Damian Hinds MP: speeches 2026

Speeches

• 7 Jul 2026 · Summer Jobs · Hansard source

  More

  We have 109,000 more young people out of work, the youth unemployment rate is at 16%, and our ratio between youth unemployment and overall unemployment is now at European levels. Why do we care about youth unemployment? There are two reasons: first, it is a matter of what is right and of justice for young people; and secondly, if someone is unemployed when they are a young adult, the scarring effect on their career and earnings can stay with them for five, 10 or 20 years into the future. It is definitely true that the labour market has softened a lot. I hear in East Hampshire that this has not been about mass layoffs; it has been overwhelmingly about not taking people on in the first place, or not increasing the amount of work hours for people already employed. That is especially true for those marginal employment decisions—Saturday jobs, seasonal work, and, the title of today’s debate, summer jobs. The number of apprenticeships is about to rise dramatically, but that is because the Government have reduced the minimum specification and length of time for an apprenticeship, and every time that is done, the number goes up hugely. But I worry that, like for like, apprenticeships in key sectors employing lots of school leavers—I hear this about hairdressing, for example, in East Hampshire, as I am sure other Members also do—are already falling. Business owners in my constituency are reluctant to expand because of the risk, and are not maxing out on business opportunities where they are fluctuating or seasonal. The phrase “pub-closing time” has become meaningless, because pubs are closing earlier and earlier, all at different times, and in some cases not opening for days. I spoke about the scarring effect of being unemployed as a young adult. There is also a big downside and cost to not being able to get early paid work experience opportunities before becoming a full-time employee. To be fair, the Saturday job, and part-time employment for under 18s in particular, has been in long-term decline. That is partly to do with the decline of paper rounds and milk rounds. There has also been a decline in Saturday work in retail, some of which is about an increasing nervousness—often an ill-placed, unnecessary nervousness—on the part of employers around their responsibilities when hiring young people. Whatever the different mix of reasons, the numbers have come down over time. That decline has now accelerated for two reasons. First, I am afraid that whenever the economy takes a hit, it is always young people who feel it first, which is because of the “last in, first out” approach to employment and people not being taken on in the first place. Secondly, it has become relatively costlier and riskier to take on those young people, because of direct employment costs and the Employment Rights Act 2025. All of us in the Chamber are Members of Parliament; we have done reasonably well in our lives. Most of us, before we came here, had successful careers of one type or another. How many colleagues in this place had their first paid employment for 37.5 hours a week, full-time, reliably throughout the whole year? I certainly did not. My first job was a zero-hours contract—we just did not call it that then. In fact, it was not quite a zero-hours contract because there was no actual contract. There was no guaranteed work; it fluctuated week to week, and night to night, washing dishes in a local restaurant, but that is where I learnt some of those crucial skills. They now call them soft skills, but there is nothing soft about them; they are hard. That job is where I learnt about taking criticism; about turning up again the next day; about turning up when I was tired or feeling not that great; about looking the customer in the eye; and about how, if I kept coming back day after day, week after week, at the end of the week they gave me money. That is an important life lesson. A high proportion of people with zero-hours contracts are young, and a high proportion are students or people with another job. But one of the biggest employers of people on zero-hours contracts is the national health service, because NHS bank staff work in that way. The contracts can work for young people. In my constituency, I know plenty of young people who have two zero-hours contract jobs: one at home, where they are during the holidays; and one where they are studying during term time. I do not see why that does not work perfectly well for both employer and employee.

• 7 Jul 2026 · Summer Jobs · Hansard source

  More

  The Minister said that he would not move the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister. I do not think that is unheard of, but I am curious to understand why, having put down such an amendment, the Government would not move it. There are three main things here, and the Minister has talked about two of them: the Employment Rights Act and apprenticeships. The third main thing seems to be about planned changes for business rates. In not moving the amendment, is the Minister saying that the Government do not stick by what they said previously about upcoming changes to business rates on pubs?

• 30 Jun 2026 · Culture, Media And Sport · Hansard source

  More

  I am going to have another go, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) did. A billion pounds over three years sounds like a lot of money. The simple mathematical question is, is that £1 billion over three years more or less than the amount for a comparable three-year period, starting just before the middle of 2024?

