Showing every spoken contribution, including 5,779 under 12 words. Hide short remarks

1. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Sir Bernard Jenkin

   NHS 10-Year Plan

   I join others in welcoming much of the Secretary of State’s plan, but I want to return to the question of the Health Services Safety Investigations Body, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Melton and Syston (Edward Argar) referred. I welcome the tone of the Secretary of State’s response to that part of my right hon. Friend’s questions, but will he agree to meet those of us from the Select Committee—a cross-party group of people—who campaigned over many years to bring this body, which is still in its infancy, into existence before making any further decisions on it? As my right hon. Friend says, HSSIB is not a regulator, and to put it in with a regulator will create confusion about what it is. If he were Secretary of State for Transport, he would never dream of putting the air accidents investigation branch into the Civil Aviation Authority, because they have completely different and separate functions. That needs to be understood across the health service, and it is obviously not well understood at the moment.

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2. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Saqib Bhatti

   Children’s Access to Theatre

   As we came into the Chamber today, we heard the tragic news of the passing of Diogo Jota, the Liverpool footballer, at the age of 28. I want to put on the record our condolences to his friends and family, and to Liverpool fans across the world. These are the first DCMS orals since the spending review, which made real-term cuts to DCMS revenue and capital budgets. For months, we have been warning the Secretary of State not to let the Chancellor take money away from the creative industries, but it is quite clear that the Secretary of State and her Ministers failed to stand up for this key sector. She talks about the legacy of theatre for children, but of course, to have that, we need a thriving theatre sector. The Society of London Theatre and UK Theatre said that although the Government talk a good game on backing our creative industries, the figures tell a different story. They are right, aren’t they? The Secretary of State and the Minister failed to stand up for our world-leading theatres and creative industries, didn’t they?

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3. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Rebecca Smith

   Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [ Lords ] (Sixth sitting)

   Am I right that the hon. Lady is suggesting that a partially sighted person or a disabled person is somehow lower down the hierarchy than a cyclist, simply because they are on a bus rather than walking or cycling?

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4. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Rebecca Smith

   Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [ Lords ] (Seventh sitting)

   I want to expand a little on what my hon. Friend was saying about sustainable fuels that are, literally, drop-in fuel alternatives. Anyone watching the British Grand Prix this weekend knows that motor racing is beginning to use such fuel. There is real appetite for manufacturing it in the UK, but regulations get in the way of that happening at the moment. I have secured a meeting to share that with the Minister’s colleague, the Secretary of State for Energy, because it feels like a significant opportunity that would impact not only public transport but, in due course—I appreciate that this is not within the scope of the Bill—general users of vehicles. Ultimately, I think we all agree that we want to get to net zero from the perspective of emissions from vehicles; potentially, however, we need an alternative third way to ensure that the transition can take place.

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5. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Rebecca Smith

   Creative Industries Sector Plan

   Last week, I spent time at the Box museum in Plymouth, before heading to Plympton in my constituency for the unveiling of a blue plaque to honour the life of Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, who was the first director of the National Gallery and chair of the commission to procure art for the new Palace of Westminster. One question that was raised was about tax incentives for philanthropic giving to museums and art galleries. I note the tax relief mentioned in the creative industries sector plan, so will the Secretary of State tell me if that will address the question raised with me by the sector last week?

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6. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Nick Timothy

   Business of the House

   The rigged Government consultation on Islamophobia is overseen by supposedly independent people who have already declared their support for a definition that will kill free speech in this country. An invitation to participate in the consultation was sent only to hand-picked organisations, the identities of which the Government refuse to disclose. One of them appears to be the Muslim Council of Britain, which is supposedly subject to a Government policy of non-engagement. Which organisations were invited to take part in the consultation? Do they include the Muslim Council of Britain? May we have an oral statement, to provide some badly needed transparency?

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7. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Nick Timothy

   Phone Theft

   Will the Minister give way?

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8. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Neil O'Brien

   Music Education

   It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I congratulate the hon. Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous) on securing this very important debate. They say that politics is showbusiness for ugly people, and in my case that is directly true: the only reason I am here is that the band that I was in when I was 16, alas, did not work out. It was very unfair. The main reason it did not work out is that we were objectively terrible, and I was probably the worst member. None the less, I have always appreciated the contribution of music to our lives. Like others, I thank our fantastic music teachers and all those involved in music education in and out of schools at all levels. I would particularly like to thank my former music teacher, Tim Slater—alas, no longer here—and those who teach in my daughter’s primary school, who put on the most amazing musical works, including a series of musicals at Easter for the Passion that they wrote themselves. The quality has to be heard to be believed: they could genuinely be on Broadway. For weeks afterwards, our children and I were going round the house humming bits of the songs written by the music teachers in that little primary school, so incredible work is done across this country by wonderful people. We have had fantastic speeches from Members from both sides of the House, including the hon. Members for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine), for Newcastle- under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) and for Rugby (John Slinger). I always find Westminster Hall debates fascinating, because they are like peeling an onion: we see new sides of colleagues, from the plastic bassoon and the fusion of hip-hop and classical to the discovery that the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) is also into the Floyd—we must take that offline.

