Ian Sollom MP: speeches

Speeches

• 14 Sept 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Last week’s PISA results confirmed that the gap in outcomes for disadvantaged pupils remains stark throughout their education, so will the Secretary of State commit to looking seriously at proposals from the Lib Dems and others to extend the pupil premium to post-16 education?

• 9 Sept 2026 · Education and Skills Reform · Hansard source

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  The Department previously had to delay the plans for defunding BTECs, and although there has been progress on T-levels, there are still shortages of placements and teachers. Can the Secretary of State guarantee that the transition to V-levels will not have the same uncertainty? Previously delayed transitions have been damaging by not providing certainty to young people.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  The Minister cites our world-class universities and an ambition to double the number of UK unicorns that run frontier technologies such as quantum and AI, but does she recognise that those breakthroughs often come from the curiosity-driven frontier physics research in our universities, and that that research base now faces a £700 million funding gap?

• 1 Sept 2026 · Criminal Justice Reform · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Lord Chancellor’s announcement of investment in the Probation Service. Will he lay out what the Government are doing specifically to fix the vetting delays and staff attrition problems that have kept levels broadly stable despite previous investment, and will he commit to a date by which Cambridgeshire and Peterborough will exit prioritisation?

• 13 Jul 2026 · Local Government Reorganisation · Hansard source

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  The Oxford-Cambridge growth corridor is one of the Government’s flagship regional growth priorities, with a ministerial champion in Lord Vallance to ensure joined-up delivery, yet if reports that option D is being taken forward for Cambridgeshire are correct, the Government will be choosing a structure with no realistic path to viability, right at the start of that corridor. Will the Minister confirm what assessment has been made of option D’s viability within the corridor, and whether Lord Vallance was consulted before the decision?

• 8 Jul 2026 · The Greater Cambridge Development Corporation (Establishment) Order 2026 · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I would like to be clear at the outset that the diagnosis behind the idea of the corporation is one that I and many in the area broadly share. Cambridge’s growth is constrained by water supply, wastewater capacity, and transport and energy infrastructure. They are real problems with real consequences, and not just for the current residents that I and others in the area represent, but for future residents. Nobody disputes that. However, the Lib Dems cannot support establishing a corporation whose purpose remains undefined at the point at which we are being asked to approve it. This order does one thing: it creates the Greater Cambridge Development Corporation in name. The powers and functions order, which will determine what it actually does, including any planning powers, comes later in the autumn. We are being asked to vote on an institution before we know what it will be for. That is not just a procedural quibble; it goes to the heart of whether development corporations actually work. The historical cases that genuinely justify optimism—London Docklands and the Olympic Delivery Authority are really good examples of development corporations working—succeeded because they had a clearly defined task, a timeline and a funding commitment to match that ambition. That clarity is what gave them the authority and legitimacy that made the democratic trade-off arguable, at the very least, and worthwhile for those who agreed. When I asked the Minister recently at departmental questions what infrastructure the corporation would have responsibility for delivering, and by when, he replied that further details would be set out in due course. I do not highlight that as a criticism of him; he has been very constructive in his engagement with my area, and I really appreciate that. In fact, I think one of his first acts as a Minister was to give me a call on the Sunday night after the election to tell me about an intervention in Northstowe in my constituency. However, his answer to my question was telling. We are establishing what will be the largest urban development corporation of its type, covering an area almost double that of all 17 previous urban development corporations combined, and the specific infrastructure it will deliver has not yet even been outlined, never mind detailed. The powers and functions order will also bring forward planning powers for which I find it difficult to see the justification. In the medium term, the corporation is expected to take over determination of planning applications above 250 dwellings, as the Minister said, and in time it will replace the local plan process entirely. I heard what the Minister had to say, but I would argue that 250 dwellings is not a strategic site; it is a medium-sized development. The greater Cambridge area already has planning permission for 37,000 homes that have not yet been built. The evidence is clear that planning is not the barrier at that level. Water, sewerage and transport—those are the barriers, and none of them is fixed by changing who determines a 250-home planning application. I am also concerned about the boundary. We have had some discussion about that already. Lord Lansley has tabled a regret motion in the Lords specifically on this point, arguing that the geographic scope should correspond to the functional economic geography of the Cambridge economy and that any planning powers should be focused on very large new sites rather than applications on the 250 scale. I share both his concerns. The functional economic geography of Cambridge extends well beyond Cambridge city and South Cambridgeshire district, as the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough independent economic review established back in 2018. The boundary drawn here does not follow the task; it follows two administrative areas. If the Government intend to proceed with planning powers in the autumn, as I am sure they do, will the Minister make four specific commitments? First, will he publish a clear, evidenced rationale for why removing local plan-making powers is necessary—something that I do not think has yet been provided? Secondly—I think he said this in his opening remarks, so this is more for clarification—will he commit that those powers will not be transferred until the existing draft greater Cambridge local plan has been adopted? That work has been years in development and is already at an advanced stage. Thirdly, will he guarantee that any decision to activate those powers will be accompanied by published reasons and an opportunity for further representations before it takes effect? Fourthly, can he confirm that the powers and functions order will be subject to the same affirmative procedure as the order we are considering today, giving Parliament a proper opportunity to scrutinise the planning powers before they come into force, rather than having them take effect without oversight? I will be voting against the order today, not because I oppose growth in Cambridge or the principle of strategic intervention where it is justified—I hope the Minister appreciates that I try to engage constructively with him on growth and infrastructure in my constituency; there are lots of brilliant opportunities there and it is a great part of the country to grow—but because establishing a body of this scale and duration, at 25 years, with this level of democratic cost before the purpose has been defined is the wrong way to proceed. I hope that at the very least the Government come back with a powers and functions order that sets out what the corporation will actually build, where and by when, and a clear, evidenced rationale for why planning powers are necessary to deliver it.