• 30 Jun 2026 · Culture, Media And Sport · Hansard source

  More

  As the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) just said, sports participation underpins so much for young people, building character and resilience, acting in favour of good mental health and tackling obesity. Into old age, too, staying active has huge benefits, as I was discussing just this weekend with the brilliant, dementia-friendly Petersfield walking football group. In many ways, sports provision is probably better than ever, and national governing bodies have done a very good job. I was particularly grateful when the bowls national governing body introduced the Culture, Media and Sport Committee to the national open weekend for bowls, and I discovered what great fun it can be. Of course, children are now introduced to a great variety of sports at primary school, and that is a good thing. That has been underpinned in many ways by the schools PE and sport premium, the requirement for which is to go over and above what is set out in the national curriculum. Crucially, it has been a budget controlled by the schools themselves. This is an estimates day, which is about spending. I think we could query a lot of priorities at DCMS. I was particularly gobsmacked by the decision to cut the business events growth programme—a tiny sum of money in overall Government terms, but one that drives such success and billions of pounds’ worth of contribution to the economy—at the same time as looking at bringing in an overnight visitor levy, which will make this country less competitive compared to competitor nations. In this part of the DCMS world, there is the axing of the National Citizen Service and the closure of the youth investment fund. At the same time, the Department for Education is closing the opening school facilities fund and the Treasury is making changes to business rates, with the effect that that has in this sector. Of course, there is the question at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government about Sport England as a statutory consultee. The Department of Health is also cutting by 66% its contribution to health-related activity in schools. However, the biggest things are the cuts to the schools PE and sport premium, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) set out. It is both a total budget cut and money that now has to be stretched across far more schools, having already let the real value of the £320 million erode over the first two years. Control of that is going to be taken away from schools. That is a very aggressive move. I commend to the House the Committee’s report, “Game On: Community and school sport”. There is a great deal in it, as my right hon. Friend set out, in terms of improving funding applications, local authority duties and doing things in initial teacher training. Most of all, though, as has been mentioned by colleagues across the House, what we need to see, and what this report calls for, is a cross-Government approach to movement for health.

• 24 Jun 2026 · Draft Lifelong Learning (Fee Limits) Regulations 2026 · Hansard source

  More

  We all knew that!

• 24 Jun 2026 · Draft Lifelong Learning (Fee Limits) Regulations 2026 · Hansard source

  More

  Like everyone who has spoken, I support the principle of the lifelong learning entitlement. I welcomed it in Sir Philip Augar’s review, which reported while I was at the Department for Education. I was pleased that it was brought in by my erstwhile right hon. Friends for Chichester and Harlow. It is true that higher education in this country has been too rigid for too long. The lifelong learning entitlement eliminates the “do it now or do it never” problem. It makes the most of talent, and it means that people can move into growing sectors in the economy, or just new areas of interest, and learn what they need to learn. For all those reasons, it is also good for productivity. This statutory instrument is not about the existence of the lifelong learning entitlement, nor is it about the existence—or the level—of the fee; it is just about the modularisation of that fee. I have a couple of short questions to put to the Minister. The first touches on what the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire was just saying: there is a question of debt aversion. That did not happen, as was widely predicted, after the Vince Cable reforms in the early 2010s—the great risk of debt aversion among young people did not turn out to be true. However, this is mostly about an older demographic, with different sets of responsibilities, at a different life stage. What research has been done about that? I wonder whether the Minister might say a word about the levels of enrolment in the pilots that the Department for Education undertook, and what we have learned. Is there a risk of people being reluctant? There is a psychological barrier if there is a fixed lifetime maximum. What do we know about people’s possible reluctance to eat into that at a certain level, rather than leaving it intact? Has there been any research on that? Conversely, is there a risk of overselling the modules, given the terms of the loan and what may seem to many people—low earners in particular—quite low risk in taking one out? Are there specific risks of gaming from moving to a system in which providers will be paid according to a number of credits? As my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor rightly said, there are particular questions around that for online courses. Credits and modules have long existed in this country, but breaking up a course or stretch of study, or moving from one institution to another, has not been nearly as prevalent in this country as in others, whether in Europe through the Bologna system or indeed the United States. What will the Government do to ensure that the amounts that are involved in this statutory instrument will represent value for individuals, with comparability of the modules, full recognition when that module is taken somewhere else, and a culture change in our higher education system?

