Charlie Maynard MP: speeches

Speeches

• 7 Sept 2026 · Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  I thank the Chancellor and the Minister for their speech and statement. We know that the Conservatives’ Brexit deal has hit national GDP by as much as 8%, costing the country up to £90 billion a year in lost tax revenues. Will the Government now pull the largest zero-cost growth lever available to them by negotiating a growth and defence partnership with the EU, including joining the single market and a new customs union, rather than clinging to the same failed red lines, which are costing businesses billions every year? Being outside the single market and the customs union directly links to the 13% fall in the UK’s export of goods since 2022, which has hit traditional manufacturing regions the worst—the same places that the Government’s reindustrialise-the-north agenda claims to prioritise. I would like to understand whether she acknowledges the reality of that linkage or not. I welcome the Chancellor’s emphasis on the importance of fiscal credibility and, linked to that, meeting the fiscal rules. However, the reality is that those rules have been easily gamed by successive Governments, with our budgetary process being summarised as speculation without scrutiny, short-term headroom chasing and gaming the system, with an approach of jam today, which is spending, and pain tomorrow, which is tax, but tomorrow never arrives. The result is that it has been more than 25 years since we had a balanced Budget, and our national debt is now six times larger than 20 years ago. Will the Chief Secretary demonstrate that she is serious about tackling our debt and agree that a key way to do that is to grow our economy? Will she consider what we can learn from how other countries such as Switzerland, Sweden and New Zealand have addressed and solved their budget process problems?

• 3 Sept 2026 · Global Biodiversity and Ecosystems: National Security · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for his speech. Around Witney, 200 farmers are implementing a landscape recovery scheme. Only three such schemes have been implemented in the country. That one is on the Evenlode. Would it be helpful if the Minister said when the Government are going to bring forward the third round of landscape recovery schemes? We urgently need to be moving faster.