• 6 Jul 2026 · Payment Scheme · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for his continued commitment to improving the compensation scheme and for keeping the House up to date on its progress. I know that he takes this matter seriously, and I hope that we will see him continue to do so after the summer recess. We Liberal Democrats welcome many of the changes being made today, as we welcomed the previous changes made in April. The infected blood scandal is the biggest treatment disaster in NHS history, and such a disaster should never be allowed to happen again. The suffering inflicted on infected and affected people was, and still is, immeasurable. It was compounded by a cover-up that no amount of compensation will ever truly make up for, but it can go some way. After all this time, it must happen quickly, fully and fairly. Unfortunately, the experience of too many of those impacted is that that is not currently happening. Today I would like to draw attention to some significant omissions still missing from the legislation, and I hope that the Minister will take them on board in his efforts to achieve justice for everyone impacted by this scandal. I will share some stories from my constituents by way of example. The first is the lack of a dedicated care award for living affected persons. One of my constituents infected with hepatitis C 30 years ago has repeatedly raised with me her concern about elderly affected carers who are still alive and providing care. Three decades on from her infection, her mother continues to live with her and provides care daily, yet there is no separate pathway for her to claim compensation for this. To possibly pre-empt the Minister’s response that care awards can be applied for through claims made as an infected person, I would argue that this method only works if it is performed at pace. We know that the speed of compensation is not what it should be. My constituent tells me that it is “painful to contemplate” that she “may not receive compensation in time to meaningfully support or repay” her elderly mother “after a lifetime shaped by…infection.” I would be interested to hear from the Minister what consideration the Department has given to calls for a dedicated care award paid directly to eligible living affected persons, and why, while simultaneously promising to speed up compensation, he is continuing to compensate carers only through this complex existing pathway. Also missing from the regulations are measures to remove the impossible evidentiary demands currently in place, such as requiring victims to produce non-existent records, forcing elderly and grieving parents to go through complex online verification processes, or parents of children who died as a result of infected blood products being asked to prove that they lived with their child at the time. By way of example, I have a constituent whose father received blood transfusions following a severe car accident in 1989. He contracted hepatitis C and subsequently died from leukaemia in 2007. The records of his treatment across two hospitals have been destroyed, and his daughter has reached a complete impasse in trying to claim compensation for this incredibly traumatic series of events. I appreciate that some of this was only raised with the Minister very recently, but I do wonder if he might tell the House what steps he has taken to urgently investigate those reports and what steps he is taking to ensure that no victim is retraumatised and prevented from being served justice by having to provide impossible evidence. I have on several occasions raised my constituents’ concerns about disparities in compensation for different diseases. One of my constituents has lived without his mother for 25 years after she died from hepatitis C in 1998, and he questions why claiming in her case involves complex severity bands whereas claiming for a living infected person with HIV is done through one single band. Can the Minister clarify whether he is still considering where there may be broader structural differences within the scheme and how they might be addressed? My final, broader, point is that there are very few accountability mechanisms in place for infected and affected people to genuinely hold both IBCA and the Cabinet Office to account. Both have been responsive when I pass along letters from my constituents, but that does prompt the question of why they were not so responsive when the constituents made contact themselves. Victim and patient voices matter, and they must be listened to at every level. We Liberal Democrats would mandate integrated care boards to include patient voices at board level through organisations such as Healthwatch, and we share the disappointment of many impacted by the infected blood scandal that the Government have consistently, it seems, listened to the advice of the technical expert group over the lived experience of hundreds of victims. We need to end the culture of cover-up exposed by the infected blood inquiry and other scandals by immediately introducing that legislation to impose a statutory duty of candour on all public officials and establishing a patient safety taskforce to improve data sharing, analyse patient risk and co-ordinate safety responsibilities. I therefore ask the Minister for an update on the progress of the Hillsborough law and stress once again the urgency of getting it through this place. In closing, I pay tribute to every victim of this awful scandal and reiterate calls from across the House for IBCA to work faster to ensure that justice is served for all.

