Helen Morgan MP: speeches

Speeches

• 25 Jun 2026 · National Resilience · Hansard source

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  Water resilience is very much on people’s minds this week. When a canal embankment collapsed in Whitchurch in my constituency just before Christmas, I found out that the canal network is used for drinking water, and that millions of gallons of drinking water will be being pumped over the breach every single day until it is repaired. Canal embankments are often 200 years old and largely made of sand, yet they are critical national infrastructure. Is the Minister satisfied that the Government are doing enough to retain the canal network in a safe state, not only to keep people safe but to protect our water resilience?

• 24 Jun 2026 · Farming: Financial Sustainability · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for North Northumberland (David Smith) for securing this debate. I am the vice-chair of the APPG on food security. Agriculture makes up 20% of businesses in North Shropshire, with well over 1,000 agricultural holdings, so it is a huge part of our local economy. In the short time I have, I will focus on two issues. For the roughly 130 dairy farmers in North Shropshire the huge pressures of climate change, increased input costs, rising energy and fertiliser prices, and hostile trade deals have come at a time when milk prices are simply not keeping up with the cost of production, as we have heard. One farmer in Market Drayton reports being down £25,000 a month on his milk price, while a family farming in Maesbrook told me that they have been selling off livestock just to keep their heads above water. On top of that, several farmers in the area have reported being unable to reach their milk buyer for information about pricing, meaning that they are unable to plan ahead. Farmers suffer time and again for their lack of power in the supply chain. Will the Government outline the action they will take to bolster the role and effectiveness of the Groceries Code Adjudicator and to enshrine its golden rules in law so that producers are properly protected, as recommended by the EFRA Committee and the Batters review? Farmers in my constituency are particularly concerned about the proposed changes to water abstraction licences due in 2028, which could have a huge impact on the viability of many farms in my area. Water security is central to food security, so I would appreciate the Department outlining what those changes will mean in real terms for our farmers.

• 4 Jun 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  I found a really rare thing in Shopshire last week: a new entrant to the dairy sector. However, like lots of small dairy farmers, it is under immense pressure from much bigger companies, whether that is Bute Energy, which is trying to destroy a big chunk of its grassland by planting pylons and an access road though it, or the big supermarkets buying its products at a loss. Can we have a debate in Government time on support for the dairy sector in the light of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee report’s recommendation that the Groceries Code Adjudicator and the supply code of practice be strengthened?

