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In addition to some customers not being comfortable using digital, some are unable to do so because they do not have broadband. I am sure the hon. Lady’s constituency is like mine. For some communities, if the bank branch has gone, using the banking app is not possible because the broadband capability is not there.
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the rare opportunity against the run of play to follow my near neighbour, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) from Strangford. Mark Rutte, the NATO Secretary-General, has recently congratulated President Trump on his “decisive action in Iran”, which he says “makes us all safer”. Will the Minister take the opportunity to do what no one in government has so far done and congratulate the Americans on taking out the Iranian nuclear programme? If not, will she explain why we are out of step not only with the Americans, but also now with NATO?
I have been banging on like a howitzer—well, maybe like a small-bore cannon—about the need to mobilise British industry as we ramp up for possible conflict in an increasingly hostile world. I welcome the news that the new national armaments director is being resourced to oversee the alliance between our military brains and brawn and the sinews of the British defence industry. Civilians talk tactics, but veterans talk logistics, for old warriors know that a modern army marches not so much on its stomach, as in the days of Wellington and Napoleon, as on a very long supply chain, anchored mainly in small and medium-sized enterprises. That extends—to use the military’s favourite phrase—to all domains. We have had recent sharp lessons on the reality of modern warfare, from the muddy hell of trenches in occupied Ukraine to the arid highlands of Iran. We have seen high-tech systems—drones, cyber, space and stealth—undergo a baptism of fire. We have also seen weapons that would have been familiar to my infantryman grandfather on the shores of Gallipoli in 1915 plying their old trade to deadly effect; artillery remains the queen of the battlefield. While our sailors, soldiers and aircrew are the tip of the spear, the essential shaft is our factories and shipyards, and every corner of the country can play its full part. I say “every part”, but there is bad news from Scotland under the yoke of the SNP, where the nationalists and their Green party fellow travellers have engendered a hostile environment for defence firms. We have seen young apprentices denied entrance to the Holyrood Parliament by an elected representative tipped to lead the Greens; and, in recent days, we have seen former First Minister Humza Yousaf—still an MSP—blundering around on the world stage, shroud-waving about it being a war crime to allow US military aircraft to refuel at Prestwick airport, and bemoaning the proscription of the saboteurs of Palestine Action. There is a presumption, as we heard from the hon. Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie), that the Scottish Government will not channel funding towards ordnance—a battlefield prerequisite. That has led this Government to step in and say that they will help to fund a new Rolls-Royce centre of welding excellence on the Clyde, which will be key to submarine and warship building. The stakes could not be higher. Scotland is already a defence powerhouse. Umbrella body ADS estimates that 16,250 people in Scotland work in the sector, producing Royal Navy warships, cutting-edge radars, optronic masts—do not dare call them mere periscopes—for submarines and smart missiles such as Storm Shadow. Even my rural constituency of Dumfries and Galloway produces the helmets vital to the sensor suite on F-35 Lightning fighter bombers, of which we are purchasing 12 more nuclear-capable Alpha variants. Figures from 2023 show that the Ministry of Defence spends £370 per person living in Scotland. It is—or ought to be—Britain’s arsenal, and as such, Scotland should be top of the national armaments director’s in-tray, yet firms wanting to set up the new ordnance factories recommended in the strategic defence review, or seeking to expand in order to fulfil new MOD orders, cannot count on financial support via the Scottish Government. Whose side is Scotland’s First Minister on? Will the Minister tell the House what powers the new armaments director will have to eliminate the Scottish Government’s reckless fifth columnist policies on defence?
My hon. Friend talks about probation and prison places. Does he share my concern that it is all very well for the Government to announce £7 billion to deliver prison places by 2031, which is six years away, while 16,000 prisoners are walking the streets because they were released earlier by this Government? What will happen in the next six years? Will more prisoners be released early while we wait for those prison places?
The hon. Member referred to the early release scheme as temporary. Is she 100% confident that it is a temporary scheme, and that the Government will not release more prisoners over the next few years?
The hon. Member talks about £100 million being available for mayoral combined authorities, but is she confident that that is genuinely new money, rather than money reallocated from other pots for mayors to distribute?
My right hon. Friend talks about the Bus Services (No. 2) Bill, which is now in Committee. Does she share my concern that the franchising arrangements that that Bill offers have little attraction for small local authorities such as mine on the Isle of Wight, because if it were minded to go down the route of franchising, it would take all the risk and could end up with a very large shortfall that perhaps metropolitan boroughs can swallow, but certainly smaller local authorities such as mine could not?
It sounds as if the hon. Member is placing his faith in his new Reform county council. Is that really the case?
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on his Department’s plan to procure nuclear-certified F-35A aircraft.