• 24 Jun 2026 · Media Green Paper · Hansard source

  More

  This House ended the licensing of the press on 3 May 1695, when it declined to renew the relevant legislation. That makes the definition of news sources difficult. Perhaps that is why the Green Paper talks about prominence for public service media and “potentially” for local and national news sources. Does the Secretary of State agree that it is unthinkable to have a situation where we would be promoting BBC and Channel 4 news, but not our major national newspapers and trusted local news sources?

• 18 Jun 2026 · Infected Blood Compensation Scheme · Hansard source

  More

  As the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford) did, I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate. I pay tribute to him for securing it and for all his work with the all-party parliamentary group on haemophilia and contaminated blood. He puts an awful lot of work into it—it is not like a normal APPG—and we are all very grateful. This scandal is of such a scale that probably every MP has at least one constituent who has been infected or affected, but in my constituency it has a particular weight attached to it because East Hampshire is home to Treloar’s school and college. Treloar’s is an internationally recognised centre of excellence in which incredibly committed people provide the most remarkable level of support, care, nurture and education for children and young people with some of the most profound disabilities imaginable, but it was also the place where, in the 1970s and 1980s, there was the single biggest concentration of people who were victims of these terrible practices. The reason was that at any one time there were 40 to 50 haemophiliac patients there. It was seen as an opportunity to study the disease; the NHS haemophilia centre was established nearby, and it later moved into the school grounds. Treloar’s looms large in Sir Brian Langstaff’s report: an entire section is given over to it. It describes how research objectives were put ahead of the interests of children and how those children were subjected to unethical research techniques, without them or their parents being informed or consulted about the risks attached. As the hon. Gentleman mentioned, of the 122 children with haemophilia who attended the school between 1970 and 1987, only about 30 are alive now. There have been much wider effects, too: the stigma that could be attached, the interrupted education, the long-term mental scarring for the people and their families, and the trauma through families that has lasted for decades. This is a story of lost childhoods and lost futures. It has been my privilege to meet a number of the Treloar’s boys over time. There is one gentleman in particular, Adrian Goodyear, with whom I have been in contact since I was first elected in 2010; he had previously been in contact with my predecessor Michael Mates for many years. In our 2010 debate, I read out a line from one of Ade’s emails to me that haunted me then and haunts me now: “We’ve now lost so many of our friends from the Treloar days—in fact, we stopped counting at 40”. I pay tribute to Ade, to all the Treloar’s boys and to everybody in this community who has kept up the fight, for their remarkable tenacity in seeking justice in the name and memory of their friends lost. I thank the Paymaster General for his continued and consistent positive engagement on the subject. He always comes to these events in person, which I think the House really appreciates. I have a few questions that I hope he will address later in the debate. First, I have been asked specifically to raise the lack of parity between bereaved parents whose child was over 18 and those whose child was younger. I hope that the Minister can comment on that point and on whether a change may be possible. On further elements of the award, I thank the Minister for his letter in response to our exchange at Cabinet Office questions about the special category mechanism and the psychological harm payments, but I continue to receive questions from my constituents about the unethical research awards. The increase in the amount is very welcome, but in our November 2024 debate I asked how the figures had been reached, and even with the higher number I am still being asked that question. Clearly one cannot put a value on this tragic loss or say that any amount of money could compensate it, but even if the answer is that there is no way of calculating such a number, it would be helpful to have that set out. I think IBCA has tried to engage well with MPs, which is welcome, but clearly the administration of the scheme needs to accelerate. Inevitably with these processes, things move relatively well at first with the more straightforward cases, but it becomes harder when we get on to the more complex cases. As the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst says, we are talking about victims who are increasingly elderly and who, tragically, may die before they receive the compensation they have been promised.