• 1 Jun 2026 · Health Bill · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend will not be surprised to hear that I agree with his point. ICBs are already overstretched and underfunded. In North Shropshire, both Shawbury medical practice and Prescott surgery in Baschurch are in desperate need of expansion. Community infrastructure levy money is available and land is earmarked for a new site, but progress is being held up by the ICB’s inability to agree notional rent. That situation is replicated across the country, and there is no sign of such problems being solved by the Government’s changes. The plan to abolish Healthwatch will ultimately strip patients of their voice. There has been a statutory independent patient voice in the health and care system for more than 50 years. More than half of patients who experienced poor care in 2024 did not take any action, with many citing fears that giving negative feedback directly to the NHS might affect their ongoing treatment. That is why it is crucial that we have an independent patient voice, rather than leaving the Department or the ICB to mark its own homework. We need only look at the devastating consequences of the failings uncovered during the Mid Staffordshire scandal, and the long list of maternity failings since, to see how important it is to have Healthwatch exposing challenges in the health service and listening to patient feedback, and how the CQC can fail in that operation. In Shropshire more than 200 babies are thought to have died due to maternity failures; in the reviews that followed, the one thing that came up time and again was that grieving parents were not listened to. Patients and their families must have a voice. The new system will give no incentive to investigate such issues, which are invisible in the main performance metrics of the NHS. To see the value of Healthwatch, we need only look at the Cabinet Office King’s Speech briefing for the Bill, which refers to a Healthwatch report from May 2025 on missing medical records in order to make the case for the single patient record. I urge the Government to protect both national Healthwatch and local healthwatch organisations, and the independent whistleblowing routes that empower and advocate for patients. The Liberal Democrats welcome the move to create a single patient record; that part of the Bill could prove to be the most transformational for patient experience and, most importantly, for patient outcomes. People are tired of endless NHS admin and of having to reconfirm their medical histories over and over to different medical professionals. Patient harm has often occurred where clinicians have not had a patient’s full medical history, and different parts of the NHS having access to the same patient information is clearly necessary. However, that must come alongside essential new privacy protections and safeguards for patients, particularly given the understandable concerns surrounding Palantir’s involvement with the federated data platform. We would introduce a health charter to set out guiding principles for data sharing across the NHS, ensuring that patients are in charge of their own data. The Bill’s references to carers are welcome, as is the Secretary of State’s duty to promote the involvement of carers alongside patients in decision-making around care and commissioning. However, the Bill goes nowhere near tackling the social care crisis and demonstrates a pitiful lack of ambition on one of the biggest challenges we face. As I mentioned, the chaos caused by the restructuring of ICBs will only worsen the challenges that local authorities face in providing care for an increasingly ageing population. We want to transform the NHS so that patients are empowered to live more healthily, for longer and in dignity. The nation’s health is stagnating, with an ever-widening gap in healthy life expectancy between the country’s most and least deprived areas and growing pressure on adult social care. Fixing social care is fundamental to our vision for the NHS. It is the key to providing a better quality of life for the frail and vulnerable, freeing up hospitals and building independence for an ageing population. It also empowers our constituents to live as independently as possible in their homes and near to their families and communities. We cannot fix the NHS and move care to the community while ignoring social care—yet the Bill ignores it and, as I have outlined, the changes to ICB commissioning will undermine the structures that are supposed to integrate social care with the NHS. Liberal Democrat plans will give people control, rooting services in communities, listening to patients and making it much easier to see a GP. We will give patients a right to see a GP within seven days, reverse surgery closures and ensure proper personalised management of chronic conditions and frailty, with guaranteed access to a named GP for those patients. We will also protect the mental health investment standard so that we can rebuild community mental health services—something that this Government have failed to do— empowering individuals with poor mental health by intervening early and allowing them to access care in their community. Our maternity rescue plan will ensure that Britain is the safest country in the world in which to have a baby, offering one-to-one midwifery care and empowering women at this most important moment. This Health Bill could have been a moment for real change. Liberal Democrats are clear about what real modernisation of the NHS would look like. Our vision for a reformed, community-based NHS is one where proper care and restored investment in public health ultimately cut NHS waste and empower people to live healthier and more independent lives. This Bill focuses on shuffling responsibility around Whitehall and gives the Secretary of State the role of chief micromanager. The Government continue to procrastinate over bringing in real change to fix social care, empower patients and save our NHS. In Committee and on Report, Liberal Democrats will use every lever at our disposal to deliver the transformation the NHS so desperately needs.

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

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  I wish to speak about rural regeneration and the need to back business and create economic growth in rural areas. Around a fifth of the British population live in rural areas, which have great untapped potential, but we do not see the infrastructure in those areas to allow them to reach that potential and provide the economic growth we need. To illustrate the point, I have picked five areas, the first of which is digital connectivity. The previous Government’s Project Gigabit seemed like a really good idea: to roll out fibre broadband across rural areas, in places where it would otherwise not have been commercial, and connect businesses and homes so that people could do the things that they need to online—whether that is work from home, start a new business or connect their existing business. In Shropshire, the contract was awarded to a company called Freedom Fibre, which was going to roll out fibre broadband to 12,000 properties but stalled at 3,500 after it could not get the funding it needed to connect the rest. The remaining properties will now be connected by Openreach, but not until 2030. That matters in rural places where, for instance, someone with a farm might allow other businesses to run from redundant buildings that are past their sell-by date and no good for keeping animals. However, those places do not have fibre broadband, which means they are not suitable places for start-up businesses to operate from. The absence of broadband is really beginning to hold us back. It is the same story with mobile coverage. Ofcom reports that 1.45% of postcodes do not have “good” voice capability. Everyone who lives in North Shropshire knows that is complete rubbish, because it is impossible to make a phone call from lots and lots of places, including while driving down the A5. Prees Green is a particular blackspot where I tend to get cut off when speaking to my husband on my way home on a Wednesday night. There are all sorts of places where it really is impossible to make a phone call, and that is holding businesses back. In fact, the River Severn Partnership found that 15.33% of postcodes are without good coverage, and the Rural Services Network says that 65% of rural residents across the country experience unreliable mobile signal. That really matters to people trying to run a business, particularly if they are on the road with that business or trying to work from home. It is holding us back. We need the Government to put in place a regulatory environment for the businesses that connect us digitally to ensure that rural places get the service they need. At the moment, they are being held back by the lack of availability. I will give the House an example. I spoke to a business owner last week—they were actually talking to me about cash and getting to the bank, which I will come to later—who cannot accept payment cards at their premises because they are without a decent signal and any network. They have to give their bank details to their customers, who then go home and make a bank transfer—hopefully. That business is taking on all that risk because it cannot operate a simple swipe-and-pay system. The lack of digital connectivity has that kind of impact on businesses in my area. It also really affects how farmers—there are over 1,000 farms in North Shropshire—do their business. Theirs are often the worst-connected properties, but farmers need to be online to deal with the regulatory environment within which they operate, and they might need to use GPS to work their farm machinery. All that is a problem if the digital connectivity is poor.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects: Electric Lines · Hansard source