• 1 Sept 2026 · UK Financial Services · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chair, Mr Twigg. I thank the hon. Member for Buckingham and Bletchley (Callum Anderson) for securing this important debate and for making it a large enough subject for us all to pick and choose, because it is hard to cover such an enormous range. It is much appreciated. I thank him for such good points made, and I thank the Minister for returning to her role. I look forward to working with her. I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and my ownership stake in BDA Partners, the business I founded in 1996, which focuses on Asian mergers and acquisitions, in which I have no management role. Everybody here believes that our financial services sector is a strategically important national asset and a key competitive advantage for our economy. We all want the sector to continue to thrive, boosting businesses, jobs and growth all across the UK. We all want Britain’s financial and professional services industry to remain possibly the leading such services cluster globally. Such services make us a trade superpower. We benefit from our unique combination of language, law and location. We have strong institutions and dynamic markets. We are the world’s second largest destination for fintech investment after the US, and we are a material player in the AI space. Those are huge strengths that we must continue to build on, but we must also be clear about the challenges. Our financial services sector has lost ground on a relative basis and on a global basis. Other economies are rapidly growing, innovating, investing and preparing for the future. We have no cause for complacency. We need to be ambitious and take decisions now, which will help the UK over the short, medium and long term. Post Brexit, the City has continued to be an excellent location to base a global financial services business. However, our departure from the EU has substantially weakened our financial services industry, both in terms of the UK serving as the centre of European finance and a slower-growing UK economy that has not provided the traditional tailwind that it previously did. UK financial services remain a bright spot, but it would be a lot brighter if we were inside the EU’s single market. Do not just take that from me. TheCityUK notes that even though overall services trade has held up, “Exports of financial services have declined 5.9 per cent…likely at least in part due to the impact of Brexit frictions.” If the Government are serious about growth, they need to fix this. We should be pursuing a growth and defence partnership with Europe, including joining both the single market and the customs union. That would be revolutionary for the future of the UK financial services sector; it would tear down the barriers to trade in services that we have erected, which are still holding back our financial sector. In particular, joining the single market would secure again passporting rights for the sector, reducing costs and administration burdens and enabling financial firms to offer services across the whole of the EU without requiring further authorisations. In the shorter term, the Government should move quickly to immediately improve financial services co-operation with Europe. For example, they should be making the most of the UK-EU financial regulatory forum to secure a deal on the mutual recognition of professional qualifications, building on the dialogue that was agreed at the UK-EU reset last May. We must also finally see the UK-EU youth mobility scheme, which was agreed in principle last year, through to implementation. Secondly, if the Government are going to boost financial services and seriously compete with the US, they must look at the business landscape as a whole. We need far more ambition to boost UK plc—especially our high-growth, high-tech businesses—and pull every available lever to encourage capital formation, so how can we do this? Traditionally, the UK has been a fantastic harbour for international capital on the back of a cast-iron reputation for strong, fair regulation that safeguards investor rights. We need to ensure that our regulators continue to live up to that benchmark, and I think there is a question about that today. The same goes for competition. The Competition and Markets Authority needs to be using its powers under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 to demonstrate it has the will to enforce both quickly and effectively against strong players as well as weaker ones and, where applicable, it should be working closely with its EU counterpart to magnify its impact. This is not an issue that is just floating in the ether; it matters to people across my constituency, because it brings down costs. Everybody talks about the cost of living; if we allow people to control markets so that there is no competition, costs go up, and everybody feels that in their pockets. It is really important to draw that link, so having the CMA move fast, at scale and at speed matters. We also need to fix how we support business innovation. Research and development tax reliefs are a powerful tool, but too often they are undermined by uncertainty, delays and a “compliance first” mindset. A more liberal, pro-innovation approach should move towards an expert-led pre-clearance system for R&D tax reliefs. We could have up-front assessments by scientists and engineers—people who understand the technology—rather than retrospective scrutiny by compliance teams. Models in countries like the Netherlands show that this can work effectively. It provides certainty to the founders, reduces disputes, and ensures support is directed towards genuine innovation. We must also look at reducing regulation where it is not required, as the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) mentioned. For example, why is the regulatory burden on the venture capital industry so much higher in the UK than in the US, including in terms of time, which is as critical as cost? How about the UK taking the approach of using exempt reporting advisers—as they do in the US, focused on professional investors—to more effectively balance regulation with levels of risk? Many Members have talked about AI, and I am going to do so too. Any discussion of the future of financial services has to take AI into account. Earlier today, the Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, published an open letter warning G20 Finance Ministers that artificial intelligence could pose a major cyber-security risk to financial systems. Writing in his capacity as chair of the international Financial Stability Board, he said that the potential impact of frontier AI is “the most immediate concern” for the global financial system, and that financial institutions, financial market infrastructures, and technology providers all need to “strengthen vulnerability management, response and recovery capabilities, and prepare for more severe scenarios involving simultaneous disruption across multiple firms or shared technology dependencies.” These risks are inherently international, and many jurisdictions still lack the systems to manage them—frankly, I think we do too. The UK Government must make AI security a top priority to safeguard not just UK financial services but the international financial markets on which we all depend. I would therefore be grateful if the Minister could set out what steps the Government are taking to promote the safe and responsible deployment of AI internationally, and how the cyber-security of the financial system is being strengthened. The other technological revolution that will shape the future of financial services is digital assets, stablecoins and cryptocurrency. A few days ago, the Treasury gave the Bank of England the new objective of supporting payment systems innovation. That is welcome, and having the right regulatory conditions in place to make the most of digital innovations is critical, but we need more clarity from the Government about how they intend to balance the opportunities and risks generated by new digital assets. A key question is what stance the Government intend to take on stablecoins and a central bank digital currency or digital pound. The global stablecoin ecosystem is now dominated by two US dollar-pegged issuers, Tether and Circle, which together account for around 90% of the market. The UK’s own GBP stablecoin is, per the House of Lords Financial Services Regulation Committee’s assessment, “nascent”. Many are therefore worried that the digital financial infrastructure of the future is likely to default to dollar-denominated instruments issued by foreign private firms. I urge the Minister to address those concerns clearly, and to set out how this Government plan to make the most of the opportunities presented by this new technology while safeguarding against the risk and, crucially, whether there is or will be a timeline for a decision to be made jointly with the Bank of England.

