Liberal Democrats MP for Hazel Grove since (elected). An MP continuously since .
Parliament recordVoting recordWritten questionsEarly day motions
Entries on this tracker
475
Each filed under the party they sat for that day
Register entries
25
As currently published
Declared while sitting for Lib Dem
£47,004.07
20 of 25 entries state an amount
| Party | Office | Area | Period | Began | Ended | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lib Dem | MP | Hazel Grove | – present | elected | — | Party history |
Parliament's party history for this member: Liberal Democrat ( – present).
Every entry the member has in the Register of Members' Financial Interests, as Parliament currently publishes it. The wording and values are the member's own declarations; nothing here has been assessed by this site.
Totals add only the entries that declare an amount received: payments for work, donations, gifts, and funded visits (register categories 1.1, 2, 3, 4 and 5). Ongoing employment is listed but not added, because its figure is a rate rather than a sum received. Each entry is dated by when the benefit happened, not when it was registered, and placed under the party the member sat for on that date. A member who changed party therefore has a separate total for each.
| Date | Category | Entry | Declared value | Sitting for | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| date registered | 2. Donations and support | Stephen Gosling - £2,000.00 | £2,000 | Lib Dem | Register record |
| date registered | 2. Donations and support | Chris Fox - £2,000.00 | £2,000 | Lib Dem | Register record |
| date registered | 2. Donations and support | Hilary Stone - £3,000.00 | £3,000 | Lib Dem | Register record |
| date registered | 2. Donations and support | James Moore - £4,000.00 | £4,000 | Lib Dem | Register record |
| 8. Miscellaneous | Vice President of Local Government Association. This is an unpaid role. | — | Lib Dem | Register record | |
| 4. Visits outside the UK | International visit to Brunei between 24 May 2026 and 28 May 2026Armed Forces Parliamentary Trust | £864.39 | Lib Dem | Register record | |
| date registered | 2. Donations and support | Richard Pym - £1,494.50 | £1,494.50 | Lib Dem | Register record |
| date registered | 2. Donations and support | Hilary Stone - £2,000.00 | £2,000 | Lib Dem | Register record |
| date registered | 2. Donations and support | Dominic Mathon - £1,000.00 | £1,000 | Lib Dem | Register record |
| date registered | 2. Donations and support | Richard Pym - £1,000.00 | £1,000 | Lib Dem | Register record |
| date registered | 2. Donations and support | Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Limited - £3,000.00 | £3,000 | Lib Dem | Register record |
| date registered | 2. Donations and support | James Moore - £5,000.00 | £5,000 | Lib Dem | Register record |
| date registered | 2. Donations and support | Elizabeth Desmond - £3,000.00 | £3,000 | Lib Dem | Register record |
| 3. Gifts, UK sources | National Liberal Club - £1,140.00 | £1,140 | Lib Dem | Register record | |
| date registered | 2. Donations and support | Elizabeth Desmond - £3,000.00 | £3,000 | Lib Dem | Register record |
| date registered | 2. Donations and support | Hilary Stone - £2,500.00 | £2,500 | Lib Dem | Register record |
| date registered | 2. Donations and support | Dominic Mathon - £2,500.00 | £2,500 | Lib Dem | Register record |
| date registered | 2. Donations and support | Ahmed Hindawi - £5,000.00 | £5,000 | Lib Dem | Register record |
| 3. Gifts, UK sources | Elizabeth Desmond - £1,641.49 | £1,641.49 | Lib Dem | Register record | |
| date registered | 2. Donations and support | Adam Management Holdings Ltd - £2,000.00 | £2,000 | Lib Dem | Register record |
| 3. Gifts, UK sources | National Liberal Club - £863.69 | £863.69 | Lib Dem | Register record | |
| date registered | 8. Miscellaneous | Unpaid director of Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Limited and JRRT (Properties) Limited. This is an unpaid role. | — | Lib Dem | Register record |
| date registered | 8. Miscellaneous | Governor at Fairway Primary School, Offerton. This is an unpaid role. | — | Lib Dem | Register record |
| date registered | 8. Miscellaneous | Trustee of Barrack Hill Educational Charity. This is an unpaid role. | — | Lib Dem | Register record |
| date registered | 8. Miscellaneous | Stockport Canal Boat Trust for Disabled People. This is an unpaid role. | — | Lib Dem | Register record |
<Question HRSContentId="{E9D50990-9894-45BA-AD14-F52A199E7A69}">1. <QuestionText HRSContentId="{58B483D9-A194-4675-8754-2B5A23ABA5C7}">What recent discussions he has had with European allies on tackling foreign interference in democratic processes internationally.</QuestionText> </Question>
I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary for those remarks, but with Russian-linked interference operations continuing to target democratic elections across Europe, does he feel that the current arrangements are sufficient? He will know that the European democracy shield is developing new structures to co-ordinate action against foreign interference and disinformation, so what discussions has he had with our European partners about ensuring that the UK is fully involved in those efforts, including the proposed European centre for democratic resilience, so that we can better identify and respond to Russian attempts to undermine democratic elections across Europe?