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  Green GEN Cymru, which is a sister company of Bute Energy, is in the latter stages of a very controversial process to secure planning consent for power lines for the Vyrnwy Frankton connection. The problem is that there is no substation at Lower Frankton in North Shropshire with which to connect those lines. We expect that proposal to come through later this year, but given Bute Energy’s widely reported links to the Labour party and National Grid’s obligation to connect new infrastructure to the grid, how can the Minister reassure my constituents that the whole process is not predetermined?

• 24 Mar 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T6. In North Shropshire, around 15,000 households, including my own, are reliant on fuels like heating oil or LPG to heat them. These people are also hit hardest by rises at the petrol pumps because they do not have alternative forms of transport. While everybody who is connected to mains electricity and gas benefits from the price cap, those of us who are off-grid have only been offered means-tested support. Will the Government consider introducing a price cap on alternative fuels to ensure that rural and off-grid homes get the support they deserve?

• 18 Mar 2026 · Flooding: Rural Communities · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member is making an excellent speech and has taken a huge number of interventions, for which I thank her. When it comes to development, flood management strategies are not taking into account the run-off that additional development will cause; for example, the upper Severn catchment management scheme is looking at opportunities to store water, but not at risks from additional development. We know that the drainage arrangements that are put in place, such as attenuation ponds, are often not maintained into the future. Does the hon. Member agree that we need a better plan for making sure that when development happens, the run-off does not affect the existing residents?

• 25 Feb 2026 · Post Office Green Paper · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Government’s announcement today that they are going to maintain 11,500 branches, but in my constituency, outreach services that were only available maybe for an hour or two each week anyway in Cockshutt, Clee, Weston Rhyn, Knockin, West Felton and Ruyton XI Towns have all been lost because of the retirement of a single postmistress in Trefonen. The current criteria have not protected those services, and the distance criteria are not incredibly helpful when there is no public transport that can be relied on, and for a business it is an incredible waste of time to have to get in the car and drive three or maybe six miles to another post office to post something. What can the Minister say to my constituents who are faced with long journeys to get to post offices? What likelihood is there of a post office reopening in their area, and how will that help them deal with these access problems of public transport and efficiency when they are running their businesses?

• 12 Feb 2026 · Rural Mobile Connectivity · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I will mention Project Gigabit and its shortcomings, but we could have a three-hour debate on the subject. I wholly agree that we cannot consider mobile coverage and broadband separately. They are two parts of the same thing: the areas with the worst broadband signal tend to have the worst mobile signal. It is a very difficult problem to resolve. As I was saying, modern farming requires modern technology, but if the signal is inadequate it does not work. Being able to rely on broadband would also help those who work in an office, but just 50% of rural commercial buildings in North Shropshire have access to full fibre. The announcement of Project Gigabit gave us real hope, but after two years, the contract was handed back having connected just 3,500 of the planned 12,000 properties. The word I would use to describe Project Gigabit is “shambles”, as my adjectives of choice are unsuitable for the Chamber. We are still waiting for details of when the rest of the properties will be delivered, but meanwhile we continue to pay exorbitant prices for mediocre broadband because Openreach and other companies neglect to invest in our area. Across the House, Members are calling for a change in direction for rural digital infrastructure. I am conscious of time so I will speed up slightly. Essentially, gaps in mobile and broadband coverage threaten to undermine national ambitions. My report from the APPG on digital communities highlights how co-ordinated action to address the challenges and unlock the full potential of the UK’s digital infrastructure is crucial for rural areas and for growth in the rest of the UK as well. Successive Governments have failed to grasp that. We can just look at the emergency services network, which should have been introduced in 2017. Nearly a decade on, we are still waiting for it to be properly rolled out. The Government’s ambition is to have high-quality 5G in all populated areas by 2030, yet we rank 30th among 39 developed economies according to the Social Market Foundation. We know that we are lagging miles behind and we are still trying to make up the ground. In Shropshire, we would be grateful for consistent 4G. People who live in rural areas pay the same, or even higher, fees as people in towns in return for a second-rate service. We must be given the connections that we need to reliably access modern life. Successive Governments have treated rural areas with disdain, telling us that everything is great when we can see for ourselves that it is not. It would bring far more money into the Treasury and unlock the huge potential of the rural economy if the Government finally saw sense. I hope that the Minister will address the abject failure of the shared rural network and Gigabit projects, and outline a sensible strategy for delivering rural infrastructure in future.