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9. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Neil O'Brien

   Music Education

   The hon. Gentleman has taken the opportunity to put on the record an important point of clarification. I understand that the Leader of the House is looking at modernising the terms that we use in this place—the word “Bill” will be scrapped, perhaps—so the next time we come to this Chamber, it may no longer be a Westminster Hall debate, but a sound system clash or some equivalent that has been modernised. To create a sense of balance, I will say various things about what the last Government did on music education. I will not say that everything in the world was brilliant—obviously it was not—but, for the sake of balance, let us hear some of the things we did. We introduced the music education hubs, which hon. Members have mentioned. They did a mix of providing musical education directly and helping schools. There are, I think, 43 in England today, and we put in £79 million over the past three years towards that programme and another £25 million for the direct capital funding of musical instruments for kids. We brought in the first ever national plan for music education, a key goal of which was to give every child the chance to learn a musical instrument. By 2018, a record number of children were learning instruments. That plan also set out goals to have high-quality music education and more partnerships between schools and others, and to try to reverse the decline in the amount of time spent on music in schools, which I will come back to in a moment. I will not make lots of political points today, but I note that the current Government have pulled the funding for the national youth music organisations. I think it was in February that the national youth music organisations announced that the Government would not be renewing their contribution of £0.5 million towards their work. That is one thing that perhaps takes us in the wrong direction. A question I want to ask the Minister early on in my remarks is about something where there is quite a lot of uncertainty for parents. The Government announced that they would top up the music and dance scheme bursaries for musically gifted young people, so that the effect of the VAT increase on independent schools was counteracted, and they said that that would mean that things would remain unchanged for the rest of the 2024-25 academic year. I want to ask the Minister what will happen for future academic years, which are of course now looming. We have only two weeks left of school, certainly in Leicestershire; it may be three in the rest of the country. The next academic year is looming, and I am keen to understand from the Minister whether that decision will stand for all future academic years and in particular for the one coming up. We have talked a bit about the various changes and trends in music education. It has not been one thing over the last 14 years; there have been different phases. There definitely was a squeeze on music in the coalition period, in the years from 2010 to 2015, but there has been a recovery since, which has not necessarily come out in the debate so far. If we look at the number of hours of music taught across all years, we see that that has gone up from about 80,000 hours a year in 2017-18 to about 86,000 now, so the total amount of music education has been going up since that low point in 2017. This is all aligned with some of the things that were happening to funding over that period. Very difficult decisions on funding were being made in the light of inheriting, in 2010, the largest structural deficit in our entire peacetime history. That was not something we wanted to inherit, but over time we moved towards more generous settlements for schools. In the last Parliament, for example, there was an 11% real-terms funding increase per pupil, and that benefited lots of different things, including music. We have talked about the loss of music teachers, but the number of music teachers has followed a similar, U-shaped trajectory. We have 1,000 more music teachers than we did in 2017-18. The number went from about 6,500 up to 7,500 by 2024. It is worth bringing out some of the nuances in this debate. Also, in a lot of debates about this subject—I have read previous debates on it—we hear people talking about GCSE entries, but as the Government’s own curriculum and assessment review points out, we have to also look at the other qualifications. Although GCSEs have gone down, technical music qualifications that are not GCSE qualifications have been going up, so it is worth having the full and rounded picture. Speaking of full and rounded pictures, the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire also talked about the nature of education debates and the way we often have different priorities being advanced. As someone who has followed education for a long time, I am very conscious that there are constant calls for x to be put on the national curriculum or for schools to do more y. Of course, our poor old teachers, our hard-working teachers, have only so many hours in their day. They are already working hard and there are inevitable trade-offs. The hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire said—I agreed with 90% of his speech—that these things are not in tension with one another. To some extent, they are. There are only a certain number of hours in the school day or in a child’s day, and we do need to make choices. I do not always say this, but one very sensible thing that the Government did was to commission some polling, as part of the curriculum review, about what parents and young people themselves want to see more of in school. The results are really interesting. The survey was of kids who did their GCSEs last year and their parents, and they were asked, “What would you like to have spent more time on in school?” In response, 35% say employment and interview skills, 27% say academic subjects, like maths, history and science, 26% say digital skills and computing, 26% say creative thinking and problem solving, 22% say sports, 22% say communication, like debating and public speaking, 19% say technical subjects, 18% say volunteering and outdoor pursuits and 15% say cultural activities like music, drama and media. I mention that not to say that music is not important—obviously it is; the whole point of this debate is that it is hugely important—but merely to sympathise slightly with Ministers for once, because a lot of different people want more of different things in the school day and there are tensions and choices for them. In that same poll, only about 1% of parents said that their kids were not doing arts subjects because they were not available at their school. There was more of an issue with technical and vocational subjects. One of the things that I am proud of about our time in government is that we prioritised gateway subjects, which has had positive effects. For example, having fallen from 83% to a low of 70% between 2006 and 2011, the share of pupils who take double or triple science has now increased to 98%, and the share of children doing triple science increased from 6%, to 27% in 2019. There was a real turnaround in science, and the same is true in other areas. One of the reasons that English schoolchildren have become the highest achieving in the western world in reading and maths, in studies such as the trends in international mathematics and science study and the programme for international student assessment, while Scotland and Wales have gone backwards, is that we have focused on the important core academic disciplines. None of that is an argument against music or doing more in music; it is simply that there are choices for us. If people say that they want more of the school day devoted to something, they should be clear about what they do not want. I am a bit sceptical about messing around too much with long-running accountability and progress measures such as Attainment 8 and Progress 8. Of course, a student’s results in GCSE music can already be put into those measures if it is one of their eight best subjects. There is discretion: three of the eight have to be from the broad range of subjects in the EBacc, but three do not, so there is already huge school choice in the measure. I am very sceptical about using it as the way to solve our problems. I will end by introducing a thought that has not been much discussed in previous debates on music education. I will not relitigate the debates we have had with the Government about phones in schools, and I do not think that this is something we will disagree on, but we need to think about the way that young people are spending their time, including out of school. I am alarmed by the changes in the way that young people are spending their time: the increase in the amount of time they are spending alone and on social media and the incredible number of kids who, when you ask them, “What are you doing this evening?”, say, “I’ll be scrolling TikTok.” That is incredibly depressing, and we can see that it is having negative real-world consequences. It is leading to worse mental health among young people and worse real-world consequences in, for example, A&E admissions. It is eating up the time for other things that, when we are much older, we wish we had spent more time on. I wish that I had spent more time learning the guitar and less time faffing around on the ZX Spectrum, that time thief of the 1980s, but young people today have it much worse because of social media. They feel compelled to be on it because of social pressure and because it is designed by geniuses to be incredibly addictive, and it is eating up their time. One thing we may find a consensus on over time is the need to do something about that and to change the balance of young people’s lives and the amount of time they spend on social media, often on platforms that they are not supposed to be on but that happily welcome young people, who they can monetise—in violation of their own terms and conditions, by the way. I fear that I am veering away from the subject, but this is an important part of the conversation. Here is a very large part of the time of young people, who are at the time of their lives when they have the opportunity and the mental sponginess to learn something new—and could, unlike me, make a success of a career in rock and roll—yet it is being swallowed up by things that in future they will not think were a good use of their time. I again congratulate the hon. Member for Southgate and Wood Green on securing this very important debate, which I welcome. There is a lot more we can do. I hope that the Minister will cover the point about the special bursaries scheme.

