Charlie Maynard MP: speeches

Speeches

• 18 May 2026 · Backing Business to Create Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  We all agree that we urgently need to get the economy growing again. However, the Bills in the King’s Speech do not represent the big, bold economic change that the country needs. I will talk today about just two things that would create economic growth: trade, and balancing tax and spending through our fiscal framework. On trade, our country prospers when fair markets for goods, services, capital and labour operate effectively. Trade makes this country great. Raising barriers to trade makes it harder for the economy to grow and erodes the tax base on which our vital public services depend—and the cost of doing business skyrockets, whether for a small business person in my constituency or for a large financial institution here in London. The evidence of the damage that Brexit has done is in plain view. America’s National Bureau of Economic Research, which produces non-partisan economic research, estimates that by 2025, the Brexit process had reduced UK GDP per capita by 6% to 8%, investment by 12% to 18%, employment by 3% to 4%, and productivity by 3% to 4%. That comes at enormous human cost. The UK-EU reset has some good elements, but each element, which is being painfully negotiated, returns merely some of the benefits that we all used to have. Our young people may soon have the opportunity again to travel and work abroad. We may rejoin the EU’s energy market, cutting electricity costs and making both markets greener and more efficient. The Government have been working hard on an SPS agreement on food with the EU. That would hugely reduce costs and delays for our farmers, and the benefits would be felt in Oxfordshire and rural communities across the country. It would bring cheaper food to supermarket shelves, which is good news for all of us. But consider the logic: the Government are now fighting really hard to rejoin the EU’s single market in food products, while remaining resolutely against rejoining the single market for anything else. Where is the logic in that? Two things are painfully clear. We are expending enormous political capital to recover just a fraction of the benefits we once had, and even that goal is wholly insufficient, given the scale of the challenge that our economy faces. We need to be bolder and aim higher. I turn to the UK’s fiscal framework. Let us have a think about how well it has worked over the last quarter of a century. In the last 25 years—a period spanning at least eight different fiscal frameworks—we have not had a single year in which tax receipts have exceeded spending. The 2024-25 deficit was £153 billion, which was 5.2% of GDP. The consequences of this are severe: our national debt has ballooned to £2.9 trillion, equivalent to 94% of GDP. When I look at our fiscal rules, the words that come to me are, “Lie to me.” The tradition works something like this. The Government of the day assure the country that all targets will be hit—not now, when it actually matters, but at a completely unknowable forecast date, five years hence. That five-year target rolls forward and is never reached. Spending is front-loaded in years one, two and three, and tax rises are backloaded in years four and five—ideally, the other side of a general election. Traditionally, voters have been lied to because the alternative means politicians confronting and explaining a financial situation that nobody wants to face. Is this failure inevitable? No, it is not. Other countries have moved in the other direction and cut their debt-to-GDP ratios. Sweden had a financial crisis in the 1990s, with a debt to GDP ratio of above 80%. Its response was the 1996 Budget Act, one of the most rigorous fiscal frameworks in Europe, which fundamentally reshaped how taxation and parliamentary scrutiny interact. Most importantly for our situation today, the principles of this framework continue to command very strong cross-party support. That does not mean that there is agreement on specific spending or tax decisions—these remain contested—but the framework rules themselves are treated as largely above partisan dispute. That is precisely why the Swedish model is so frequently cited internationally. I am asking everyone in this Chamber and everyone listening to think seriously about whether we could do something similar here. After all, we are far better off addressing this very large problem now, before a financial crisis forces our hand later.

• 22 Apr 2026 · Pension Schemes · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for his statement. We have learned today that this contract was awarded two and a half years ago. Capita had two and a half years to prepare for taking on the administration of the civil service scheme. As has been mentioned, the Public Accounts Committee warned in October that Capita was not ready, yet it took on the contract regardless on 1 December. Today we learned also that the Government have terminated another Capita contract, for the Royal Mail pension scheme. My constituents would like answers to the following questions. How many people on the civil service pension scheme, as of now, have not received payments that they should have had? Why should taxpayers be paying for the surge in His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs staff? A hundred and forty staff have come in to sort this out. Surely Capita should be paying for its incompetence. What is the timeline for Capita to clear up all inherited arrears, and is it prioritising hardship and bereavement cases? With regard to the Royal Mail pension scheme, now that Capita has been terminated, what is the plan?