• 12 Feb 2026 · Rural Mobile Connectivity · Hansard source

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  My right hon. Friend makes a good point about the use of public money and how we develop infrastructure fit for the modern age as part of a public and private operation. Rural roaming measures have been opposed by the industry, but they were recommended by the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in its 2019 report. I am convinced that if the Government are serious about enabling economic growth in rural areas, they should explore that option. My constituent Rob Paul, a consultant with vast experience of rural telecoms projects, suggests that robustly enforced financial penalties are the only thing that operators will respond to. After years of being let down, I cannot disagree. I turn to the digital switchover. Mobile phones have been cited as the default back-up option in a power cut once the copper landline network is switched off, as has now happened over most of the UK. That is hugely concerning for people in areas prone to extensive power cuts in winter storms. As we are rural, our power is not put back online as a priority. Back-up batteries for routers will last for a couple of hours—perhaps up to 12. People in remote parts of North Shropshire are sometimes left without power for several days. Someone who is at home on their own, in the dark and frightened, might want to call someone other than the emergency services in the event of a power cut. It is crucial that people can access their mobile phone and get a reliable signal when the power is down, whoever they are. One 90-year-old constituent told me that she purchased a phone because she was concerned about the digital switchover and wanted to ensure that she could still make calls in the event of a power cut. The mobile connection in her village of Knockin is so bad that she was never once able to use the phone. When she asked EE to end the contract, it required £293 to release her. It is not just about power cuts. Hundreds of people in Kinnerley and Ellesmere have been left without any service at all when their broadband cabinet has been taken out by other factors such as fire or car accidents. Peter, who lives near Whittington, has terminal lung disease. Last weekend, his internet went down for 12 hours, which also meant that his landline was down. There was no mobile signal at his home. If Peter had had an emergency, he would have had no one to turn to. Improving rural phone signal would not just help vulnerable individuals. It would help local businesses, grow the economy and help our health and social care system. Smartphones are an essential part of daily modern life, whether that is for a GP patient who needs to book an appointment or request a repeat prescription or for a small business owner who needs to take payment from a customer. I have spoken to countless elderly people who struggle to access key services. I have heard from farmers, landscape gardeners, taxi drivers and dog groomers whose businesses all suffer because of signal problems. One livestock and arable farmer told me: “I cannot express strongly enough how frustrating it is farming in the modern world. It is depressing the amount of time wasted walking around the yard trying to get a slight signal to answer the phone”. Someone who gets injured may have no way of contacting the emergency services or seeking other help. Vast sums have to be spent on helping tractor GPS systems to navigate the inconsistent signal.

• 2 Feb 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T5. In my constituency, complaints about water supply to single living accommodation doubled from 116 in 2018 to 232 in 2024, with 16 separate losses of water for more than 24 hours last year. Will the Minister meet me to discuss how we can bring single living accommodation up to the standard that our servicemen and women deserve?

• 27 Jan 2026 · Business Rates · Hansard source

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  I declare an interest in that my husband works for an independent wine merchant. Today’s news will be very welcome for the many pubs in North Shropshire that have been pushed to the brink over recent years by national insurance contributions increases, high energy bills and now business rates. However, this will not help shops or hotels such as the lovely Pen-y-Dyffryn in my constituency, the rateable value of which has nearly quadrupled. Will the Minister outline the timeline for his review of hotels in particular, and what other help can be given to retail and hospitality businesses?

