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.
Two months ago, our new Prime Minister admitted that the UK needed to do better. Today, the Foreign Secretary has shown us how things get done, by working together with our allies to declare a ban on trade with illegal settlements and declaring the occupation unlawful. Last year, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) and I were denied entry to the west bank for our advocacy in this House. The Foreign Secretary has already withstood threats and intimidation as a result of his bold, principled stand. Will he continue to do so with the moral courage he has shown us?
Putin’s war in Ukraine and Trump’s war in Iran have shown us the need to make Britain more resilient against global energy shocks. Can my hon. Friend set out what the Government are doing to ensure that domestic electricity prices are decoupled from global gas prices, so that my constituents can get the best out of cheap, green, local renewables?
I thank the Housing Minister for all his tireless work on these landmark commonhold reforms—I only hope he finds my constant lobbying not too tiresome. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi) for her leadership on this issue.
My parents and grandparents are in the Gallery today. I thank them for ensuring that throughout my childhood, I had a roof over my head. Thanks to their efforts, I have enjoyed the childhood tour around all the various property tenures possible under English law—from council, to private rental, to leasehold, to freehold and a brief interlude as lodgers in a community Christian church.
When my parents moved to Earley, they bought a freehold house that was built in the 1960s. It came with no strings attached. If they had bought the same house on a new build estate built in the last two decades, it would have likely come with estate charges, standing charges for some, and often low-quality roads and communal infrastructure that will never have any route to adoption by the local council. They would have had a contract to pay these fees to a property manager—someone they did not choose and who they almost certainly cannot leave. Five million leaseholders also face similar fees, from ground rent to property management charges that are difficult to change.
What has happened over those few decades since the 1960s to make things so much worse for young families moving into new builds today? The negotiations and relationships between developers and local authorities, as other Members have pointed out, have taken a turn for the worse. As a result, over a thousand constituents have been in touch with me, seeking advice for taking control of property management and breaking free of the monopoly held over them.
The problems are not just about charges. In 2024, the average annual service charge bill rose by 11% to £2,300—four times the rate of inflation over the same period—so the average service charge now exceeds the average cost of all other utilities combined.
In Shinfield, the impact on my constituents goes beyond that; they also pay a suitable alternative natural greenspace charge. Following negotiations that I instigated between the landowners and the residents, they are still waiting for a final agreed position. They also face a lack of transparency. Residents in Woodley, for example, have negotiated through me a service charge freeze with their managing agents, FirstPort, but there is still lack of transparency about the underlying charges.
One resident, June, said:
“I’m afraid that all the years of bullying, alternating with being ignored by FirstPort on all levels, have finally taken their toll on my mental health”.
It is time for better regulation.
Q11. Thames Water’s headquarters are local to my town of Reading, but it is their distant creditors who are really in charge. Investors should be rewarded for success, but they should pay for their failures. That is why I strongly welcome the Government’s objections to the current creditors deal. Under any deal or special administration regime, the company will be restructured, but the question is whether that restructuring will be done only in the interests of senior creditors, or with customers and the environment in mind. Will the Deputy Prime Minister tell us whose side he is on?
I thank the Minister for her statement. Tomorrow, I will be bringing Thames Water’s management into Parliament to answer a simple question: what improvements will my constituents get in return for the increases in their bills? My constituents do not feel they are being treated fairly by Thames Water, and that makes it even more important that Ofwat should reject the current deal proposed by Thames Water’s creditors to let it off the hook for polluting our rivers. Does my hon. Friend agree that fairness in the water sector means that the polluters and their investors have to be the ones who pay, not customers?
T2. This weekend, while door-knocking in Woodley, I spoke to a young father of three who, despite working multiple skilled jobs, feared being made homeless because of high and rising costs of rent. Will the Chancellor examine the case for a fixed-term rent freeze in the private rented sector to protect renters like my constituent from rising costs following the invasion of Iran, and to bring inflation down in the wider economy?
I am indeed very proud of this Labour Government’s historic Employment Rights Act 2025, which, from this month, means that workers will get statutory sick pay from the first day they are ill, rather than having to wait till the fourth. Too many people in Reading—even those working in health and care settings—are working through their illnesses; this measure will protect them, their clients and patients and improve the productivity of their workplaces.
While the ERA is an important step forward, does the Secretary of State accept that the current flat rate of statutory sick pay—at four fifths of average earnings—remains a barrier to those on low incomes, and thus remains a barrier to tackling illness in the workplace?