I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement. Let me place on record our thanks to the emergency services, volunteers and communities who respond to civil emergencies, be they storms, floods or wildfires. I welcome the announcement of the Be Ready campaign, and agree that every household that can be ready to look after itself should be ready to do so, for at least three days. During the first covid lockdown, I raised an eyebrow when my other half stockpiled enough bottled water to keep us going for weeks, but today he has been proved right, and I fear that I will never hear the end of it. The Security Minister rightly mentioned the importance of volunteers. I wonder if he has spoken to our Finnish allies, for example, to learn from their experience of establishing a formal civil volunteer reserve. Its members would receive non-military training, and could be called on in an emergency, just as community first responders can attend medical emergencies. As the Minister said, not everyone can stock up for three days. People relying on food banks, older people and people with mobility difficulties are often the least able to prepare and the most exposed. The priority services register can work well only if it is accurate, so what more can the Minister do to ensure that it is kept up to date? Can he say specifically what co-ordination is in place with the utility companies, so that information can be shared about their lists of vulnerable customers?<span id="195" class="column-number" data-column-number="195"></span> It is not just weather or climate change that we need to be prepared for; the number of nationally significant cyber-threats has doubled in the last year. The Liberal Democrats have called for a digital sovereignty strategy to ensure that critical national functions are powered by technology that the UK can control. Can the Minister update us on any progress being made on digital sovereignty?
I thank the Minister for advance sight of her statement and for the briefing last week. Since the last ministerial statement in July, Capita is reported to have met its own September target on priority cases, but as the Minister has said, that does not match lived experience and hon. Members have heard promises of improvement before. Capita missed both its April and June targets, and months later it is being propped up by a Cabinet Office taskforce. I welcome the news from the Minister that Capita is improving its technology, and I am glad that it has been deploying additional resources to support improvements to its dashboard so that it can get through more cases. Time will show us if that work actually results in Capita working through its backlog—there are still too many people across the country waiting. My constituent, Diane, who lives in Offerton, applied for retirement at the end of August last year. She finally received her formal quote this month—a full 14 months after applying. It was a whopping £14,000 less than she was informally quoted, which may well have changed her decision to retire had the quote been received in a reasonable timeframe. There are 1.7 million current and former civil servants who simply want to know that their pension will be handled competently, fairly and with dignity. I heard the Minister’s statement on holding Capita to account, but will she say, in terms that our constituents will relate to, exactly how she is planning to do that and what the impact will be on families around the country? I note the Minister’s comment on debarment, but, given the absolute shambles Capita has made of this situation, can she truly say that she would be happy for it to bid for future Government contracts? Will the Government finally commit to inflation-linking payments for all outstanding cases in order to ensure that those affected by Capita’s mistakes do not pay even more for Capita’s delays?