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10. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Neil O'Brien

    Music Education

    The Minister talks about the next financial year. Can she be clear about which school years are covered? People going into the start of the school year in September 2026 will be covered, but the Government have not made a commitment for those starting in September 2027—I just want to check that that is correct.

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11. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Neil O'Brien

    Children with Allergies: School Safeguarding

    It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Redditch (Chris Bloore) on securing this important debate, which he opened by telling a frightening story about his own child. I am sorry that he is also suffering in a smaller way this afternoon, but we never would have known; he did a good job of making his case. We also heard good speeches from the hon. Members for Clwyd East (Becky Gittins), for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis) and for Nuneaton (Jodie Gosling), which included stories about their own frightening experiences and fears of social exclusion. As other Members have done, I thank some of the groups that do great work on this subject, including the Benedict Blythe Foundation, the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, Anaphylaxis UK and Allergy UK. When I was the Minister for public health, I met some of the parents and others who had lost loved ones, and those who were working with these campaign groups. I was struck by not only the fear that people experience that something bad or terrible will happen, but that sense of people being excluded or missing out, or feeling that they cannot do things because they are not getting the information or protection they need. That is a hugely important part of the discussion. I will touch on some of the things that the previous Government did, not to say that everything is fixed—of course it is not—but to talk about how we got to this point. One thing that made a big difference was the creation of Natasha’s law in 2019, which requires all prepackaged food products to display all the key 14 allergen ingredients in bold. We started to join up the discussion across Government—something Members have called for this afternoon—with the expert advisory group for allergy. There is potentially scope to go further, and a number of Members have talked about the argument for an allergy tsar. I am sympathetic to the idea of having, in some way, shape or form, better cross-Government join-up of policy; it is a sensible thing that we need. In schools, we introduced a duty on governing boards to make arrangements to support pupils with medical conditions, so that they are all supported to actively play a part in school life. In practical terms, in 2017 we changed the law to enable schools to have their own supply of adrenalin auto-injectors for use. There is scope to go much further, but half of schools have them, up from relatively few before that change in the law. Of course, a conclusion from this debate is that there is lots of scope for pens to be available in more schools, and for us to do more to ensure that they are in date and that everyone knows where they are so they can be used at a useful point. One of the bigger things we did was bring in the statutory school food standards in 2015, which removed things like nuts as an acceptable snack. We got all schools to do a risk assessment of the way they handle these issues. We also updated the allergy advice for schools more broadly to emphasise the importance of awareness-raising about common allergies and to get more staff to recognise symptoms, particularly anaphylaxis. Again, as hon. Members have pointed out, there is scope to go further to improve the training of teachers across the board. One thing that has not been mentioned so far is the ongoing debate about Owen’s law, and the availability of information about ingredients in restaurants and settings where food is not prepackaged. It is a complex debate, but there is clearly scope to do better and to ensure that children and people of all ages feel more included in our society. I wish Ministers well in coming to a landing on some of these questions. Even just the discussion about them and the campaign itself is doing a lot of good to get providers to change their behaviour and to be more inclusive. There has been progress, but, as Members have said, there is a lot more to do in our schools to ensure that children are kept safe and can play a full part in school life and in their broader community, without having to worry or constantly duck out of or be excluded from activities that they want to be part of. This has not been a politically contentious debate. I look forward to hearing from the Minister about the next steps.

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12. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Neil O'Brien

    Poverty

    Churches across the country are doing amazing work tackling poverty, but they could be doing more. Many of my constituents will be surprised that the Church Commissioners have already spent £5 million on Project Spire when it is not within their charitable objectives, and that they plan to spend £100 million when the Charity Commission has not signed that off. Why are the Church Commissioners doing something that is not within their charitable objectives?

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13. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Ms Nusrat Ghani

    Business of the House

    Order. To ensure everybody gets a fair chance of getting in, questions and answers must be shorter.

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14. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Ms Nusrat Ghani

    Business of the House

    I call Chris Vince.

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15. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Ms Nusrat Ghani

    Business of the House

    Yes—with me joining her, no doubt.

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16. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Ms Nusrat Ghani

    Business of the House

    For the final question, I call Paul Davies.

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17. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Ms Nusrat Ghani

    NHS 10-Year Plan

    I call the shadow Secretary of State.

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18. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Mr Richard Holden

    British Musical Acts: International Promotion

    5. What steps she has taken to promote British musical acts internationally.

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19. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Mr Richard Holden

    British Musical Acts: International Promotion

    I welcome anything the Government bring forward to support our new bands and musicians across the country, but the big thing that so many musicians are asking for is that we get touring rights sorted out with our European counterparts. Could the Minister update the House on what progress there has been, if any, and how we can go further to get our bands out there and their bands over here?

