Angela Eagle MP: speeches

Speeches

• 14 Jul 2026 · Extreme Heat: Preparedness · Hansard source

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  It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Christopher, in this debate on a matter that has affected a great many of our constituents and all Members who are struggling through the London heat. I am grateful to Members for their valuable contributions. I thank the hon. Member for Waveney Valley (Adrian Ramsay) for securing the debate. I hope to give all Members some confidence that we are making progress in what is an extremely complicated and interconnected problem. It is not only interconnected in this country; it requires action locally, nationally and internationally, and it cannot be solved easily or quickly. Despite some of the issues and considerable challenges—they are considerable—that hon. Members have pointed out in their contributions, I want to cheer people up slightly with the statement that the Nature Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry East (Mary Creagh), made on the Floor of the House yesterday. She pointed out that before the Paris agreement, the world was on track for 4% of warming, but we have now got it down to 2.5. That is still way too high, but I use that example because I want to inject a little bit of confidence that if we can get our processes right—internationally as well as nationally—we can do something about this. Such issues are so complex and interrelated that it is easy for people to think that the problem is too great and we cannot possibly deal with it, and then be despairing about it, so I wanted to inject that little bit of optimism. We have made progress, and we have to make sure that we carry on making progress. The Government recognise that extreme heat fuelled by climate change is no longer a rare seasonal event to be managed with temporary emergency measures; it is a chronic, recurring, structural risk to our economy, public health and national security. Every hon. Member who has contributed today has recognised that point. Our response to extreme heat is built on a combination of tried and tested plans and capabilities that have been refined over time, and also longer-term programmes to meet the specific challenges of climate change. Evidence suggests that without action, the physical impacts of climate change could cost England’s economy between 1.1% and 3.3% of GDP by 2050, and at least 7.4% by the end of the century. We are taking action now in recognition that it is economically beneficial to invest early to reduce emissions. As Nicholas Stern said many years ago, the more money spent on investing to prevent, the cheaper it is to deal with the consequences. The Government have put clean energy and climate action at the heart of their agenda, which includes showing global leadership by setting a world-leading target to reduce emissions by at least 81% by 2035. Cutting emissions remains our first line of defence, but it is harder when the political consensus that existed about climate action has broken down globally and in this country. There are still people who claim that climate change does not exist and that we are spending a load of money for no particular reason, when we know that scientists are universally agreed that the increase in heat and changes in climate that we are talking about have been caused by human effects on our planet’s climate. The sooner that everybody recognises that globally, the easier it will be for the great ingenuity of the human race—when it is in a good mood—to deal with the consequences of what was done in the past with industrialisation. We are taking action as well as mitigation to prepare the UK for the impacts of climate change. Under the Climate Change Act 2008, we maintain a robust climate change risk assessment, and through the national adaptation programme, DEFRA co-ordinates a rigorous cross-Government response to ensure that our sectors remain resilient.