• 2 Jul 2026 · Access to Further Education · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the hon. Member for Runcorn and Helsby (Sarah Pochin) on securing this important debate. Access to further education is access to opportunity. For most young people, and for a great many adults, it is the route to a job or back into learning. When that access works, it changes lives. When it does not, we fail not just an individual but their family, their local community, the economy and, over a lifetime, the public purse. We do not make it as easy as it should be to access further education. I will focus on two barriers: funding and transport, on which the Government are not going far enough or fast enough. Last year, in the skills White Paper, the Education Secretary promised real-terms increases in per-pupil funding for 16 to 19 providers. Instead, per-head funding this year is going up by just 0.55%. That is a real-terms cut. Overall funding for 16 to 19 education now stands at around £4.7 billion, 30% below its inflation-adjusted high of £6.8 billion in 2003-04. Cambridge Regional College sits just outside my constituency of St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire. Its principal, Mark Robertson, has been clear with me about the cost: there is a pay gap of around £12,500 between school and FE teachers. At a time when the college needs enough maths and English teachers to deliver resits for about 1,300 young people in each subject, those teachers could earn thousands more teaching exactly the same subject in a school down the road. Less visible but just as damaging is the fact that colleges are funded based on the previous year’s intake. This means that when demand rises—and it is rising—colleges have to enrol and teach students now, but must wait, often a full academic year, to be funded for them. Nationally, colleges took on around 32,000 additional 16 to 19 students in ’25-26 to meet that rising demand, and were left to absorb the costs themselves. That is not a funding system that supports improving access. I would just suggest two changes that might help. As the Minister will know, colleges, unlike schools, cannot reclaim VAT. That amounts to a tax on further education worth around £210 million per year. The Liberal Democrats would end that anomaly. We would also extend the pupil premium to post-16 learners, including those in FE, so that support for disadvantaged young people does not simply stop the day they turn 16. Of course, funding cannot reach colleges that are not there. I will give another example from my constituency: St Neots is the largest town in Cambridgeshire, but it has no further education college of its own. Despite innovative efforts to provide some provision in the town, many of our young people must travel to reach the courses that could change their lives. Of course, St Neots is far from being the only further education cold spot in the country. That brings me to the second barrier: transport. The law requires every young person to remain in education or training until 18, but it does not require any local authority to help them to get there. Once a young person turns 16, transport support becomes discretionary, rather than statutory—a cliff edge at exactly the point the law starts asking more of them, not less. The Association of Colleges tells us that some students face journeys of up to three hours a day to reach their course, and colleges are increasingly subsidising transport themselves out of budgets meant for teaching and learning. The Liberal Democrats have urged the Government to fully restore the £2 bus fare cap—a change that hit rural passengers particularly hard, in exactly the areas where too many of our young people are trying to reach college. Perhaps the Minister could also explain in this debate why a more direct measure—a concessionary bus pass for under-22s, which was recommended by the Transport Committee—was rejected by the Government as unaffordable. To conclude, it is worth highlighting what it costs when access fails. The Milburn review puts a number on it: an average of £29,000 a year for every person who is not in education, employment or training, rising to a lifetime cost of £240,000. We spend £7,900 a year on a further education student—that is not a close call. This is a false economy on a national scale. There is a missed opportunity on our doorstep to prove that it does not have to be this way. I hope that the Minister will tell us how the Government plan to address those barriers to access.