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question. You will recall that the Government’s plan, announced today, to procure nuclear-certified F-35As was previously covered in The Sunday Times the day before the SDR was published. You therefore granted an urgent question that day on this very subject, but we received no meaningful answers at all. I hope the Minister can be more forthcoming today. On 25 May, I wrote in the Express that our nuclear forces needed to be “even more resilient”, including in respect of the continuous at-sea deterrent, but also, “potentially, by diversifying our methods for delivering nuclear strike.” That is because we have to recognise the threat posed by Russia in particular, and its ability to operate nuclear weapons at tactical and theatre levels. To deter effectively, we must be able to do the same. In principle, then, I welcome the announcement, but I have the following questions. What is the anticipated in-service date for the 12 F-35As? Will they already be nuclear certified, or will that occur after delivery? We note that the 12 F-35As will be ordered instead of 12 F-35Bs, but will the Government still order the remaining F-35Bs as planned? How will the F-35As be air-to-air refuelled, given that the current RAF refuelling capability is probe and drogue? On operational sovereignty, we are fully committed to our strong military partnership with the United States, but given that the announcement is about diversity of delivery, has the Department given any thought to additional tactical options for which we have greater industrial input, such as Storm Shadow and Typhoon? Ironically, it was Lord Robertson, as Defence Secretary in 1998, who removed our last air-launched nuclear capabilities. It is noteworthy that, as one of the authors of the SDR, he said to the Select Committee recently that the authors were “not terribly enthusiastic about it.” That is before we get to the fact that the Deputy Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary voted against the renewal of Trident. On this side of the House, we wholeheartedly back our nuclear deterrent. Does this situation not show why we need a robust plan to get to 3% on defence in this Parliament, rather than Labour’s smoke-and-mirrors and lack of a fully funded plan to properly increase defence spending in this Parliament?
It is 2.4%—less than we spent.
It is a pleasure to respond to today’s estimates debate on defence expenditure. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for North Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, for securing the debate with the Backbench Business Committee, and particularly for timing it perfectly for the NATO summit and Armed Forces Week. Given the threats we face from Russia and the instability in the middle east and elsewhere, it is welcome in principle that NATO states have agreed at this week’s summit to increase spending. Nevertheless, when we consider what the Government’s announcement means for UK defence expenditure, we must be clear that talk of 5% on national security and 3.5% on defence is nothing but a con. It is unadulterated smoke and mirrors when we need real investment at real pace to produce a real step change in our deterrence. Consider first the promise of 5% on national security by 2035, consisting of 3.5% on the core defence budget and 1.5% on resilience and security. The Prime Minister confirmed on GB News yesterday that the 1.5% is already being spent. Not a penny of new money is being spent on actual military capability. As for the core defence budget, Labour has promised 3.5% in 10 years’ time, but the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster confirmed on yesterday’s media round that there is no plan to fund that increase, and there will not be one until at least 2029. If there is no plan for 3.5% in the Parliament after next, what about a plan for 3% in the next Parliament? The authors of the strategic defence review wrote on the day of its publication, 2 June, that the decision to go to 3% “established the affordability of our recommendations across a 10-year programme.” The problem is this: the Government no more have a plan to fund 3.5% in a decade than to fund 3% in the years leading up to it. It means that the promises of the SDR were dead on arrival, and the headline pledge of “up to 12” nuclear submarines is a fantasy fleet based on fantasy funding. Most worryingly, the smoke and mirrors are not just being used for spending in future Parliaments. What I am about to say is subject to the caveat that in response to our written questions to the Treasury, it is simply not sharing with us the quantum of money that has been moved from the intelligence budget into defence. Nevertheless, as far as we can see, Labour is not going to spend the 2.5% that it promised for defence by 2027. To recap, in his defence spending statement in February, the Prime Minister confirmed that intelligence spending would be added to the core defence budget, taking it to 2.6%. By our reckoning, that intelligence spend is the equivalent of almost 0.2% of GDP. Subtracting that from 2.6% gives a figure of just over 2.4%. The smoke and mirrors do not end there. That 2.4% will have to cover the cost of Chagos, which is at least £250 million next year, rising to a total of £30 billion. That 2.4% will also have to include spending on election interference, and other non-official development assistance FCDO expenditure that the spending review confirmed would now be added to the defence budget. The significance of that is that if 2.6% is actually in the region of 2.4%, it will mean that the increase in defence spending to 2027 is not the biggest since the cold war, because it will be less than the increase when Boris Johnson was Prime Minister in 2019. Here is the upshot of the so-called 5% on national security that Labour has announced at NATO: no new money in the 1.5% for security and resilience, just reclassification of existing spending; no plan to get to 3.5% on the core defence budget by 2035; and no plan to get to 3% on the core defence budget in the next Parliament. The detail of the spending review confirmed that when spending hits the supposed figure of 2.6% in 2027, it does not increase towards 3% but stays flat. Worse than that, as I have explained, defence spending does not get to 2.6% on defence at all, but to something like 2.4% at best. It is smoke and mirrors at every turn. If there is one thing worse than the lack of substance in Labour’s defence spending spin, it is the lack of urgency. Its promises are all about 2035, a decade away, but the threats that we face are real and imminent. As the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee said in his excellent speech, last July the head of the Army, General Walker, said that we must be ready for a war not in a decade or even five years, but within three years. The SDR promised a bigger Army in reserve, but only in the 2030s. Its big headline promise on attack submarines will be delivered into the 2040s. Warfare is changing fast, but Labour is moving far too slowly. The SDR was promised for the spring, but published in the summer. The defence industrial strategy was also promised for the spring, but the Minister recently confirmed to me in a written answer that it is months away. The Government must move much faster to boost the total lethality of our forces in the near term, not least by rapidly embracing the extraordinary opportunity to boost our overall mass and capability through autonomous systems and drones. In my defence drone strategy, the aim was to provide high-quality drone and anti-drone tech for Ukraine—which we have done, and I am very proud of that—and then to learn from