• 14 Jul 2026 · Future of Thames Water · Hansard source

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  On that point, will the Minister give way?

• 14 Jul 2026 · Future of Thames Water · Hansard source

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  I completely agree, and Thames Water’s full-year accounts are out at 7 am tomorrow morning. We will see just what they tell us. It is going to be ugly, not least because the company’s equity is worthless. The largest equity shareholders wrote down their shareholding to zero value and withdrew their board members more than two years ago. When Thames Water’s creditors sought to take on another £3 billion of debt last year, I was given permission to intervene in the High Court and speak for the interests of Thames Water’s 16 million customers, who are paying all these outrageous costs and interest expenses, but would otherwise have had no voice in court. This Labour Government have slow-peddled for the last two years, and have refused to draw a line under decades of Tory bad behaviour by putting Thames Water into special administration. This approach is costing customers an absolute fortune. Thames Water paid £338 million just in interest expenses in the six months to September 2025. That is £133 million more, just in interest expenses, than it paid in the same period the previous year. Labour is taking this hands-off approach despite the company’s multiple breaches of its operating licence. Let me illustrate some of those breaches. As I have stated, the company has carried out more than 1,000 illegal spills over four years. It must hold two investment-grade credit ratings as a condition of its operating licence, but it last held any investment-grade credit rating two years ago, in July 2024, and it has undergone a change of ultimate controller; yet the Minister, the Secretary of State and Ofwat have repeatedly refused to answer on that point.

• 14 Jul 2026 · Future of Thames Water · Hansard source

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  Absolutely. The consumers are getting the raw deal, and there is no end in sight. To qualify as an ultimate controller—it is a defined term—a party need only have material influence over Thames Water. The creditor consortium right now is negotiating bilaterally with the company, and has put in £3 billion, but somehow that does not make it meet the criterion. It is ridiculous, and frankly, seeing this failure play out was probably the single moment when I most despaired of government and the rule of law. I repeatedly ask the same question, and repeatedly do not get an answer. I find it really, really bad.

• 14 Jul 2026 · Future of Thames Water · Hansard source

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  I agree 100%, and that is what is so depressing; by continuing to demonstrate that the regulators have no teeth, we create a bigger and bigger problem for ourselves. The alternative to a SAR—a deal with the creditors, which, extraordinarily, seems to be the Government’s preferred option at this point—should not be countenanced. Giving these businesses, now operating as London & Valley Water consortium, yet more control of the company at ludicrously high interest rates would allow this downward spiral to continue. The Government must and can change course by using their power to ask for a SAR under existing legislation. There is now the opportunity for Thames Water to exit special administration as a mutual, owned and run in the interests of its customers, and to break the cycle of financial mismanagement and egregious environmental failings once and for all. Legislation sets out that a water company insolvency SAR can conclude in two ways: rescue, whereby the company is restructured, debts are written down or converted, and the existing legal entity continues in a modified form; or transfer, whereby the regulated undertaking is sold or transferred to a new owner. That does not require a competitive auction, as the legislation provides for a transfer approved by the Secretary of State and Ofwat.Nothing in the legislation states that either route requires a competitive sale, as the overriding objective in a SAR is continuity of public service, not maximising creditor returns. The Government could therefore set out at the point of SAR entry, or shortly after, that a mutual is the preferred exit route for Thames, and make that clear in the special administrator’s mandate. Work would need to be done in parallel with the SAR process to incorporate and put in place the governance framework for a new mutual, as well as more broadly updating water regulations to take into account the Cunliffe report’s recommendations. Ofwat could then work towards a licence transfer to the mutual, rather than running a market sale. In conclusion, I have some questions for the Minister. If she is unable to answer them now, I would appreciate an answer in writing if possible. Have the Government sought legal advice on the SAR process from a specialist law firm? I appreciate that FTI Consulting has been instructed for many months, but that is not a substitute for legal advice. A proper, specialist understanding of the SAR as a legal process, and of the litigation risk—perceived or actual—of applying for a SAR, is critical. Will the Government commit to publishing a SAR assessment policy, and does the Minister agree that the creditors consortium has material influence over Thames Water, and therefore meets the ultimate controller test? Will the Minister act with Ofwat to enforce the appropriate penalties on Thames Water for having undergone that change without having given notice, and will she provide an update on the negotiations between Ofwat and Thames Water? Will the Minister now take the London & Valley Water deal off the table, and work with the Secretary of State to apply to the court for Thames Water to be put into special administration? Finally, in response to a question about whether she would consider the Liberal Democrat call for water companies to be mutually owned public benefit companies, the Minister said: “I would be happy to see more mutual ownership of water companies, but the question is how we get there.”— —[ Official Report , 16 June 2026; Vol. 787, c. 728.] Given that, will she confirm her Department’s position on mutual ownership models for water companies? What are the Department’s plans for exploring how we get there?