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20. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Mr Louie French

    Major Sporting Events

    The Government are on the ropes after a grand slam of unforced errors. Since we last met, we have seen the Secretary of State placed under investigation after appointing a Labour crony to head the football regulator, the Chancellor slash the DCMS budget and the DCMS Government Whip resign in protest. Own goal, knock on, double fault—whatever our choice of sporting analogy, it is clear that they have royally ballsed it up. With Labour’s latest U-turn creating a fiscal black hole set to be £20 billion, what assurances can the Secretary of State give today that her Government will not go ahead with their planned tax raid on bingo halls, racecourses and sports betting, which will immensely damage sponsorship of major sporting events, fuel the black market and cost thousands of jobs across the country?

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21. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Kit Malthouse

    Business of the House

    As I am sure you, Mr Speaker, and the Leader of the House know, the number of children who have been killed in the war on Gaza now runs into the many thousands. Similar numbers of children have been mutilated and injured, and a large number of them require specialist medical treatment. As I hope she knows, countries across the west have responded by bringing those children who cannot get the treatment that they need in Gaza to their country for treatment. Shamefully, the UK has not done so, admitting only two children so far. The Home Secretary has inexplicably refused many applications to come here, despite the fact that Project Pure Hope has raised all the money required for the children’s transport, treatment and maintenance. May we please have a statement, so that MPs can understand why the numbers are so small, why applications have been refused, and what the Government will do to increase the number? If we cannot have a statement, may we at least have a meeting between the relevant Minister and a cross-party delegation of MPs to discuss what more can be done to help these children in dire need?

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22. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Katie Lam

    Phone Theft

    It should go without saying that law and order is the bedrock of a healthy society, but laws that we make in this House are only worth anything if they are enforced. In Britain today, this is all too often the story: a widening gulf between our laws and how they are actually applied. I can think of few better examples than mobile phone theft. There is a temptation to think of phone theft as an example of petty crime, but it sounds as though we in this House all agree that there is nothing petty about it. Mobile phones are a link to our friends and family, and for many people they are a necessary tool for work, study and day-to-day life. They often hold sensitive information, both personal and financial, to say nothing of the intimidation and violence experienced by victims, and the corrosive impact that rampant phone theft has on our public realm. So when we think about phone theft, we should not just be thinking about the inconvenience of a missing phone; we should be thinking about the distress to victims and the creeping sense that, increasingly, we are no longer safe in public. To capture the scale of the problem, it is useful to reflect on the data. According to last year’s crime survey for England and Wales, snatch thefts of mobile phones and bags rose by 70% last year, reaching a 20-year high. Overall, theft stands at the highest rate for a decade, according to the Office for National Statistics. At the epicentre of this crime wave is London, where thefts have more than doubled over the past five years. Three quarters of phone thefts take place there, with 116,656 phones stolen last year alone. Those devices have a street value of more than £20 million. Phone theft often contributes to other forms of crime. According to Commander James Conway of the Metropolitan Police, about 70% of London’s knife crime is linked to theft, meaning that the increase in phone theft is likely to be contributing to the city’s rampant knife crime epidemic. Cyber-security experts have also warned that phones stolen in London are being shipped off to countries like China, where they are often used in international organised crime. Perhaps that should not come as a surprise given the approach taken by Sadiq Khan, London’s Labour Mayor. He is focused on cracking down on stop and search, which is clearly proven to cut crime, while his police and crime plan barely mentions phone theft, focusing on introducing new regulations for phone companies, instead of stopping actual crimes. Of course, technology companies should do their bit where they reasonably can, but our focus should be on catching and imprisoning criminals. In the vast majority of the 116,656 cases, the reported crime is not solved, the phone is not retrieved and the offender is not arrested, leaving them to walk free to commit more crime. That is simply not acceptable and we should not accept it. All the while, police forces across the country spend an estimated 60,000 hours per year on non-crime hate incidents, collecting and storing data on speech that might be perceived to be offensive. Is it any wonder that many people are beginning to describe the state of modern Britain as anarcho-tyranny? More rules, applied more strictly for the law-abiding majority, while actual criminals walk free. While many police officers work hard and genuinely wish to make our country a safer place, the systems and incentives that govern their activities are totally broken. It is simply wrong that resources are spent on policing speech, while prolific thieves run rampant through our streets. Phone theft is not the only crime like that. For too many people in Britain, particularly in our larger cities, low-level disorder is now the unpleasant mood music of their day-to-day lives. We all feel the decline in our public realm, and it makes our country a worse place to live. Speak to any member of the British public, and they will be able to tell us exactly what to do: spend less time on policing speech and more time on catching thieves; give police forces the tools they need to tackle these crimes; and when we catch a career criminal, ensure they serve a proper prison sentence. In short, enforce the law.

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23. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·John Lamont

    Apprentices

    1. What steps the Commission is taking to increase the number of apprentices in the House of Commons.

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24. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·John Lamont

    Apprentices

    I am grateful to the hon. Member for that answer. Everyone should have the potential to work in Parliament, not just those who live in and around London, so can he confirm how many apprentices have been recruited since the introduction of the UK Parliament’s apprenticeship scheme, and in particular how many were recruited from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?

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25. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·John Lamont

    Business of the House

    Can we have a debate to recognise volunteers and fundraisers who support the work of hospices and help people living with cancer? I recently met the team at the Lavender Touch in Galashiels who have been supporting people across the Scottish Borders for over 20 years, funding and providing therapeutic treatment to bring relief to those in need. Will the Leader of the House join me in thanking them for everything that they do?

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26. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·John Lamont

    British Film and High-end Television

    I congratulate my hon. Friend on her report and her wonderful statement, as well as on all the work that has gone into the report behind the scenes. Public service broadcasters are struggling to compete with the massive budgets set by streamers, so what more can be done to ensure we see high-quality British drama and comedy on terrestrial television?

