John Milne

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1. 3 Nov 2026·Parliament·John Milne

   Young People and Work: Milburn Interim Report

   The first instalment of the Milburn review has been well received on both sides of the House. As a member of the Work and Pensions Committee, I had the chance to ask Alan Milburn about it a few months ago. One of the things he said, which got a lot of press but has been misunderstood, is that we spend £25 on benefits for every £1 we spend on helping young people into work. Contrary to what some on the right have assumed, that emphatically does not mean that slashing benefits is the way to cure youth unemployment. For years under the Conservatives, jobcentres operated under a sanctions-based culture. That failed. Job hunting is difficult, and totally demoralising job hunters by distrusting their every move is not the way to coach them through their first interviews. In evidence to the Committee, young people described being made to feel like a “leech”. How does that help anyone? The demand for people to demonstrate that they have submitted large numbers of job applications like notches on a belt has been completely destructive. Local employers have disengaged in my constituency because they have been spammed with poorly targeted applications. We should not be so hasty to write off the current generation as a bunch of snowflakes. Rather, we should remember that the current level of nearly 1 million NEETs is less than the peak back in 2011, when we had 1.25 million. The remarkable fact is that 44% of NEETs are not claiming any kind of benefit at all. Surely, even the most zealous right-winger can see that that challenges the cliché of an out-of-control benefits culture. Success stems from intervention at an early age. When kids stop attending school, that is a powerful indicator of their likelihood of becoming NEETs later. In that context, the Government’s youth guarantee scheme will not do the trick. It only kicks in after 18 months of unemployment, when the damage is done. It is also not available to kids on benefits. This will not be a quick fix, but actions today will bring huge long-term rewards for the people who matter most: our children.

   Hansard source
2. 3 Nov 2026·Parliament·John Milne

   Child Trust Funds

   This is fantastic news—so many people have campaigned for it over so many years. I thank my colleague Baroness Kramer in the Lords, who helped by tabling an amendment to the Financial Services and Markets Bill that has brought us to this point. Will the Minister join me in paying tribute to my constituent Andrew Turner, who was one of the first parents to discover this issue when his child Mikey reached the age of 18 six years ago and has campaigned tirelessly on it? He has done a fantastic job. Would she like to congratulate him?

   Hansard source
3. 2 Nov 2026·Parliament·John Milne

   Budget Resolutions

   This Budget has around 100 separate measures, but most would never have featured in the previous Chancellor’s Budgets—not because of any particular policy difference, but because they are just too small. It is less “Steady as she goes”, and more “Let this grind to a complete halt.”<span id="670" class="column-number" data-column-number="670"></span> As far as taxation goes, by far the biggest impact comes from a policy that was not even mentioned: the continued freeze on personal tax thresholds. This year alone, it means another half a million people will start paying tax for the first time, and a further half a million will be pushed into a higher tax bracket—all a function of that handy Chancellor’s trick: fiscal drag. Understandably, the Conservatives give the Government an easy ride on this, as it was their idea in the first place. When it comes to welfare, the critical Milburn and Timms reviews have both been conveniently kicked to the other side of the Budget, but the issues that we face are not what people think they are. It has been said so many times that everyone assumes it must be true that millions of people are getting personal independence payment or universal credit health awards for mild anxiety. The appeal of this story is that it makes people think that we can slash social support for vulnerable people and feel morally good about it. Unfortunately, it is just not true. In reality, absolutely no one gets PIP for mild or severe anxiety, or for any form of mental health condition. That is because PIP is not awarded according to condition. Rather, applicants are assessed according to their daily abilities or lack of them—whether they can wash themselves, cook for themselves or manage short distances walking. There is not even a category for mild anxiety. I find it incredible that politicians, including Members who are the welfare spokespeople for their parties, can continue to ask for something that they must know by now is not possible. What chance have we got of making smart reforms to the economy if politicians cannot even get the basic facts straight? While we continue to wait for all the missing parts of the Budget over the coming weeks and months, I urge caution. Welfare cuts are just a right-wing version of the magic money tree. As a proportion of GDP, today’s spend on non-pension welfare is roughly the same as it was in the mid-80s, when a certain Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. At that time, the Defence budget was twice what it is today, so clearly the current level of welfare spend is perfectly compatible with meeting our defence targets, and welfare is not the reason why our defence budget is in such trouble. The peace dividend did not go to UC and PIP; it went to the NHS and pensions. Above all, this is a challenge caused by a general decline in the economy, not welfare. Yes, it is always important to control welfare spend, and I support that, but slashing welfare on the basis of an arbitrary financial target invented simply to raise enough to pay for some dramatic manifesto pledge is not a credible path to anything. What we have is a Budget that does not seek to do anything very much about anything; the real battles have yet to come.

