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1. 8 Jul 2025·Parliament·David Davis

   Post Office Horizon Inquiry: Volume 1

   The Minister plainly agrees that this injustice has gone on too long. Earlier today, I spoke to Janet Skinner, one of the postmasters whose life was wrecked in 2007 when she served nine months in prison after wrongful conviction. She has spent 18 years since then struggling to get compensation and is still battling for it now, forced to wade through endless paperwork and a cruel bureaucratic maze. In her own words, the compensation process has been “harder than anything I’ve ever had to do before—and I’ve been to prison.” That is what she said to me today. Sir Wyn’s report is welcome. I hope it ignites a fire under the Minister, although I know that he is committed to solving problems like Janet’s in months, not years. Can he give me the undertaking that he will solve these problems in months, not years?

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2. 8 Jul 2025·Parliament·Danny Kruger

   Parole Board Decisions: Serious Offenders

   18. What steps she is taking to ensure she can refer Parole Board decisions in cases of serious offenders to the High Court.

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3. 8 Jul 2025·Parliament·Danny Kruger

   Parole Board Decisions: Serious Offenders

   The Secretary of State is declining to take the power to refer to the High Court on unduly lenient Parole Board decisions in cases of manslaughter, like that of Robert Brown, who killed the best friend of my constituent, Hetti Barkworth-Nanton. Will the Minister meet me to discuss this decision and explore how we can ensure that the Secretary of State has all the powers necessary to ensure that violent killers like Brown are not released early?

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4. 8 Jul 2025·Parliament·Damian Hinds

   Generative Artificial Intelligence: Schools

   I beg to move, That this House has considered the use of generative artificial intelligence in schools. It is a great pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Jeremy. You will not be presiding over a heated political debate this afternoon, and I hope this is a good opportunity to openly discuss the enormous change that is upon us. Throughout the education world, a lot of thinking is being done about artificial intelligence and its implications. Most of that thinking is being done by teachers, and I hope we will contribute to some of the wider system and policy questions today. In a November 2024 omnibus survey, half of teachers said they had already used generative AI in their role; about a quarter said they had no plans to; and the rest either planned to or did not yet know. The most common uses of generative AI are creating resources, planning lessons and communicating with parents. In the same survey, 6% of teachers said that pupils were permitted to use AI in the work they are set. It is hard to pinpoint an exact number, but it is fairly safe to say that the proportion of pupils actually using AI to some degree in their work is rather more than 6%. The survey data that we have, incomplete as it is, suggests that somewhere between one in three and three in four children are using AI to some degree, with some frequency, in their homework. In this rapidly changing world, I commend the Department for Education for its guidance update in January and the materials that came out on 10 June, made by the Chiltern Learning Trust and the Chartered College of Teaching. Those materials are easily accessible, but that does not mean that masses of people have seen them. This remains an area in which a lot of communicating remains to be done. The DFE guidance talks about balancing the safety considerations of AI with the opportunities. Those are definitely two considerations, but they are not the only considerations, nor are they the most obvious. We always have to remember that at whatever pace we work at in this place, or that Whitehall works at, kids will work at about six times that pace. The four areas I will briefly cover today are two areas of opportunity and two areas of risk, where we need some caution. The areas of opportunity are workload and enhancing learning, particularly for children with special educational needs. The areas of risk are the need for discerning and careful use of generative AI by pupils and, finally, the impact on homework, assessment and exams. Workload is a big issue for teachers. Historically, along with pupil behaviour, it has often been the No. 1 issue in teacher retention. In a 2019 survey, it was encouraging to see that the reported workload had reduced by about five hours a week, or an hour a day. However, workload remains a stubborn issue, and the biggest contributors have been planning and preparation, marking, and data entry and analysis. There is also communicating with parents, dealing with behaviour issues and so on, but those first three all lend themselves to artificial intelligence. In particular, the creation of teaching materials seems to be an enormous area of opportunity. Too many teachers spend their Sunday evenings at home, trawling the internet for resources to use during the working week, when much of that work could be done for them. I commend Oak National Academy for its work on the AI learning assistant. As the Education Committee, chaired by the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), discussed just this morning, the national curriculum is, of course, a framework. It is not a precise set of things that children will learn, because we need diversity in provision. We therefore need to think about how AI can support that diversity. I hope the Minister will give us an update on the content store announcement of August 2024. AI has plenty of other potential uses, such as for timetabling, for letters and emails home—although my special request would be that we do not add to the volume of communications that have to be consumed—and for report writing. But we need a clear code of practice, because for the trust of parents, and indeed of pupils, there needs to be clarity about when and in what ways generative AI has been used. Care will still be needed. How does a teacher tell children that they must write their own work, if that teacher is generating text through a machine? The second area of opportunity is in supporting learning. There is clearly a lot of potential for learning personalisation, especially for certain types of special educational need, alongside the role of assistive and adaptive technology. For some subjects, AI will also be useful for dynamic assessment. But schools will have the same issue with AI as with all educational technology, which is that they generally do not have much idea which bits of it are any good. There are both great products and pretty low-grade products, and discerning one from the other is notoriously difficult. As with edtech in general, but even more so with AI, product development cycles do not lend themselves to randomised controlled trials to try to establish what is good. I suggest that schools require an extension of the principle established with the LendED product, which is made with the British Educational Suppliers Association: a sort of forum where teachers can see these products, distil the good and bad, and crucially get recommendations from other schools and teachers, because teachers tend to trust teachers.