I really welcome Sir David’s review and the Secretary of State’s response. Antisemitism is an ancient poison. It is why my nan had to flee Germany to come to this country in the late 1930s and it is, as the Secretary of State said, the responsibility of all of us to tackle it. I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, because I am in my 20th year of being a primary school governor. The review and the recommendations talk about the role of school leadership, but I noted that the Secretary of State did not mention school governors. I wonder if she could say how she sees the role of governors in tackling this issue? I welcome her earlier assurance to my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) that money will be made available. Will she confirm if that is new, new money, or if it is money that has already been allocated to our schools, or already allocated to tackling antisemitism?
Liberal Democrats have long advocated for modernisation and improvement across the Houses of Parliament. We continue to support legislation that modernises, and hope to see many more moves towards ensuring that Westminster is representative of the country as a whole. For almost 200 years, the law has said that a Roman Catholic Minister, or later a Jewish Minister, may not advise the monarch on appointments in the Church of England or the Church of Scotland. Those restrictions never applied to people of other faiths or no faith at all. They were aimed squarely at two communities and are rooted in the anti-Catholicism and antisemitism of the age in which they were written. The Prime Minister has called this an “antiquated and archaic anomaly”, and of course he is right to do so. It cannot be acceptable in 2026 that someone who holds the confidence of this House should be barred from part of their job because of their faith. We are told that Church House is content with the change, and the National Secular Society has said that the ban is “increasingly difficult to justify in a modern liberal democracy”. It is rare to find that much agreement on a question involving Church and state, and the Government are right to make this change in the law. Liberal Democrats believe in freedom of belief. Everyone should be able to practise their faith, or none, without fear of discrimination or state interference. That principle should apply at the very top of public life as much as anywhere else. Removing this bar sends a message that the highest offices in our country are open to people of every background. But I note that this is the very first Bill brought under this Prime Minister. It is a sensible fix to a problem he faces personally, but there are more widespread problems with how our democracy works—problems that affect every one of our constituents—and they still await action. Take the other place. Liberal Democrats have long called for a House of Lords with a democratic mandate—
I am always grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for guidance on what is in and out of scope, and I am always pleased when we are able to talk about modernisation, as this Bill does. I encourage the Government to go further, faster—an encouragement that the Liberal Democrats always give when they are on their feet talking about political and constitutional reform. On prime ministerial advice and appointments, which I hope you will agree, Madam Deputy Speaker, is very much in scope, these appointments often ingrain patronage and reinforce elitism, which causes many people to lose faith in politics. We would encourage the Government to get to considering proposals such as the Burns report, which looked at cutting the House of Lords to 600 peers. We think the Government could do far more, but that is perhaps for another debate on another day. None of the <span id="1175" class="column-number" data-column-number="1175"></span>changes that we Liberal Democrats would encourage, whether it is putting the ministerial code into law or ensuring a fairer voting system, are terribly complicated. All they do is restore trust in politics. We support the Bill. Discrimination on grounds of faith has no place in our law, and I am glad to see the change come in today, but I hope the Minister will very much treat this as a starting point, rather than the limit of his ambitions for political and constitutional reform. If the Government are serious about modernising our institutions, they should go further, faster, and the Lib Dems will keep pressing them to do exactly that.
Thank you, Sir John. It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair. I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Opher) both on the way he opened this debate and on how he chairs the all-party parliamentary group on House of Lords reform. The Liberal Democrats have called for a democratic second Chamber for decades. We simply believe that those who make the law should, at some point, be accountable to those who have to obey it. In the other place, that link does not exist. People across the country understand that; they see a Chamber filled by prime ministerial appointment, where a seat in our legislature can follow years of party loyalty or a generous donation. That system ingrains patronage. It feeds the sense that politics is run by and for a small elite and it is one of the reasons why so many people have lost faith in our democratic institutions. In her excellent speech earlier, the hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) mentioned the Lords Spiritual—the 26 Church of England bishops who take their seats in the other place. It is not an excessive understatement to say that that arrangement feels a bit outdated. Britain today is a country of many faiths and none, and nobody should have a hand in making our laws simply because of the religious office they hold. It is surely long past time to modernise. Peers may also be appointed because they are seen to be experts within a field. However, as there is currently no time limit on how long they sit within the Lords, someone could indeed have been an expert in something 40 years ago, but the field has moved on vastly. Yet they still legislate in that area and are viewed as a specialist. Some say that this issue is not a priority; it does not come up often on the doorstep. But a quick look at my inbox shows that some of my Hazel Grove constituents do indeed care about it enough to contact their MP. I have had constituents write to me about this, including most recently Kellie from Offerton, who argued powerfully that we should have an elected second Chamber. I agree with her.<span id="372WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="372WH"></span> The Lib Dems supported the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill. Nobody can seriously defend a place in Parliament being handed down through a family line.