• 23 Mar 2026 · National Insurance Contributions (Employer Pensions Contributions) Bill · Hansard source

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  The Liberal Democrats have been clear throughout the Bill’s stages that we think the Government would be misguided to make this change. While it may raise some tax revenue in the medium term, in the longer term it discourages pension saving. It also puts an extra cost and admin burden on small businesses at the worst possible time. For that reason, we support Lords amendments 6 and 12, which would exempt small and medium-sized businesses and charities. I would like to note again, as I did on Second Reading, that I am sceptical of the timing of this change. It will, very conveniently for the Government, only kick in during the likely election year of 2029-30, and not in 2026-27 or 2027-28. It seems as if the Government are motivated more by a wish to fix their numbers nominally to meet their fiscal rules than by a genuine belief that this change is the right thing to do. [ Interruption. ] I am asking the Minister to give us a reason why it is deferred and to explain that logic. Lords amendment 5, tabled by my colleague Baroness Kramer, would raise the proposed threshold from £2,000 to £5,000 on NICs-exempt savings. That would at least mitigate the impact on many lower and middle earners. This would be a sensible way to ensure that it is genuinely those who can afford to pay more who are impacted by this change. The proposed threshold of £2,000 will undoubtedly hit people on relatively modest incomes who are simply trying to do the right and sensible thing and plan for their future. The CBI has also expressed its strong support for a threshold at £5,000.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Royal Mail: Performance · Hansard source

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  I have been here for 17 months. We could rehash things from 14 or 17 years ago. I believe that in 2009 the Labour Government sought to take a 30% stake out of the Royal Mail, but I am not interested in going back through that because we are where we are. Let me try to finish my speech, and I will talk about where I think we should be heading now. The Government and Ofcom need to urgently make it clear to Royal Mail executives that they must get a grip on the situation. Although letter numbers have fallen, there is still plenty of demand for Royal Mail’s delivery services. Crucially, everyone across the country and all of us here in Parliament place huge value on retaining the universal service obligation. What seems clear is that the incentives are wrong. The new owner of Royal Mail is a commercial operator that bought International Distribution Services, the holding company of Royal Mail, in June 2025 with a full understanding of the Royal Mail’s USO requirement. The business seems to be prioritising its profitable parcel business, General Logistics Systems. The owner also has a clear commercial incentive to cut costs on the Royal Mail side of the business and to keep lobbying Ofcom to continue to loosen the USO requirements even further. Such a strategy serves the owner of Royal Mail very nicely, but is a terrible outcome for the many millions of people up and down the country who depend on the USO, and for the posties. I am sure the Minister and Ofcom recognise that predicament and also recognise that the USO is a key public good. I am interested in the extent to which the Minister considers the situation similar to or different from the telecoms industry levy, which is used to fund the broadband universal service obligation. Does the Minister agree that insisting on much clearer operational transparency from the Royal Mail would be good to establish more detail on whether parcels are being prioritised over letters and the impact of that? It could be managed by Ofcom requiring root-level data on delivery performance and clear reporting on parcels versus letters prioritisation to make it harder for USO traffic to be quietly deprioritised. What steps is the Minister considering taking to stop a situation where Royal Mail keeps trying to bounce Ofcom into cutting the USO further?