• 14 Jul 2026 · Future of Thames Water · Hansard source

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  I will discuss the future of Thames Water, starting with Thames Water’s record of pollution and environmental failure, and how it impacts everyone in my Witney constituency. Thames Water serves the constituency and embodies the systemic failure of the national water sector. Last year, Thames Water pumped sewage into rivers and lakes for 107,822 hours. West Oxfordshire is very much ground zero for sewage. We have the Thames, the Evenlode, the Windrush, Shill brook and the Cole. We also have WASP, or Windrush Against Sewage Pollution, which has been so active in going after Thames Water’s bad behaviour. It has mapped the illegal sewage spills at Thames Water sewage treatment works and found that, between 2021 and 2025, there were 1,231 illegal spills just in the Witney constituency, and 271 illegal spills in just one sewage treatment works, Faringdon. West Oxfordshire district council has done great work in trying to hold Thames Water to account, as has WASP, which inspired the Channel 4 programme “Dirty Business”, which many hon. Members will have seen, so well done to Peter, Ash, Geoff and Vaughan. Despite Thames Water’s appalling record, residents have seen their bills skyrocket. I have constituents whose bills have gone up by 50% and 70%; I even have one whose bill has gone up by 93%. That is outrageous, but those bill hikes are not making the situation any better. That is because Thames Water’s financial situation is disastrous. Thames has nearly £20 billion of debt.

• 14 Jul 2026 · Future of Thames Water · Hansard source

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  My apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am grateful to the former Secretary of State for setting out in a letter to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee in June last year that “we expect that any Government funding required during a SAR would be recouped after the conclusion of the administration”. The current Secretary of State set out the same point in a parliamentary debate on 16 June. It is also worth noting that the Tories—there are not any in the Chamber—continue to refuse to acknowledge this, and that Teneo, Thames Water’s own expert adviser, stated the same in its report to the High Court in December 2024.

• 14 Jul 2026 · Future of Thames Water · Hansard source

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  I completely agree with my hon. Friend. That is what is going on up and down the catchment writ small, with treatment works deferred despite being crucially needed. In Aston, we have sewage running down the street year after year, and it is the same in Standlake. It is just disgusting, and there is no end in sight. A SAR process would allow the Government to use the period while Thames Water is in a SAR to put much of the good work from the Cunliffe review into new legislation, and to do the legwork to enable the company to exit as a mutual. Crucially, a SAR would not ultimately cost the Government anything—this really matters—because they will recoup all the funding spent on a SAR, as this new funding injected by the Government would be super senior to all other funding. I am very grateful to the former DEFRA Secretary, Steve Reed, for setting out in a letter to the—

• 14 Jul 2026 · Future of Thames Water · Hansard source

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  How is that possible?