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5. 8 Jul 2025·Parliament·Damian Hinds

   Generative Artificial Intelligence: Schools

   Funnily enough, I agree with the hon. Member, though not necessarily about statutory requirements. It is certainly true—in fact, he inadvertently leads me on to my next point—that we need to be careful and discerning in using these products. There are many risks, including the safeguarding risks inherent in technology, hallucinations, dud information and, as the hon. Member rightly says, biases. There are some very direct and sharp risks to children. I am afraid that many misleading, unpleasant and cruel things can be done with AI. They can be done already but, as with so many other things, AI magnifies and turbocharges the problem. Some of those things can be done by adults to children; some of them are done by children to other children. We need to be very aware of those risks, some of which relate to existing practices and policy questions, such as how to deal with intimate image abuse and sexting. The problem further supports the case for a comprehensive school-day phone ban, to take cameras out of schools. More generally, there is a need for media literacy and general discernment. I am reluctant and nervous to talk about media literacy, and more so about the phrase “critical thinking,” because it is too often conflated with the false dichotomy that occasionally comes up in the educational world: knowledge versus skills. Clearly, we need both. We need both in life, and we need to have developed both in school, but knowledge precedes skills because we can only think with what we know. However, it is really important in this context that children know how AI can make mistakes, and that they come to trust and know to look out for the correct primary sources, and trusted brands—trusted sources—rather than just stuff on the internet. In the 2019 guidance on teaching online safety in schools, since updated, a fusion of the computing, relationships and citizenship curricula was envisaged. Children would be guided through how to evaluate what they see online, how to recognise techniques used for persuasion, and how to understand confirmation bias, as well as misinformation and disinformation. The new edition of “Keeping Children Safe in Education”, which came out yesterday, lists disinformation and misinformation as safeguarding concerns in their own right for the first time. The online safety guidance also included the importance of learning why people might try to bend the truth on the internet and pretend to be someone they are not. That was a start, but at this technological inflection point, it needs a huge scaling up.

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6. 8 Jul 2025·Parliament·Damian Hinds

   Generative Artificial Intelligence: Schools

   The hon. Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) should not misunderstand me, as I am not against regulation. His points about data protection and privacy are really important, although they are probably too big to fold entirely into this debate. His first group of points and what the NSPCC talks about are the same risks that I am talking about. There is an even broader point, as there is already a lot of blurring between fact, fiction and opinion online. There are all manner of news sources and influencers, network gaming, virtual reality and augmented reality, the metaverse—the whole concept of reality is a little hazier than it once was. With these machines, which in some cases almost seem to have a personality of their own, there is a danger of yet more blurring. We all shout at our PCs sometimes. Indeed, adults using AI may start to give human form, which is called anthropomorphism, to the machine they are interacting with—I occasionally try to be polite when I interact with one of these interfaces. Apps such as character.ai take that to another level. We have to think about the impact on children in their most formative years—on their sense of self, their understanding of the world and their mental wellbeing. That includes the very youngest children, who will be growing up in a world of the internet of things and connected toys. It will be that much more important to draw a line between what is real, what is human, and what is not. In time, when the system has had enough time to think about it—we are not nearly there yet—that may be yet another area for regulation. Finally, I come to the most immediate risks, around homework, assessments and exams. Colleagues may already have had a conversation in which a teacher has said, “Isn’t it brilliant how much so-and-so has improved? Oh, hang on—have they?” They now cannot be absolutely certain. There are AI detectors, but they are not perfect. They can produce false positives. In other words, they can accuse people of plagiarising using AI when they are not. In any event, there is an arms race between the AI machine and the AI detector machine, which is deeply unsatisfactory. Of course, that is where the teacher’s skill comes in, because there is always classwork to compare. Most importantly, there is always the exam itself, and we need to keep it that way. The safest way to protect the integrity of exams is for them to be handwritten in exam conditions, with a teacher walking up and down between the desks—not quite for everybody, but for the vast majority of children, except where a special educational need or disability requires another arrangement. There are also subjects, such as art, design and technology and computer science, where it would not be appropriate. There is already a big increase in access arrangements for exams. A particular type of adjustment, called a centre-delegated arrangement, does not need approval from the exam board, so no data on it is available. One such centre-delegated arrangement is to allow the child to use a keyboard—in the rubric it is called a word processor, which is a delightfully archaic term. If children are allowed to use a keyboard, spellcheck and AutoText are disabled, to ensure safeguards are in place—but it is still true that most people can type faster than they can write, so there is a disparity in the two formats. The regulations require a school’s special educational needs co-ordinator to decide whether a child is able to use that facility, but they are still quite loose in that they refer to the keyboard being the child’s “normal way of working at school”. I would love the Minister to say a word about that. The Department for Education should be clear that, where such arrangements are made, it should be because of a special educational need or disability.

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7. 8 Jul 2025·Parliament·Damian Hinds

   Generative Artificial Intelligence: Schools

   The hon. Gentleman makes his point lucidly and well, and I think it stands on its own feet. The bigger issue with more children taking exams on a keyboard rather than on paper is that exam boards would like to move entire exams online for all children. In a sense, that would be better because it would be equal; there would not be any difference in the speed of writing and typing. Some might ask what is wrong with that, as long as it is the same for everybody, and as long as the internet, spellcheck and autocorrect are disabled. I suggest there would still be multiple types of security risk in having exams done en masse online. There is also a wider problem: if a GCSE is done online, how will students do a mock GCSE? They will do it online. How will someone do a year 9 exam? Hon. Members can see where I am going with this. It cascades further and further down the age range, until eventually people question why they are learning to write with a pen at all. Some are already asking that question. By the time my child is an adult, people will not even be using a keyboard, but other types of communication and interface, and this will seem very archaic. There are important advantages to learning to write by hand, however. Handwriting and writing are not the same thing. The way someone develops their handwriting, learning the strokes and patterns and how letters join together is an important part of learning the skill of wider writing. There is also plenty of evidence that making marks on a page by hand aids visual memory. Handwriting helps us to understand things because, as we write, we synthesize what we are reading or hearing into our own words. There is even evidence to suggest that people do better in tests and have better recall as a result. Maintaining handwriting is therefore important in its own right, quite apart from maintaining the security and integrity of examinations. DFE guidance states that teachers should keep up to date with this rapidly changing world. That is a tough ask. Over the months and years ahead, the Department will have to do a lot to provide teachers and school leaders with bite-sized, easily digestible chunks of information to keep them up to date with this rapidly changing area. A recent Ofsted report, on 27 June, said that there was not yet enough evidence to conclude what constitutes a good use of AI in schools, but that one common approach among schools that seemed to be using AI successfully was to have a champion who spreads good practice throughout the school. That seems to me a good approach. Sarah Hannafin of the National Association of Head Teachers stated: “The technology should be introduced gradually…to maximise its potential and mitigate the risks.” That is an important point. Most immediately, I implore the Minister not to allow all exams to go digital en masse, except for certain subjects where that makes sense, and except, of course, for an individual child for whom that is the right thing because of their special educational need or disability. I contend that there should be no rush to move to online exams. There might be opportunities, lower costs or easier administration involved, but there are certainly also risks, some of which are immediate and some of which would manifest only over time and might take us a long time to spot. If we do move en masse to online exams and away from pen on paper, I promise hon. Members that we would never go back. A cautious approach is what is required.