• 11 Mar 2026 · Finance (No. 2) Bill · Hansard source

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  I completely agree. The stress of that is horrific, so the more it can function effectively would be appreciated. The Government have said that people whose only source of income is the state pension will not pay any income tax over this Parliament, but no details have been provided on how they will be protected. I ask the Government to put an end to the uncertainty and set out plans in full explaining exactly how they intend to shield pensioners from that unfair tax hit. We would love a timeline for when they will do that. More broadly, extending the stealth tax by two more years will drag an estimated 1.3 million people into a higher tax band by 2029-30: just over 600,000 into the basic rate of tax and just under 700,000 into the higher rate. Those are big numbers. We would really appreciate it if the Government explained to each of the 1.3 million people who will be impacted what it will do to them, because I do not think they are aware of it right now. That disproportionately impacts those on low incomes who will be dragged into income tax for the first time. At the very least, please provide that information. Next is the impact of the Government’s actions and inactions on youth unemployment, which is building to a real crisis point. Some 16% of all 16 to 24-year-olds are out of work, or almost 740,000 people, which is 100,000 up in the last year—I repeat, 100,000 up in the last year—so something is going wrong with the Government’s policies and we need to get to the bottom of that. The Liberal Democrats have tabled new clause 14, which requires the Chancellor to review and report on the impact of the Bill on unemployment, with particular regard to young people aged 16 to 24. It is worth noting that this legislation, which dampens growth and hits jobs, comes at a time of broader disruption in the labour market. AI is already having a particular impact on entry level so-called white-collar jobs, but it is also having an impact in pubs. All our local pubs are hiring fewer young people because there is no incentive to do so any more. The creation of a new employers’ national insurance contribution band between £5,000 and £9,100, with a lower rate to incentivise employers to hire often younger, part-time workers, would really help. In new clause 13, we highlight the complexity of the tax system and the cost of administering it. There is a green brick sitting here masquerading as a Bill. With such a big majority in this Parliament, the Government have a real opportunity to do some serious thinking about how to simplify, root and branch, our tax code. It is disappointing that we see no sign of that actually happening. With this size of legislation being added each time, the tax system is getting bigger and more complex, and that puts a real burden on business. The Treasury Committee, the Public Accounts Committee and the Business and Trade Committee have all spoken out about how much damage our over-complex tax system is doing to our businesses. We would really appreciate anything that the Government can do and if they could get more serious about that.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Charter for Budget Responsibility · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I will not burden the House with too long a speech. There are a lot of issues with the Government’s and the country’s economic policymaking process, but there are good arguments for reducing the number of fiscal events, which create artificial cliff edges. However, I note the concerns, including from the IFS, that this looks like a way to reduce scrutiny of the Government’s economic record. Fundamentally, if we are serious about the responsible management of the public finances, tackling our high levels of debt and getting our economy growing again, I am most interested in how we scrutinise our Government’s tax and spending plans. The current situation, in which we have months and months of speculation and then approve hundreds of billions of pounds of Government tax and spending with just a few hours of debate, with no one permitted to see what the Chancellor is proposing in the Budget until it is announced as a fait accompli in Parliament, is exceptional by international standards and a key source of uncertainty and instability. If the Government truly want to improve market confidence, this is where they should be looking to make reforms. For example, we could look at Sweden, which, following a budget crisis in the early 1990s and soaring debt, introduced proper parliamentary debate of the Government’s budget, with alternatives offered and amendments made before it is finalised, before getting a subsequent period of scrutiny and accountability. The fact that Sweden has seen years of strong growth and high living standards, and that its debt has now dropped from 80% to 30% of GDP, is a positive endorsement of this approach. The reality is that incredibly important choices are made as part of the Budget process. These choices impact the day-to-day life of each of our constituents, whether in Witney or any of the constituencies that the Members here all represent. The people have a right to have the fullest possible picture of how the Government are going about setting their taxes, spending their money and managing the economic picture, and this step will not achieve that alone. The Government need to foster stability and manage the public finances responsibly. That hinges on getting growth back into our economy, not pencilling in unfair tax rises in a last-minute fashion at the end of the forecast period just to stick to the letter of the fiscal rules. However, until the Government grasp the nettle on much more fundamental reform of our Budget process, I do not think that will be achieved, and more critically, I do not think the dial will move on economic growth or market confidence.