• 14 Jul 2026 · Future of Thames Water · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend. Rather than having customers pay hundreds of millions of pounds of debt at ludicrous interest rates of nearly 10%, Thames Water should be taken into a special administration regime, which is commonly known as bankruptcy on insolvency grounds. I urge the Government to pursue a SAR on the basis of insolvency, as this is a more straightforward way to secure special administration than on a performance basis, and it will give the special administrator additional powers and a stronger position in relation to the creditors. The Water Industry Act 1991 sets out triggers linked to financial insolvency. Among them is the company being unable, or likely to be unable, to pay its debts. The Secretary of State and Ofwat both have discretion to apply to the High Court for a special administration order if that condition is triggered. I understand that the Government currently do not have, and have refused to publish, a SAR assessment policy. That is despite the Cunliffe review concluding that there is a need for “broad, judgement-based tests within a clear policy, that has been set out in advance, of how the regulator will assess failing companies against these tests, the factors it will take into account and the indicators it will consider.” That is from paragraph 793, recommendation 59, of the final report. Clarity around those tests and when a SAR will be used would benefit the water sector and its investors. Importantly, it also increases the Government’s negotiating leverage with the class A creditor consortium by further increasing the credibility of the threat of a SAR. I am interested to hear from the Minister why the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is so reluctant to publish those tests. A SAR process would allow Thames Water’s debt to be written down substantially, very likely into single-digit billions. This write-down is crucial, and it is not punitive. The write-down should be sufficient for the company to leave the SAR with a balance sheet that is strong enough to manage the huge spend that will be required over the next decade or so on treatment works and pipe networks.

• 9 Jul 2026 · Timms Review: Interim Report · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister and everyone involved in the review for their hard work; this is a difficult subject, so it is much appreciated. Today’s report has confirmed what perhaps all of us knew for many years, which is that PIP is supposed to act as a lifeline, but is administered through a broken system. Disabled people say that the application process actively disincentivises them from staying in work and maintaining an active social life. That is unfair on claimants and damaging for our economy, and it should worry us all. People deserve far better. We welcome this interim report, and we will engage constructively with the Government and play our role in the delivery of genuine improvements to the system. We want a society in which everyone can live independently and with dignity. We need the right support in place to ensure that disabled people and their carers can live their best possible lives, and the PIP system must be built around those principles. We must, however, recognise the structural underlying challenges in the operation of the system. In 2024 prices, spending on incapacity and disability benefits rose from £34 billion a year in 2019 to £51 billion a year in 2024, under the previous Conservative Government. The number of those economically inactive due to long-term health issues rose from 2.1 million to more than 2.8 million in the same period, and the figure is stuck at a similarly high level now. This is seriously worrying, and the UK is largely an outlier in that regard. On current trends, the total bill for working-age sickness and disability benefits is projected to rise to £78 billion in 2030, which means that it will have more than doubled in 10 years. Managing these economic pressures in an effective, fair and sustainable way is vital, so could the Minister expand a little on the work done to make sure that the evidence gathered is representative? Is work under way to address the root causes of these challenges in a holistic way, looking at everything from employment support to mental health? Can he also update the House on progress on merging PIP and universal credit incapacity benefit assessments?

• 9 Jul 2026 · NATO Summit · Hansard source

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  On behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Bicester and Woodstock (Calum Miller), I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of her statement. As we have come to expect of all major international summits, NATO’s meeting in Ankara was taken over entirely by Donald Trump’s tantrums and threats. He restated his claim that Greenland should become American, threatened the withdrawal of all remaining US troops from Europe, and once again lambasted allies for not joining his and Netanyahu’s calamitous war in Iran, which has upended the world economy and worsened a spiralling cost of living crisis for millions across Britain. That is no way to conduct international diplomacy. Did the Prime Minister make it clear to Donald Trump that his threats against Greenland are totally unacceptable? However, there were some positive moments from the summit. NATO allies reaffirmed support for Ukraine, and the Prime Minister announced plans for the development of a new deep strike capability with our European partners. Will the Secretary of State outline how exactly the UK will provide its share of the £37 billion of funding for that capability? Even before that new commitment, as has been pointed out, the Government’s own defence investment plan delivered only just over half of what military chiefs deem necessary for our national defence. Together with the Secretary of State’s colleagues in the Ministry of Defence, will she consider how defence bonds could be used rapidly to support the UK’s contribution to that initiative, bolster the confidence of our allies and send a clear signal to our adversaries? Have these plans been drawn up together with the Ukrainians? They have shown with incredible effect how deep strike capability can be developed fast and much, much more cheaply than £37 billion. On defence funding, the Prime Minister discussed the possibility of collective financing and procurement models as a critical way to generate cheaper loans for military programmes and support greater interoperability. Will the Secretary of State update the House on whether any progress was made at the summit to bring together the existing Defence, Security and Resilience Bank and our own multilateral defence mechanism into a single European rearmament bank? Finally, the Secretary of State mentions El Obeid in Sudan and the thousands of lives at risk. The UK has the power to act, so will she proscribe the RSF, as has just been done with the IRGC? Will she suspend all UK arms sales to the UAE, given its role in arming the RSF?