   Hansard source
4. 28 Oct 2026·Parliament·John Milne

   National Scheme of Delegation of Planning Functions

   It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) on securing the debate. The Liberal Democrats are deeply concerned by the introduction of a national scheme of delegation, which gives the Secretary of State sweeping powers and allows planning decisions to bypass local planning committees. We opposed this approach throughout the passage of the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 and sought to protect the existing powers of committees. Faster planning <span id="212WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="212WH"></span>decisions should come from having properly resourced planning departments and giving councils the freedom to set planning fees that truly reflect the cost of their job—not by shutting communities out of decisions about their local areas. On Saturday, a national scheme of delegation will come into force. Every council in England must rewrite its constitution to match it, and none has been given a say on whether to do so. As many Members have said, planning is where most people first meet democracy, and it is one of the most important reasons why they vote for a councillor in the first place. Household applications, minor commercial applications, schemes of up to nine homes and a range of technical decisions must now go to officers. For other applications, a committee can step in only where it raises a significant issue and an officer and nominated member agree; a councillor cannot refer an application alone. The ward member’s call-in has gone, and so has the route by which enough objections would bring an application to committee. Nine houses next to someone’s home are not a minor matter, and councillors will still be blamed for it. When something is built that nobody wants, residents will ask their councillor why, and the honest answer will be that they had no control over it whatever. The Government’s case is that committees slow things down, but the reality is that this country does not have a big permissions problem in the first place; councillors already approve nine in 10 applications.

   Hansard source
5. 28 Oct 2026·Parliament·John Milne

   National Scheme of Delegation of Planning Functions

   I very much agree, and I will come on to that. Removing local scrutiny, as this scheme does, touches none of the problems I have mentioned. Where delay is real, it lies in planning departments running with about 80% of the staff they need, one in five major applications being decided on time, and fees that the Government accept do not cover the cost of the work. The Liberal Democrats made that point throughout the passage of the Planning and Infrastructure Act. My hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) tabled 78 amendments in Committee and more than 50 on Report, including some to try to protect planning committees. Unfortunately, the Government accepted none of those amendments. The Government have decided that residents are just a nuisance to be overcome. Through these measures, which come on top of years of reduced neighbourhood control, they have killed one bird with a thousand stones. It is not as if local people had much say over things beforehand. The Liberal Democrats regret the lack of any attempt to build consent. This is just storing up problems and resentment for the future, as Members have said.<span id="213WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="213WH"></span> I ask the Minister: will the Government let a ward member bring an application to committee on behalf of residents as the locally elected official? Will they look again at the standard method—the flawed formula—that sets local targets? Will they commit to telling us in plain terms whether this change is doing what it is supposed to by 2028 at the latest? Finally, national fees are planned at an estimated 90% cost recovery. Will the Government commit to full cost recovery so that planning departments are properly resourced? We need to rediscover the principle of consent.