• 21 Jan 2026 · Warm Homes Plan · Hansard source

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  As the Secretary of State has pointed out, in rural areas, we tend to have older housing stock and lots of people off-grid. They are very keen to see upgrades made to their home, and we welcome this announcement. In my constituency, a number of people engaged with the energy company obligation 4 scheme. Unfortunately, they have been let down badly by rogue installers, who have left their bills higher and their homes damaged, and who have taken money from the taxpayer. What is the Secretary of State doing to ensure that does not happen this time, and what remedy might be available for those who have been let down by rogue actors in ECO4?

• 12 Jan 2026 · Finance (No. 2) Bill · Hansard source

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  I am speaking in favour of the amendments and new clauses tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), and against the changes to APR in general, and its less conspicuous but equally ugly twin sister, the changes to BPR, because they are downright destructive to the economy in rural places like North Shropshire. The Conservatives showed that they took farming communities for granted, presiding over botched trade deals and an unfair transition from the old basic payment system to the environment management scheme, and leaving the farming budget with an underspend of hundreds of millions of pounds, but the new Labour Government have shown that they do not understand rural communities whatsoever. It is utterly inexcusable that family farms have been put through over a year of uncertainty and anguish since the Government first announced changes to APR. I have had the pleasure of visiting many farms and attending roundtables with farmers in my constituency. The uncertainty, anxiety and fear caused to them and their families because of the changes has been appalling for Shropshire, not only because those farmers are part of the economic backbone of the economy, but because they are part of the community. As we have disputed with the official Opposition, the Liberal Democrats were the first to call out and oppose the unfair family farm tax in last year’s Budget. We have been proud to stand alongside our farming communities in campaigning against it ever since. December’s U-turn, which increased the farm inheritance tax threshold from £1 million to £2.5 million, has been hard won, and we are grateful to all the farmers who have fought tirelessly to achieve it. It is a step in the right direction, and it would be churlish not to acknowledge that, but having spoken to farmers in my constituency, I can say that the change just does not go far enough. I will focus on the dairy industry, because North Shropshire has a lot of dairy farmers. Dairy farming in the modern era is capital-intensive. You need expensive assets, like automated milking systems, cooling units, feed systems, housing and slurry storage. They are all essential for operating the modern dairy farm, but incomes are low and volatile. The reality is that the industry is becoming increasingly unprofitable, and many smaller dairy farms have already sold up in North Shropshire. To make matters worse, milk prices have recently fallen below the cost of production, while the price of feed and energy and labour costs remain historically high. Last week, two North Shropshire dairy farmers outlined the crisis that their sector has been put in. As partners in their farm, they told me that even with December’s increase in the threshold, the family farm tax incentivises them to keep their business small—they describe the tax as putting the dairy industry in a straitjacket. Because they have borrowed to finance their assets and capital expenditure, these farms are in a position where they are worrying about servicing their debts, maintaining production and remaining viable, yet the value of their land and machinery is in excess of the cap. There is already no money left for future capital expenditure, and now they have to plan to be able to pay off IHT in the future as well, which will not be achievable for them without selling parts of the farm to big players whose methods will be far less sustainable and worse for the environment than their current low-input model. Ending capital investment not only affects family farms and their growth, but puts our nation’s agricultural equipment producers and suppliers out of business, damaging growth and reducing our food security.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  The NHS continues to face a historic crisis after years of mismanagement by the last Conservative Government. Their dire legacy is still felt across the country, with hospitals crumbling and dental deserts across England—not least in my constituency—as well as a mental health crisis and many people struggling to access their GP, waiting hours for an ambulance or suffering in crammed hospital corridors. The British people deserve better. The Liberal Democrats welcome efforts to bring down the sky-high waiting lists left by the previous Government, and there have been green shoots of recovery across the country. In the Shrewsbury and Telford hospital trust, which serves my constituents, performance against the 28-day faster diagnosis standard has reached 80.1%—the highest on record. I thank all the hard-working hospital staff there and across the country, who are working tirelessly at the moment to improve the situation. There are some welcome announcements in the Budget. The prescription price freeze is clearly the right thing to do, and we strongly support protecting victims of the infected blood scandal and their families from inheritance tax. It is an unacceptable injustice for bereaved families to lose out just because their loved ones died waiting for compensation. We also support the lifting of the two-child benefit cap, because it is the type of investment that will reap savings in the future and correct a moral injury. I am afraid, though, that overall this Budget does not meet the moment. The Government are treading water on their spending commitments, and hundreds of millions of pounds are set to be drained from services to fund a medicines price hike. From the Office for Budget Responsibility’s report, it is not clear whether frontline NHS services will be raided to pay higher prices for branded medicines at the behest of President Trump, on top of the billions already anticipated in the spending review. No. 10’s briefing suggests that the money will come from the NHS budget, yet we have just heard from the Secretary of State that it will not. A statement to this House to clarify the details would be most welcome. Yesterday we learned that the Government have capitulated to the US Government and will increase spending on medicines by 0.3% of GDP—more than the value derived from some trade deals—or from about 9.5% of the NHS budget to 12%. We desperately need to understand how that will be paid for; I hope it will not be by cutting frontline services. The Secretary of State has previously said that he would not allow the NHS to be ripped off by drug companies, and I hope the Minister will confirm that position. The life sciences sector is vital to the UK. Rather than defunding vital NHS services, the Liberal Democrats urge the Government to take real actions to strengthen it by implementing a new, bespoke customs union with the EU to slash red tape, along with a major boost to research and development funding so that new drugs can be brought online as quickly as possible. NHS spending should be targeted at where our health service really needs it: ending the crisis in GP services so that everyone has a right to see a GP in seven days, or in 24 hours if it is urgent; guaranteeing that 100% of patients are treated for cancer within 62 days of an urgent referral; and ending unacceptable and degrading corridor care. I urge the Government to adopt these proposals without delay in order to protect patients and prevent trust in our NHS from being irreparably broken. One of the most visible symptoms of decline is our crumbling hospitals and the degrading scenes that became commonplace under the Conservatives. Those patients falsely promised a new hospital by the Conservatives will continue to be bitterly disappointed. We all know that the 40 new hospitals promised to patients did not number 40, that they were not necessarily new, that they were not all hospitals, and that there was no plan to fund them. However, this Government have chosen not to pledge new investment, which means that the maintenance backlog will continue to balloon at eye-watering levels, having climbed from £13.8 billion in 2023-24 to an astonishing £15.9 billion in 2024-25. The Chancellor should have guaranteed that no patient, doctor or nurse faces the indignity of substandard, broken and, frankly, unsafe estates. We appreciate that there is pressure on the public finances, but holding back on these improvements is a false economy when a fortune is being spent papering over the cracks to keep substandard buildings that should be condemned limping on. The repair backlog at the sites of new hospitals is set to reach nearly £6 billion by the time construction is due to start. The Liberal Democrats will continue to champion investment in our crumbling NHS buildings in order to protect patients, hard-working NHS staff and the taxpayer.