• 18 Jun 2026 · Infected Blood Compensation Scheme · Hansard source

  More

  My word! My hon. Friend puts it in very striking terms. [Interruption.] I see the Minister indicating that he has heard her question, so I think it is right that I defer to him to say a word about the matter when he makes his speech. As the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst and other colleagues have said, this is not the first compensation scheme that has been set up. Obviously every case is somewhat different and involves different categories of harm, but it seems that every time this happens, processes and systems have to be set up and time is thereby lost. We want lessons to be learned from this scheme, but they should also have been learned from previous schemes. I welcome the fact that the Public Accounts Committee is conducting its inquiry; I hope to hear a commitment from the Minister that lessons will be learned, particularly from that inquiry. The last thing I want to mention is the possibility of a criminal investigation. I know that you and your constituent have been involved in discussions about that, Madam Deputy Speaker, and that you and I have both had discussions with the police and crime commissioner for Hampshire, Donna Jones. This is clearly not a question for this Minister or any Minister—not for the Cabinet Office or the Home Office; it is about the criminal justice system, the police and whether a threshold has been met. But I want to take this opportunity through the debate, without expecting the Minister to respond directly, to say that with all the passage of time, there is a premium on knowing what will happen and if we will move in this regard. Nothing will ever or could ever make up for the multiple failings of the state in this case—from successive Governments, the civil service, the national health service and many more—but we can and must ensure that at this point, we have a compensation scheme that now does pay out in a timely way, and is as effective and humane as possible for all the victims and their families. We must face up clearly to our failings as a state and —let’s be honest—as a political system over those many years, and give truth to that phrase, “Never again”.

• 15 Jun 2026 · Social Media Ban for Under-16s · Hansard source

  More

  I welcome this morning’s announcement. The platforms are not now off the hook: the Online Safety Act 2023 operates until the age of 18, which is the age to which the Children Act 1989 requires protection to be in place. On the announcement, what is the net effect of exempting messaging services but blocking communication from strangers, if a messaging service allows anybody who knows a person’s phone number to add them to a large messaging group?

• 15 Jun 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

  More

  Further to the Minister’s answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), will he take the opportunity of the new NPPF to make it absolutely clear that if someone wilfully ignores—not inadvertently, but deliberately and wilfully—the need for planning consent, they will not subsequently get retrospective permission?

• 10 Jun 2026 · Local Government Reform · Hansard source

  More

  Half a billion pounds?