that, in parallel, to build a UK sovereign drone industrial base, but that has been completely stymied by the procurement freeze effectively in place since the election. Labour is prioritising penny-pinching over rapid rearmament. While Ukraine is producing thousands and thousands of drones every month, Labour ordered just three new military drones for the British armed forces in its first financial year in government. What would we do differently? We would go to 3% on defence in this Parliament. We would scrap the Government’s crazy Chagos deal and use the money to rapidly rearm, starting with next year’s £250 million on Chagos. That cash could be spent not on tax cuts for the Mauritians, but on drones and anti-drone tech from British SMEs—on tech that is battle-proven in Ukraine and can be produced in months, and that can be ordered at a low cost but a sufficient scale to enable the Army to start training comprehensively in drone warfare by next year. That is the kind of urgency that we need to see against the threat we face. If the country hears that the Government are going to spend 5% of GDP on defence, it will assume that it will be like in 1985, when we actually spent 5% of GDP on our military, not on smoke and mirrors. That gave us 337,000 regular personnel, over 600 combat aircraft and a full array of tactical nuclear weapons for land, sea and air. Perhaps there is a reason why our 5% then was so different from Labour’s 5% today: in 1985, our Prime Minister actually led the country. Instead of surrendering sovereignty, Mrs Thatcher stood up to Galtieri and successfully defended the Falklands. She would never have been neutral when asked if she supported strikes by the US on the nuclear programme of a country like Iran. By standing shoulder to shoulder with Washington, she helped to bring down the Berlin wall and relight the torch of freedom in Europe. Far from returning to the days of 1985 and actually spending 5% of GDP on defence, we now have instead a massive con trick from Labour. Unfunded ambitions and smoke and mirrors will not deter our adversaries. In Armed Forces Week, those who bravely serve our nation deserve much better.
The Minister mentioned money, and it is brilliant that she is engaging in that debate. I mentioned the 2.6% issue. This is very important; the pledge is for 2.6% of GDP by 2027. In written parliamentary answers, we are not being told what quantum of money will be added to the Ministry of Defence budget—namely, what the intelligence spend will be, and the spend on the Foreign Office items outside Chagos. Will the Minister tell what that quantum is, so that we know whether the MOD will really be spending 2.5% on the core defence budget?
It is a pleasure to respond on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition. I thank the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) for securing this important debate. Transport has always been about more than how we get from A to B. Infrastructure is the connective tissue of our economy, and investment in infrastructure can propel economic growth. I think the whole House would agree with that statement. In that light, I welcome the fact that the spending review confirmed that capital investment, excluding spending on HS2, will increase at a real-terms annual growth rate of 3.9% between 2025-26 and 2029-30. The Government have outlined where much of this capital will be directed in the spending review and the 10-year infrastructure plan, and I am pleased that many of these projects align with the commitments set out in the previous Government’s Network North plan. I look forward to the publication of the infrastructure pipeline in July to see further information.
My right hon. Friend is a doughty champion for her Aldridge constituents. I share her disappointment. It is not the first time I have heard her raise that disappointment in this Chamber in the past few months and—
No, I suspect it will not be the last time I hear it. There will be occasions when Labour Members fail to read the previous Government’s announcements, so for their benefit let me point out how the funding sums promised to authorities by the previous Government have been closely replicated, in some cases identically replicated, by those promised in this Government’s spending review announcements. For example, for West Yorkshire, £2.115 billion was promised in 2023, and £2.115 billion in 2025; for Greater Manchester, £2.47 billion was promised in 2023, and £2.47 billion in 2025; for the Liverpool city region, £1.58 billion was promised in 2023, and £1.58 billion in 2025; and for West Midlands, £2.65 billion was promised in 2023, and £2.4 billion in 2025. I could go on, but Members will recognise the point. The estimates and the spending review are not new and they are not innovative. Turning to the substance of the Government’s plans, I want to take this opportunity to examine some of the assumptions underpinning this spending review. I am afraid those assumptions are flawed. The first relates to the supposed benefits of nationalisation. The spending review anticipates that the Department for Transport’s resource departmental expenditure limits, which is its day-to-day revenue spending, will fall by 5% in real terms during the next three years. I do not dispute that it is possible to make savings in the Department for Transport, but I do question the means by which the Government expect to deliver those savings. The spending review claims: “Resource DEL funding falls in real terms over the period, primarily driven by a declining rail passenger services subsidy as passenger ridership and revenue continue to recover post COVID-19 and efficiencies and savings are made through public ownership.” This is another entry in the ever-growing list of benefits that Labour claims nationalisation will deliver—lower fares, no strikes, better services and now lower spending. Let us be clear: this is political daydreaming, not economic reality. The first train operating company to be brought into public ownership by the Government was South Western Railway, and we have already seen unexpected costs with its rolling stock. Credible reports show that mistakes made by the Government will cost the taxpayer an anticipated £250 million more. The Transport Secretary herself has admitted that nationalisation is not a silver bullet. She is right, but the narrative presented in the spending review and these estimates continues to rely on assumptions that remain unproven. Labour’s ideological plan to nationalise even the best performing rail operators will benefit neither passengers nor taxpayers. Beyond the loss of private sector investment, nationalisation also poses a deep structural risk, because under a single nationalised employer, there will be enormous pressure to harmonise terms and conditions across the entire railway workforce. That may sound harmless or even desirable, but in practice it means the trade unions openly calling for levelling up pay, benefits and working practices to the most generous standards currently found in the system, and they have wasted no time in doing that. I am sure that their members will be delighted by that, but for the Government, the taxpayer and the fare payer, that has one inevitable outcome: rising costs, almost certainly with no corresponding rises in productivity. Far from delivering savings, this sets the stage for spiralling costs, renewed industrial action and even poorer services for passengers. Turning to the wider economic picture, the Government claim their infrastructure plans are “creating the conditions for sustainable economic growth in communities throughout the UK.” However, the truth is that the greatest barrier to growth in this