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8. 8 Jul 2025·Parliament·Damian Hinds

   Generative Artificial Intelligence: Schools

   There are two simple safeguards against misuse of AI in exams here in front of me. Will the Minister recognise that the best way to ensure the security and integrity of exams, and how assessment is done lower down the school, is—for the great majority of children, in the majority of subjects—for exams to be handwritten in exam conditions?

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9. 8 Jul 2025·Parliament·Damian Hinds

   Generative Artificial Intelligence: Schools

   I was happy not to wind up, but you have now made me stand up, Sir Jeremy. We have had a good and constructive debate. I am grateful to the Minister for his engagement, and to all colleagues for taking part.

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10. 8 Jul 2025·Parliament·Damian Hinds

    Generative Artificial Intelligence: Schools

    Indeed—computers talking to computers, with us as the facilitators. The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I will conclude by repeating something I said much earlier in my remarks. We should always remember that, at whatever pace we, the education system or, certainly, Government can work, young people will work at a pace six times faster. I am, again, grateful to the Minister. Question put and agreed to. That this House has considered the use of generative artificial intelligence in schools.

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11. 8 Jul 2025·Parliament·Damian Hinds

    Down’s Syndrome Regression Disorder

    I rise to speak briefly in support of the case put so comprehensively and powerfully by the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft). The APPG on Down syndrome, of which the hon. Member for Mid Cheshire (Andrew Cooper) and I are both members, was given a very striking presentation on Down syndrome regression disorder by Dr Ella Rachamim. We were told of the case of a young person with Down syndrome who went from being socially and physically active, able to get dressed, have a shower and enjoy swimming and playing basketball, to becoming stiff and catatonic, losing the ability to balance and walk upstairs, soiling and wetting himself frequently, and refusing food and drink to the extent that he became so dehydrated as to need hospitalisation. As colleagues have said, Down syndrome regression disorder is a sudden loss of previously acquired and present social, motor and language skills. It is clearly a devastating development for any family, and it is often compounded by a lack of awareness and misdiagnosis. As the hon. Member for Thurrock said, it is taken for autism or early-onset dementia. We are all very grateful to the hon. Lady for securing this important debate, and to the Backbench Business Committee for granting it. I know that she intended to raise awareness of Down syndrome regression disorder in this debate, and she has certainly done so. Clearly, more research is needed. Dr Rachamim shared with us various treatments, advocated for work-up and treatment plans to be put in place, along with trials and treatment options, and argued that to help this community, increasing professional awareness is key—key to preventing misdiagnosis and to ensuring that patients receive the right care and support. By increasing awareness of Down syndrome regression disorder, more support can be put in place both for the individuals affected and for the parents and carers who are so heavily impacted. This debate is part of that work. Again, I am grateful to the hon. Member for Thurrock, and I hope the Minister will take note.

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12. 8 Jul 2025·Parliament·Dame Harriett Baldwin

    Post Office Horizon Inquiry: Volume 1

    I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement. We welcome the release of volume 1 of the Post Office Horizon inquiry final report and I put on record my thanks to Sir Wyn Williams and the inquiry team for all the work that they have done, alongside all those who gave evidence. This inquiry lays bare one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in modern British history. Volume 1 focuses on redress and the human impact of the Horizon scandal, which has been evolving since 2000. The human impact is particularly devastating, with the report revealing that at least 13 people may have taken their own lives as a result of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal. It also recognises that family members have also suffered from this miscarriage of justice. Even though, as the Minister says, we can never recompense a person properly for this miscarriage, I am sure the whole House will want to ensure that the victims are fully compensated by the schemes, and I would like to put on the record my tribute to the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), who set up this process of redress. The report has recommended that the Government and/or the Department, and where appropriate the Post Office and Fujitsu, shall provide a written response to Sir Wyn’s recommendations by 10 October. Can the Minister confirm that the Government will be able to say by 10 October whether they will accept all 19 of the report’s recommendations? The report details that there is still much to be done to ensure justice for the victims, so who and how will those responsible be held answerable for the years of denial and suffering? This was not simply a technical failure; it was a failure of oversight, governance and accountability. The report finds that the Post Office and Fujitsu knew, or at the very least they should have known, that the Horizon IT system had faults. The sub-postmasters are also described “as victims of wholly unacceptable behaviour” by the two companies. Sir Wyn has stated that there are still more than 3,000 claims to resolve and that there have been egregious delays in compensation. Will the Minister therefore update the House on the most recent status of the compensation schemes? What steps is he taking to address these concerns, and how are the Government ensuring that full, fair and fast compensation is delivered without further bureaucracy or delay? Will the Minister update us on what action is being taken in relation to Fujitsu, which is still being awarded Government contracts? Fujitsu said that it would wait until the inquiry reports to offer compensation, so will the Minister confirm that there is now nothing preventing Fujitsu from paying interim compensation? Will he also confirm that it will be made clear how much he believes Fujitsu should contribute to the redress scheme? In the spending review, the Government allocated £86 million from its transformation fund for the Post Office, specifically earmarked to support investment plans, including replacing the existing Horizon computer system. Will the Minister update the House on the progress of securing a new computer system for the Post Office and whether that system will replace the Horizon system in its entirety? What assessment has he made of the earlier Capture accounting software and its legacy of problems? Finally, to move on from this protracted miscarriage, will the Minister confirm when we will see the much anticipated Green Paper on the future of the post office network and how the public can have their say on that consultation? The time for half measures is over. Justice delayed is justice denied, and those affected by this scandal deserve nothing less than the full force of the Government’s commitment to truth, reform and redress. Taxpayers also deserve to know how much Ministers think Fujitsu should pay to resolve these terrible wrongs.