• 10 Jun 2026 · Local Government Reform · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to see you in the chair, Dr Murrison. I congratulate and thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston (Neil O’Brien) for securing this important debate. It was also a pleasure to hear from everybody’s honourable friend, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). It is not the first time he has come here and said, “I know that Northern Ireland is not covered by this, Minister, but perhaps our experience can be instructive,” but boy was he right today. There are two key questions, and he highlighted the importance of the first: “Why do this at all?” With all the attention it needs, it will take away from other priorities, at a time, in particular, when we are about to have huge changes to the system for special educational needs and disability. There are also the costs involved. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Melton and Syston (Edward Argar) said, it is a question that literally no one was asking, and the answer was not in the Labour manifesto. Even if we accept that there can be reorganisation, we must ask: “On what basis?” In East Hampshire, this plan will break up communities, take away local identities and put people into new artifices. It will take the people of Horndean, Clanfield and Rowlands Castle and put them into a new super-council area centred on Portsmouth, with the rest of East Hampshire going to a vast area called the Mid Hampshire unitary authority, all for an uncertain and quite likely negative return. In plain English, that means that local people will end up paying more. As my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) mentioned, the Government set out clear criteria for reorganisation, which included a focus on sustainability of high-quality services and a minimum scale of 500,000—that number did not come out of nowhere; it came from a serious piece of work by PricewaterhouseCoopers about the minimum scale needed to deliver services—and, crucially, that the building blocks of the new organisation should be existing districts and boroughs. It was on that basis that local leaders engaged in the process. They were not clamouring for it—leaders in Hampshire were not knocking down the door of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government saying, “Please reorganise us!”—but they engaged in good faith in the process. Nick Adams-King, the leader of Hampshire county council, set out a summary of conditions for change, including that any new structure must be sustainable financially, operationally and democratically. He said: “It must be capable of delivering high-quality services” and “resilient enough to manage demand in adult social care, children’s services and SEND.” Crucially, he said, it must have “a balanced tax base” and “reflect real communities”, and “not create winners and losers by stripping growth, infrastructure and income from area to shore up another.” I do not think I could put it any better than that, but that is not what has happened. There were three different options in Hampshire, with different rationales for them. In theory, the fewer the unitary councils, the bigger the cost savings, but Hampshire county council and my district council in East Hampshire preferred the middle option, which was to have four authorities—a balance between delivering savings and reducing risk. There has been a big disagreement about the analysis of those different options by different people looking at them. Crucially, we do not know the Government’s own analysis of the different options for carving up Hampshire and why they chose the one they did. We do know that, of the different local authorities, two on the mainland are smaller than the 500,000 minimum. Of course, the Isle of Wight is smaller again, although there are unique circumstances there. We know that there are substantial costs. Although there will be some economies of scale in things moving from district level to unitary level, there will also be diseconomies of scale in things moving from county level to unitary level, and those are the things with the biggest cost pressures in our system. People worry what this will mean for housing. All the local plan work was done on the basis of the existing district councils; now, that will not work. People worry about the loss of local knowledge. Parish councils are concerned about the implications for them. Crucially, there is the question of identity and cohesion. I already mentioned Horndean, Rowlands Castle and Clanfield being split off into Portsmouth, and this is also a concern, as my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East said, for parts of the New Forest, for Test Valley and for Winchester. The Minister has spoken of how identities grow over time. These are entities that have been in place for at least 50 years, around which other organisations have organised themselves. Charities and other public sector organisations organise themselves around district and borough boundaries, and these changes will inconvenience them. If the Government insist on proceeding, the process will need time and sober assessment, and for local authorities to come together to find consensus on the way forward. This is not a trivial question; it is about some of the most important things in our lives, such as the care for our ageing mums and dads and for the children with the highest needs and vulnerabilities. It is a long-term decision. This will not have an effect for three or five years; it will have an effect for decades. We need to start by knowing on what basis the Government made their decision. We cannot very easily argue with it if we do not know what it is. The letter from the 16 council leaders mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) makes a very reasonable ask: that we should know the Department’s own analysis and feasibility assessment. I say to the Minister simply: please, show us your workings.

• 2 Jun 2026 · Milburn Review: Interim Report · Hansard source

  More

  This is an important piece of work from Alan Milburn, but what principles will underpin the Government’s approach? Does the Minister think that, other things being equal, if we increase the cost of employing people, then that will come at the expense of jobs? Does he think that, with slack in the labour market, if we do things such as reducing probation periods at a time when the cost of employing younger people without experience is going up anyway, that will mean that those young people are less likely to be given the opportunities and the vacancies that exist?

• 23 Apr 2026 · Contaminated Blood: Compensation · Hansard source

  More

  12. What recent steps he has taken to ensure that people infected and affected by contaminated blood are compensated.

• 23 Apr 2026 · Contaminated Blood: Compensation · Hansard source

  More

  I thank the Paymaster General for his personal work in this area. The increase in the unethical research award is a material improvement, and I am particularly thinking of the former pupils at Treloar’s. However, there is still some uncertainty in the community about the evidence that will be required to qualify for the severe psychological harm element under the special category mechanism. Could he confirm how that will work, and will IBCA have discretion and flexibility about what evidence will be required?

