Bobby Dean MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 28 Oct 2025 · Stamp Duty Land Tax · Hansard source

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  When the hon. Gentleman refers to covid, I think he is referring to total debt, which has increased. We are talking specifically about why the civil service has increased in size. A lot of that can be attributed to the new functions that the UK Government have had to take on. On the welfare budget, yes, the Government struggled to get through their welfare reforms, but so did the previous Conservative Government. That is why the proposal that half of the £47 billion will come from welfare cuts lacks credibility.

• 28 Oct 2025 · Stamp Duty Land Tax · Hansard source

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  Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

• 28 Oct 2025 · Stamp Duty Land Tax · Hansard source

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  I think the hon. Member will find that across the country there will be opposition politicians opposing developments. In Sutton council in my borough, where we are in control, we are outstripping all of London in house building, and I am very proud of that record. In order to fix the housing crisis, we need sustained wage growth, so that wages come up against the increase in house prices. I do not hear that on offer from the Conservative party today. I am sorry to say that we have a Trussite proposal on the table: an unfunded tax cut that lacks real credibility.

• 28 Oct 2025 · Stamp Duty Land Tax · Hansard source

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  Exactly. He obviously was not paying enough attention to our argument. Yes, we did agree with the analysis that stamp duty is a poor tax, but we could not support the motion, because we do not think there is a credible plan for abolishing it. We would like to see a much more holistic review of property taxes, alongside a credible plan. There is no credible plan in the motion. We do not trust the public spending cut proposals that have been put forward.

• 28 Oct 2025 · Stamp Duty Land Tax · Hansard source

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  Ask any economist, or indeed most Members in the Chamber today, and they would say that stamp duty is a bad tax. It creates friction in the market, whether we are talking about someone in a one-bedroom flat who is trying to take the step up to a family home, but who finds that their savings goal is now that much more, or whether we are talking about someone whose kids have flown the nest, and who is considering downsizing but finds the bill a disincentive. It is important that we do not overstate what abolishing stamp duty will do. There have been lots of claims about how it will help millions of young people on to the ladder. For most people, this would not be the case. There is an exemption for first-time buyers of properties worth up to £300,000, and a further discount all the way up to half a million. It is important that we recognise that the proposal would not make a difference for huge numbers of people, including young people. I appreciate the points made about the fluidity of the market as well, but that is not the critical point. The central problem in the housing market is the disparity between people’s wages and house prices. People have said to me, “I had to save hard to get my home,” and “You should have seen the interest rates back in the day.” I have no doubt that it has always been hard and a struggle to save up to buy a property, but the extent to which it has become out of reach today is not properly understood. Around the time I was born—1990, if Members are interested—the difference between the average wage and the average house price was about three times a person’s income, but today that average difference is eight times a person’s income. I represent a London constituency, and for people in London, that difference is 15 times the average income. That means that people in the top 10% of earners in the capital cannot afford the average home. It is an absolute disgrace that we have allowed ourselves to get to this situation.

• 28 Oct 2025 · Stamp Duty Land Tax · Hansard source

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  I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. I made the point earlier that the welfare bill went up on the Conservative Government’s watch, not least because they cut back NHS funding.

• 28 Oct 2025 · Stamp Duty Land Tax · Hansard source

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  I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way after his fantastic punchline, which everybody really enjoyed.

• 28 Oct 2025 · Stamp Duty Land Tax · Hansard source

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  I will make some progress; I have been intervened on quite a few times. In the Chamber, we may agree on the analysis of stamp duty’s failings, but the Liberal Democrats cannot support the motion, because it is not a credible plan. Also, if a stamp duty cut were made in isolation, it might not deliver what Conservative Members say it would. It might just gum up the housing market further for the next generation. It is high time that we had a serious debate about property tax reform. Some of that has happened in the Chamber today, but the motion does not reflect that serious debate, so I will not support it.

• 28 Oct 2025 · Stamp Duty Land Tax · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for bringing me on to my next point early. I want to address this proposed £47 billion in public spending cuts. If the Conservatives were to hand over that proposal in its current form to the Office for Budget Responsibility, it would laugh them out of the front door. Those cuts are not credible at all. Over half of that figure is based on welfare cuts—a welfare bill, by the way, that rose on the watch of the Conservative Government, not least because of the defunding of the NHS, which caused people to be in ill health in the first place. The Conservatives are also talking about reducing the size of the civil service. Can any Member hazard a guess as to why the civil service has grown since 2016? It is because we have in-housed a lot of bureaucracy that we used to outsource to Brussels. One of the primary reasons why the civil service has grown is the number of services that we now have to deliver in this country.