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13. 8 Jul 2025·Parliament·Caroline Nokes

    Government Resilience Action Plan

    I thank the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster for his statement this afternoon.

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14. 8 Jul 2025·Parliament·Caroline Nokes

    Road and Rail Projects

    Before I call the shadow Secretary of State, I remind the Transport Secretary that it was always open to her to ask for more time for her statement. There is a 10-minute limit—so if the shadow Secretary of State would like more time, he too will get it.

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15. 8 Jul 2025·Parliament·Caroline Nokes

    Road and Rail Projects

    I call the Chair of the Select Committee.

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16. 8 Jul 2025·Parliament·Caroline Nokes

    Road and Rail Projects

    I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

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17. 8 Jul 2025·Parliament·Caroline Nokes

    Road and Rail Projects

    I call Markus Campbell-Savours to ask the final question.

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18. 8 Jul 2025·Parliament·Caroline Nokes

    Road and Rail Projects

    I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. That is not a matter for the Chair, but I am sure the Secretary of State will have heard his comment.

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19. 8 Jul 2025·Parliament·Caroline Nokes

    Post Office Horizon Inquiry: Volume 1

    I call the shadow Minister.

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20. 8 Jul 2025·Parliament·Caroline Nokes

    Post Office Horizon Inquiry: Volume 1

    I call the Chair of the Select Committee.

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21. 8 Jul 2025·Parliament·Caroline Nokes

    Post Office Horizon Inquiry: Volume 1

    I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

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22. 8 Jul 2025·Parliament·Blake Stephenson

    Local Government Reform: Cambridgeshire

    I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Part of the Government’s plan for local government reform is to align the ICBs with new mayoralties, as he just mentioned. Does he share my concern that the plan to merge Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB with Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Milton Keynes, despite there being no plans for a mayoralty to cover that area, is a complete waste of time and money that could be better spent fixing local healthcare gaps and patient care?

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23. 8 Jul 2025·Parliament·Blake Stephenson

    Road and Rail Projects

    I welcome the commitment to deliver East West Rail. Sticking with the railways, will the Secretary of State provide assurance to my constituents that she is committed to delivering step-free access—in particular, at Harlington and Flitwick stations? On roads, junction 13 of the M1 is desperately in need of remodelling to cope with a growing population and to ease traffic flows. What assessment has been made of the benefits of remodelling that junction?

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24. 8 Jul 2025·Parliament·Ben Obese-Jecty