The hon. Gentleman has extended himself several times this afternoon—and I, for one, am here for it. There are many things I would change about the way our country runs. If we were designing a country from scratch, I do not think we would have a Parliament or a monarchy like this. The monarch and the royal family do an important job in all sorts of ways, but I would very much change the relationship between Parliament and the monarch. To answer his question, yes I would. Removing the remaining hereditary peers on its own does not go anywhere near far enough. That is why my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) tabled an amendment to the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill to replace every unelected Member with a fully elected Chamber. Sadly, neither the Labour nor Conservative party supported that, which feels like a missed opportunity to begin the transition. We continue to see events that highlight why we should have an elected and accountable second Chamber. The Mandelson scandal has shown how poorly the current Chamber copes when a Member appointed for life has lost the public’s trust. According to an Electoral Commission study from 2025, only 14% of respondents trusted politicians. We must all work to improve that level of trust; increasing accountability in Parliament feels like an important place to start. In February, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey), called for legislation to strip Peter Mandelson of his peerage. Ministers told the public that reform was urgent and that they were talking to other parties. The Removal of Peerages Bill was included in the last King’s Speech, yet we are still to see any wide-scale reform. Can the Minister confirm if, and when, we should expect to see legislation to produce reform in the House of Lords—including, but not limited to, the Removal of Peerages Bill? The Representation of the People Bill could have been a good place to start to make vital reforms to the way the second Chamber works. It contains welcome measures including votes at 16, steps towards automatic voter registration and a U-turn on the independence of the Electoral Commission—all changes that the Lib Dems have campaigned for. But it says nothing about the Lords or proportional representation, and far too little about the money that flows into our politics. We want the Government to stop tinkering at the margins and to make the real changes needed to fix the broken political system in which we currently operate. They could take steps now: implement the 2017 Burns report; bring the House of Lords down to 600 Members; introduce the retirement age for peers that Labour promised in its own 2024 manifesto; put the ministerial code into law so that Ministers—
I look forward to seeing that happen at pace; I am sure that is what is going on. The Government could also move at pace to move power out of Westminster and Whitehall. But none of the steps I just mentioned is a substitute for the end goal. Our second Chamber needs the legitimacy that only a democratic mandate can give it. The Lib Dems will keep making that case until it has been won.
Held . Recorded result: LD Gain. Majority 6,500. 45,998 votes cast from an electorate of 72,846. Parties are as each candidate stood at the time.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lisa Smart | Liberal Democrat | 17,328 | 37.7% |
| Claire Vibert | Labour | 10,828 | 23.5% |
| Paul Athans | Conservative | 9,011 | 19.6% |
| John Kelly | Reform UK | 6,955 | 15.1% |
| Graham Reid | Green Party | 1,763 | 3.8% |
| Tim O'Rourke | Social Democratic Party | 113 | 0.2% |
| Seat | Dates |
|---|---|
| Hazel GroveElected 1 time | – present |
| Post | Dates |
|---|---|
| Liberal Democrat Spokesperson (Cabinet Office)Opposition Department | – present |
| Liberal Democrat Spokesperson (Home Affairs)Opposition Department | – |
| Committee | Dates |
|---|---|
| Representation of the People Bill | – |
| Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission | – present |
| Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill | – |
| Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill: Programming sub committee | – |
| Constituency | Date |
|---|---|
| Hazel Grove | |
| Hazel Grove | |
| Hazel Grove |
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