• 22 Apr 2026 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

  More

  Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to have heard the last few speeches, which made very important points, but even with five minutes, time is still short for me. I will speak briefly about a couple of aspects of social media and mobile phones. On social media, let us get on with it. We have had this issue come back from the Lords multiple times, and we can do this. There is a glaring logical flaw at the heart of the Government’s argument for not taking action—we have also heard it from a bunch of Labour MPs today—which is, “We can’t do this one thing, because there are some other things we could do as well.” That just does not hold water. All those other things—around gaming, other types of applications, chatbots, addictive features and so on—could be additive to a ban on social media for children under the age of 16. They would still, by the way, be very relevant to child safety. I remind the House that our duty to children extends to those aged up to 18, as per the Children Act 1989 and our commitments to the United Nations. There are issues to resolve about a ban—exactly where the lines should be drawn; exactly what is in and what is out—and yes, of course, the Government have to consult on those issues, but they do not need to consult further on the principle of whether the country and the House of Commons want a ban on young people under the age of 16 accessing social media, a conclusion that so many other countries are also coming to. On mobile phones, throughout the progress of the Bill, I have found a remarkable contrast. The Government said for so long that they would not ban phones in schools because there should be some discretion for headteachers, but they are going to tell them precisely how many items of branded school uniform they are allowed to specify, and will tell them that in secondary schools that could include a tie, but in primary schools, for some bizarre reason, it cannot. I am pleased that the Government have partly seen the light. The Minister, whom we all like and respect, said last week that the problem had already been solved—and presumably it has now been re-solved, as the Government have come back to the issue—but I have to say that that is not what children say. What children tell us, both informally and when they are answering surveys about the actual use of mobile phones in schools, is how often lessons get interrupted, teachers are filmed, and bullying and other stuff happens at break times and lunchtimes. We need to act. Of course, there can be individual exceptions for those using assistive and adaptive technology, for young carers, and for others, but the one exception that we must not have is on the type of ban. The critical question is about having a policy of “not seen, not heard”. Every school in the country, pretty much, already has at least that, but I am afraid that it is not effective as a ban. If you have this thing in your pocket, or in your bag at your foot, it is still there, and you feel its presence. If it vibrates, you might actually feel it, physically; but even if you do not, you feel that compulsion towards it. The only way to make a school truly free of the scourge of mobile phones is to have them away from the child. The “not seen, not heard” approach does not work. The main argument for saying that we have to allow “not seen, not heard” is about cost. I understand that. Pouches, which a couple of colleagues have mentioned, do have a cost, but we do not have to do pouches. There are other ways of doing this. I mentioned the Petersfield school in my constituency, which has a phones-away-from-children ban, and which uses a simple device—a plastic box that can be purchased in most large-format Swedish retailers. That is locked away in a cupboard, along with a number of other boxes, until the end of the day. The biggest cost has been the foam inserts, with numbered slots in which each child puts their phone, but the sum total cost is very reasonable. I want to answer the hon. Member for Banbury (Sean Woodcock), who is no longer with us, so to speak. He asked why had we not taken this measure when we were in government. That is a perfectly reasonable question. There are two reasons: first, the issue has become more acute; and, secondly, the attitude of headteachers. It has changed. We have gone from headteachers and their representative bodies saying, “The best way for you to support me in this school is not to impose a national ban,” to them saying the exact opposite—that the best way to support schools and headteachers is to have a ban written into law.

• 22 Apr 2026 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I think that would try Madam Deputy Speaker’s patience. Today is the day that we can take action on those two points.

• 20 Apr 2026 · Falling School Rolls · Hansard source

  More

  It is true that the effects of the falling birth rate have been felt most so far in places such as Hackney, but it is coming to many more places, and the effect will be felt in a much more magnified way, particularly in small rural schools. Does the Secretary of State accept that the funding formula will have to change away from being so heavily reliant on a per capita amount, so as to support our small rural schools?

• 15 Apr 2026 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I think I just heard the Minister say, “We have already solved this problem.” I do not know if any other colleagues heard that. She said that she has written to every headteacher in the country, and it is absolutely the right thing to be in contact with them. Has she heard back from any headteachers or headteacher representative bodies, who say that this ban would be so much more straightforward if it were written into law, because of the difficulties that arise with a minority of parents? Headteachers say how much easier it would be for their school and their authority in their school if this ban were written into law.

• 15 Apr 2026 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

  More

  There are unanswered questions about definitions, what should be in and what should be out, and exactly where the boundary lines are. Parents sometimes talk about social media in a way that professionals might not; parents might exclude certain messaging apps, for example. There are questions to be resolved, but the Government consultation is not just about that; it is about the “whether”, as well as the “how”. By all means, let us consult to get those technical points right, so that the measures are bullet-proof and future-proof, but today is the day that we could say, like those other countries did, “We are doing this. We are going to protect our children—and yes, there is still work to be done on exactly how that will fall out.” Does the hon. Gentleman agree?