    Local Government Reform: Cambridgeshire

    I beg to move, That this House has considered local government reform in Cambridgeshire. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. Following the publication of the English devolution White Paper in December 2024, on 5 February Cambridgeshire and Peterborough’s district councils were invited to develop proposals for the introduction of unitary authorities within the county, expected to come into effect in April 2028. A detailed collective proposal for what the future unitary authorities in Cambridgeshire should look like is to be submitted to the Government by 28 November. I applied for this debate to outline the sizeable concerns in Huntingdonshire about local government reorganisation. These concerns are potentially echoed across other areas of Cambridgeshire, and I encourage other MPs to whom I have spoken about the proposals also to voice their concerns. Cambridgeshire residents have been presented with just three options on which to give their opinions. Proposal A is referred to as the north-west, south-east option, with Peterborough, Huntingdonshire and Fenland in the north, and Cambridge, East Cambridgeshire and South Cambridgeshire in the south. Proposal B is the north-south option, with Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire together, and then Peterborough combined with everywhere else—Huntingdonshire, Fenland and East Cambridgeshire. Proposal C is east-west, with Peterborough, East Cambridgeshire and Fenland in the west, and Cambridge, Huntingdonshire and South Cambridgeshire in the east. These proposals were apparently narrowed down from six options. However, these have not been published, and it is difficult to know, even as an MP, how they were decided and why the possibility of a breakdown by Westminster constituency, county division or district council ward was ruled out. My own Huntingdonshire district council stated that: “We are taking an evidence-based approach. Inevitably, the different needs and local identities of our areas will have a significant impact on the preference of our own councils, and we must respect that”. However, what evidence is there? The consultation by each of the district councils appears to be little more than a paper exercise. How are residents expected to feed back an informed decision regarding a once-in-a-generation opportunity to shape the future of local government without any actual information on what the impact of expressing their preference might mean? Martin Hassall, the independent councillor for Buckden, Diddington and Southoe, said: “The proposals are complex, poorly communicated, and offer little reassurance that the end result will mean better services or genuine value for money.” In a written answer, the Minister for Local Government and English Devolution, the hon. Member for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton (Jim McMahon), said: “We expect there to be wide engagement with local partners and stakeholders, residents, workforce and their representatives, and businesses on a proposal.” But how can Cambridgeshire’s district councils credibly be expected to develop a robust proposal without realistically understanding the preferences of their residents? The only feedback prior to the final proposal being submitted is an engagement survey that bears little resemblance to the three options that have been put forward. They are in effect situating the estimate, having already decided one of three answers, and will tailor the results to fit. How will the Government ensure that any decision reflects the wants and needs of local residents? Moreover, if the Government overrule the proposals submitted by the council, upon which evidence will they ensure that the voices of local people are considered? The Huntingdonshire district council website says: “All proposals will be assessed against all the criteria in the invitation. Decisions on the most appropriate option for each area will be judgements in the round, having regard to the statutory guidance and the available evidence. That evidence will include information provided by the councils as part of their proposals, representations received during the statutory consultation, and other relevant information available”. A written answer to me on Friday said: “a consultation could be launched in early 2026, likely closing at some point after the May local elections”. Could the Minister clarify whether impacted residents across Cambridgeshire will have their say? If so, is the late May date the first opportunity they will have? If the statutory consultation is not until after next year’s local elections, can we assume that district council elections in Huntingdonshire will definitely go ahead? The Government are in the process of botching this local government reorganisation with their hands-off approach. Every question to the Minister for Local Government and English Devolution has so far been met with a deflection to the relevant local authority, but this has left a situation where local authorities seem unsure of the detail, local residents have endless unanswered questions, and we are on the cusp of making enormous changes that will have a lasting impact on people’s lives, their prospects and their quality of life, all because nobody had bothered to think through the detail. In March, a joint statement from council leaders across Cambridgeshire stated: “We look forward to further discussions with each other and with government, and when the time is right, with residents, Members of Parliament and our partners”. When will Members of Parliament be engaged on the initial proposal? I have not been engaged thus far, and I do not believe any of Cambridgeshire’s other MPs have been officially engaged either. What is the plan? I appreciate that is more of a rhetorical question than one for the Minister, but the point still stands. I am sure this debate will be watched by council leaders, and some of my questions are more for their benefit. Last week, I wrote to each councillor in my Huntingdon constituency to seek their input on the potential impact of the changes, and hon. Members will hear a selection of quotes peppered throughout my speech. I was very pleased to receive a range of responses from across the political spectrum, with Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat and independent councillors highlighting their concerns. Councillor Nathan Hunt, Liberal Democrat, Huntingdon East ward, said: “throughout the process, communication from central government seems to have lacked required detail and has generally been poor”. It is highly notable that, despite our political differences, the responses highlighted the same broad concerns: a rushed process, short timelines, lack of rigour, unclear criteria, poor communication, inadequate information, analysis and evidence, and no clear identification of what is best for residents. The engagement survey currently in flight, led by East Cambridgeshire district council as communications lead, is not clearly signposted or easy to locate. It will be interesting to see once it closes whether there has been significant uptake. There has been no indication from Huntingdonshire district council of whether there is a minimum viable response rate. If sufficient responses are not received, will they be considered at all? Will that extend to the whole of Cambridgeshire and to other district councils? Prior to the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough combined authority mayoral election in May, a booklet was sent to every household, so why has a similar effort not been made to engage residents with a posted survey? Most people have no idea that the local government reorganisation is happening, and that is as much the fault of the Government as of the local authority. The engagement survey closes on Sunday 20 July, so in less than two weeks, residents in my constituency and across Cambridgeshire will have had what initially appears to be their only opportunity to influence the process, and it will have passed most of them by. The three shortlisted options were sadly published only as maps and with no additional information, and all local authorities published the same survey at the same time. To what extent will the Government take into account the results of the engagement survey from residents in each district council area? To what extent will the Government take into account the submission from the district councils regarding the preferred option? If the Government decide that they simply do not like the unitary structure proposed by the Cambridgeshire district councils, which criteria will they use to override them and impose their own solution? It is inconceivable that residents are being asked to make a decision on the future structure of Cambridgeshire without any financial information. No information is publicly available that compares the finances of councils, and we have seen no information on council income, expenditure, debt or council tax.

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25. 8 Jul 2025·Parliament·Ben Obese-Jecty