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

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. The Lib Dems have long supported the principle of a flexible credit-based system that lets people study in smaller chunks across their working lives, rather than in one fixed block at 18 years old. We are glad to see that direction reflected here today. I am afraid we cannot endorse the instrument, however, for reasons that I will put on the record. The first reason is substantive. The instrument, and the package that it leads, relies entirely on a loan-based model to drive take-up among exactly the cohort it claims to serve—adults who are already in work, with mortgages, dependants and a shorter working life over which to repay any loan. A loan that looks like a reasonable proposition for an 18-year-old starting a three-year degree looks very different to a 45-year-old weighing up retraining against existing financial commitments. When that issue was raised directly in the other place during the passage of the enabling legislation in 2023, the Government’s response was essentially to defer the question to the detail. The instrument is that detail, but the question has not really been answered. The Department’s 2021 pilot of loan-funded short courses, run jointly with the Office for Students, planned for more than 100 courses and 2,000 students, but only 17 courses launched and 125 students enrolled, of whom just 41 took out a loan. That direct, real-world test of the model that this instrument now extends across the entire post-18 system did not generate demand. Will the Minister tell us what assessment has been made of whether the LLE risks repeating that outcome at scale? Has a grant-based supplement, of the kind that the Liberal Democrats have proposed, been costed and considered? The second reason is procedural. This instrument is subject to the affirmative procedure, but the two remaining SIs in the package—the student support regulations and the repayment regulations—will be laid under the negative procedure, meaning that they will become law without a vote and without the parliamentary scrutiny warranted by a package of this complexity and long-term consequence. The student support and repayment arrangements are not peripheral details. They are the mechanisms that will determine whether the Government have addressed that loan-aversion issue, whether maintenance support is adequate and whether repayment terms are fair. What if the fee system fails to generate the take-up that the Government are predicting or hoping for? The review is not planned until 2031-32, five years after launch. I suggest that those two instruments should be upgraded to the affirmative procedure so that we can properly scrutinise what follows. I have a number of more specific questions for the Minister. First, the instrument carries forward the £5,760 lower fee cap for foundation years in subjects such as humanities, business, law and social sciences. That cap was set in 2023 and is unchanged since. Every other major fee category in the instrument receives an uplift in the second tranche, from August 2027. The lower fee foundation year rate does not. For many people without a traditional academic pathway, foundation years are the entry point into higher education. That route runs disproportionally through colleges and lower-tariff institutions, serving the students whom the Government say they most want to reach. Can the Minister confirm that this is simply a continuation of the 2023 cap with no independent review for the instrument, and that, unlike every other fee category mentioned, it does not rise in August 2027? If the policy rationale for that is to keep fees down to protect access, which is reasonable, is there any compensating mechanism—direct institutional funding, for example—to ensure that providers can keep delivering that provision as costs rise around a frozen fee? The risk is that we are quietly trusting institutions to absorb an indefinite real-terms cut in exactly the provision that is most likely to serve disadvantaged learners. Regulation 9 requires providers to notify in advance the Secretary of State of the number of credits attached to a course year, and to repeat that notification whenever activities change mid-year. Has the Department made any assessment of the cumulative administrative burden that that will place on smaller providers and FE-based higher education providers, which, again, are precisely the institutions best placed to deliver the flexible, bite-sized provision that the LLE is meant to enable? The two-tier higher and basic fee structure in the instrument imports the existing access and participation plan mechanism from full-time undergraduate study. APPs were not designed with part-time modular or older learners in mind. Has the Office for Students been asked to assess whether APP commitments, as currently framed, are fit for purpose in a credit-based lifelong learning context? Regulation 19 ensures that courses designated for lifelong learning purposes are not treated as designated under the pre-existing Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998 regime. Can the Minister confirm that no student currently part way through a course will risk falling between those two designation regimes and losing eligibility for support as a result? On a minor point that is still worth highlighting, the explanatory memorandum states that the per-credit rate is £81.58, but dividing the £9,790 headline figure by 120 credits gives a recurring decimal, meaning that, at the stated rounding, 120 credits produces £9,789.60, rather than £9,790.

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

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  Well, I am a mathematician by trade. It is a small point, but every fee limit in the system is derived from that per-credit calculation, so will the Minister confirm the correct rounding convention, and that the providers and the Student Loans Company are working from the same figure? We support the direction of this reform, and will not stand in its way today, but the loan-only design and the inadequate scrutiny afforded to the two follow-on instruments are real concerns. I hope that the Minister will address them.

• 23 Jun 2026 · Forest City: West Suffolk · Hansard source

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  My constituency is in the path of the Oxford-Cambridge arc. I welcome the proposed development at Cambourne; there is also a proposal for a new town just south of the constituency, in Tempsford. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that Forest City could just be a huge distraction from the new towns programme, which is a credible way of getting on with delivering the housing for which we certainly see the need in my constituency?

• 22 Jun 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T7. In April, the High Court found that the Office for Students had predetermined its decision against the University of Sussex, approaching the investigation with a “closed mind”, and had acted beyond its legal powers. What is the Secretary of State’s response to that finding, and what steps is she taking to restore confidence in the regulator?

• 17 Jun 2026 · Steel Tariffs · Hansard source

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  A specialist manufacturer in my constituency employs 26 people designing and fabricating foundation tooling systems used in piling and construction across the country. None of the steel it needs can be sourced in the UK. Can the Minister explain how a policy that taxes raw materials but exempts imports of fabricated products does anything other than make British fabricators less competitive than international rivals?