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27. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Joe Robertson

    Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [ Lords ] (Sixth sitting)

    It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Siobhain. I rise to talk briefly about floating bus stops and therefore new clause 47. Floating bus stops exist not least to help with the flow of cyclists, and I support that aim, but they present challenges for the safety of pedestrians, particularly those with disabilities. As ever when it comes to sharing the highway, pavements, and areas in and around bus stops, everything is a balance. It is about satisfactorily mitigating the risk. The challenge with floating bus stops relates particularly to people with disabilities. Of course, cyclists have a responsibility not to hit people, and the vast majority of cyclists are safe users of roads and cycle lanes. Some people, not everyone, have a slightly old-fashioned—I might say ignorant—assumption that somebody with a disability will be very visible, and that it should be obvious to cyclists that they need to take special care. That is simply not the case. That is an old-fashioned, outdated and, as I say, in some cases ignorant view. Disabilities, including physical disabilities, can be very hard to identify. I would support the prohibition of new floating bus stops, and I support all the elements of new clause 47, which is about safety and about recognising the challenges, particularly for those with disabilities. We need to get this right. I urge the Government to support the new clause.

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28. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Joe Robertson

    Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [ Lords ] (Seventh sitting)

    I will make a point that I have made before, following on from the shadow Minister’s description of clause 38 as revealing, and of the Bill as transparently not providing funding for anyone. The clause would also be helpful to demonstrate to small local authorities and local authorities that provide over large rural areas, such as my own on the Isle of Wight, the gulf between trying to realise the objectives behind franchising and having responsibility for delivering them, as a small local authority taking on all that financial risk. So, like him, I support the clause standing part of the Bill, if only to reveal to local authorities some of the issues behind it, and that it is not the all-singing, all-dancing solution that they might think.

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29. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Jesse Norman

    Business of the House

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

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30. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Jesse Norman

    Business of the House

    I am sure the Leader of the House and all Members will want to join me in recognising this year as the 81st anniversary of the announcement by the Government of a national health service, by Sir Henry Willink in 1944. Most of us wishing to celebrate an anniversary would probably have a bit of a party—maybe get a few friends round, order in some pizza and put up decorations. Only the Labour party would seek to celebrate its first year in office with the kind of Charlie Foxtrot multidimensional legislative omnishambles that we have seen in the past few days. Given their three massive reverse ferrets of recent weeks, I must say I had thought that the Government had perfected the art of the U-turn. After all, they had had U-turns on winter fuel payments and the two-child benefit cap—each, in its own way, a little masterpiece of slow-motion dithering and indecision. But then, the other day, the Government upped their game significantly by executing a comprehensive 180° U-turn on their decision to hold a statutory inquiry into grooming gangs, having repeatedly said that it was not necessary. Brilliantly, the Prime Minister managed to U-turn at the same time on his own speech about the UK being an island of strangers. I naively believed that that was the state of the art—the Government had maxed out on U-turns and nobody could be more bewilderingly incompetent than that. How wrong I was. On Tuesday, we saw something that was almost unheard of in the 750 years of our Parliament—a Minister pulling out his chainsaw and disembowelling his own Government’s flagship welfare Bill in mid-air on live television from the Dispatch Box. Really, Mr Speaker, that outstrips my poor powers of description. We need the pen of a Shakespeare or a Thackeray to do it justice; it is the quintessence of cock-up. But, actually, Mr Speaker, this past week has been much worse even than that. Just as Nick Clegg was defined by his U-turn on student fees, so the Prime Minister will be defined by this moment: a new and supposedly reforming Government with an enormous majority have been unable not to cut, but to reduce the rate of increase in public spending on benefits, let alone make any serious actual reforms to protect people. There has been a remarkable complacency about this Government and this past week has shown it up. They regard disagreement as something to be ignored or crushed: they do not answer questions at the Dispatch Box; they obfuscate on written questions; they try to ignore the Opposition; they dismiss the House of Lords; and they spurn their own Back Benchers. Loyal Labour MPs, concerned about disabled people, have been trying to get a hearing on this issue for months, only to be repeatedly rejected, and this has been the result. Three things follow from it. First, there are the immediate consequences. It will be next to impossible now for the Government to achieve meaningful reform of the welfare system. They have shown that they have no ability to make savings. Taxes will go up while the economy continues to stall. Little wonder the gilt market exploded during Prime Minister’s questions yesterday. Secondly, the Prime Minister has opened the door to future rebellions. Indeed, he has gone further than that; he has written the playbook for them. Doubtless, he will have a reshuffle sometime soon. Loyal dissenters will be punished, the talented cast out, and Select Committee Chairs bought off, but that will make no difference. There will be others—the Select Committee Chairs have shown that they are a powerful new force in Labour politics. Finally, the Prime Minister has massively damaged his own reputation. He has endlessly harped on about the need for professional competence and moral seriousness, but this has been a year in government that started with a host of undisclosed personal gifts received and has ended with utter political humiliation. He has shown that he is in office, but not in power. What is the point of this Government? No one knows, not even the Prime Minister.

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31. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Jerome Mayhew

    Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [ Lords ] (Sixth sitting)

    I challenge the Minister’s rationale on clause 30. I understood him to be saying that making a duty mandatory might force the Government to issue guidance before consultation is undertaken, but there is nothing in the clause that suggests that. If he wishes to propose that as an argument against amendment 40, he needs to set out what it is in said amendment that would require the issuing of guidance prior to any consultation or standard operating procedures. I cannot see anything like that.