• 21 Jan 2026 · National Insurance Contributions (Employer Pensions Contributions) Bill · Hansard source

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  My chief concern with this Bill is that, like a lot of the measures that the Chancellor announced in the Budget, it looks like it may be a route to some medium-term increased tax revenues, but it gives no thought to longer-term consequences. That will help the Chancellor meet her fiscal rules, but I say “may” because the Bill does not kick in this year, next year, the year after or the year after that; rather conveniently, it will kick in during the election year of 2029-30. That is pretty useful if you are fighting an election and want to meet your fiscal rules, but it is not very useful if you are trying to be fiscally prudent, so that leads to some scepticism about what is actually going on here. Given the pressures on the state pension and the social care system, it seems extremely counterproductive to reduce the incentives for those who can afford to save more towards their retirement. Let us look at the impact that small businesses have warned about. Pensions UK and the Federation of Small Businesses have jointly expressed their concern that these changes will increase costs for businesses that rely on salary sacrifice to support staff retention and reward. They state: “Higher National Insurance costs and operational disruption would make it harder to offer competitive benefits, invest in growth, or plan effectively.” We need to remember the wider context that small businesses are operating in. Even before this Bill, they were battling the sharply rising costs of everything from rents to energy bills, supplies, business rates, the costs of Brexit and so on, and they also have to adjust to the changes in their NICs bills that the Chancellor announced a year ago. One can imagine how that must feel for small business owners—the additional burden heaped on them feels unsustainable. This Bill is a double whammy on last year’s national insurance hikes—the NICs burden went up last year due to the rate increase, and now this measure is raising their NICs bills for a second time. I would be interested to hear from the Minister what assessment the Government have made of the impact of these changes on businesses, and on small businesses in particular. That is why the Liberal Democrats have tabled amendments requiring the Government to publish full assessments of the impact of the Bill on the recruitment and retention and the tax liabilities of businesses. Let us now consider the potential damage that this choice will do further down the road by disincentivising saving. Earlier this year, research by Scottish Widows found that 39% of people in the UK are not on track for a minimum lifestyle in retirement, which is a 4% increase since 2023. Research showed that people were actually saving more towards their pension in the last year, but projected retirement income was still failing to keep pace, given the rising cost of living.

• 7 Jan 2026 · Advanced Brain Cancer: Tissue Freezing · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I thank the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Chris Evans) for securing the debate, and I thank Ellie for all her work, as well as Hugh and the others who are pushing very hard on this issue—many thanks indeed. I want to try to make this debate a bit broader in two directions. My sister, Georgie, also has a glioblastoma. She was diagnosed two and a half years ago and has been incredibly brave and determined, working with the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh) and Ellie to try to get more brain cancer justice, and driving that debate. That also applies to many people in my constituency of Witney who have brain tumours but also tumours of all sorts of cancers. We ought to be considering two things. First, I ask the Minister to consider making tumour tissue freezing standard for all cancerous tumour tissues, not just brain. However close the issue is to my heart, I think it is inequitable to just focus on brain tumours. We have to try to get all tumour tissues frozen as standard, and the economies of scale mean that makes sense. The other thing is how we have equitable and public health-oriented access to that tissue once it is stored, which we as a country are massively failing on. I ask the Minister to consider reforming the Human Tissue Act 2004, which could be broadened in terms of what is legally permitted in research contexts. That would create explicit legal pathways for retrospective clinical samples. First, clinical tissue, such as biopsies and diagnostic archives, could be routinely made available for public health research under clear safeguards, without requiring separate project-by-project consent. Secondly, requirements for de-identified tissue could be simplified, clarifying that truly anonymised, non-identifiable samples can be used without consent or an HTA licence for a wider range of research, rather than just narrowly defined exceptions. Thirdly, licences could be converted to broader authorisations. Instead of a licence for each tissue bank, accredited biobanks could be allowed to supply samples under nationally recognised frameworks. Fourthly, DNA analysis rules could be reworked. Barriers to genomic public health research could be reduced by redefining or narrowing the offence of having tissue for DNA analysis, provided that strong data protection is ensured. That is one big chunk. The second big chunk I am asking for—there are only two—is that we reform the Human Tissue Act 2004 to apply a default system similar to the one we now use nationally for organ donation to tumour tissue data. To do so, Parliament would need to amend the HTA to introduce a deemed consent regime for residual tumour tissue and derived data. That would be limited to public interest cancer research, with a statutory and simple opt-out, strict purpose limits and enhanced oversight by the Human Tissue Authority. The model would mirror the Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Act 2019, but apply just to data derived primarily from tumour tissue. In plain English, that means that we have something that works for organ donations and saves lives day in, day out. If any of us die, our organs are taken and our next of kin can opt out if they choose. The great majority of people do not opt out. That has meant that many more organs have been available, which has saved lives. Somebody may want to dispose of their tumour tissue, but the great majority of us do not; we would want it used for public health and science, so having it as an automatic—