    Local Government Reform: Cambridgeshire

    I wholeheartedly agree with my right hon. Friend. I will come on to the division of assets. There is such a staggering lack of detail that I do not know how residents can possibly hope to make a good decision based on all the information. To gain an insight into the current finances, I have had to turn to the House of Commons Library, a resource to which the vast majority of people do not have access. Huntingdonshire, which my Huntingdon seat sits completely within, is the second largest non-metropolitan district council in the country. Last year, it had a negligible notional overspend, with a £2.175 million contribution to general reserves. It also has £35 million in the earmarked general fund reserves. To our north, Fenland has a growing budget shortfall from an overspend of £350,000 last year to a projected £1.4 million this year, rising to over £4.5 million by 2029-30. Nearby Peterborough has a projected budget gap of £4.1 million next year and £7.3 million the following year. It is unacceptable that my constituents should have to bail out the spiralling debts of other councils. This would see revenue raised in Huntingdonshire being largely spent elsewhere. Cambridgeshire residents should be aware of the projected budgetary overspend of these councils before they are asked to express a preference on how they would like the new unitary authority to be structured. It is frankly irresponsible for councils to gloss over the financial implications of this decision without full transparency. From the look of the finances as they stand, Huntingdonshire could well find itself propping up financially unviable unitary authorities, meaning that the work we have done and are doing to make Huntingdonshire a fantastic place to live and work may be undone, with revenue raised here used to pay for services elsewhere. Councillor Ian Gardener, Conservative, Alconbury and Kimbolton division, said: “The major concern for me is that HDC could lose control of its well managed financial reserves, which could be used to mitigate the losses of less well run councils in the newly formed unitary authorities. Which would be to the detriment of HDC residents.” Councillor Simon Bywater, Conservative, Sawtry and Stilton division, said: “There is a real risk that HDC’s reserves could be pooled and redirected…forcing them to subsidise areas that may not have shown the same level of financial responsibility.” What steps do the Government plan to take to implement a pre-nup so that current districts are protected? If they choose not to do so, we are likely to see a spending splurge, lest we have to spend money elsewhere after the reorganisation. It is imperative that it is clearly explained to residents how the different combinations of district councils will look from a financial perspective. How will the assets and liabilities of Cambridgeshire county council be disaggregated? On the one hand, a lot of the assets are held in South Cambridgeshire and Cambridge city, including development opportunities; on the other hand, there is circa £450 million-worth of damage on Fenland’s roads. Are assets and liabilities to be shared equally or kept in their geographical location? I am keen to hear from the Minister on whether the Government will write off any of the debt currently held by district councils or the county council. What work have the Government done to look at how that will be distributed? Can he address my concern that this is being hidden from the general public, and that it should be made statutory that finances, particularly inherited debt, be published? To that end, what transitional support will be available to new unitaries that inherit significant debt, or are projected to inherit significant debt, between the decision this year and the implementation in 2028 and beyond? Furthermore, a new funding system will be implemented in the 2026-27 financial year, with fundamental changes in the needs distribution, council tax equalisation and, crucially, a business rates baseline reset. It is therefore essential to model the proposed options on these forthcoming changes in order to understand how they will impact each unitary in 2028. Initial independent modelling suggests that Cambridge city council may lose 25% of total resources and South Cambridgeshire district council 35%—combined losses of £18 million due to the baseline reset. That illustrates just how important a published impact assessment will be. To date, no impact assessment has been published. Cambridgeshire residents have no idea how local services will be impacted, for better or worse. Given that the issue is regularly raised by constituents in my mailbag, it is difficult to see how councils could fail to engage with their MPs as key stakeholders. We have no idea how the differing combinations of district and county council wards and divisions will be affected. How will the new unitary authority boundaries affect school places? Will parents suddenly find themselves outside the catchment areas for their desired schools? Will a school on the other side of the unitary boundary suddenly no longer be an option? How will special educational needs and disabilities provision work? Will the two new unitaries be resourced adequately to enable the timely provision of education, health and care plans? Cambridgeshire currently has a terrible reputation for meeting the statutory timeframe. Social care is a key factor and consideration for any new unitary authority. Cambridgeshire as a whole is lucky in that it has lower social care needs than many other areas of the country. However, given how other formulae work against Cambridgeshire, owing to the area’s population growth outstripping the outdated modelling for these formulae—often by 10 to 20 years, when we look at the Carr-Hill formula, fire and rescue service funding formula or police allocation formula—the impact of social care costs on Cambridgeshire should not be underestimated, even if the relative needs formula looks more favourable. With regard to the proposed options, what consideration will district councils be obligated to give to service scale versus financial viability? From a healthcare perspective, we have already seen that Cambridge and Peterborough integrated care board is set to merge with Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes ICB and Hertfordshire ICB. The 10-year health plan, announced only last week, makes it clear on page 13 that, under the proposals for a new operating model, the Government “will streamline how local government and the NHS work together and make ICBs coterminous with strategic authorities by the end of the plan”.

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26. 8 Jul 2025·Parliament·Ben Obese-Jecty

    Local Government Reform: Cambridgeshire

    I wholeheartedly agree. We saw that only last week, when the 10-year health plan was rolled out. The Government would have known full well that this contradicted their previous stance. How does the Government’s merging three ICBs together to make one of the largest in the country chime with the need to reorganise those same ICBs to reflect the 10-year health plan? Can the Minister confirm what the future of the new mega-ICB that includes Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB will be under local government reorganisation? Currently, this is completely contradictory. Analysis of the proposed Greater Cambridge unitary of Cambridge city and South Cambridgeshire has shown that it would have a high share of total relative needs formula from environmental, protective and cultural services. Greater Cambridge would have the highest total share after the City of London, and it would be ahead of Westminster. The same analysis shows that the balance of service in any unitary containing Cambridge city would be very focused on non-demand-led services, and thus there would be a greater share of service delivery based on resident services and services for visitors and commuters. Huntingdonshire district council states on its website that the new unitary authority should have a population of around 500,000, though that has since been confirmed by the Minister as a “guiding principle”, not a target: “We understand the need for flexibility, especially given our ambition to build out devolution and take account of housing growth”. Given the proposed housing growth across Huntingdonshire, it is vital that the council does not max out the population size. Huntingdonshire’s projected growth shows that it will be one of the fastest-growing regions in the fastest-growing county, but with several parts of Cambridgeshire expected to grow in the near term, with an increasing tax base and business rates, what modelling have the district councils conducted to ensure that the proposals put to the general public are balanced? The Government have suggested that population size is the main measure of sustainability for new unitaries, but to what extent has the projected growth been factored into those current proposals, particularly on the question of whether two or three unitaries would be preferable within Cambridgeshire? Even if the option were taken for three smaller unitaries, each between 275,000 and 300,000 people, what assessment has been conducted to ascertain the population size of each unitary in 2028, when they would actually come into effect? Furthermore, what would their size be once we see some of the projected growth? We could easily see the new smaller unitaries approach the 350,000 minimum size quite quickly. Between 2021 and 2041, the Greater Cambridge unitary is projected to grow from 318,000 to 381,000. We could potentially see comparative growth across other parts of Cambridgeshire, where development continues at pace. In Huntingdon alone, we will see another 4,000 houses built at Alconbury Weald, with no commitment from the Government regarding a new east coast main line station at Alconbury Weald—a request I have made multiple times. I have discussed that with the Transport Secretary and asked for the current status of the plans from Network Rail, sadly to no avail. We will likely see up to 4,500 homes at RAF Wyton, now that the surplus Ministry of Defence land there has been designated as an MOD Trailblazer site. Between the two, we also have potential development at Hungary Hall. In excess of 10,000 homes in the area potentially means 20,000 to 40,000 additional people over the next 10 to 20 years. Coupled with the new defence technology cluster nearby, the travel to work areas will likely change dramatically. Going forward, we will potentially see Huntingdon as a centre of employment rather than a dormitory town for Peterborough, Cambridge or even London. In 2032, we should theoretically be due a constituency boundary review. We will then see further disruption as constituency boundaries straddle new unitary boundaries, meaning yet more burdensome administrative upheaval, potentially leaving residents confused about who is representing them. Can the Minister confirm the smallest size of unitary that the Government will accept? To what extent will the Government include projected growth in their decision-making process, and over what period? In the event that current and/or projected growth figures do not meet the threshold, to what extent will a sound business case outlining the financial viability of the unitary take precedence? There is much to cover on the various pitfalls of LGR—too much to cover today, arguably. There are still significant questions about how new unitaries will affect travel to work from one extreme to another, for those whose work takes them to Cambridge or Peterborough. There are questions about how unitary boundaries will impact school places and catchment areas for pupils close to the boundaries, how the availability of social housing will be impacted by different combinations of districts, with some owning their social housing stock and others not, and how South Cambridgeshire district council’s ridiculous new four-day week for five days’ pay will translate to the new unitary. Will the new unitary be a four-day week, or will those now on four-day week contracts be mandated to work five days? Will the whole thing be ripped up because SCDC will not technically exist any more? Brett Mickleburgh, Liberal Democrat councillor for Godmanchester and Hemingford Abbots ward, has raised concerns that, “a unitary authority will have huge seats/divisions with a single councillor struggling under an unreasonable case workload—compounded if they have a cabinet role. I fear the members allowance will only be sufficient to allow those retired, of independent wealth or aspiring career politicians to take office”. Brett makes an important point. To what extent have the Government considered that? How big will each unitary council seat be? How many councillors will there be? How will the seats be divided and boundaries drawn? Will they be bigger or smaller than the county divisions? Will there be one, two or three councillors per area now that district and county council functions will be merged? Will we have district council elections in 2026? If we do not get an answer until the end of the year, we are doing a disservice to the candidates, who could have had months’ more time in which to campaign. I could go on. To roll out LGR with such little detail and so few answers does not augur well. It gives me and other Cambridgeshire MPs and councillors little confidence that this will be a smooth transition to larger councils that everybody feels is an improvement on the current structure. I will leave the last word to one of our local councillors, and my main opponent in last year’s general election, Labour and Co-operative Councillor Alex Bulat for St Ives South and Needingworth division: “Among all these voices, Huntingdonshire local voices seem sidelined at best, if not ignored at worst.”