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32. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Jerome Mayhew

    Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [ Lords ] (Sixth sitting)

    I am grateful for the Minister’s considered response to all the amendments. I spoke in favour of a number of amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova), who is not a member of the Committee. The mathematics of the Committee are pretty obvious, so I will treat the majority of them as probing amendments. Some of them have done their work, and I hope that those that the Minister batted away will be quietly reconsidered when he is back in the comfort of his ministerial office. I consider amendment 40 to be one such probing amendment, so I will not press it to a vote. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Amendment proposed: 43, in clause 30, page 32, line 42, at end insert— “(6A) The bodies listed in (6) may depart from such guidance only if— (a) it considers that there are exceptional local circumstances which justify the departure; and (b) it has obtained the written approval of the Secretary of State to the proposed departure. (6B) The bodies listed in (6) must pause the construction of any stopping place designed as a floating bus stop or shared bus stop boarder, and must not proceed with construction, until the Secretary of State has issued guidance under this section relating specifically to the design and use of floating island bus stops and shared bus stop boarders.”—(Jerome Mayhew.) This amendment would ensure that listed bodies would be obliged to follow the guidance except in exceptional circumstances, and would require those bodies to pause construction on new floating bus stops and shared bus-stop boarders until guidance has been published. Question put, That the amendment be made.

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33. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Jerome Mayhew

    Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [ Lords ] (Sixth sitting)

    I will not rehearse the rationale behind the need for the proposed new sections in clause 33; the Minister has set that out pretty clearly. However, there is one issue that I seek clarification on from him or his officials. The clause makes it an offence for an operator to permit a driver to drive a closed school service if the operator either knows or has reason to believe that the driver is barred from undertaking regulated activity relating to children. So far, so good. That is an offence and it comes under the criminal justice system. The clause also requires the operator to check the enhanced criminal record certificates at least every three years, and it sets out how that can be achieved, but it is silent as to whether the failure to do so is an offence. I have a question for the Minister: if an operator fails to comply with the duty to check every three years, what are the practical consequences? Is that failure an offence? I stand to be corrected on that; I may have misread the clause when I read it some time ago. If it is not an offence, how does he intend proper enforcement to be undertaken, because without robust enforcement and information on the consequences of failure to comply with the clause, the safeguarding duty risks being diminished? I will not go into the details of Government amendment 76. I fundamentally accept the need for it, because it deals with devolution. It does prompt a question about timescales, however, which the Minister might be able to put my mind at rest about. We want these improvements to be made, because they address the safety of children and the provision of transport for children, which are important. Yet through the devolution process that we all have to respect, we run the risk of a delayed response in devolved areas of the country, because there is currently no guarantee of timescales in the clause. I understand the constitutional niceties that the Minister has to comply with, but it would be helpful for Committee members, and for Members of the House more widely, to receive some assurance that conversations have at least taken place with the devolved Administrations, so that they are fully aware of the need for this amendment and their own legislative processes are not unduly delayed. If he could reassure me on that point, I would be grateful.

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34. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Jerome Mayhew

    Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [ Lords ] (Sixth sitting)

    Clause 34 concerns crime and antisocial behaviour. It is about improving personal safety and the perception of safety for people, especially women and girls, which was a key component of the Government’s manifesto. The measures aim to train staff in the bus industry to identify and respond to acts of crime, including violence against people, particularly women and girls, and antisocial behaviour. The Minister will deal with the details of the clause in his remarks, so I will reduce my comments as much as I can. Although the principles of clause 34 are, of course, difficult to argue against, I have a number of concerns about the current drafting, similar to the concerns I had with clause 33, that I urge the Minister to address. Proposed new section 144F(2) of the Transport Act 2000 requires training “to identify, respond appropriately to and, where safe to do so, prevent” crime and antisocial behaviour, but it does not set out minimum content standards or accreditation requirements. This is a sensitive issue. We are anticipating drivers putting themselves into certainly confrontational—perhaps even violent—situations, so we have to be very careful what we are asking them to do in the legislation. Will the Minister confirm that it is not the intention of the legislation to require bus drivers to physically intervene in potentially violent situations? That is quite an important point that we need to make clear. How will we ensure the consistency of training quality across different bus regions? Has any assessment been undertaken of the availability of training professionals across the country? It is not a niche area, but it is certainly a small area of training. If not, how can the Minister impose a requirement without having undertaken an assessment of the ability of the sector to comply with that requirement?

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35. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Jerome Mayhew

    Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [ Lords ] (Sixth sitting)

    I bow to the hon. Gentleman’s greater knowledge of training in this area. I am substantially persuaded by the information that he put forward in his intervention. Amendment 52, which is in my name, seeks to ensure that any training or requirements established under this clause do not include guidance that would advise, encourage, direct or imply that individuals, in this instance bus drivers, should put themselves in danger at any stage. I am grateful for the Minister’s non-verbal indication during my earlier comments that I was right in assuming that that was not the Government’s intention, but my amendment would make express what the Minister has implied. Although it is entirely right that drivers and frontline staff receive training to identify, respond to and, where safe, prevent criminal and antisocial behaviour, we must be clear that their personal safety is also essential. The amendment ensures that no training delivered under these provisions would ever advise to the contrary. It preserves the purpose of clause 34 by ensuring staff that are trained to recognise and respond appropriately to crime and antisocial behaviour while guaranteeing that such training will never instruct them to act beyond what is reasonable and safe. I will leave it the Minister to address amendment 73. Amendment 75, also tabled by the hon. Member for Wimbledon, would require relevant senior managers to undertake regular training on disability awareness and accessibility. I appreciate its intention, but I have two concerns. First, it would inevitably place an additional regulatory burden on operators and local transport authorities, where there is currently no clear evidence of an existing gap that needs to be filled. We have to remind ourselves that we are not running the buses in this Committee; we are creating legislation that requires other people to run the buses in a certain way. As legislators, it is always tempting to think, “Oh, that’s a good idea. Let’s put that in the Bill.” However, we sometimes forget that we are dealing with primary legislation, which requires an Act of Parliament to change. We need to be very careful that we do not create an administrative overload, and this provision would be an additional regulatory burden without clear evidence. We also need to be cognisant of the fact that, although some of the potentially affected organisations will be local transport authorities or large municipal bus companies—at least in the future—many of the affected businesses will be small and medium-sized enterprises, some of which will be very small local bus operators that need to be protected from over-regulation. Secondly, there is a danger of duplication and confusion when there are other statutory duties and guidance being created in the Bill, particularly those in clause 30 that deal with the safety and accessibility of stopping places. We need to ensure clarity, not an overlapping jurisdiction of training mandates, which may cause regulator confusion. Those are my concerns about amendment 75.

