. Those are all eye-watering profits—
I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for his statement, and I congratulate the Environmental Audit Committee for its excellent and thoughtful report on governing the marine environment. A key component in that is marine conservation and protection, including the myriad species living in that environment, such as cetaceans. There is no humane way to kill a whale, and sadly the barbaric practice of hunting and killing whales and dolphins still continues. Does the Chair of the Select Committee agree that the United Kingdom can play a pivotal role in ending this practice with its global soft power, and in treaty negotiations, trade deals and fisheries negotiations, by putting pressure on countries like Japan, Norway, Iceland and the Faroe Islands to stop this horrific practice in our seas and oceans once and for all?
Like the constituencies of Members across the House, Epping Forest has seen a series of bank closures over the years. Tragically, Lloyds bank has said that later this year it will close its branch in Debden in my constituency. Like the banks in my right hon. Friend’s community, that branch is a lifeline; many people rely on it for face-to-face banking and will struggle to get to other branches. Does she agree that banks such as Lloyds need to rethink and stop those closures, and that the Government and Link need to step in and support high street banking?
I am delighted that more children will have school meals at lunch time. It is great for pupils to be well fed—as a paediatrician, I see the value of that. However, I want to ask about transitional protection and money. The transitional protection will take 1.2 million children out of this category; some may go back into it with UC. However, the robbing of the money from pupil premiums will leave schools £1.5 billion short. How does the Minister intend to replace that £1.5 billion for schools so that children can get a good education as well as school meals?
Will the Leader of the House bring forward a specific debate that focuses on the 80th anniversary of VJ Day and the end of the war in the far east, so that the horrific conditions in which those, for example, in the King’s Own Scottish Borderers had to fight and the conditions that people faced as prisoners of war can be properly recognised? We had a debate on the 80th anniversary of VE Day, but—as in 1945—the end of the war in Europe overshadowed those events in the far east.
I welcome the point that the hon. Gentleman is raising. There is also an issue with cash machines inside shops that may be open for longer, but they are stocked from the shop by the cash received in the premises. There can be cash machines in a shop that have no cash in them, but Link has to take them into account when assessing whether there should be a free-to-use cash machine in a community.
In that case, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will start with my ask of the Minister, which is that the criteria for assessing whether there should be a free-to-use cash machine in a community be reassessed. For example, in my constituency, the Bank of Scotland closed its branch in the community of Moffat on the same day as it closed four other branches. At the moment, Link has to take into account every other cash machine in the vicinity, regardless of whether there is any cash in those machines—often, machines in retail outlets are not fully stocked with cash all the time; they rely on cash coming in through the till to go into the machine—or whether premises are open for 24 hours or are particularly disabled or vulnerable people-friendly. At this moment, we cannot get another cash machine because it has been assessed that the number is sufficient, without any assessment of those cash machines. The closures I referred to mean that for 75 miles along the M74 motorway, from the border to Hamilton, you will not find a bank branch. When it comes to bank buildings being taken up by others, I have not been as lucky as my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey): they are often very large buildings on small high streets, and unless the banks are willing to do something themselves, there are not often other users. The Bank of Scotland previously said that it would allow the Peebles branch that is closing to be for community use, and the community have engaged, so I am disappointed to hear that they find today that a “For sale” sign has appeared outside that branch. I hope that the Bank of Scotland will keep that community access. My third point is that we need to join up what is happening. The Bank of Scotland in Sanquhar in my constituency is closing. The bank is putting a bank consultant into the community to look after its customers, it says, but that person will not be in the post office that has been designated by Link as the effective banking hub in that community. That person will hold separate meetings in a council office. There just is not joined-up thinking. My final point is that we talk about post offices when many people do not have a physical post office, but a temporary post office delivered out of the back of a van, which is not capable of providing a banking hub service.
Does my hon. Friend understand that people are very angry about bank closures, and about the fact they feel that the banks just do not listen to them when they go through some consultation exercise? That is why in Moffat, at 2 pm tomorrow, there will be a protest outside the closing Bank of Scotland.
Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that the location of many of these sites are in rural areas, which are often served primarily by retained firefighters? They are a long way from where specialist firefighting resources would come from, and that does not seem to be taken into account fully in the planning process.