• 15 Apr 2026 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

  More

  Will the Minister give way?

• 25 Mar 2026 · Proposed Visitor Levy · Hansard source

  More

  I do not know if the hon. Gentleman heard the earlier intervention by the hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling), who made the point—quite rightly—that we cannot look at a single tax in isolation. I will come on to discuss that point, and I will invite the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) to look at the maths on what happens when we add up all the taxes together and compare the cities that he has just mentioned with cities in this country. We have lost market share, and it turns out that reaching the big target that the Government now have, to reach 50 million arrivals in the next few years, will involve—believe it or not—us losing more market share. Therefore, the great big ambition is for us to lose share of the global market for tourism. We should be much more ambitious than that. Governments of all sorts and all flavours have acknowledged the importance of tourism, verbally and in writing. I will not go through all the sector deals and so on that there have been through the years. We now have, or at least anticipate, the visitor economy growth strategy from the current Government. However, I do not think—and I am not making a party political point here, because this applies to multiple Governments—that any Government in this country in my lifetime have ever given attention to this sector commensurate with its importance and potential.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Proposed Visitor Levy · Hansard source

  More

  I do agree; the hon. Member makes some very good points about national insurance contributions, which I will go on to talk about further. He also makes some very good points about looking at the set of taxes as a whole—we cannot just look at a bed tax or a tourism tax without thinking about all the other taxes. However, if I may, I promise him that I will come on to those matters later. Inbound tourism is something that we are rather good at as a country. How could we not be, when we have great cities such as London, Manchester, Edinburgh, York, Bath and Brighton, as well as the lakes, the Peaks, the moors, the dales and the beautiful South Downs, part of which I have the privilege of representing? There is also our literary heritage, not least Alton and the village of Chawton in East Hampshire, the home of Jane Austen. Britain is also the birthplace of more sports than most of us could name if we were prompted to do so in 60 seconds. There is also the draw of screen “on location” sites, as we have recently seen in the “Starring Great Britain” campaign, west end theatre, live music and much more. There is also the small matter of the English language—and believe it or not, even the weather actually acts in our favour. The fact that so much more of our inbound tourist infrastructure is indoor means that our tourist season is much longer, and we have considerably less seasonality in our tourist numbers, than many of our competitor nations. All those things help to explain our success. We are the seventh or eighth biggest country in the world by tourist arrivals, but we are even higher—third in the world, in fact—for tourist receipts. Of course, that is particularly driven by London, which is a very high-value market, but overall, tourism is our third largest services sector by export earnings, and comparable to goods sectors such as automotive and pharmaceutical. We do inbound tourism well, then; but tourism is also a competitive market and the reality is that we are not doing as well as we used to. We are doing well, but worse. Over the last 30 years, the UK’s market share of world tourism has tumbled. It has come down by something like half.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Proposed Visitor Levy · Hansard source

  More

  I do agree. My right hon. Friend and I have been in multiple debates in the main Chamber talking about exactly those issues, both for tourism and for the wider hospitality sector. There are some arguments in favour of an overnight visitor levy, some of which have come up already. The main one is summed up in the sentence, “Visitor levies provide local government with a financial incentive to grow the visitor economy.” That has truth to it, and there is definitely an argument for making hospitality more hospitable through more investment in the visitor economy—in facilities, events, policing and so on. The sector needs more money going into sales and marketing if we are to realise our potential, so there might be an argument for this measure if the money were truly ringfenced—if it were only being spent on truly incremental items. Even then, we would still get the problem where hotels over quite a wide area pay it but the events, attractions, extra policing and so on all take place somewhere else. That might apply in Hartlepool, for example, as has been mentioned. It will certainly be the case in London—a hotel in Brent Cross is not going to feel the benefit of some extra things being put on in theatreland in the west end. Of course, though, the money will not be ringfenced. Even if it is nominally ringfenced in year one, do we honestly believe that in year five it will still be ringfenced? Of course it will not.