• 16 Jun 2026 · Lifelong Learning: “University of the Air” White Paper · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I congratulate the hon. Member for Southport (Patrick Hurley) on securing the debate. I know that he is a passionate advocate and champion of the OU. I welcome the opportunity to speak on a subject that, frankly, deserves far more attention. Opening access to education, rewarding hard work and helping everyone to fulfil their potential are aims that sit at the heart of the Liberal Democrat vision for a free and fair society. Our predecessors were wholeheartedly supportive of the spirit behind the 1966 White Paper and we continue to be so. It is right that we mark its 60th anniversary by celebrating the work that it set in motion. In my constituency there are currently 240 Open University students: 210 undergraduates and 30 postgraduates. Nearly half of those undergraduates started their studies under the age of 30 and over a quarter declare a disability. That tells us something about how OU study fits around life. It is not a story that is unique to my patch. Nationally, 19% of OU students live in the most economically disadvantaged areas of the country, nearly 70% are already in work when they begin studying, and three in four arrive with no previous higher education qualification at all. That is a testament to the access mission that the OU embodies. In preparing for this debate, I enjoyed revisiting the 1966 White Paper, its proposals and the debates that led up to it. Hindsight is, of course, a wonderful thing but after reading one Member dismiss the idea as an “inflated concept” in a 1965 debate, I could not help but reflect, 60 years later, that the OU has comprehensively answered that objection, becoming a much-loved national institution. It has also been interesting to reflect on the world of adult education at the time. The White Paper was explicit that the university would sit alongside a wider ecosystem of provision, not replace it. The Government of the day promised to make full use of “existing agencies, such as the Extra-Mural Departments of Universities, the Workers’ Educational Association…and local education authorities.” In fact, the White Paper returns to that point twice. The vision was plural: a national broadcasting university—at the time—working hand in hand with local night classes, adult education centres and further education colleges, each reinforcing the other. The Open University itself has remained admirably faithful to that founding outward-facing instinct. It partners with institutions that lack their own degree-awarding powers, validating their programmes, and a high proportion of its graduates stay in their local area, contributing to the local economy. Five years after graduating, more than nine in 10 OU graduates still live in the postcode area where they studied, which I believe is precisely the kind of locally rooted impact hoped for by the authors of the White Paper. What has perhaps not survived so well is the other half of the 1966 vision—the local ecosystem that the OU was meant to complement. Public funding for adult skills and community learning has fallen sharply since its peak in the early 2000s. Spending on classroom-based adult education specifically has fallen by about two thirds over that period, and the number of publicly funded classroom-based further education courses taken by adults in England has dropped from 5.4 million in 2004-05 to just 1.7 million last year, which is a fall of about 70%. Of course, that is not the OU’s doing, and further education colleges still do excellent work within a narrower remit, but the wider tapestry of provision that the White Paper authors assumed would sit alongside a “University of the Air” has thinned out considerably since. Even the OU is feeling the strain of operating in that emptier landscape. Its own accounts for the last financial year show an accounting deficit of £27 million, which was brought back into a small underlying operating surplus only through a sustained programme of costs reduction, including the loss, sadly, of over 300 full-time equivalent roles last year. That should be seen less as a reflection on the OU, and more as a reflection on a much deeper structural problem. The part-time higher education market in England has been shrinking for years, and the OU, even as the strongest player in that market, cannot grow the pool of adult learners on its own. That is a job for Government policy, not for one institution’s marketing budget. That is exactly why the choice of funding mechanism matters so much for mature and returning learners. The lifelong learning entitlement that the Government are bringing forward is a welcome step in the right direction, but the evidence consistently shows that loans are not a strong enough incentive on their own to get more people from that group into education or training. Financial anxiety is already one of the biggest barriers preventing people from returning to study. Older learners are understandably more risk averse than 18-year-olds, and asking someone to take on the very debt they are trying to avoid to access more flexible and modular learning is not necessarily the answer. Instead, we Liberal Democrats have long called for grants of between £5,000 and £10,000 to be made available to people at key stages throughout their life to support retraining and reskilling. To ensure that that funding is well spent, we would pair it with good guidance on the options available and make sure that it is usable across a wide range of institutions, from local further education colleges to national universities and, of course, the OU. I hope the Minister, hearing praise from across the Chamber for the OU’s success in reaching learners of all ages, will give serious thought to that proposal for the long term, because it will matter more, not less, as time goes on. The world of work is changing fast, and maintaining a highly skilled, productive economy will require us to continually invest in our most precious resource—people. Learning cannot be a cost to be minimised once an initial education ends. The OU’s own record bears out the difference that can be made: it is ranked third nationally for graduate employability, and it has innovative schemes such as the virtual internships programme, which was built specifically for distance learners who could never have accessed an internship through conventional routes. That is what lifelong learning looks like when it works, but it cannot fall to one institution. Perhaps the most important insight from the White Paper is that no single institution, however innovative, can deliver lifelong learning alone. That responsibility sits with Government, who have their own opportunity to address that. Last October’s “Post-16 education and skills” White Paper restated the Government’s ambitions for the lifelong learning entitlement, which is due to come into force in January 2027. However, the secondary legislation and implementation detail that will determine whether it actually reaches risk-averse adult learners, rather than just the 18-year-olds who the loan model already works for, remain outstanding. I therefore hope that the Minister can set out not just the date for that detail but whether the detail will include any role, or ambition, for grants alongside loans. It would be fitting for the anniversary that we are celebrating today to be marked by such a step forward in adult education.