• 9 Jul 2026 · Iran Conflict: Ceasefire · Hansard source

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  Iran is continuing to hold the global economy to ransom through its reckless strikes in the strait of Hormuz—we all agree on that. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s continuing tit-for-tat retaliations risk dragging the whole region back into a full-blown conflict. This would threaten the lives of citizens across the middle east, while heaping even more economic harm on millions of British people already struggling with the spiralling cost of living. Donald Trump has claimed that the war has been a huge success, but in reality it has been a costly humiliation for the President. Will the Minister confirm what steps the Department is taking to get both sides back to the negotiating table? Are we working with our reliable allies to secure a diplomatic resolution? Will the Minister also update the House on the status and health of Craig and Lindsay Foreman, who are still imprisoned in Iran? Will the Minister recognise their detention as arbitrary and will he refer the case to the International Court of Justice? Will the Minister confirm that after the National Security (State Threats) Bill was passed yesterday, the Government will move immediately to proscribe the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the exporter of Iranian terror?

• 9 Jul 2026 · Israeli Settlements: Trade Ban · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) for bringing such an important debate to the House. I appreciate all the speeches that have been given with such force. The issue is enormously important to many of my constituents in Witney. A disaster is happening in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Some 2,000 people have been killed just in the west bank since October 2023, but that is just the tip of an iceberg of settler violence and state-sponsored violence that is carving up land and putting in barriers. Between half and three quarters of a million Israelis now live in settlements in the west bank that are illegal under international law. The Israeli Government have doubled down on this with their active plans for a massive further expansion in the E1 zone, while the UK Government look on passively. We need to introduce a legislative ban on all UK trade in goods and services with illegal Israeli settlements. That should include a package of sanctions including large fines for any UK firms that bid for tenders relating to illegal settlement construction in the E1 area or elsewhere in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. These sanctions should extend to include any financial institutions here in the UK that through the provision of finance directly facilitate UK companies’ involvement in construction or other service provision for illegal settlements —and yes, we are all thinking about you, JCB. Various hon. Members talked about the contrast with the speed at which the Government introduced sanctions on Russian-occupied Crimea and other illegally occupied parts of Ukraine, so I will not rehash those arguments, but the Office of Trade Sanctions Implementation and His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs play key roles in those sanctions, which they are not being asked to play in relation to these sanctions. Members also talked about how other countries, including Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland and Belgium, are implementing bans or legislating to implement bans. If we do not know how to do it, why do we not ask them how they did it? We might learn something. I want to stress the important subject of services. Compared with the value of goods, the value of services is unknown, but it is almost certainly large, perhaps much larger than goods. Whatever that value is, we want services to be included in the sanctions. I am looking for a commitment from the Minister to a ban that includes services, and to the enforcement of that. On the Government’s non-enforcement of their own labelling measures, the Business and Trade Select Committee, of which I am a member, has written to the Government twice, most recently in April 2026 following a meeting with Palestinian delegates on 4 February and a Sub-Committee session with the Minister for Trade—I thank the Minister—on 25 February. The Government, however, have since refused the Committee’s request for evidence on enforcement of their current labelling measures. Will the Minister give us that evidence? These commitments matter, because we made them, along with Israel, under the UK-Israel free trade agreement, which requires the UK and Israel to differentiate goods produced within green-line Israel—within the pre-1967 borders—and goods produced in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. That is a key point. At the moment, I think many Members of this House share the overall impression that the Government’s inaction means that they are talking the talk about protecting human rights and upholding international law, but not walking the walk. This is a Labour Government; bluntly, I expect more from them, so I really hope we will see something today on this issue.

• 7 Jul 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Regarding contracts for difference, will the Government now consider moving from a 100% revenue guarantee model to a partial coverage model, along the lines of what Australia now has?