country is not a lack of spending. How could it be when current levels of spending are just about the highest in our entire peacetime history? No, the greatest barrier to growth is the economic mismanagement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and this Labour Government. We know that to fund this increased spending, Labour has not got control of the welfare bill, or reduced the size of the state, but simply changed the fiscal rules to allow billions more in borrowing. More borrowing is certainly not the long-term answer—this is not free money. Britain already spends almost £106 billion a year just to service its debt. For context, those payments outweigh what we spend to protect our country not just from foreign threats, but from crime at home, because our debt-servicing payments exceed the combined amounts allocated in the spending review to the Ministry of Defence, the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. That is not just unsustainable, but irresponsible. Higher spending and higher borrowing fuels inflation. It undermines growth and it blows a hole in the public finances. Of course, we all know how Labour plans to fill that hole—with higher taxes. Will the Transport Secretary urge the Chancellor to restore discipline to the public finances? I hope she does. Will she set a credible strategy to deliver efficiencies within the Department for Transport? I hope she does, so that come autumn we are not hit with yet another round of tax hikes. I thank hon. Members for their contributions to this estimates debate, exploring their priorities for Government spending, including those Members who presented a vision with which I might disagree. We must acknowledge that the Government continue to offer more questions than solutions. In transport, we are presented with legislation to change bus policy without the funding that we know will be required to implement it properly. We await pipeline plans, railway reform papers and road investment strategies. When I was appointed shadow Secretary of State, I was initially faced by the former Transport Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sheffield Heeley (Louise Haigh), who constantly declared that she wanted “to move fast and fix things.”—[Official Report, 10 October 2024; Vol. 754, c. 446.] But nearly a year into this Government, it feels as though things are moving at the speed of a canal boat in reverse—very slowly and taking the country backwards. The problem is not the current Transport Secretary, or the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane), who is responding to the debate today. The problem emanates from No. 10 and No. 11 Downing Street, because when the captain and the first officer of the ship have no ideas of their own, refuse to scan the horizon and see it for what it is, rather than what they would wish it to be, the journey ends up lost and directionless. For the good of the country, I hope that the Government will come to understand that real change means supporting British business and backing the everyday commuter. In the meantime, I fear these estimates are indicative of a Government who are not listening, failing to heed the warnings and will continue steering the ship of state straight towards the iceberg.
In response to an earlier question, I was pleased to hear the Minister commit to seeking to compress the timetable between delivery and the in-service date. I believe I heard the Minister say that the delivery date was the back end of the 2020s. Can she confirm the anticipated in-service date?
The hon. Gentleman raises an important point about court backlogs. Another factor is having the appropriate magistrates, legal advisers and so on to hear these cases. The Magistrates’ Association has raised concerns that the spending review allocation is insufficient to tackle that. Does he share those concerns?
Today this House is quite properly considering the scale and seriousness of the threats we face, from those requiring conventional deterrence in Europe to those of strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific. The case for strengthening our armed forces is not just compelling but essential. However, we must be honest about how we fund this renewal, and what we are willing to sacrifice to do so. Let me be clear: the case for increased defence spending is self-evident. Like many others, I have long argued that we must invest more in our sovereign capability, critical munitions, advanced deterrence and national resilience, including by expanding both the remit and the resourcing of the national armaments director. The strategic significance of that role has grown substantially. In today’s volatile security environment, the national armaments director is not merely a procurement official; they are the principal architect of our defence industrial strategy, responsible for ensuring that our armed forces are equipped not just adequately, but decisively. Their portfolio spans capability planning, acquisition reform, exportability and the stewardship of our defence supply base, from the factory floor to the frontline. In an age of contested logistics, technological disruption and rapid rearmament by authoritarian regimes, the role is fundamental to preserving both operational readiness and sovereign capability. Delivering a credible deterrent in today’s world means accelerating procurement cycles, building in modularity and adaptability, strengthening domestic supply chains, and driving long-term collaboration between government, industry and academia. It means ensuring that we can surge production in a crisis, replenish stockpiles at speed and invest in the innovation that gives us the strategic edge. That cannot be done in isolation or as an afterthought. That work must be led, co-ordinated and embedded across defence planning, not in spite of fiscal pressures, but because of them. If we are serious about resilience, readiness and regeneration, we must empower the national armaments director with the authority, capacity and resources to act not simply as a technical overseer, but as a strategic enabler at the heart of defence policy. Only then can we translate increased spending into real-world capability, and ensure that British power is not only credible on paper, but deliverable in practice. However, this investment must not come at the expense of our international development commitments. Funding defence by slashing foreign aid is a false economy. Worse, it risks undermining the strategic posture that we seek to build. Aid is not an indulgence. It is not a soft option, and it is certainly not a luxury for easier times. It is an instrument of national strategy—a projection of British values, a tool of soft power, and a forward-deployed asset in the defence of the realm. When Britain pulls back from the world, our adversaries do not hesitate to step in. China in particular has understood this dynamic. It does not wait for crises to send in troops; it sends in investment, infrastructure and influence, often to the very regions from which we have retreated. When we reduce aid, we do not save; we cede ground and create vacuums that others are all too willing to fill. Let us be frank: foreign aid and defence are not in conflict. They are complementary. One builds resilience, prevents crises and supports our allies; the other protects us as those crises unfold. A truly strategic posture requires both, because real security does not start when the first shot is fired. It starts in the classrooms of conflict zones, in the clinics of fragile states, and in the partnerships we forge before troubles take root. If we choose to retreat from the world, we shall find that the world does not retreat from us.