• 15 Jun 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T6. The Government have described the recently announced greater Cambridge development corporation as “infrastructure-first” development, so will the Minister set out what new infrastructure it will have the responsibility for delivering, and by when it will deliver it?

• 11 Jun 2026 · Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire: Transport Links · Hansard source

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  5. What steps she is taking to improve transport links between Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire in the context of the Universal United Kingdom resort.

• 11 Jun 2026 · Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire: Transport Links · Hansard source

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  The Universal resort will be a major employer, as well as a visitor destination, and East West Rail is central to people getting there sustainably. For my constituents, that includes being able to access the railway sustainably. Can the Secretary of State confirm that the planning of the new stations at Tempsford and Cambourne will include the design of travel connections by bus, cycle and foot? Will she also confirm that provision for an additional new station to the east of St Neots will be reviewed?

• 3 Jun 2026 · Lord Mandelson: Response to Humble Address · Hansard source

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  The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister reminded the House on Monday that he had given 10 updates on the Mandelson affair to Parliament, and, as the Paymaster General reminded us earlier, it will be 11 today. There are more than 1,500 pages of documents in this release alone—the largest Government response to a Humble Address in parliamentary history—but there is still one account that we have not received. In April, I said in this Chamber that when the Prime Minister simply says that he should not have appointed Peter Mandelson to the UK’s most important diplomatic posting—that it was, in his words, an “error of judgment”—he gives a description of an outcome, not an account of his judgment. I used the analogy of a driver saying, “I should not have crashed the car”, without ever accounting for the actions that led to the crash. That matters if we are to understand properly what went wrong, it matters to preventing it from happening again, and it matters to judging whether the driver should still be behind the wheel. If the House will indulge me, I will extend that analogy. These 1,500 pages give us the crash scene in more detail than Parliament has ever received on any comparable matter. We have the vehicle’s full mechanical history, we have the account of every passenger, we have what the bystanders observed from the pavement, and we have what the recovery team found when they arrived—but what we still do not have, after all that, is the driver’s account. What did the Prime Minister weigh in making his decision, what did he conclude, and where does he now think he went wrong in his reasoning? The Prime Minister received the due diligence in December 2024, which documented Mandelson’s association with Epstein and that he had stayed in Epstein’s home while Epstein was serving a prison sentence for sexual offences against a minor. The document described that as a “reputational risk”—not a moral question about what it means to appoint someone who maintained such a friendship, not a question about what message it sends to the victims and survivors of Epstein’s crimes, just a reputational risk to be managed. Did the Prime Minister consider any of those questions? We do not know. All we know is that he proceeded anyway. As my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Josh Babarinde) said on Monday, in these 1,500 pages, Epstein’s victims are not mentioned once in any document dated before Mandelson’s appointment. The only reference to them seems to be in an email written after he was sacked. The victims were not just an afterthought; they were given no thought at all. The published documents also highlight failures once Mandelson was in post. The due diligence was explicit: Global Counsel interests would have to cease on appointment. During Mandelson’s seven months as ambassador, from February to September 2025, he retained a substantial shareholding in Global Counsel. In February 2025, weeks into his ambassadorial role with that shareholding intact, he accompanied the Prime Minister on a visit to Palantir’s Washington headquarters. No formal minutes of that meeting were taken. In July 2025, he wrote to No. 10 suggesting that the Prime Minister should meet Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel while in London. Palantir was a Global Counsel client. How was an ambassador who retained a commercial stake in a lobbying firm permitted to accompany the Prime Minister to a meeting with one of that firm’s clients, with no formal record of what was discussed, and then suggest a further meeting with the firm’s founder? The due diligence said those interests should cease. They had not. Nothing in the published documents suggests that anyone asked why. The documents also reveal that in February 2025 Mandelson advised the then Technology Secretary to include “more positive language about AI” in a speech to the Munich security conference. The then Secretary of State replied that it was “all v good advice which I’ll action”— in text speak, obviously. This, again, was while Mandelson retained his shareholding in a firm that represented OpenAI and Palantir, and while he described OpenAI’s chief executive as his “chief AI buddy”. My hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) has today written to the independent adviser on ministers’ interests calling for an investigation into that, and she is right to do so. Those are only the