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27. 8 Jul 2025·Parliament·Alex Burghart

    Government Resilience Action Plan

    I thank the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster for advance sight of his statement and the associated documentation. I also thank him for the date on which the UK emergency alert will be tested—he can only have chosen it to notify the country that it is my birthday. I shall very much look forward to the alarm at 3 pm. I understand why the Government want to plan for resilience. It is understandable that the Government would want to come forward with a plan, faced with the collapsing economy, a collapsing Government, capital flight, spiralling borrowing costs and the Office for Budget Responsibility’s warning this morning that the Chancellor’s latest U-turns have left Britain more vulnerable and less able to respond to future crises. As the Minister said, the plan published today builds on the work of the previous Government on the roll-out of the national emergency alert system, the expansion of biosecurity preparedness, investment in flood protection and ensuring better cross-departmental collaboration on resilience and emergency preparedness. The Minister said in his statement that he was looking for an assessment “on a continuous basis”. The report sets out the intention for data collection in this area, but it would be useful to hear by when that new data framework will be available for us to scrutinise. He said that he wished to enable “the whole of society to take action”, but I rather wonder how he intends the whole of society to find out about this. The plan calls on the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to provide guidance on developing cohesion strategies and to monitor tensions. However, that does not sit easily with the fact that the Government are not currently tackling Islamist extremism properly, that they dragged their feet on a national inquiry into grooming gangs, and that they seem to be bringing forward a highly controversial definition of Islamophobia. The Minister referred to “improving core public sector resilience”. That is certainly to be welcomed, particularly on a day on which it has been announced that resident doctors have voted in favour of strikes, which will result in industrial action in January. It was notable that the plan does not mention an ability to deal with widespread industrial action. Are the Government planning for the eventuality of a general strike? The Minister also mentioned the increase in defence spending, which we know is a form of smoke and mirrors. We understand that the 1.5% in addition to the hypothetical 3.5% includes things such as tunnels and roads, but we have not been provided with a baseline for what is currently spent in those areas. How will we know when the Government have got to 1.5%, or indeed whether they are at 1.5% already? As the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster set out, the previous Government took steps to extend our capabilities and published the first UK biological security strategy. I was interested that, in this strategy, there is a reference to exploring the utility of waste water analysis, which had great success during the pandemic. Does the Minister intend to bring that back on a wide scale? It would be welcome if that was the case. I am pleased that the Government are pressing ahead with the biothreats radar, which was a Conservative idea, but two years after our announcement there is still no go-live date. This could be a major asset to national resilience, but we need to know when it will come online. The CDL also told the House that a fully operational radar will give us near real-time warning of emerging pathogens, but the World Health Organisation is still reminding China to hand over its basic virological data on covid-19. Can he guarantee that the radar will allow the UK to independently verify when a state actor chooses to withhold or delay information? I was interested to read about Exercise Pegasus, the preparations for pandemic exercise. However, as the Minister will know, different types of pandemic behave in different ways. Which pandemics were tested in Pegasus? Which were tested in Alkarab? It is important that the House understands what the Government are looking at in that regard.

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28. 7 Jul 2025·Parliament·Steve Barclay

    Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life

    Will the Secretary of State agree to write to me, as a matter of urgency, regarding the frankly bizarre decision by the Government to twice turn down funding for a new heating system for Meadowgate academy, a special educational needs academy, rated outstanding, that provides places to 182 pupils, which is at risk of having to close as a result of that decision? It is bizarre to announce special educational needs co-ordinators, while both delaying the new 210-place new special educational needs school that was to be provided to Fenland and risking the closure of the existing outstanding school, because the Government are refusing to fund a new heating system.