• 27 Oct 2025 · Access to Work Scheme · Hansard source

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  2. What steps his Department is taking to assess the effectiveness of the Access to Work scheme in helping to enable long-term career progression for disabled people.

• 27 Oct 2025 · Access to Work Scheme · Hansard source

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  A constituent came to my surgery the other week who felt pretty frustrated that the Access to Work scheme, which once supported him, was pulling the rug from beneath his feet as he progressed in his career. He has been a model example; he has not let his multiple neurodivergent diagnoses hold him back. He has worked hard and, with support, has earned a promotion to a deputy leadership position. At that point, the DWP decided to reassess him, and it downgraded his support—right at the moment when he felt he needed to maintain that support, given his new responsibilities. Can the Minister assure us that when the reforms come, they will ensure that people are supported over the progression of their career, as well as into work in the first place?

• 23 Oct 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  First, I associate myself with the comments made about Oliver Colvile’s passing and the Aberfan disaster. I wonder if we can have a debate about rhetoric colliding with reality. Earlier this week, we had the Chancellor, after years of telling us that we can make Brexit work, finally concede that things are not going so well on that front. In the same week, our resident patriots—people who are so passionate about Britain that they seek to import American politics to our shores—discovered that their latest pet project has hit the buffers as well. Reform’s department of government efficiency—or DOGE, as I hear teenage boys call it—has succeeded only in cutting the number of Reform councillors in Kent from 57 to 50. The latest spate of losses has come after Reform’s Kent county council leader conceded that there is not much waste to cut in local government and that it will probably have to put up council tax, just like everybody else. As much as I enjoy watching populist promises go pop, there is a serious point to be made about local government being on its knees. As real-terms budgets have been cut year after year, demand has continued to rise. More elderly people require social care, there are more children with special needs, and more families are turning up at the council’s front door after becoming homeless. For many local authorities, the vast majority of their budget is now spent on services for these vulnerable people, leaving little left for the services that residents expect to see across their communities. The Government’s fair funding formula was supposed to fix all this, but in some places, including my London borough of Sutton, it seems like it is set to make things worse. That is in no small part down to the fact that it utterly fails to take account of the real cost of housing, particularly in London and the south-east. Can the Government give us assurances that they intend to fix the problems with their current proposal, that they are going to listen to the feedback from London Councils and the Local Government Association, and that they will come back with a funding formula that works for local authorities?

• 16 Oct 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  I thank the Leader of the House for his warm welcome—it is a warmer welcome than I received online, where somebody compared me to a failed contestant on “The Apprentice”, which is a good start. I share the right hon. Member’s sympathies expressed about the synagogue attack in Manchester, as well as his tribute to Ming Campbell, which is greatly appreciated by Liberal Democrat Members. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman) for her service in this role, and I wish her well in her new job. This past week we have been digesting news of the ceasefire in the middle east which, despite reporting, has nothing to do with President Trump’s candidacy for the Nobel peace prize and is all about the welfare of the people living in that region. There is indescribable relief that the hostages are now heading home and the bloodshed can come to an end. The immediate concern is that the ceasefire holds, and the hope is that there will be a just and sustainable peace in the region, including a two-state solution. As we look to the future, it is also important that we do not forget what happened before. A few weeks ago there was a UN report that a genocide had taken place in Gaza, and it is the international community’s obligation to establish the truth and hold those responsible to account. Will the Government, at the appropriate time, make a statement about how Britain will contribute to such an international process, so that justice and accountability for what happened in Gaza can be served?

• 13 Oct 2025 · Security Update: Official Secrets Act Case · Hansard source

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  I admire the Government’s attempts to pin this on the previous Conservative Government. It is an endeavour in which I would usually join them, but on this occasion I cannot, because the argument simply does not stack up. The argument seems to hinge on the Conservative Government’s classification of China as a threat to national security. That is not a formal classification, but one that needs to be substantiated. The Government seem to be arguing that it was not because, for instance, in the integrated review refresh of 2023, China was merely described as an “epoch-defining…challenge”. However, the same paragraph in that report talks about the Chinese Communist party as presenting “state threats to the UK’s democracy, economy and society”. Reports by the Intelligence and Security Committee of the same year talk about how China’s “ambition at a global level…poses a national security threat to the UK.” We have heard other testimonies today from MI5 and others. My question to the Government is: was this the sort of evidence that was provided to the CPS? If not, why not? Whose decision was it not to present that kind of evidence?