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36. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Jerome Mayhew

    Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [ Lords ] (Sixth sitting)

    If hon. Members cast their minds back to earlier, they will know my exact views on amendment 75, so I will not repeat them. I will not speak on amendment 69, because my remarks would be similar to those on amendment 75. I will, however, speak briefly on clause 35. Clause 35 will introduce measures on disability training. There is currently a requirement in article 16 of EU regulation 181/2011 for mandatory training on disability awareness and disability assistance to be undertaken by particular categories of staff of carriers and terminal managing bodies, with different categories of staff required to do different elements of the training. The Government are totally right to realise that that is an unnecessary complication, and that there needs to be a tidying up exercise so that all staff dealing with passengers in the transport sector receive similar training. Clause 35 streamlines the requirement so that all categories of local bus service staff referenced in article 16 of the EU regulation should undertake both disability assistance and disability awareness training, and stay current every five years. It enables bus drivers and staff who deal directly with the travelling public or issues related to them, including those who provide direct assistance to passengers, to be informed of the needs and experiences of disabled people—quite right too. That is a good clarification. Clause 36 deals with training about disability and contains further provisions. Its intentions are as decent as those of clause 35, and they are undeniably important. Namely, it seeks to ensure the effective implementation of disability awareness training requirements. However, we need to be aware of the potential issues with regulatory overreach and the administration burden. Measures under subsection (1) of the clause empower the Secretary of State to require operators to keep, publish and provide compliance records. I am repeating myself slightly, but this is an important point: we are dealing with primary legislation that covers the entire sector. It affects not just big organisations but SMEs; we have to remember that not all operators are large organisations. For SMEs with a small workforce or a small fleet, increases to the administrative burden can be disproportionate to the benefit that such requirements to maintain data can bring to others. I wonder whether that burden is justified in terms of its outcome, and not just theoretical tidiness. Theoretically, I understand the provision and it makes sense. We are saying, “We want operators to do these things, therefore we want records that are updated and published regularly.” In reality, that comes with a time and labour cost. How will services be improved in practical terms as a result of the additional requirement? Has the Minister already conducted an impact assessment of the additional financial and administrative burdens that the measure will place on smaller local authorities and bus operators? Government amendment 20 ensures that references in the Rights of Passengers in Bus and Coach Transport (Exemptions and Enforcement) Regulations 2013 to the “enforcement authority” cover traffic commissioners responsible for taking enforcement action under regulation 10A. Again, I will leave it to the Minister to address the amendment. I hope Committee members are applauding my changed approach to the pace at which I am going through some of these provisions—it is against my better judgment. As a former lawyer, I love going into the subsections, but I am trying to canter on. There is a concern with amendment 20 that we are loading a whole load of additional obligations on to traffic commissioners, these previously unknown—certainly in my case—servants of the state. A question arises about capacity and the funding necessary to increase it. Traffic commissioners already oversee a vast amount of regulatory functions for operating licensing, vehicle standards and general compliance across the bus and coach sectors. The Bill, particularly clause 36, adds significant additional enforcement duties, and that obviously comes at a cost in both manpower and legal fees. If a commissioner takes enforcement action, they have to be prepared to defend their decisions in court, and that is expensive, particularly if they lose. We can all agree that there are significant costs associated with the clause, should it be enacted, but the Bill is silent on funding for traffic commissioners—there is no mention of it all. What is the assessed cost to traffic commissioners of the proposed changes, in aggregate? What changes will be made to traffic commissioner budgets to allow for this burden? Will the Minister conduct an assessment of the current work of traffic commissioners and whether they have the resources and time to fulfil this additional duty? Those are minor but important points; we have to think about the practicalities of what we are asking. This is not guidance but primary legislation, so we need to be cognisant of its consequences and prepare for them. Government amendment 21 follows amendment 20, and I have no comment on it. The same goes for Government amendment 22, which is another procedural tidying-up exercise that I have no objection to. Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Kate Dearden.)

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37. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Jerome Mayhew

    Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [ Lords ] (Seventh sitting)

    I seek clarification on the import of the hon. Lady’s amendment. On Transport for London, she said that no newly purchased bus would be outside this consideration. Proposed new section 151A(1), for which she seeks to bring the date forward, states: “The operator of a service that falls within subsection (2) may not use a vehicle that falls within subsection (3)”. Her amendment would therefore mean that no existing bus that was not zero emission at the tailpipe could be used from 2027 onwards. Is that really her intention?

