Parliament's party history for this member: Labour ( – present); Independent ( – ); Labour ( – ).
Register of interests
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
4. Visits outside the UK
International visit to Brunei between 24 May 2026 and 29 May 2026Armed Forces Parliamentary Trust (AFPT)
In Cumbria, we fully appreciate how disruptive bad weather can be, and we have quite a lot of experience of it, but we do not appreciate why bad weather in Scotland can mean that trains heading north on the west coast main line terminate in Preston, which is nearly an hour away from Penrith and even further away from Carlisle. Will the Minister commit to writing to Avanti and Network Rail to determine why that is and consider solutions that might get my constituents home a bit quicker?
While the Government look to boost economic growth in Cumbria, businesses in the county are frustrated at losing staff to Sellafield and the wider nuclear sector, not just engineers and project managers, but business administrators, trades people, nurses and teachers. Will the Secretary of State consider a review of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s social impact duties under the Energy Act 2004, and its impact on the growth and diversity of the wider Cumbria economy?
In rural Cumbria, those without a car struggle to access education and jobs, which is why families on the lowest incomes prioritise car ownership. However, our councils lost out on significant financial support because funding formulas used car ownership as a determinant of income. Will the Secretary of State carry out a review of this approach, and perhaps ask whether civil servants who are privileged enough to travel to work on one of the world’s finest public transport systems are giving us duff advice?
I thank the Home Secretary for her leadership on this issue. In the Lake district, due to housing shortages, there is a long-established policy of social housing being subject to local occupancy restrictions; only those with a local link—for example, local employment—are eligible for housing. Looking beyond the Home Office, does she agree that her Cabinet colleagues—not least those responsible for the fairness of housing policy—also have the power and a responsibility to reduce immigration pull factors?
The last train from London to Newcastle tonight is at 11.08 pm, but the last train from London to Carlisle is at 7.30 pm. Now that the experiment with train privatisation is coming to an end, is it possibly time for a new experiment where the west coast gets the same level of service as the east coast?
Purchased for £51,000 in 2022, Cockermouth’s Old Courthouse later collapsed and still partially sits in the River Cocker. However, the accounts of owner Halal Group Ltd state that it has fixed assets of £248,000, and the company has not responded to calls for transparency or action. Will the Leader of the House agree to a debate on micro-company accounts, their use by property investment businesses and the lack of transparency about asset valuations?
One former Conservative Minister wrote a book that discussed the prison system’s failure to reform. Will the Minister confirm that she has looked at Rory Stewart’s book and his concerns that the Department lacked project management capabilities and support from the Treasury, and required a longer tenure for Prison Ministers? Would she recommend the book to the shadow Minister?
Echoing concerns raised by Members across the House, I ask the Minister to imagine an elderly constituent living alone in an isolated Lake district valley where copper phonelines have been replaced with fibre; a storm takes out the power to their router in the night, and by the time that they wake, the modest battery back-up has failed, as has the mobile mast. Does the Minister share my concerns that they would have no way to raise an alarm in an emergency, and agree that we need a new technological solution to protect the elderly?
The grade II listed Old Courthouse in Cockermouth still lies half-collapsed in the River Cocker, with the owner yet to demonstrate either the means or the desire to lift a finger. Will the Leader of the House agree to a debate in Government time so that Members can discuss the issue of neglected heritage buildings, which is of importance across the country?
To be honest, I am not a big fan of Opposition day debates in Parliament. I made my discomfort clear in a debate on farming in 2024, when I put the Government on notice of my intention to vote against the APR Budget measure. That evening, as the news that I had voted against the official Opposition’s motion was circulated on social media—a motion that quite rightly called for the Government to halt their planned changes to APR, but also appeared to claim that the last Conservative Government were the greatest gift to farming since Jethro Tull’s seed drill—I noted the way my vote was being reported by Conservative Members. One said I had “misled the chamber” and had “voted to impose the family farm tax”. As all Members know, Opposition day motions do not enact change. They are expressions of opinion, not instruments that alter policy or law, or as “Erskine May” says, they do not bind the Government.
It was the same last week. In a debate in which the Conservatives tried out their new theory that sticking the word “family” in front of a tax makes it unpalatable and ripe for scrapping, I objected to the idea that a £175 million penthouse flat could be exempt from tax. For this, I was accused by Conservatives on social media of “nit picking”, being spineless and of “toadying” to get my Whip back—which I have had back, by the way. The post was accompanied by a meme that made reference only to family farms. I would like to be explicit: I want to see the end of the family farm tax, and I urge the Chancellor to do so in the Budget, but I do not believe the plight of my farmers should be conflated and used by politicians who want to give tax breaks to the mega-rich.
Let me now turn my attention to today’s word salad. I like tomatoes, and I agree that the APR changes should be scrapped. I like olives, and I agree that the SFI has been a disaster. Lots of Members like olives, even those on the Labour Benches. The end of universal payments seems like a missed opportunity. Farmers are perfectly candid about how many in the industry who received the basic payment were doing very little for it, but I am increasingly of the view that a universal offer linked to delivering key public goods as a baseline, with a top up ELMs-style offer, would be preferable. It would give all farms a chance, and provide a buffer that they may rely on when times are hard. The farmers I have engaged with since my election have described how they take risks with every investment decision. Bad weather or market conditions can change and do change. A universal payment could not only provide a cushion, but help reassure those considering an investment that they are safe to do so.<span id="1211" class="column-number" data-column-number="1211"></span>
Last week I read an article in the <em>Financial Times</em>, which described issues faced by some farmers in accessing SFI. It quoted one Cambridge farmer as saying:
“I will literally take a plough to everything… We will have to go back to farming more intensively than the 1950s.”
It worries me that we may see farmers reaching the end of existing schemes simply plough up the good work they have done and look for what is commercially best for them. I believe a universal offer could, if implemented properly, prevent that from happening.
I do not object to everything in this salad and I am quite pleased it has been served, but everyone has something they do not want in a salad—fennel, just in case you were wondering, Madam Deputy Speaker—and in the case of this motion it is the Liberal Democrats’ inclusion of a commitment to
“an additional £1 billion a year to properly fund environmental land management schemes.”
It sounds tasty, but having sat through a large number of debates in the House, I know that at the heart of their Budget plans is their claim that re-entering Europe would pay for everything. That is as silly as claiming that we could pay using lithium mined on Mars; its presence does not preclude the fact that there is one hell of journey before we get there. These motions are a con: a word salad full of things that Members across the House love, but ultimately containing an ingredient which makes them edible only to the author.