• 6 Jan 2026 · Less Survivable Cancers · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones) for securing this fantastic debate. I also thank the Members in the room for all the work they have done, and the Minister for her engagement, particularly with the Brain Cancer Justice team. I really appreciate it. My sister Georgie received a glioblastoma multiforme diagnosis two and a half years ago. She is well, has survived longer than they gave her and is fighting like hell for Brain Cancer Justice, alongside many in this room. I praise her and her colleagues, as well as so many people in my constituency in Witney who have helped her and who suffer with this range of cancers. I will say only two things today. First, we should explore reforming the Human Tissue Act 2004 to apply to tumour tissue a default system similar to the one we now use nationally for organ donation. To do so, Parliament would need to amend the Act to introduce a deemed consent regime for residual tumour tissue and derived data, limited to public interest cancer research, with a statutory opt-out, strict purpose limits and enhanced oversight by the Human Tissue Authority. The model would mirror the Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Act 2019, which means that if someone dies their organs are automatically taken, although people or their families can opt out. We are advocating the same for our tumour tissue. Very few of us really want to hang on to our tumour tissue if we are unfortunate enough to be in that situation, but that tumour tissue has huge scientific value and we should use the data as much as we can for the public good. Denmark is a fantastic model: it has a registry-first legal architecture with mandatory health registries covering cancer diagnosis, pathology, genomics, treatment and outcomes. Secondly, we need to double the survival rates for all less survivable cancers in the next decade. If we put that mark in the sand as our goal, and it gets into the national cancer plan, it will draw global attention and will drag resources and talent to our cause and our country. It would be good for our country, good for our patients who are suffering, and good for our economy too. If we can make that a key demand of our national cancer plan, that will be a huge plus.

• 18 Dec 2025 · Point of Order · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. In response to a recommendation by the Committee on Standards, I would like to apologise to the House for failing to register several interests within the 28-day period set by the House. They included my receipt of pro bono legal advice to support my intervention, at the High Court and subsequently at the Court of Appeal, in the sanctions hearing of Thames Water Utilities Ltd’s restructuring plan. Nor did I appreciate that I should have registered an informal arrangement with a family member to use her London flat without charge while I was staying in Westminster. I also owned and subsequently sold shares in a Vietnamese company that exceeded the threshold for registration. Finally, I failed to update my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests when my role as a councillor at West Oxfordshire district council ended. Those failures were a result of my own errors. I am grateful to the Committee for recognising that I neither gained nor sought to gain any advantage, and that I acted honestly in repeatedly drawing the commissioner’s attention to failings as I identified them. I fully accept that those are breaches of rule 5 of the code of conduct. I apologise to the House and commit to take a more diligent approach to the registration of my interests in future.