   Hansard source
6. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·John Milne

   Council Housing

   It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. I thank the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) for securing this debate. In my constituency of Horsham, the council stock was sold off long ago to Saxon Weald, a housing association, which does a pretty good job. For years, under a series of Tory administrations, there was little council interest in building any more, so I applaud the current Lib Dem-led council for its recent announcement of 22 new homes for social rent—that is a start, at least. <span id="93WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="93WH"></span>However, having the will is not enough; you also need the means. In this context, the Government’s main housing strategy—the standard method for allocating local targets—is having a destructive effect. It did not work for the Tory Government, and it is not working for Labour, either. A new Horsham district local plan is passing through the system right now, but it is simply not possible for an authority in an area such as mine to require the provision of large amounts of social housing—or, indeed, any. The subsidy system, based on section 106 taxes, does not generate nearly enough, and that means that councillors cannot set a guaranteed percentage of homes for social rent in the plan, even if they want to. Such a plan would be ruled unsound by the inspector because it is financially undeliverable.  That is exactly what happened to me when I was cabinet member for planning a few years ago. Because Horsham ranks as a relatively affluent area, it is not in line for Government subsidies. Ironically, the locations that face the highest housing costs are precisely those least likely to get any Government investment support. We have a system designed to deliver cheap housing in areas that, on average, have more cheap housing. The Government obsession with counting permissions instead of actual real-life houses has directly undermined Horsham’s ability to deliver low-cost housing. Unfeasibly high targets force the council to accept developer proposals that are optimised for quantity not affordability. In reality, private developers are principally in control of choosing the sites; councils merely edit them. In an area like Horsham, where most of the district is farmland, the market drives developers to buy up green spaces on the edge of existing settlements. The result is a strong incentive for suburban house building, which by its nature tends to poorer affordability and wasteful land use. At the same time, we have a construction industry trapped in a boom-and-bust cycle. The absence of consistent local authority house building makes it much harder to bring in low-cost models, such as modern modular construction, because that depends on a continued reliable delivery pipeline. That is one reason why Legal &amp; General, which bravely invested in this market, was forced to close its modular arm a few years ago. Whatever the Government decide to do, some further change of policy is necessary. I hope the Minister will be honest and realise that the current trajectory is not going to solve anyone’s problem in any reasonable length of time.

   Hansard source
7. 27 Oct 2026·Parliament·John Milne

   West Bank: Illegal Settlements

   The Government have declared the occupation unlawful, and their measures on settlements depend on reliable evidence of what is happening on the ground. In April, the Foreign Office unit that tracked potential breaches of international law by Israel was closed because of cuts, with the work said to pass to a “different team”. Which team now does that work, and how many officials does it have?

   Hansard source
8. 26 Oct 2026·Parliament·John Milne

   Antisocial Behaviour

   Following recent changes, police are now able to seize vehicles that are used antisocially without first issuing a warning. This is potentially a way for police in my constituency to deal with illegal street racing meets on the A24 and the A264 from Kilnwood Vale down to Southwater. Can the Minister confirm whether this new power is proving to be effective, and how many vehicles have been seized thus far?