The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech. When the last bank in town closes in communities such as Tenbury Wells and Pershore, it is a cumbersome process for them to qualify for a banking hub. He mentioned the role of the regulator. Does he agree that when the last bank in town closes, a banking hub ought to be provided automatically?
This is a subject in which I might have more than a passing interest.
Members will be able to see how many are standing. I do not intend to put a formal time limit on, but if Members can keep their contributions below five minutes, everybody will just about squeeze in.
Order. The hon. Member for Ipswich (Jack Abbott) might like to read the handbook on how Parliamentary Private Secretaries should behave. It is not their job to be heard. If he wishes to contribute to a debate on a policy area, perhaps he should resign his position and return to the Back Benches.
Order. The right hon. Gentleman will know that he cannot intervene from the Front Bench in an Adjournment debate.
Economic resilience is a key part of our national resilience. One of the strongest ways in which the Government can have it is to support the delivery of goods and services via British companies in the first instance. Does the Minister agree? Can he update the House on what steps the Government are taking to bolster procurement policies so that they put British supply chains first?
Mobile phone signal across Bromsgrove and the villages is wholly inadequate. It regularly drops out, and that is if we are lucky enough to get a signal. Things are getting worse, particularly following the rolling switch-off of 3G signals across the country. A recent real-world study in Worcestershire demonstrated that signal is actually 1,000 times worse than operators claim it to be. Does the Leader of the House agree that this is unacceptable and that my constituents deserve better? Will she support my efforts to secure a debate on the Floor of the House and a meeting with the Minister to discuss improvements?[Official Report, 9 June 2025; Vol. 768, c. 8WC.] (Correction)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery) on securing this important debate. In a world dominated by contactless payments and banking apps, it is very easy for some people to live cash-free and seldom visit a bank, but we must not overlook the 3 million to 5 million people who still rely on cash on a daily basis. These consumers are far more likely to be digitally excluded and financially vulnerable. I recently conducted a cash access survey in my constituency. Some 55% of respondents said that they use cash on a daily basis, and 91% believe the Government should safeguard the acceptance of cash as a valid form of payment. It is vital that access to cash and banking services is protected. It is important for those who use cash, but we must consider the resilience of the wider banking and financial system too. We have recently witnessed a major power outage at Heathrow, as well as large-scale power cuts in Iberia. We are increasingly aware of threats posed by hostile states that want to conduct cyber-attacks to disrupt our national infrastructure, so cash and local banking services must remain accessible to allow society to function in the event of any major disruption. This is a matter of national security. In Bromsgrove and the villages, we are experiencing the effects of changes in the way that people bank. With the closure of Lloyds and Halifax, Bromsgrove high street will have lost four banks in just three years. Such banks are a lifeline for so many small businesses—particularly those run by independent entrepreneurs—as well as for local residents, who rely on banking services every single day. If we are not careful, Bromsgrove risks becoming a banking desert with an increasingly empty high street. I know that Bromsgrove is not eligible for a formal banking hub, so I call on the Minister to review the true impact of the closure of banks across the country, and to review the criteria that a community has to meet in order for a banking hub to be provided. In the limited time I have left I want to draw attention to the further decline of high streets and the important role that banks provide in drawing people into their communities. Banks often occupy some of the most prominent, most beautiful and most significant historic buildings. Once they are vacant, they are often left empty, and they become eyesores and further symbols of the deterioration of high streets, which affects so many of the communities that we represent. I ask the Government to review the criteria for banking hubs, and to focus on serious, long-term business rates reform that will enable high streets to thrive into the future. Collectively, as a House of Commons, we must put pressure on the banking system to ensure that cash access remains a part of our functioning economy, and that as many of our constituents as possible have access to day-to-day retail banking services.
In a society where collective trust is depleting, does my hon. Friend agree that the presence of face-to-face banking services and banking customers being able to have a direct in-person relationship with real people is one step that we can all take to help rebuild collective trust in the institutions that underpin society?