conflicts that Parliament can currently see. The right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, asked on Monday, and again today, whether there is any written evidence of mitigations being put in place for the other conflicts identified in the due diligence. Those include the connections to the sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska; to Lan Fo’an, China’s Minister of Finance; and to Tamir Hayman, a former head of Israeli military intelligence. They also include a £1 million loan to invest in an Israeli start-up. The Chief Secretary’s response was that those documents are with the Metropolitan police, so Parliament cannot yet see whether those warnings were taken seriously or set to one side. The Liberal Democrats have consistently called for the reforms that this affair has made unavoidable. Government by WhatsApp must end. These documents show exactly what happens when significant business is conducted through channels that are imperfectly preserved and impossible to scrutinise. One senior Minister told Mandelson in writing that a sensitive matter was: “A convo for the phone.” That Minister warned: “There is a pattern we must get out of.” The review of non-corporate communications must produce enforceable rules, not just guidance. The lobbying register also needs root and branch reform. An ambassador retained a commercial stake in a lobbying firm throughout his tenure, arranging meetings between the Prime Minister and clients of that firm, and it seems that the system had no mechanism to prevent it. The ministerial code must be placed in statute. Having a code the Prime Minister can choose whether to enforce is not accountability, but it appears to be, which is more corrosive. Ultimately, those reforms will only address the system around the decision. The Father of the House, the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), observed on Monday that the Prime Minister has almost no presence in the 1,500 pages, comparing him with “The Man Who Never Was”. The response of the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister was that “Prime Ministers do not sit at computers, sending emails from Outlook. They have officials who action their decisions on their behalf”. —[ Official Report , 1 June 2026; Vol. 786, c. 860.] That may be true, but officials action decisions; they do not make them. The decision to appoint Peter Mandelson was the Prime Minister’s—his judgment, his decision and his error, as he acknowledges—but the House has never received his account of that decision. After 10 updates and 1,500 pages, the House might begin to wonder about the reasons for that absence, and I think there are three possibilities. Perhaps the Prime Minister genuinely does not know why he made the decision, and cannot reconstruct the reasoning that led him, having read the due diligence, to proceed. If so, that is alarming. A judgment of this sensitivity—involving national security, a convicted sex offender’s associate and known commercial conflicts of interest—should not be one whose reasoning evaporates without trace. Perhaps the Prime Minister knows why he proceeded, but believes an honest answer to this House would be embarrassing, and that explaining his reasoning would require him to acknowledge something he would prefer left unexamined. If so, that is a choice to protect himself at the expense of Parliament’s right to hold him to account. Perhaps the Prime Minister may genuinely believe that repeatedly saying, “I made an error of judgment,” constitutes an adequate account of his judgment. If so, it reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what accountability to Parliament actually requires. None of those three possibilities reflects well on a Prime Minister who promised that integrity and accountability would define his Government. Before taking up his post, Peter Mandelson wrote to the then Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), that if appointed, he would make sure the Prime Minister never regretted it. The Prime Minister has now expressed regret, but regret without explanation is not accountability. This House, and Epstein’s victims, deserve more than that: they deserve an answer.

• 2 Jun 2026 · Children: Development of Essential Skills · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under you in the Chair, Dr Allin-Khan. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) on securing this really important debate. Whether children leave school with the skills that they need is not just an education question but an economic one, and one that the Government have a particular responsibility to get right. As mentioned, the Milburn review, “Young People and Work”, published just last week, underlines how complex and deep-rooted the problems are and how much depends on getting the foundations right. Skills England has noted that members of the UK workforce are more likely to be underqualified for their occupations than counterparts in other OECD countries. We are talking about 26% of UK workers, against an OECD average of 18%. That is not an accident; it is the accumulated consequences of choices made about what we teach, how we teach it and whom we invest in earliest. If we want to understand where things go wrong, we should start at the beginning, as the hon. Members for Bolton North East (Kirith Entwistle), for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and others have highlighted. The early years foundation stage data for 2024-25 shows that 68% of children achieved a good level of development at the end of reception, meaning that nearly one in three did not, falling short on personal, social and emotional development, physical development, communication, literacy or numeracy. Children who arrive behind tend to stay behind. The attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers opens early and rarely closes, sadly.