• 1 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  Yes, I welcome it. The OBR has marked down economic growth for each of the next four years, which is bad news. We have a ballooning debt, which now sits at £2.9 trillion. Our debt costs have tripled in the last five years—yes, that is the Conservatives’ fault—and our Government debt is now more expensive than Italy’s. Yes, this all happened on the Conservatives’ watch, but we now have a situation in which 11% of Government spending goes on covering the interest payments, not on paying down the debt itself, and the Chancellor has given no indication that she is serious about addressing that. Across the five years of the forecast, the Chancellor proposes to deliver a reduction in our net borrowing of just 0.04% of GDP, and I question her tactics. What is the sense in taxing salary sacrifice schemes when we know the strain that the state pension and social care systems are under and when we need people to save more, not less? Does common sense not tell us that discouraging people from saving for retirement now will only lead to a greater burden on the public purse in the long run? Then there is the desperate state of our special educational needs and disabilities provision. The SEND national deficit overspend is forecast to reach £17.8 billion by March 2028. The Government have said they will cover costs directly from that point on, but they have given no answer as to how this huge bill will be settled up. In Oxfordshire alone, the SEND annual overspend is expected to reach £153 million by March 2026. Why are we waiting two and a half years to do something about that? As per policy decision 37, the Government determine that they will go further on efficiencies and savings in public services, but not just yet. There are zero governmental cost savings in each of the next three years and then, miraculously, we expect £4 billion in savings in 2029-30—the other side of a general election. How can the country take the Government seriously when they take this approach? That last instance highlights the problem with the fiscal framework the Government have set themselves. The rule that the current Budget must be in surplus in 2029-30, and the aim of ensuring that debt is falling as a share of the economy by ’29-30, are all well and good, but entirely excluding the intermediate years from the calculation serves our country extremely badly. This Government are gaming the system, in the same way the Conservatives did before them, by adjusting everything in year five to perfectly line up, with more spending early on and tax rises deferred, possibly into the never-never. Let us look at international examples of how national Budgets are set to understand why the UK is so ineffective at controlling its debt. The Government could take inspiration from the Swedish model of tax scrutiny. Thirty years since introducing changes, and aided by strong economic growth, Sweden has reduced its national debt from nearly 80% to 32%—and yes, Sweden had covid too. Meanwhile, our national debt stands at around 95%. A key component of the solution is that we need to substantially strengthen the scrutiny powers of this Chamber when it comes to the Government’s financial management. This four-day debate clearly does not provide an effective scrutiny function, and there is no meaningful ability for Parliament to amend the Budget once it is announced. Our country is the poorer for this approach. Secondly, of course, we need to seek a deal with Europe that captures the economic benefits of the European market, which is five times bigger than our own, while maintaining control of our borders. This should start with negotiating a new customs union with the EU. Last month, the US’s National Bureau of Economic Research published a paper that found that Brexit had cut UK GDP by between 6% and 8%, with the economy now £170 billion smaller than it would otherwise have been. The House of Commons Library found that we are losing £90 billion in tax revenues every year as a result of Brexit—an enormous number. That is equivalent to two thirds of the UK’s entire annual Budget deficit of £138 billion; to nearly 80% of our entire annual debt expense of £114 billion; or to our defence, security, prisons and courts budgets combined. The Government now finally acknowledge that Brexit has left our country poorer, weaker and more divided, but they are still unwilling to do almost anything material about it. I was elected by my Witney constituents in 2024 to do all that I can to make their lives better and our country better. This Budget is a key lever through which to do so, and I am deeply dismayed at the lost opportunity that it represents.

• 12 Nov 2025 · Taxes · Hansard source

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  Okay, can I just respond to my colleague chuntering in the background? He keeps saying “the OBR”. We are Parliament. We have a responsibility to scrutinise the Budget, and I believe that we, as a Parliament, should be doing that properly, line by line and taking out what is wasted— [ Interruption. ] I would do it tomorrow if we had the chance, yes. I will finish in a moment, then I will be off—

• 12 Nov 2025 · Taxes · Hansard source

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  I have already said that the Government should keep their promises, so there we are. May I continue, please? We want to back hard-pressed households and small businesses and push for practical steps that will help ease the burden on families and get our high streets thriving again. We have called on the Government to respond to the crisis in our hospitality sector through an emergency VAT cut. That would boost footfall on our high streets, thus protecting jobs in a sector that employs people from all walks of life: young, old, those returning to work, those vulnerable part-time workers and everyone in between. We also propose bringing down household energy costs as winter is coming by removing the biggest levy baked into people’s electricity bills and, in effect, putting more than £90 a year into the pockets of the average family. Indeed, that will be closer to £250 for some of the least well-off, who rely more on electricity for their heating. This is about supporting local businesses at the heart of our communities, which we all represent, and making a real difference to people’s lives by making it cheaper for them to heat their homes. For too long, our high streets and the small business owners on them have been crippled by the policies of successive Governments. All that needs to be paid for and needs to be done in a way that is pro-growth and pro-business and which shields households from even greater bills each month. That is not an easy circle to square—I will not pretend that it is. We, as Liberal Democrats, seek to bring deliverable and progressive ideas to the table. If the Chancellor chose such ideas, she could deliver them in her Budget, which is just days away, and the impact would be felt by households across the country with almost immediate effect. First, we call for a time-limited tax on big commercial banks levied on the massive windfall profits that they receive due to unintended consequences of our financial system. Because of high interest rates and the way the quantitative tightening programme works, the Treasury hands over billions of pounds to the big banks every year via the Bank of England, effectively subsidising banking profits at the expense of the taxpayer. Figures from the OBR confirm that, as things stand, we are on course to hand the big banks £50 billion over the course of this Parliament. Banks never expected to receive that windfall, they never relied on it and never took any risk to reap it. They have only received the payments because inflation and interest rates shot up. That needs to be corrected. It is fair and reasonable to return a portion of that unexpected windfall to the taxpayer and it will do nothing to undermine the health of our financial sector to claim it back.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Financial Transparency: Overseas Territories · Hansard source