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29. 7 Jul 2025·Parliament·Sir Mel Stride

    Government Performance against Fiscal Rules

    (Urgent Question): To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if she will make a statement on the Government’s performance against the fiscal rules.

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30. 7 Jul 2025·Parliament·Sir Mel Stride

    Government Performance against Fiscal Rules

    The Chancellor said that she would not make any commitments that were not “fully funded and fully costed”, but the Chief Secretary to the Treasury has just said that he now expects us to wait until the autumn to hear how the Government intend to cover the £6 billion of unfunded commitments that their U-turns have run up in the last month alone. A Government divided. A Government racking up unfunded spending. A Government wrecking the public finances. Why is the Chief Secretary not prepared to explain how they will fund these U-turns? There are surely only two possible answers: either the Treasury has made them without a clue as to how they will be funded, or it knows but is refusing to tell us. Either is completely unacceptable. Can the Chief Secretary set aside the usual blather that we have just heard and tell us whether he knows how these unfunded commitments will be paid for, or are his Government simply refusing to say? The House will also have noted the inherent contradiction in the Chief Secretary sticking to the line that decisions will be made at a fiscal event in the normal way, when that is precisely what the Government have not done. By losing control of the finances and of their own parliamentary party, the Government have made significant fiscal decisions outside of a fiscal event. The Chancellor said at the Budget that she would not be coming back with more tax rises. Is this still the position? Will the Chief Secretary rule out a wealth tax, along with reconfirming there will be no rise in income tax, national insurance or VAT? The Chancellor said that she would not extend the freeze on tax thresholds because it would hurt working people. Is this still the position? Can the Chief Secretary confirm that the Chancellor will not be adding to her fiscal black hole by scrapping the two-child benefit cap? Can I also ask whether consideration—

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31. 7 Jul 2025·Parliament·Sir Mel Stride

    Government Performance against Fiscal Rules

    It certainly is now, Madam Deputy Speaker. If Ministers are to begin putting their house back in order, that must start right now with full transparency and proper answers.

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32. 7 Jul 2025·Parliament·Sir Mel Stride

    Government Performance against Fiscal Rules

    Devon.

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33. 7 Jul 2025·Parliament·Sir Julian Lewis

    Small Boat Crossings

    16. What steps her Department is taking to stop small boat crossings.

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34. 7 Jul 2025·Parliament·Sir Julian Lewis

    Small Boat Crossings

    I agree with the Home Secretary that that would be a major step forward. Does she agree with me that, on average, well over 1,000 people have been crossing the channel each week this year, and that there is no way any form of court procedures can keep pace with that? Does she therefore agree that nothing other than prevention, as she has described, interception or, as a last resort, detention and return can possibly be successful?

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35. 7 Jul 2025·Parliament·Sir Julian Lewis

    Actions of Iranian Regime: UK Response

    May I help the Minister share a little information with the House by asking him whether the Government know of any purpose for refining uranium-235 to 60% purity other than to build a nuclear weapon?

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36. 7 Jul 2025·Parliament·Sir Julian Lewis

    Pension Schemes Bill

    I am extremely grateful to the Minister for taking my intervention and for the very helpful letter he sent me on 30 June about schemes of this sort, and in particular the ExxonMobil pension scheme. His letter encouragingly states: “Following our reforms, trustees will continue to consider the correct balance of interest between members and the sponsoring employer when making decisions about the release of surplus funds. Trustees will be responsible for determining how members may benefit from any release of surplus…and have a suite of options to choose from—for example, through discretionary benefit increases.” The trouble is that these pensioners have received a letter from the trustees of the ExxonMobil pension fund stating: “The power to award discretionary increases is held by Esso Petroleum Company Limited (the “Company”). Whether or not any discretionary increase is provided is for the Company to determine: the Trustee has no power to award discretionary increases itself.” This may be a loophole that the Minister needs to address. If the trustees cannot award the surplus as benefits and the company says no, that is not going to benefit my constituents.

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37. 7 Jul 2025·Parliament·Sir Julian Lewis

    Pension Schemes Bill

    What if it is the other way round?

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38. 7 Jul 2025·Parliament·Sir Edward Leigh

    Topical Questions

    The number of small boat crossings is driving people mad and eroding support for the Labour Government, just as it eroded support for the Conservatives. I worry for the Labour Government; I want them to do better on this, for all our sakes. Have not our French friends got a point about this country being uniquely attractive to illegal asylum seekers? We do not have identity cards, and we do not do what the Belgians do, which is to refuse to put them in reception centres. Can we make a study of what every other member of the Council of Europe is doing, and replicate the strongest actions, so that this is not the most attractive country for illegal asylum seekers?

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39. 7 Jul 2025·Parliament·Sir Bernard Jenkin

    Government Performance against Fiscal Rules

    Has the Chief Secretary seen the much longer-term forecasts by the OBR for the growth in public spending and the growth in debt rising to more than 250% of GDP in decades to come and the debt interest rising to 12% of GDP? Now that there is a gaping hole in the Government’s financial plans because of the votes last week and the U-turns on welfare reform, why does he think that he can play for time, instead of acting to give the markets confidence before they lose confidence?

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40. 7 Jul 2025·Parliament·Sir Andrew Mitchell

    Actions of Iranian Regime: UK Response

    I have to say that I think the Minister is right in making the judgment about whether to proscribe the IRGC. I support the comment made by the Chair of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry). The theocratic regime in Iran has never been weaker domestically, internationally or among its regional neighbours, so there is now a real premium on working with our European and regional allies to explore all avenues of progress through more reasonable elements within Iran.

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