• 13 Oct 2025 · Baby Loss · Hansard source

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  I thank the co-sponsors for securing the debate and for all colleagues’ powerful contributions so far tonight. Many of those contributions have focused on preventable baby loss, calling for lessons to be learnt and for more to be done, which I fully support. However, I would like to take this opportunity to shine a light on the many occasions when baby loss is not preventable, but where I believe there is still more that could be done as a society. Earlier this year, my wife and I had an early miscarriage. It was our first pregnancy and we were extremely excited when we got the positive test result. We were very quick to tell all our friends and family. We had no negative signs ahead of our 12-week scan, but during that scan it became quickly apparent that something was not right. We were asked whether it was possible that it could have been nine weeks. Then a second staff member came in and shortly after we were told that there was no heartbeat. We were moved to another room where we asked all the questions that I am sure many ask in this situation. Was there anything we could do? Is there anything we could do differently next time? We were reassured that, actually, it was extremely common, there was nothing we could have done, and that it happens to around one in four or five people. On our journey home, we felt a bit silly for not knowing that fact and for not being prepared for how common that type of miscarriage was. We wondered why we had not been told in our early antenatal appointments that it was a possibility. We also wondered why we had not heard that so much from friends and family, or seen it in conversations on the TV. After that, we pledged that we would talk about it more. After that moment, we were faced with some morbid choices: a natural miscarriage, the opportunity to take some pills, or some sort of surgical procedure. We were given a leaflet to think about it and off we went. We did not actually have the opportunity to make that choice, because shortly after we found out the miscarriage started to happen naturally. I can only say that I was not prepared for the level of brutality that that would entail. We were told that it might be like period pains, but it was much more severe than that for my wife and the volume of blood was unsettling. I could not believe it was normal while it was happening. We started googling and looking online for advice, and we were lucky to find blogs by Tommy’s and other organisations that have been mentioned today, which provided us with some reassurance. However, we still ended up going to A&E because we were concerned about the blood loss. They gave us some reassurance, and we managed to go home with some medication and to get through that event. The follow-up from that traumatic incident in our lives was a simple phone call; we had to report a negative pregnancy test a few weeks later, and that was the end of the support. Before I run out of time, I must add that we were keen to get on, and we have since got pregnant again. We have jumped that 12-week hurdle, and we are now aware that the chances of miscarriage have greatly diminished, so we are in a better place than we were. However, we are still wondering about what more can be done to provide reassurance to people in that really troubling moment. I ask the Secretary of State whether we can record every miscarriage so that we can get firmer statistics about how often this happens. I ask him also to look at whether we can provide access for people 24 hours a day so that they do not have unsettling moments wondering if they need to attend A&E, and whether the mental health support that is in place after a third miscarriage could be in place from that very first moment, because it is a deeply traumatic event for anybody to go through. I think we need to talk about it as a society much more, so that the next couple is prepared.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Official Secrets Act · Hansard source

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  China has broken international agreements with the UK. It has placed bounties on the heads of Hongkongers seeking refuge in this country. Today’s announcement that charges have been dropped will only embolden China in its efforts to interfere with our democracy. The Minister has mentioned the effectiveness of the foreign influence registration scheme, so will he now assure us that all relevant officials, including those in the Administration of Hong Kong, will be placed in the enhanced tier of the scheme?

• 9 Sept 2025 · Tax Reliefs: Zero-based Review · Hansard source

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  The Minister detailed that about 350 reliefs have been assessed, but my understanding is that more than 1,200 tax reliefs are on the books, amounting to hundreds of billions of foregone revenue for the Treasury. Given that the Treasury examined the spending of all Departments in detail over the summer, I wondered whether it was considering applying the same level of scrutiny to itself.

• 9 Sept 2025 · Tax Reliefs: Zero-based Review · Hansard source

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  9. If she will make an assessment of the potential merits of undertaking a zero-based review of all tax reliefs before the autumn Budget 2025.

• 8 Sept 2025 · Palestine Action: Proscription and Protests · Hansard source

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  I hear the distinction that the Minister is attempting to make, but the fact remains that almost 1,000 largely peaceful protesters were arrested in London this weekend. I am sure that when we look back on this, we are going to conclude that it was not only a huge waste of police resources, but a chilling moment for free speech in this country. Given that the Government seem so convinced that these people are associated with terrorism, will they commit to publishing data on what proportion of those arrested are actually charged with terrorism-related offences?