In Armed Forces Week, I want to thank our brave servicemen and women who do so much to keep us safe. I welcome the Minister’s response to this urgent question tabled by His Majesty’s Opposition, but can she give us a cast-iron reassurance that our continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent will be supported and maintained by His Majesty’s Government, and that they will not contemplate any reduction in the submarine fleet from four to three submarines, which was alarmingly floated by the third party not so long ago?
It is a pleasure to serve under your leadership, Dame Siobhain, and to be here. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley) for securing this debate on a topic that I am all too familiar with, having spent time as a GP. This place may not be so familiar with the inner workings of GP practices, so it is fantastic to have the chance to discuss it. I declare an interest: many of my immediate and wider family are GPs, and it is important to put that on the record. This debate has allowed us to discuss a huge variety of things, including the Carr-Hill formula and the QOF. We did not touch on DES and LES—directed enhanced services and local enhanced services. Rural dispensing practices are a really important funding stream. We have talked about the partnership model, retention, joining up services, ICBs and their toolkits, the interaction with the planning department and rurality, which has a particular impact on services in my area. I want to pick up on the comments made by the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Vikki Slade). Fair play to her for going out and shadowing a GP to see what their life is all about. At the heart of what she said was the good care that goes on. If we were to believe the Daily Mail, every GP is on the golf course and only cares about the money. The money is important, but GPs care far more about the patients and the quality of care they give. That is what drives them and gets them out of bed each day. We in this house must not forget that when we discuss healthcare, because it is important. We will get far better healthcare than ever before in the last few decades, and we must not lose sight of that. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Newton Abbot for giving me my first chance as a shadow Health Minister to debate general practice and ask the Minister some questions. Without further ado, I will turn to those questions. First, what is the Government’s current position on primary care and its models? In an interview in The Times in January 2023, the current Secretary of State for Health and Social Care said: “I’m minded to phase out the whole system of GP partners altogether and look at salaried GPs working in modern practices alongside a range of other professionals.” He went on to speak at events held by the King’s Fund and the Institute for Public Policy Research, where he acknowledged that he has “observed a GP partnership model in decline where very soon we’re going to have more salaried GPs than partner GPs” and that the “status quo is not an option”. Then 18 months ago, just six months before the election, the Secretary of State stated, “What we were minded to do is to sort of phase it out over time. I’m still not sure whether or not the GP partnership can survive in the longer term. But I haven’t reached a sort of firm conclusion that says that it shouldn’t.” In the light of that, and given the importance of the partnership model, could the Government clarify their position with regard to the partnership model and any other models that are being considered?
The hon. Lady is spot on. I posed my question to the Government because we know that primary care is one of the most efficient parts of the NHS. Why? Because the people running those businesses—they are businesses, and we have to be open and honest about that—pay attention to where the money comes in and goes out. They take full pride in it, first, because they care, and secondly, because their salaries are paid from the profit that comes out of that. Again, “profit” is a dirty word that people do not like to use, but it is the reality of what we are dealing with when it comes to how we break down the funding. The Government have proposed to get rid of NHS England, and it is still unclear not only how much that will cost, but how much it will save and where the administrative burden will fall. On top of that, we do not know what will replace the partnership model if we lose it, and this is the question to be asked. Given that it was only six months before the election that the Secretary of State stated his intent, I too am keen to find out the answer. I have a second question to pose to the Government. There are concerning reports this month in the Health Service Journal, which has had sight of a leaked version of the Government’s 10-year plan to improve the NHS. It says that the plan will push back the Government’s ambition to increase the share of NHS spending on primary and community care to 2035, rather than 2029 as originally promised. Can the Minister confirm or deny those reports? When it comes to funding, the Government raised taxes directly on GPs as part of the national insurance increase. Has the Department made any assessment of how much of the £886 million uplift that has been allocated to GP practices will be needed to meet the increase in employer’s national insurance contributions? I turn to the figures for the ARR scheme. The Government announced in April that they thought they had reached 1,500 new GPs, but as the RCGP pointed out at the time, although having “more GPs employed in the workforce is encouraging, when considering full time equivalent GPs—which gives the most accurate picture of the GP workforce and the care and services GPs are able to deliver for patients—the numbers published today are lower, at 851 GPs”. The increase is encouraging, but when we dig into the data, it appears that we are simply seeing more locum doctors coming back into the scheme. I would be grateful to understand exactly how the numbers are made up, and where the inference of 1,500 GPs comes from. More importantly, where is the scheme going in the future? Is it time-limited? Will it continue? Will it be expanded and, if so, what does that look like? Although it is an important part of addressing provision, we also need to understand exactly what is going on. Initial reviews of the data suggest that appointments have not kept up with the pace of the introduction of GPs, so I am interested to understand from the Minister why, despite the supposedly new GPs coming in, the number of appointments has not increased proportionately. I would be grateful for any comment on that. Finally, I turn to recruitment. Training new GPs has understandably been seen as the priority when it comes to solving the long-term workforce problems in England. As Pulse magazine puts it: “This is probably one of the areas of workforce planning that could be considered a success. Health Education England, which has been incorporated into NHS England, has been able to meet its target of over 4,000 new GP trainees a year.” The NHS workforce report, launched under the previous Government in 2023, made commitments to increase that. It set goals to increase the number of GP specialist training places to 6,000 by 2031, ensure that all foundation-year doctors do a rotation in general practice, and require GP registrars to spend the full three years in general practice. There has been progress, but along with progress come new problems. The British Medical Association has warned that up to 1,000 GP registrars could face difficulty when qualifying in summer 2025 without funding for GP practices to recruit newly qualified, unemployed or underemployed GPs. What active steps are the Government taking to avoid that, and what support will they be offering newly qualified GPs?
