Parliament's party history for this member: Labour ( – present).
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.
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Entry
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Sitting for
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4. Visits outside the UK
International visit to Brunei between 24 May 2026 and 29 May 2026Armed Forces Parliamentary Trust (AFPT)
My hon. and learned Friend is giving a powerful exposition on the arguments. He mentioned Australia, which has prompted a number of colleagues, including me, to sign a letter to the Government saying that five essential things, including age-verification, are needed to avoid the mistakes and perils that Australia has experienced. We also need parental involvement, privacy by design, and companies to be accountable by default. Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that any effective ban must include some of those steps?
I welcome the news last week that local government reorganisation will finally take place in Oxfordshire and that the Thames valley will have devolution. Can the Minister confirm that it is the Government’s intention that these new authorities will all be in place by the end of this Parliament?
In the Thames valley, as with much of the south-east, the key driver of homelessness is high house prices. Many of the measures announced today and over recent months, while welcome, are focused in areas with mayors. In the south-east, however, devolution has stalled, meaning that some of these levers will not be available. Can I urge the Minister and the Secretary of State, who was sitting next to the Minister earlier, to get on with delivering devolution across the south-east so that we can tackle the issue of homelessness in areas with high house prices, including the Thames valley?
Banbury is heavily affected by the failings of Thames Water; we have had thousands of sewage spills, leading to hundreds of thousands of hours of sewage being discharged into local rivers and streams, which is probably why so many of my constituents signed the petition. I had prepared a longer speech for the debate, but given the number of speakers and time available, I will keep my remarks much briefer.
In March, I wrote for LabourList that the water scandal had become a test of whether a Government elected on a promise of change were prepared to confront vested interests. Across England and Wales, water bills rose by 26% last year, but for Thames Water customers, including my constituents, they rose by 31%—and this year the bills have risen again.
During the Makerfield campaign, the Prime Minister said that Britain’s water industry had become a system where
“the shareholders always win and the billpayers always lose”.<span id="490WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="490WH"></span>
He was right. On Thames Water specifically, the Prime Minister argued that public ownership was ultimately something that should happen. Although I welcome the steps that this Government have taken to address the water industry, the fact that so many people have signed the petition would suggest—as would a glance at my mailbox, and probably that of every other Member of Parliament—that most people feel that, despite what those measures are intended to do, none of them quite goes far enough. My simple question to the Minister is this. What more are the Government prepared to do to demonstrate that they understand the scale of public anger, that they hear the public’s frustration and that they are prepared to act with greater urgency in response?
I had a much longer speech prepared for this debate, but with the constraints on time I do not think I will be able to make it. Let me reflect on the fact that for the majority of this debate, the Conservative Benches have been next to empty, with almost no contributions from Conservative Members other than those on the Front Bench. I posit that that may be because of an element of shame on the part of Conservative Back Benchers regarding the contribution that we heard from those on their Front Bench. This is a Tory party—that, not too long ago, was led by somebody born on the upper east side of New York—deciding that it will start defining the value of people as British citizens based on whether they were born here. For shame! I am more than happy to get fully behind this legislation.
The automotive sector is hugely important to Banbury, with numerous companies supporting hundreds of jobs, including in the supply chain for Jaguar Land Rover. People there will be nervous about the news over recent days. Can the Minister provide them and me with reassurance about the support that the Government will provide the company and others in the supply chain?
I have to say that I am really disappointed by this decision. Councils have spent months working on proposals; resources and precious time have been spent—or, I would say, wasted—on them. Growth is meant to be a priority for this Government, and Oxfordshire is a high growth delivery area, yet we have no devolution, no local government reorganisation and no timescale for either. Will the Secretary of State or one of her Ministers meet me and my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds) to discuss the shortcomings in this high-value growth area?