• 8 Sept 2025 · Indefinite Leave to Remain · Hansard source

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  I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate, and to stand alongside other hon. Members in defence of a promise that we made to the people of Hong Kong. Carshalton and Wallington is home to many Hongkongers. It is situated in the London borough of Sutton, which has become a bit of a go-to location for new arrivals, with more than 5,000 now living in our area. It is no surprise that many of those local residents signed this petition. They know, at first hand, what is at stake. They took risks to be here, they have built their lives here, they have contributed to our community and they have trusted the UK to be a safe haven. We owe it to them to secure their future. The BNO visa scheme was introduced in response to the imposition of the national security law in Hong Kong—a law that essentially criminalised dissent against the Chinese Communist party. The visa is a lifeline rooted in the special and enduring ties between our two nations. It offered a clear pathway: five years to indefinite leave to remain and then citizenship.

• 8 Sept 2025 · Indefinite Leave to Remain · Hansard source

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  Clearly, if there is to be consultation, that will entail a further few months of uncertainty for many people on the scheme. Does the Minister have an ambition for when the consultation will be concluded and for when we will hear the results?

• 8 Sept 2025 · Indefinite Leave to Remain · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend makes an excellent point about this being part of a promise that we made to the people of Hong Kong. When the route was introduced, the Chinese Communist party warned BNO applicants that they should not trust Britain. If we move the goalposts in the way we are now proposing, we may hand a huge propaganda victory to that Government. Does my hon. Friend agree that that would be a big mistake?

• 8 Sept 2025 · Indefinite Leave to Remain · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member makes an excellent point. It is a moral duty for our country to maintain its promise to those people. To extend the pathway to 10 years would be a betrayal of trust. The change would have damaging consequences: young Hongkongers would face a decade-long wait to access university at home fee rates, and families would be locked out of £3 billion-worth of retirement savings that they cannot access at the moment because of the restrictions imposed in Hong Kong. Many would be immobilised, unable to travel safely without risking contact with Chinese consulates. Children born here would have to wait until the age of 11 to gain a passport. All of that would play directly into the hands of the Chinese Government, who have long claimed that BNO holders misplaced their trust in Britain. Changing the rules now would hand the Chinese Government a huge propaganda victory. Constituents on BNO visas have written to me to describe how the limbo of waiting for indefinite leave to remain makes it difficult to continue their education or apply for the jobs that they want. Others have shared how they are harassed or subjected to surveillance, even here in the UK, simply for speaking out or being politically active. This is about safety. The Hong Kong diaspora in the UK faces transnational repression, a term that is no longer abstract. In recent months, we have seen surveillance and intimidation of activists, bounties placed on UK residents, physical attacks including the assault of a protester at the Manchester consulate, and attempts to break into the homes of exiled Hongkongers. Those are no longer isolated incidents. They are part of a systemic campaign, and the UK must respond with clarity and courage. In our borough of Sutton, I have heard personal stories of fear, resilience and hope. Hongkongers have opened businesses, joined our schools and enriched our community. We must not let bureaucracy or short-term politics undermine the commitment that was made in good faith. We must stand by Hongkongers, guarantee their rights and secure their futures in the way we promised.

• 4 Sept 2025 · Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree, and that was the point that I was about to make. I am sure the Minister will tell me that money is tight, but I ask her over what time horizon she is considering this—five, 10 or 15 years? Families know that this is not a cost-cutting measure. They know how expensive it gets for the state if arrangements fail. A family in my constituency—a couple of elderly grandparents caring for a teenager who keeps making attempts on their own life—cannot get the support they need, and that child is now under the care of the local authority, which is a far more expensive measure. How are the Government evaluating this fund and the impact it has on their finances? To me, it feels like they are saving a penny a day, and it is costing them a pound tomorrow. I say this to the Minister: restore the funding, guarantee it for good, and stand by those families who are doing our society such a service.

• 4 Sept 2025 · Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett) for her passionate advocacy. There is sometimes a misunderstanding that adoption and kinship care are somehow the fairytale ending to a traumatic situation, but I know at first hand that that is not the case. When I moved into the care of my grandparents as a teenager, I was angry and full of trauma, and I gave my nan and pops way too much grief and not enough appreciation. It was not until years later that I got to access therapy. Hearing the contributions from others today, I wish I had access earlier. I want to address the Government’s announcement today of the year extension. I want to be honest about how I feel about it—I feel like it is a sop. Families do not renew every financial year; they are for life, and they need long-term certainty about the fund.