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I thank the hon. Member for Horsham (John Milne) for securing it, and for his comprehensive introduction. I would like to talk about this issue in the context of rural constituencies such as mine, as many other hon. Members have this afternoon. First, farmland is not just another piece of land, but an irreplaceable national asset. The ability to produce food domestically is a fundamental pillar in our sovereignty and our national economic strength. In recent years, we have witnessed prime agricultural land being converted into sprawling arrays of energy installations with solar farms, and now we have the increasing prevalence of battery energy storage systems appearing in glorious countryside across the country. My right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), who is not present, has raised this point comprehensively in the past, as well as safety concerns around battery energy storage systems and the displacement of good agricultural land for energy production. We are at real risk of displacing this good agricultural land and of energy production facilities becoming, in effect, a new cash crop. These facilities area incredibly lucrative for farmers who feel stretched—it is very difficult for them to make a living in this challenging economic climate. I am pleased to be supporting the new clause to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills to protect agricultural land in the long term. There is another point I would like to highlight beyond those that have been made by many other Members today. We face the exposure of our energy supply chains to foreign countries—countries that may not share our values—and the long-term depletion of our energy resilience if they manage to embed their infrastructure within our national energy infrastructure in the UK. In Weatheroak in my constituency, we have been battling an energy storage application bang in the heart of north Worcestershire’s green belt. This glorious countryside will be fundamentally changed forever should the application go ahead. I am grateful to Tony Williams, the chairman of Weatheroak residents association, for having written to me on numerous occasions. I have engaged with many local residents who share the concerns that have been raised today, namely around the proximity of such sites to villages and the potential danger should there be an accident or incident whereby one of these sites catches fire and the sparsely dispersed rural fire services are unable to get there. We also have the impact on roads, which has been picked up by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith). Rural communities across the country are facing a fundamental change in their identities, at the expense of industrial applications that are often granted at ease with little regard to the identity and character of those villages. I know that this is a concern that so many of my constituents share. If I had three asks of the Government, they would be: that they pause the granting of battery energy storage system applications in the first instance; that they consider a minimum radius for the proximity to settlements within which applications can be granted; and that they ensure that fire services across the country are statutory consultees in every case where there is an application for a battery energy storage system of any size.
I thank the Leader of the House for making time this week for the debate on dementia, which was well attended, with a time limit imposed on Back-Bench speeches. However, I think she owes an apology to the proposers of the debate on the Thursday before we rose for recess, when the debate was curtailed at the Government’s response so that they could make a statement, after which you, Mr Speaker, had to adjourn the House for an hour, after individuals who wanted to speak were unable to do so, before the Government finally made a statement. In addition to the business that the Leader of the House has announced, next Thursday there will be a statement from the Business and Trade Committee. I am glad that the right hon. Lady has continued the experiment of having Backbench Business debates after Government business, with the Windrush Day debate, which I am sure will be well attended, and indeed the estimates days that have been announced. Applications are now open, and we will consider them at our meeting on 17 June. We will give priority to the Departments that were not chosen for the estimate day debates earlier this year. In addition, the business in Westminster Hall next week is as follows: on Tuesday there will be the debate on the United States Agency for International Development’s pause on funding and its impact on UK international development; on Thursday there will be a debate on legal recognition of humanist marriages, followed by a debate on long-term conditions; on Tuesday 17 June there will be a debate on hydrogen-powered aviation; and on Thursday 19 June there will be a debate on the role of careers education in improving social mobility, followed by a debate on Down’s syndrome regression disorder. Over the weekend and earlier this week, we had our first cross-party delegation from India for many years. It included parliamentarians from all religions, and I know that many MPs and Members of the House of Lords had the opportunity to meet them. Two things came out of that delegation loudly and clearly: first, that the uneasy truce that exists between India and Pakistan could at any time be violated if further terrorist actions emanate from Pakistan; and secondly, that India is reaching out for support from the west on security and defence measures, and we must assist it. May we have a statement next week, probably from the Foreign Secretary, on what we in this Parliament will do to support India in its need to quash terrorism?