I am pleased to hear that the scheme is working well, but the question is—as the hon. Member would know if he had been here for the start of the debate and all the way through it—what does it look like going forward? In other places, are locums simply being stepped into the ARR scheme because there has been a shift in the way that GPs commission their work and PCNs are looking to deal with that? That is the question at the heart of it. We seem to be training more GPs than ever, yet at the same time, we have a disproportionate number of people at the top end who are not able to find work. It is important to build up multidisciplinary teams that take account of the pharmacists, nurses and mental health workers around GPs, and I welcome the fact that the ARR scheme allows that. It has been widened to get more funding but, as the hon. Member will know, there is a discrepancy in how much doctors are funded for and there are limitations on how long they can work in the scheme. If I were to return to practice, I would not qualify under the scheme. The Government need to pose these questions; although the scheme is welcome, does it solve the whole problem? I do not think so, and my final set of questions relates to that. We have seen a trend in international medical graduates coming to work in the UK, with the number of international medical graduates overtaking domestically trained medics for the first time in 2023. Have the Government considered something similar to the Australian scheme? Australia classifies locations using the modified Monash model or the Australian statistical geography standard to rank areas from major cities to remote regions, and then prioritises overseas doctors into the areas of most need. That could help to deal with the disparities across different parts of the UK. Will the Government consider that model in attempting to address those disparities? Whether it is right for the UK is for the Government to decide. Hospitals might save your life, but your GP has been quietly guarding it for decades. That fact is often lost in our debates, so it has been a privilege to remind the Government, the House and the public of that fact today. I look forward to the Government’s response.
The Minister talks about contracts, which is an appropriate point to question him again on his Government’s position on the GP partnership model. It is not clear what that looks like from any of the documentation, so I would be grateful to understand that or, if the Secretary of State is considering new models, what they are and when we can see them.
On that point, what would the Minister say to junior doctors, now coming to be registrars, who will be looking for a job? Should they look to the ARRS as the way forward when they qualify? What will he say to them if they do not get a job? Should that be the route they look to? Is it an expansion he is asking for? What are the alternatives for those graduating in August?
It seems pertinent to ask this question now: the Australian scheme I mentioned is one way that another country has dealt with the issue. Would the Government consider placing overseas doctors in the areas of most need? Is that something under consideration?
As a member of the Select Committee, you will want to be accurate in what you say about prison places—
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. The hon. Member will want to be accurate in what she says about prison places. Does she accept that we added 13,000 prison places during our time in office?
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I gently point out that the hon. Gentleman might consider the ratio of Labour Members to Conservative Members, and look at how many people are on the Conservative Benches and on the Labour Benches. We can be pretty proud of our showing, compared to that of Government Members.
It is a pleasure to respond on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition to this estimates day debate on Ministry of Justice expenditure as it relates to criminal justice. I thank the Select Committee Chair, the hon. Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter), for securing and opening the debate. We are in Armed Forces Week, and those of us who have been involved in the criminal justice system in various guises over the years know that in our prison service, around a quarter of prison officers have an armed forces background. In that sector alone, we see the ongoing contribution that people from the armed forces community make to our public services in different ways. It is a pleasure to be able to pay tribute to them on the record today. Criminal justice is, of course, a very important topic for discussion. Our courts, prisons and probation services are the bedrock of our criminal justice system. This Government have been in charge of these key areas of public expenditure and activity for almost a year now, and we have heard from Members about the challenges that those who are in contact with the criminal justice system continue to face. We all know that, almost from day one, this Government have lurched from crisis to crisis, and sadly the Ministry of Justice has not been spared. As we consider the estimates for expenditure and the Government’s linked plans to overcome challenges in the criminal justice system, we can only have a meaningful debate if we consider the journey we have been on to reach this point. I will begin by responding to the points that have been raised about the inheritance that this Government had. Their inheritance can only be fairly considered in the light of what we inherited, what we delivered despite the challenges, and what challenges remain. Labour Members talk about challenging inheritances in the criminal justice system, but what did we face upon arriving in office? We have heard a lot in recent months about Labour being forced into early release schemes for prisoners as a sign of the pressures on the system, but what exactly was happening with early release at the end of Labour’s last period in government? Under the last Labour Government, an astonishing 80,000 prisoners were released early—a huge number—with those releases stopping just before the election for purely political reasons. We were left to pick up the pieces across the prison estate that we inherited. During our 14 years in office, we released just 6% of that figure. If the number of prisoners that Labour Members say they have been forced to release since they came into office is a barometer of failure, what exactly do they make of releasing 80,000 prisoners early after more than a decade in charge? Perhaps Labour had a good excuse for releasing that many prisoners early—maybe it happened because Labour had been spending its time in office rightly toughening up sentencing for the worst offenders. I am afraid not. In fact, in what I consider to be an enormous historical mistake—the consequences of which we are still battling today when it comes to delivering proper punishment through the justice system—Labour introduced