Labour Party MP for Poole since (defected). An MP continuously since .
Parliament recordVoting recordWritten questionsEarly day motions
Entries on this tracker
179
Each filed under the party they sat for that day
Register entries
3
As currently published
Declared while sitting for Labour
£1,771.42
2 of 2 entries state an amount
Declared outside these periods
£2,000
1 of 1 entries state an amount
| Party | Office | Area | Period | Began | Ended | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Labour | MP | Poole | – | elected | left the party | Party history |
| Labour | MP | Poole | – present | defected | — | Party history |
Parliament's party history for this member: Labour ( – present); Independent ( – ); Labour ( – ).
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3. Gifts, UK sources | Bournemouth and Poole College - £1,200.00 | £1,200 | Labour | Register record | |
| 2. Donations and support | BCP Unison Branch - £2,000.00 | £2,000 | — | Register record | |
| 3. Gifts, UK sources | BCP Council - £571.42 | £571.42 | Labour | Register record |
In coastal communities like mine, the issue is not the rate of house building, but the rate of affordable house building. In 2024-25, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council <span id="557" class="column-number" data-column-number="557"></span>built just 89 affordable homes. What plans do the Government have to take back land that developers are banking and to start building the council houses we need?
Given that those earning more than £50,000 will have a five-year route to settled status, while those earning less than £50,000 will have a 10-year route, how will we assess whether a lawyer offers more value to our society than a teaching assistant, setting aside how much they earn?
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) on securing this timely debate. My constituency does not have a university, but many of my constituents study and work at the two nearby universities in Bournemouth. However, my interest in this subject comes from the fact that when I was a regional official for Unison, I was head of the HE section in the south-east. That experience taught me a lot about the way in which the sector is financed. Today, a growing number of institutions are forecasting deficits, and many have introduced or will soon be introducing the cost-cutting measures that hon. Members have mentioned, including redundancies among academic and support staff. For years, there has been a financial over-reliance on international students. We saw that decline greatly during covid, when I was working as a trade union official, and it has not yet been able to come back. Coupled with changes to visa restrictions, international students are being put off from coming to the UK. There are also rising operational costs—energy costs, pensions and national insurance rises; those have all had an impact on large campuses—and a tuition fee funding model that has failed to keep pace with those rising costs, but the real reason for the state of HE funding is the marketisation of the sector. Pitching one <span id="146WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="146WH"></span>university against another to compete for students has driven an arms race to build the shiniest buildings they can, often at the expense of the teaching and student experience. At any time, many of our campuses look more like a building site than a university. The financial risks, however, are not evenly spread across the sector. Institutions with smaller reserves, limited international recruitment and weaker balance sheets are particularly exposed. The most invidious result of these financial pressures is the move to make staff pay for the failure of the system. At a number of universities, including those with whom I used to negotiate, we are seeing the creation of subsidiary companies to transfer staff out of direct university employment. That removes them from either the local government pension scheme or the teachers’ pension scheme. Staff who refuse to transfer often face the threat of redundancy. Despite the Government’s best efforts, this looks remarkably to me like fire and rehire. The Government cannot secure the future of the HE sector simply through further fee increases for students. I believe we need an immediate cap on student numbers for each institution, rather than allowing the larger institutions to hoover up all the available students in an area. We need financial support for those universities facing immediate financial pressure, and we need to put a halt to the redundancies and wholesale course closures that are taking place across many of those institutions. The Prime Minister has made it clear that his growth agenda is based on a triple helix model of business, Government and universities working together. For that to succeed, we need a healthy HE sector, and to achieve that, we need greater Government intervention and support.