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38. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Jerome Mayhew

    Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [ Lords ] (Seventh sitting)

    As has become my custom, I will start with the clause and then look at the amendments. I will be relatively brief, but it is worth highlighting that clause 37 deals with the use of zero emission vehicles for local services in England. It is intended to prevent the use of new non-zero emission buses in local bus services in England, but inevitably there a number of qualifications to the proposed ban. Under proposed new section 151A(2)(a), the ban will be limited to local bus services or London local services, the rationale behind which is presumably that long-distance buses do not currently have the technology to reliably use electric batteries, as opposed to other forms of lower-carbon technology. That raises questions about rural services that are classified as “local” but are, in fact, long distance. The county of Norfolk is a big old place, and there are long journeys that are classified as “local”. I raise a flag at the way in which the Government have sought to vary the classification by taking out long-distance journeys, and assuming that bus battery technology is therefore capable of dealing with all other local services. That is not necessarily the case where long rural routes, which are classified as “local”, still face the same disadvantage in battery technology, as it is currently developed. I am raising that issue with the Minister so that he can go away and think about it. The date of registration is 1 January 2030. The consequence of the clause is that it bans tailpipe emissions, and there is a separate, but slightly more philosophical, point. I have a challenge to the Government’s policy direction: it looks like the Government are picking winners—in fact, they definitely are—in relation to low-carbon technology. The tailpipe emissions include CO2, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxide and particulates, which is all set out in subsection (3)(c). Currently, only hydrogen and electric buses would qualify, so there is a huge implication to this clause. This is a blanket ban for new registrations, which undoubtedly has some positives but also some negatives of which we collectively ought to be aware. The positives of these vehicles are their quietness and, as the hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion pointed out, air quality. That is a significant positive. I was born and went to school in my early years in London, and the difference in air quality in this city between then and now is enormous. It is a totally different experience from back in the 1970s, when vehicle fumes just enveloped us. That has made a huge difference. If we agree to the amendment, however, we would be legislating enormous cost increases for the creators of fleets. We need to be careful: the cost of a standard Euro VI compliant bus, which has the most efficient engine, is about £180,000. An electric equivalent is about half a million pounds. These are hugely different orders of cost.

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39. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Jerome Mayhew

    Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [ Lords ] (Seventh sitting)

    I was just coming to that. The hon. Lady is quite right, but I am talking about the up-front capital cost. The lifetime running cost may well be cheaper for an electric bus, but the creator has to finance their capital cost on day one, whereas the lifetime operating costs are spread over the effective lifetime of the asset, which, for an electric bus, is an interesting question, actually. The lifetime of the structure of the bus may be 15 or 20 years, but we are not yet sure what the effective lifetime of the battery component of the bus is, and whether or not it needs to be replaced after about 10 years. The data is not particularly robust on that. If it means that we have to change out enormous battery banks during the operating process, that would be a significant additional secondary capex cost. The Department for Transport figures for March 2024 say that there are 29,400 buses used by local bus companies. If we are going to replace all of those, that would be an £8 billion investment. That is very significant, and it is not considered in the impact assessment. There are some long-term savings, as the hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion quite rightly pointed out. It is not just the differential in costs between electric and diesel; there are reduced maintenance costs as well. There are many fewer moving parts with an electric vehicle as well as the lower fuel cost, but the capex costs are front-loaded, and we cannot ignore that. Have the Government considered the financing consequences of imposing large, increased, front-loaded capex costs on bus companies? I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response. The second issue here is that through the current drafting, the Government are inevitably picking a winner in terms of technology for low-carbon vehicles, because it focuses on tailpipe emissions and ignores whole-life carbon assessments. That is important; again, we must have a balance of approach here. There is a significant benefit in zero tailpipe emissions, which is primarily about air quality as opposed to carbon and greenhouse gas emissions. There are very significant emissions during the construction of large-scale battery-operated buses, and there are alternatives under development. In the life cycle of the vehicle, if we take into account its construction, operation and disassembly, it is likely that new technologies, particularly ones using synthetic fuels, could be lower in carbon terms, albeit emitting Euro VI equivalent particulates at the tailpipe. The Bill denies an opportunity for that market to develop. There are currently artificially-produced fuels made using renewable energy that have no net CO2 emissions over their life cycle. If they are interested, I can explain the basic process to Members: it uses carbon capture plus hydrogen from renewable electricity, synthesised via processes such as the Fischer-Tropsch or methanol synthesis, to create e-diesel, e-kerosene, e-methanol or e-gasoline. The key benefit is that it works with existing engines and fuel infrastructure, and avoids the enormous carbon emissions from wasting existing built infrastructure and machinery. We need to understand that we have “spent” an enormous amount of carbon and greenhouse gases in constructing the 29,400 vehicles—buses—already out there, many of which have a natural life that could be extended significantly. We do not even need to convert them: we could just pour a synthetic fuel into the same bus, saving all the carbon associated with the manufacturing of new, large-scale hydrogen or electricity buses. At the very least, that would be a significant transitional material to extend the use of existing, or pre-manufactured, vehicles. We try to reduce, reuse and recycle, and that would be an absolutely classic case of a good thing, and yet the clause, I am afraid to say, prohibits the development of that market. I suspect that that is not the intention of the Department or the Minister, but that is what will happen.

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40. 3 Jul 2025·Parliament·Jerome Mayhew

    Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [ Lords ] (Seventh sitting)

    I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. I accept that currently synthetic fuels are expensive, because they are at the development stage, but I do not believe that the Government’s intention is for the clause to write them out. I recognise that the Minister is unlikely to tear up his clause on my say-so, but I would be grateful if he discussed the issue further with his Department. I will leave it to the Minister to consider amendments 32 and 33, and the same can be said for amendments 78 and 58, tabled by the Liberal Democrats. Finally, therefore, amendment 63 would require the Secretary of State, within six months, to produce a report assessing the adequacy of funding for the replacement of emitting buses with zero emission versions. The amendment is right to focus once again on the central issue of funding, because that is totally absent from the existing drafting of the clause, but—a fatal “but” from my perspective—the amendment focuses on the LTAs. In fact, however, in the vast majority of cases, the cost lies with private operators and not with the local transport authority. The amendment makes no mention of what should be done for them, and that lets the Government off the hook, frankly, of addressing the real problem, which is the bus companies and the impact on them, as opposed to the local transport authorities. That is probably an inadvertent oversight, but I just point it out.

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