• 2 Jun 2026 · Children: Development of Essential Skills · Hansard source

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  The point is well made about the importance of early years. That decision was sadly before my time, but it has certainly had consequences that we should all attempt to put right. Investment in high-quality early years provision, properly funded and staffed, is the most cost-effective skills intervention available for the long term. The Liberal Democrats broadly welcome the curriculum review, but we are concerned about the scrapping of the EBacc, at least in isolation—that is to say, without more clarity about accountability. The EBacc fulfilled an important role in mainstreaming subjects that were in decline, such as the humanities and languages. The right response to that is to build on its success by broadening it further to encompass arts, coding and physical education, rather than removing the accountability framework altogether. Without clear guidance, vital subjects risk being sidelined as schools struggle with budget pressures. That is why the Government’s commitment to give arts GCSEs equal status to humanities and introduce a core enrichment entitlement matters. It is also why the test now is whether those commitments translate into actual curriculum time in actual schools—particularly those serving disadvantaged communities, where the squeeze has been sharpest. It is important to recognise that breadth is only part of the answer; the quality and relevance of the core curriculum matters just as much. Too many young people leave school without feeling equipped to use maths in their lives or careers. Financial literacy, data interpretation and proportional reasoning are not optional extras but critical foundations. We should be asking not just whether children can pass their maths exam but whether the maths they are taught actually serves them. That same question—does what we teach serve children in the world they are entering?—applies in many respects. The hon. Member for Bracknell and others highlighted civic skills, and I would pick up artificial intelligence, given the world we are entering. The curriculum review is the right moment to embed AI literacy, not simply as a bolt-on qualification but as a genuine thread running throughout what children learn. Understanding those tools and their capabilities and limits is becoming a basic competency. The Government’s instinct is right, and we encourage real ambition in following it through. Skills alone are not enough if children cannot see where they might take them. Even a child who leaves school with strong skills, broad knowledge and digital fluency may still struggle if nobody has helped them to see what is possible, so careers guidance really matters. It matters most for the children who do not have family networks reaching into professional life. For children in that position, a well-timed conversation about what their aptitudes could lead to is not peripheral support; it is transformative. The Liberal Democrats are clear that the earlier that guidance begins, the more powerful it is. To pick up the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance), children with SEND must be included in every part of our ambition for essential skills. Too many children with SEND still cannot access support for their education, health and care plans. The system remains slow and adversarial, and is too dependent on families fighting for entitlements that should be automatic. Early identification and intervention is not happening at the scale or pace required, and when that does not happen, the consequences are compounded through adolescence and into adulthood. The Government’s reforms are a step in the right direction, and we genuinely welcome their intent, but SEND reforms must be judged not by the stated intentions but by the outcomes for children. That is the standard we will continue to hold the Government to.

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

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  Milburn highlights the need for the cross-departmental working that the Minister has highlighted, but I wonder what structures are in place for that. We have already seen missed opportunities, for example through the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026, to put more local powers in place. This must be a focus of every Department of Government, so what is the structure to deal with that?

• 1 Jun 2026 · Armed Forces Recruitment and Retention · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for his answer— [ Interruption. ]

• 1 Jun 2026 · Armed Forces Recruitment and Retention · Hansard source

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  1. What steps he is taking to improve recruitment and retention in the armed forces.

• 1 Jun 2026 · Armed Forces Recruitment and Retention · Hansard source

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  Joining the armed forces demands a huge personal commitment from young people, but those who put their hand up to serve can wait the best part of a year or more, with little communication, no sense of progress, and real frustration that their commitment to our country is not being matched. That frustration often leads them to seek different opportunities. Does the Secretary of State agree that solving the recruitment problem is not just about improving an online portal, but about building a genuine relationship with potential recruits from day one? What is he doing to deliver that now, ahead of the new portal roll-out next year?

• 1 Jun 2026 · Health Bill · Hansard source

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  The CQC and HSSIB themselves have expressed concerns about how those two organisations might be brought together. The AAIB is separate from the Civil Aviation Authority, and that model was created for a good reason. The hon. Member made good points about the statistics on that earlier. Returning to the case I was talking about, a clinician at the trust who did raise concerns formally in 2015 was simultaneously subjected to disciplinary proceedings and told by the trust that they did not want to hear any more complaints. I wish I could say that I had not heard similar stories from NHS staff several times in a little under two years as an MP. Just because there are some flaws in those independent systems for the NHS, it is not a reason to remove the independence. That would represent a return to conditions that so many of the inquiries warned us about, and I think that patients would rightly question whether lessons have really been learned. As the Bill proceeds to Committee stage, I urge the Government to ask a simple question about each body that it proposes to absorb or scrap: not just whether the function will still be performed somewhere but whether it will be performed with genuine independence from the organisations that it scrutinises. That independence has been hard-won, and I hope that Ministers will reflect on that carefully before legislating to remove it.