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  Yes; I fully agree with the right hon. Gentleman. Direct legislation should be a last resort, but it is necessary and we need to move quickly. SAMLA came into force in 2018, and we are now nearly in 2026. This is just playing for time, which is bad. Since 2022, the UK’s register of overseas entities regime has required that the details of all corporate trustees in the chain of an overseas entity’s ownership structure are registered and that the ultimate beneficial owners of real estate are identified. Information on the overseas entity and the beneficial owners should be accessible to all, online and for free. I will review those top three overseas territories. Bermuda and the Cayman Islands now have registers of beneficial interest that are up and running. The BVI is getting there slowly, with existing companies having been given until the end of this year to file their information. However, and importantly, none of these three territories has a publicly open and accessible register. Instead, there is all sorts of obfuscation. I will give some examples. Some of these registers require inquiries to have “legitimate interest”, whatever that may be. Access is possible only “at the Commission’s Secretariat’s office by appointment, with no copying or scanning allowed, on written request, payment of a fee, and some limitations, during working hours”. That is not complying with the spirit of the law—indeed, it is really unhelpful—and we have it in our power as a country to stop it. It leaves a strong impression that all three are doing their damnedest to withhold information on such a scale as to make the existence of the registers completely pointless. Online, fully accessible and public access for all is not in place in any of the three jurisdictions, so I have two requests. First, can our Government set a deadline beyond which they will not tolerate a failure to provide an open, transparent register? They must use all their powers and leverage to work with these democratically governed British overseas territories to find a way to bring them quickly into line with UK standards of transparency and accessibility regarding these registers. My second request is about the Crown dependencies—Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. I understand that the Minister is here under the auspices of the FCDO, and they fall under the Ministry of Justice, but I hope that the Labour Government will very quickly look hard at applying the same UK standards to those Crown dependencies.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Financial Transparency: Overseas Territories · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) for securing this debate. I also thank the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir Andrew Mitchell) for all his work on this issue and for his good speech today. Indeed, I have enjoyed the contributions from all hon. Members so far. The common theme has been explaining that what goes on in the overseas territories impoverishes people in the UK and takes money out of their pockets, which we all want to see stopped. The Government have an opportunity to improve financial transparency by working with the overseas territories so that they adopt the same standards as the UK. The deliberate masking of corporate ownership is used to dodge tax, accountability and responsibility. It inhibits law enforcement and prevents citizens, workers and journalists from holding the powerful to account for their corporate actions. If Labour wants bad actors to be brought to heel and to stand up for people in our country and globally, this is its chance; it has the power to act. The world’s top three corporate tax havens—the British Virgin Islands, which have been much discussed, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda—are all British overseas territories. Tax Justice Network estimates that, in total, profit-shifting through the UK and its Crown dependencies and overseas territories accounts for nearly a quarter of all lost tax revenues globally—over £80 billion annually. The continued lack of transparency in the overseas tax havens, or overseas territories, including the absence of truly publicly accessible registers of beneficial ownership, poses a real threat to the UK’s reputation and standing in the world.

• 17 Jul 2025 · Arms Exports: Israel · Hansard source

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  Our strategic export licensing criteria state specifically that licences should not be granted where there is “a clear risk that the items might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law.” Given that the courts have sent this question back to Parliament, does the Minister accept that Israel is committing breaches of international humanitarian law; does he accept that the export of F-35 components is aiding in the commission of these wrongful acts; and if he maintains that we are not in breach of our own arms export laws, will he explain on the Floor of this House the basis for how he thinks we are compliant with our own laws?