   Hansard source
9. 26 Oct 2026·Parliament·John Milne

   Performance of Royal Mail

   Royal Mail is a British heritage icon. Bright red post boxes crop up in millions of photographs taken by tourists every year, but what residents describe to me is far short of a postcard picture. This debate is starting to feel like a mass therapy session in which we all share our stories. I thought it was just me, but no, it is absolutely everyone. Like others, I respect the incredible hard work of the posties and Royal Mail workers in my patch. I have visited the delivery centre in Horsham, and I have seen them at work. It is a hive of activity, and no one is standing still. Despite their energy, like many hon. Members, I have received messages from Royal Mail workers themselves who are distraught that the service they offer is being undermined by factors beyond their control. Royal Mail wrote to me this month confirming that deliveries in Horsham had been affected by sickness absence and resourcing, that some letter deliveries had been rotated and that it is recruiting for nine vacant posts. It also told me that mail is being taken out six days a week, regular as clockwork. Unfortunately, that simply <span id="111" class="column-number" data-column-number="111"></span>does not fit the lived experience of residents. They describe post arriving late, all at once or not at all. Yet as recently as August, I understood that the office’s own statistics showed deliveries running satisfactorily and that staffing was adequate. My constituents are living somewhere in the space between these two very contradictory pictures. One constituent has written to me about going without post, sometimes for more than a month. Her son is medically vulnerable, and she has missed appointments, as have so many others we have heard about tonight. She asks a fair question: why can parcels be prioritised almost instantly, yet not letters? Meanwhile, Roundabout Talking News posts out to its users every Friday morning in bags marked “For The Blind”, but a volunteer told me that she has to visit the sorting office roughly once a month simply to sort out the problems with delivery. Royal Mail tells me it has introduced an NHS-specific barcode at no extra charge to protect NHS letters in times of disruption, but it cannot tell me how many NHS bodies in Horsham use it, because each buys its postal services separately. A safeguard that nobody can measure is not a solution, and it simply wastes valuable clinician time. We have a service designed for a pre-internet, pre-email world, and it must adapt, but it must have support in doing so. Royal Mail’s own unions point out that, unlike other European countries, the UK does not subsidise the universal service. The regulator Ofcom now proposes to hold the second-class mail price cap for a further year. So I ask the Minister an honest question: does she think it is possible to run a universal service without any kind of Government support? In my previous career I worked in advertising in Ireland, and the Irish Post Office, An Post, was one of my big clients. It was plain then, 20 years ago, where we were headed, and it is where we have arrived today. There is a fundamental challenge to the business model, and we have not yet solved it. I thought the words of the right hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) were very interesting on the various options that have been considered. That is the conversation we need to have, because the way we are going is not working. It feels as though we are seeing managed decline, and not very well managed at that. This is serving no one—not the residents, not the posties. Either we say we care enough to help this service, or we finally admit that we do not.

   Hansard source
10. 21 Oct 2026·Parliament·John Milne

    Support for Farmers

    As has been brought home to us in the most powerful terms since world war two, food security is once again a matter of national security, and the Prime Minister has said as much. Just like our defence capability, farming requires long-term funding and a lasting framework to operate in. The last SFI window opened at 10 o’clock on Tuesday 22 September and closed at 3.48 later that afternoon. If you popped out to the shops, you would have missed it. DEFRA has made the excuse that demand was unprecedented compared with previous ELMS, but setting a benchmark based on a previous flawed Tory scheme that nobody really wanted is not exactly a great metric. The Minister argues that the £100,000 cap makes the scheme fairer because a quarter of the funding used to go to 4% of claimants. Yes, that is true, but a fairer way of rationing a budget that is too small is still a budget that is too small. For decades, farmers did what Governments asked of them. After the war, food production rightly came first, but the cost was paid in soil, hedgerows, wildlife and our rivers, with policymakers recommending the use of harmful chemicals. The SFI exists because that was not sustainable in the long term. We can see this as a repair bill now come due for the policy that farmers were told to follow for many years. Farmers are now weighing up whether to step back from wildflower meadows, field margins and buffer strips. Peter Hatley, who farms in Cambridgeshire, was quoted in the <em>Financial Times</em> yesterday as saying: “I will literally take a plough to everything…We will have to go back to farming more intensively than the 1950s.” Proper farm funding has other benefits too. Ministers told the House of Lords in April that SFI actions that keep soil covered and build organic matter improve its ability to hold water, and that 35 of the 71 actions in this year’s SFI would target flood and drought resilience, including through the use of cover crops. Those 35 recommendations on flood and drought resilience are welcome, but £200 million less in the budget is not. There are practical changes with very modest price tags that would help now. Farmers want to store their own water, but the Country Land and Business Association says that only 34 on-farm reservoirs have been built in the last five years. When we realise that it costs an average of £45,000 just to achieve planning permission, we can understand why there are so few. I hope that the review of permitted development rights will report swiftly. I am sadly out of time. If food security is national security, fund it like it is. Give farmers the certainty to plan and let them get on with feeding the country.

    Hansard source