• 7 Jul 2026 · Fraud Strategy 2026-29 · Hansard source

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  It is a great pleasure to be in this Chamber with you in the Chair, Mrs Harris. I congratulate the hon. Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance) on securing the debate. I also thank him for how he has set out some of the very difficult problems that all our constituents have faced as technology has provided the wherewithal to industrialise frauds and scams, often from abroad. There is now no way to get a handle on what they are doing without involving ourselves in international co-operation. As technologies advance, the threat of these kinds of activities evolves, and we have to do what we can to try to keep pace with them and hopefully get ahead, so that we can do some prevention rather than trying to pick up the pieces after terrible things have happened. At this juncture, I express my empathy and sympathy with the hon. Member’s constituents, some of whom he has mentioned today, including Christopher, who was the subject of a romance fraud, and Jason, who was subjected to fraudulent behaviour and the temptation of wealth creation that was not really there. One thing that has struck me very strongly since I took up this post three weeks ago, and from my own constituency caseload over many years, is how invidious and difficult it is for the victims of these kinds of behaviours to admit that they have fallen into a trap, because many of them feel a bit silly and embarrassed and do not know where to turn to try to get redress. The way that redress has worked in this country in the past has not kept pace with the industrialisation of fraud, its international aspect and its sophistication. It has been difficult, therefore, as the hon. Member for Yeovil recounted, for systems to keep up. People feel not only embarrassed, worried and a bit shameful that they have fallen into those traps, according to my constituency caseload, but they do not find it easy to get redress. I congratulate the hon. Member on his constituency work, and the way he has used the systems that we are putting in place to ensure that the money can be refunded in many cases, though obviously not all. My esteemed colleague Lord Hanson leads on this area of work. Despite all the innovations in our constitution since I have been in this House, we do not allow Lords to speak in Commons debates, thank goodness. I am here, however, and more than happy to talk to Lord Hanson about some of these issues. Before I come to the points raised, I want to make some simple but important ones of my own. Fraud is high volume and high harm, for the reasons the hon. Member for Yeovil outlined. Hon. Members will know that is true from their experience in advice surgeries. It deprives law-abiding people of their hard-earned money; it hits businesses with sometimes crippling losses; it destroys lives and livelihoods; it destroys confidence and mental health; it drains our economy; and it weakens our resilience and undermines confidence in the rule of law. This problem is directly linked to my work as Security Minister, because it helps to fuel some of the most serious threats we face as a country, as well as causing the human harm we have heard of today. Our response has to match the scale and impact of the threat. I believe the Government have acted with clarity and ambition, with the new fraud strategy published in March, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned. I thank him for acknowledging that he was happy to see elements of that, such as crucial international action and the replacement of Action Fraud—it was so difficult to see any action coming from it that it would have been better named “Inaction Fraud”. Thankfully, that has been replaced. As the strategy is put into effect, it will include Report Fraud, victim-support schemes and charters on advertising. In its broadest sense, the strategy brings together all parts of the system, including Government, law enforcement, industry and civil society, and goes further and faster in our fight to disrupt fraudsters and protect the public. The strategy is built on clear principles: to disrupt criminals, to safeguard people and businesses, to respond strongly, to protect victims and to enforce the law. The Government have invested £250 million and will work with everyone to clamp down on the fraud epidemic. We will try to make that money work as hard as possible in co-operation with other parts of the system to get best value for money. To some extent, that is my answer to the question the hon. Member for Yeovil asked about whether £250 million is enough: it is not a bad start, and we will see how it develops to ensure that we cover the bases that we need to cover in this area as quickly as possible. At the heart of the new approach is a new online crime centre, which has over £30 million of investment to bring Government, law enforcement, GCHQ and industry together in one place. Its mission is clear: to identify the technological enablers of fraud, which are rapidly evolving and industrialising, as I said before; to disrupt fraud at scale; and to deliver high-impact interventions at speed. The online crime centre is working on those things even as we speak. Safeguarding and supporting victims is also at the forefront of the strategy. We are strengthening public awareness through an expanded “Stop! Think Fraud” campaign because it is important to remember that, as plausible as some of these people are, the more we can increase the suspicion and resilience of the people who interact in these systems, the more likely we are to be more resilient to fraud. I acknowledge absolutely that the psychological cleverness of a lot of fraud is something to behold. These people are very clever at what they do. They are very sophisticated in how they draw people in. All of us have a duty to try to warn individuals about the kind of dangers out there from those very sophisticated approaches.

• 6 Jul 2026 · National Security (State Threats) Bill · Hansard source

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  The first duty of any Government is and will forever be to secure this country and keep all its inhabitants safe. It is a mission that has challenged us relentlessly, but it has grown and evolved in recent years. The threat posed by foreign powers will be known by all here: physical threats against individuals and property; theft of trade secrets; attempts to interfere in and influence our democracy; and cyber-attacks targeting both the state and the private sector that disrupt critical infrastructure and compromise sensitive data. As the House has heard many times before, the source of those threats has come predominantly, though not exclusively, from three countries: Russia, China and Iran. The threats from each present differently, but those threats are very real, and they are evolving. The Bill before us will strengthen the Government’s ability to disrupt hostile intelligence services and their proxies by adapting counter-terrorism tools to tackle state-based security threats to the UK. In developing this legislation, we have worked closely with the police, security and the intelligence agencies. The Bill gives our operational partners the powers that they need, and it does so in a way that reflects the differences between state and non-state actors. As Jonathan Hall himself has said, this Bill “does the job”. As the Bill progressed through its stages, the Government listened carefully to the arguments about legitimate humanitarian assistance, as well as concerns expressed by non-governmental organisations and the International Development Committee. The Government’s position remains that the Bill should not criminalise legitimate humanitarian aid work or the important work of journalists and diplomats.