I rise to present a petition signed by hundreds of my constituents, which calls for urgent action to ease the cost of living pressures that many families face and for greater support for the many local businesses that make Poole the place it is. Ahead of the Budget, I shared these proposals directly with the Chancellor, because I believe we need to recognise the distinct challenges facing coastal areas. The petitioners therefore request “that the House of Commons urges the Government to implement a strategy for coastal communities that supports affordable housing, coastal economies, lower household energy costs, cleaner waterways and stronger representation for coastal communities within Government.” <em>Following is the full text of the petition:</em> <em>[The petition of residents of the United Kingdom,</em> <em>Declares that a budget for coastal communities would address their unique challenges, boost living standards, and support local economies; recognises that in Poole, above average housing costs collide with low wages while seasonal work leaves services stretched in summer and workers and businesses struggling through the winter; that families need immediate action to control rents and a long-term plan to deliver affordable housing, alongside supporting small businesses with a funded strategy for domestic tourism; that action is needed to cushion rising energy costs caused by Trump’s war with Iran together with sustained investment in renewables; that public ownership of failing water firms is essential cleaning up the water that defines coastal areas; and that a dedicated Minister for Coastal Communities should be appointed to coordinate this plan.</em> <em>The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to implement a strategy for coastal communities that supports affordable housing, coastal economies, lower household energy costs, cleaner waterways and stronger representation for coastal communities within Government.</em> <em>And the petitioners remain, etc.]</em> [P003254]
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Jeremy. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) on securing this important debate. In Poole, we have one of the widest gaps between average wages and private rents in the country, and we suffer from a distinct lack of truly affordable housing for local people, with house prices that are 16% higher than the national figure sitting alongside rents far higher than rents in other parts of the south-west. In 2024-25, my local council built just 89 affordable homes, out of a total of 988 new properties. What we do have is a proliferation of luxury seafront apartments that local people cannot afford. It is no wonder that housing is the biggest issue raised by my constituents. Just 1% of properties in Poole are affordable to rent at the local rate of housing benefit. The freeze on local housing allowance is making rents unaffordable; it needs to be uprated urgently. Also, we need a system of rent controls, as a step towards easing the housing crisis while the building gets started .
Yes. Obviously, there is an issue about viability and the way developers use that to renege on their earlier commitments to local authorities. There is also the key point that if we want the public sector and public services of the future, the workers who provide those services need to be able to afford to live in the area, so it is a circular argument that we need to keep making with the Government. Building a new generation of council houses is essential to ending the housing crisis. The £39 billion social and affordable homes programme is welcome, but does not go far enough. The Government need to be more creative when it comes to longer term financing of the sector. Currently, £88 billion-worth of UK pension funds is invested in fossil fuel companies. What better use of that money could there be than redirecting it into council housing? Let us be more ambitious in our growth agenda. Let us see a council house building programme as a key part of that ambition. Let us remove the historical debt from <span id="91WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="91WH"></span>councils’ housing revenue accounts, which other Members have mentioned. Let us unlock low-cost financing for council house building, enable councils to buy land at the right price to build social rent homes, and bring empty properties back to life. Let us give future generations the hope that was there after 1945, with a real housing revolution that offers everyone a place they can call home.
Today’s decision feels like a backwards step in our efforts to reduce carbon emissions and our reliance on fossil fuels, but one of our biggest challenges is the £88 billion-worth of UK pensions that are invested in this dying market—some 10 times what those funds invest in clean energy sources. What pressure is the Minister bringing to bear to wean our pension funds off those damaging fossil fuel investments?
There are environmental consequences caused by the emergence of data centres. There are also overblown claims as to <span id="519" class="column-number" data-column-number="519"></span>their ability to create large numbers of jobs. The biggest concern, however, is in whose interests they will operate. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that AI works for the people, not just for big tech companies?
I welcome the Government’s move towards a national care service because, as the Minister said in her statement, everybody knows that we will not fix the NHS until we fix social care. But tens of thousands of care workers currently face a change to their immigration status. We should <span id="588" class="column-number" data-column-number="588"></span>not be changing the rules for those who are already here and making a valuable contribution to both the care sector and our wider society. Does the Minister agree?
We should be clear that setting future indexation to a proportion of average earnings means that, over time, the state pension will be lower than under the current system. Given that future generations will increasingly rely on the state pension, it seems like we are going in the wrong direction, but the real concern is that this policy is asking pensioners to pay for the care of other pensioners. Can I ask the Secretary of State why we are not sharing the cost of a new national care service among us all?
Held . Recorded result: Lab Gain. Majority 18. 44,495 votes cast from an electorate of 72,509. Parties are as each candidate stood at the time.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neil Duncan-Jordan | Labour | 14,168 | 31.8% |
| Robert Syms | Conservative | 14,150 | 31.8% |
| Andrei Dragotoniu | Reform UK | 7,429 | 16.7% |
| Oliver Walters | Liberal Democrat | 5,507 | 12.4% |
| Sarah Ward | Green Party | 2,218 | 5.0% |
| Joe Cronin | Independent | 698 | 1.6% |
| Leanne Barnes | UK Independence Party | 325 | 0.7% |
| Seat | Dates |
|---|---|
| PooleElected 1 time | – present |
| Committee | Dates |
|---|---|
| Cheltenham Borough Council (Markets) Bill | – present |
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