automatic halfway release for essentially all offenders when it was last in government. Those offenders were not included in the figure of 80,000 released early under the emergency schemes I have spoken about. Essentially, all offenders were released early, yet Labour still managed to have a sustained crisis in prison capacity, so I do not take any lectures from Labour Members about the history of the Labour party and the criminal justice sector. Under the previous Conservative Government, we worked to restore public confidence that serious offenders would face the punishment that their crimes deserved, and worked hard to ensure that—unlike when Labour was in government—we did not have to release 80,000 prisoners early through emergency release schemes. We brought in serious reforms. We reduced automatic release from halfway through a sentence to two thirds of a sentence for the most serious offenders, which was a huge step forward in introducing a greater degree of proper punishment into the criminal justice system. Building on that, we introduced whole-life tariffs for the premeditated murder of children. We increased maximum sentences for the worst child abusers through Tony’s law; for killers of emergency service workers through Harper’s law; and for those who kill through driving in memory of victims such as Violet-Grace. I am proud of all those reforms, and make no apologies for them. Such measures do create challenges for prison capacity, but as I will go on to explain, those changes were necessary. More than any other factor, it was covid that created the challenges we now face. Of course, we had to tackle the enormous challenges presented by covid, which have left a long legacy in the criminal justice arena. We prioritised the right to jury trials in a way that the rest of the world struggled to; we had one of the shortest suspensions of sittings of trials, and did what we could to support the continuation of jury trials. We increased sitting days, allowing the courts to sit at maximum capacity for three years in a row; we invested £220 million in essential modernisation work for courts up to 2025; and we extended the use of 20 Nightingale courtrooms in 2024-25. That kept our justice system moving, despite what Labour now claims. Undoubtedly, the backlog still presents challenges, but again, I am happy to compare records. Labour MPs are now deeply concerned about the backlog, but how concerned about Crown court backlogs were Labour MPs when they were last in government? I can tell Members that pre-pandemic backlogs in the Crown court reached higher levels during Labour’s time in office than they did under us. The increase in the remand population of approximately 7,000 above the historical average, which is directly linked to covid, is a major factor in the prison capacity challenges we now face. What has Labour done to make a decisive difference since coming into office? Did the Government rush to maximise sitting days to get the backlog down? No, they did not—they have repeatedly dragged their feet. For almost six months, they did not take the Lady Chief Justice up on her offer of further sitting days, and even now, there are more days available to the Government that they have not funded. With each month that has passed, that has meant more lost court days, more people waiting and more pressure on the system than if they had just increased sitting days from the outset. What has been their biggest celebration when it comes to prison building? It is the opening of a new prison, HMP Millsike, which was planned, paid for and largely built under the previous Conservative Government. Despite what Labour says, we created 13,000 prison places during our time in office, including in two new prisons, HMP Five Wells and HMP Fosse Way. I am not aware that any of Labour’s projected plans for prison places use net figures, which Labour Members want to use when looking at our record. The Government have announced plans for 14,000 prison places by 2031, supported by £7 billion, but 6,500 of those places were already in the pipeline, having been announced by the previous Conservative Government. Four of their new prisons were already planned or under construction, so this announcement is less a bold new strategy than it is a tired re-announcement. Even more concerning is the funding gap. The Government have allocated £7 billion, but the National Audit Office reports that the Ministry of Justice and His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service expect the cost of expansion to be closer to £10 billion. That is a £3 billion shortfall, placing a serious question mark over how the promised places will be delivered. How are the Government building on their legacy of releasing over 16,000 prisoners early just in their first six months, which is 11,000 more than planned? In the name of what they call sustainability, they are embedding even greater levels of early release into the system, unpicking the positive steps we took in government to turn around Labour’s legacy of weaker punishment. The Government are doing this on the back of a sentencing review carried out by David Gauke, based on the premise that increasing prison populations were unsustainable. I am clear that that review was an insult to the views of victims and their families—many have told me so directly—and it is unfortunate that so many Members speak positively about it. Imagine launching what you describe as a “landmark review of sentencing”, and then giving almost no consideration in the pages of that report to what victims and their families actually want from sentencing. Worse, instead of a serious attempt to engage with what victims and their families might want, Mr Gauke chose to deploy the all-too-common patronising talking points of those who want us to believe that victims and their families simply do not understand sentencing, and that if they did, they would undoubtedly feel much better about it all. This might be of particular interest to the Chair of the current Select Committee, because Mr Gauke, in particular, cherry-picked quotes from our excellent report from a previous Session on public understanding and expectations of sentencing. As the hon. Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick might remember, that report very much engaged with what the public wanted and how to determine that more effectively. It takes a particular type of intellectual approach to go through a report full of rich detail and just pick out what suits you, hoping no one will notice. Well, I noticed, as did representatives of victims and their families such as Justice for Victims. That half-baked exercise in considering sentencing has now served as the launch point for the Government’s sentencing policy. If halfway release was not an appalling enough legacy from the last time Labour was in government, the Government are reducing release to a third of the sentence for most offenders, and turning our two-thirds release for the worst offenders back into halfway release. Let us be clear: prisoners will now be rewarded for doing what should be expected of them. Obeying prison rules and engaging in education or working are the basic behaviours of any law-abiding citizen. They should not qualify offenders for early release, and they certainly should not allow them to serve as little as one third of their sentence. That is not justice. Labour’s model rewards serious offenders, does little to protect the public, and is a dereliction of duty. All the while, our Crown court backlogs have increased by more than 10% and stand in excess of 70,000 cases. Our remand population sits at more than 17,000 people. Wherever we look, problems that Labour promised to fix in opposition are just getting worse. How does the Lord Chancellor now plan to tackle this challenge? The £450 million committed to the courts in the spending review is a perhaps useful, if not fully adequate, indication, but how will the money be spent? Unfortunately, that is where the Government fall short. The Government have no substantial ideas of their own, with 14 years apparently not long enough for them to think of their own innovations. While we await the findings of yet another independent review that they hope will solve all their issues, they have announced that custodial sentences of under 12 months will all but vanish, replaced by community sentences. The consequences are staggering. Up to 43,000 offenders, including burglars, shoplifters and knife carriers, will avoid jail altogether. I have met local businesses at their wits’ end. They tell me about the rise in shoplifting, staff who are afraid and customers who no longer feel safe. Removing custodial sentences for repeat offenders does not send a message of reform; it sends a message of impunity. Labour has chosen the easy way out. It is tackling the prison population not with long-term reform or capacity investment, but by quietly reducing sentences and downplaying criminal behaviour. It is short-term thinking that puts public safety at risk. In fact, just last week it was reported that the Government declined to move forward with building a new prison block. They say they are doing everything possible to avoid releasing prisoners early, but how does that square with that decision? We might think that the Government would grab opportunities that cost nothing, but we have seen them stand in the way of reforms we put forward as amendments to the Victims and Courts Bill this week. Labour did not support making sure victims are awarded compensation equivalent to their losses, or allowing victims the freedom to speak their minds in victim personal statements. Labour did not support increasing the time available to collect courts fines, or giving victims and families a better chance to appeal unduly lenient sentences. All their lofty spending plans will be of little use if this Government’s ongoing mismanagement of the economy leaves us with even less money to spend on the Ministry of Justice. Across nearly every single major economic metric, Labour has made things worse. Unemployment is up, inflation is up and all the projections of economic growth it inherited from us have been downgraded. Is it any wonder why? The Office for Budget Responsibility is clear about the damaging impact of the Government’s jobs tax, and businesses can see what is on the horizon with the Employment Rights Bill. The costs of borrowing are soaring. The MOJ’s expenditure pales in comparison to what we will be paying on interest in ballooning debt over the course of this Parliament. I will finish with three short questions. First, given the funding allocated to probation and the increasing reliance on it and given that, as the Justice Committee member, my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox) highlighted, the number of probation officers has gone down since Labour came into power, how do the Government plan to ensure that money is delivering effective services? Secondly, how do they plan to close the £3 billion gap in the prisons budget? Thirdly, given that so much of their own thinking is relying on it, when will Brian Leveson’s report be published? The British people deserve a justice system they can trust—one that protects victims, punishes offenders and keeps our communities safe. This Government’s approach fails on every single count.
indicated dissent.
Why are the Government ignoring the advice of the AI opportunities action plan to encourage the start-up and scaling of tech businesses in the UK and instead favouring market-dominant corporations from abroad over our own domestic businesses when awarding Government contracts?
Have any alternative platforms been considered for the potential delivery of a tactical nuclear weapon? In particular, have the Government looked at the Astute class attack submarine as an alternative or additional platform, or at its successor, the SSN-AUKUS?
To what extent does my hon. Friend believe that the situation is even worse than he has outlined? Inflationary pressures bear far more heavily on defence than on, with the possible exception of healthcare, practically any other part of public spending, yet I see no evidence in the defence review or anywhere else over the past 12 months of that being properly accounted for by Ministers or those who advise them.
Would my hon. Friend comment on the Government’s enthusiasm or otherwise for the Haythornthwaite review of careers in the armed forces? It was put in train by and carried out under the last Government, but we hear tell that there has perhaps been some backsliding since. That is a pity, as Rick Haythornthwaite’s review was magisterial and had already shown signs, through zig-zag careers and the spectrum of service, of being appealing to servicemen and servicewomen, and holding them in—both in the regulars and the reserves. It would be a pity if that process did not continue on the basis of not-made-here-itis.
As the Minister says, the Online Safety Act has passed into law and is being implemented, but parents in my Gosport constituency are still desperately worried about the scale of the inappropriate content that very young children can stumble across in the online world. Can she reassure us? When will they begin to practically see the changes that the Online Safety Act promised, and when will the big online providers really start having to do what they say they are doing to keep our children safe online?
I also welcome this announcement, but can we talk about money? We already know that 20% of our defence budget is spent on the nuclear deterrent. It is disproportionately expensive. If we are now extending the nuclear capability with these airdrop weapons, what impact will that have on the budget for the rest of our conventional armed forces?
4. What discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Education on AI in schools.
Will the Minister outline what steps are being taken to reduce academic dishonesty and plagiarism in schools resulting from the use of artificial intelligence tools?