• 20 Nov 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  My constituents are no strangers to flooding, whether that is from the Rivers Severn and Vyrnwy in villages such as Melverley or from surface water or inadequate infrastructure in Gobowen and Hadnall. The Environment Agency says that another 1,600 properties in my constituency will be vulnerable to surface water flooding by 2050, and the Planning and Infrastructure Bill fails to address flooding or climate change at all. Given that the Government voted down my amendments and those of my Lib Dem colleagues to the Bill, which were intended to tackle this problem, can we have a debate or a statement from the relevant Minister on how the UK will build flood resilience?

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

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  A number of constituents have come to see me about adaptations made to their home under the ECO4 scheme, where an installer has received a grant from the Government—from the taxpayer—to hopefully improve the energy efficiency of their home, but what the homeowner has actually experienced is significant disruption and energy bills that have gone up. The payment to the installer from the taxpayer is based on estimates of the household’s energy use before and after—there are no facts involved. Can we have a statement from the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero on whether these schemes represent value for money for the taxpayer and the homeowner, and whether they can be made more efficient in the future?

• 9 Sept 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T2. Pubs are at the heart of the community in North Shropshire, whether community-owned pubs such as the White Lion in Ash and the Horse and Jockey at Northwood, the Bailey Head in Oswestry, which was the Campaign for Real Ale’s pub of the year, or attached to a microbrewery like the Stonehouse brewery in Morda. But all those hospitality businesses are buckling under the strain of higher business rates, the national insurance increase and higher energy costs. May I add my plea to those of my Liberal Democrat colleagues and ask the Chancellor that, in the upcoming Budget, measures are put in place to support our struggling hospitality industry?