Many of the schools in my constituency have been unable to take up the offer of breakfast clubs because, frankly, they do not have the facilities—either to provide breakfast in the first place or for the children to eat in, which is a real challenge. I want to ask the Minister about one specific issue, because I am concerned that it may create a cliff edge for parents. If the parents of a child attending school qualify for universal credit but then later get jobs, or better-paid jobs, and therefore no longer qualify for universal credit, would that child then lose their eligibility for free school meals? That could create a real problem for many parents and present us with a cliff edge. I am sure that is not the Government’s intention, but we need to make the position clear.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss. I have never seen so many police officers in Huntingdon high street as were on patrol the afternoon that the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary came to my constituency to announce the neighbourhood policing plan. Due to the police allocation formula, Cambridgeshire’s entire allocation of the 13,000 officers is just 30 new warranted officers over the remaining four years of this Parliament. Across eight constituencies, that is fewer than four officers each—one officer per constituency per year. Presumably, the starting state for the 13,000 is the number of police officers in 2023, when the pledge was made. That was 141,760. In the year to March 2023, we recruited 16,300 officers; in the year to March 2024, we recruited 9,479 officers, a fluctuation of nearly 7,000. What are the intra-year recruitment figures, and how will recruitment targets fluctuate with natural churn? In March, the Home Secretary stated to me that the redeployment of 3,000 officers from other duties would involve “redeploying existing police officers and backfilling by recruiting other officers to take their posts.”—[Official Report, 10 March 2025; Vol. 763, c. 678.] The Home Secretary does not have operational control of police officers, so when will she outline how that will work in practice? Which police forces will be forced to redeploy officers, and how many will each need to redeploy? What other services will suffer while new officers are recruited to take the place of more experienced officers? In April, the Metropolitan police announced swingeing cuts as a result of pressures from the Chancellor’s Budget. The Royal Parks police is being disbanded, as are officers in schools; the dogs unit is being slashed by 7% and the mounted branch by 25%; the MO7 taskforce, which tackles moped and e-bike robbers as well as gang-related crime, is being reduced by 55%; and cold case investigations are to be cut by 11%. The Met is also cutting 20% of the flying squad and potentially removing its firearms capability. Even after a £1 billion cash injection by the Mayor of London, the Met still has a £260 million shortfall and will cut 1,700 officers, staff and police community support officers. In December, Sir Mark Rowley suggested that it might have to cut 2,300 officers. The Mayor claims that his cash injection has saved 935 of those roles, so presumably the remaining 1,350-odd are frontline officers. Last Friday, six police chiefs went over the head of the Home Secretary and appealed directly to the Prime Minister. They stated: “A settlement that fails to address our inflation and pay pressures flat would entail stark choices about which crimes we no longer prioritise. The policing and NCA workforce would also shrink each year.”
I absolutely welcome that additional funding, but the point that I would most like to make— I have made it previously—is that the police allocation formula, which determines how much funding each of our police forces receives, is grossly unfair. Constituencies like mine in Cambridgeshire do not receive a fair allocation of the overall pot. I will press the Policing Minister: as she well knows, because we have had a lot of conversations about this, I encourage her to revise that next year.
I believe that it is remunerated budgetarily in order to cover that.
But, I agree, not enough, and the police allocation formula would do well to look at policing as a whole so that every constituency gets its fair share of police funding. As we all know, the population has grown, and the police allocation formula is from 2014. I met the last Government when I was still a candidate to ask them to review the formula, and I press the new Government to do the same.
They did as much work on it as the hon. Gentleman’s Government have. That reduction in police strength comes before we consider the fact that the numbers that the Home Secretary based her calculations on were completely wrong in the first place, as the Government announced, very quietly, on 19 March. Of the 43 forces in England and Wales, 29 advised that their published combined neighbourhood officer and PCSO numbers should be revised down. That resulted in an overall downwards revision of 2,611 compared with the figures published last year. In total, that, plus the 1,350 from the Met and the 7,000 annual fluctuation, means that the 13,000 figure looks a lot more like 24,000. Can the Minister outline why the baseline figure of 13,000 has not been revised since it was first announced in February 2023—even to account for the shortfall caused by miscounting? The general public deserve to have police that are resourced to protect the communities they serve. My constituents deserve to have their fair share of police officers, not a token amount based on a police allocation formula that is years out of date.