John Milne MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 5 Jun 2025 · Battery Energy Storage Sites: Safety Regulations · Hansard source

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  The issue of site choice is closely associated with grid capacity, so that is a factor. That is why some of these sites are ending up in otherwise somewhat improbable and very un-industrial settings. Rules around the pollution of watercourses are one of the most important measures to be brought in, and a wider discussion of land use is going on that could help with that. There was another accident in February this year. Essex firefighters dealt with a fire at a BESS project that was still under construction and therefore not even operating at full power. The most serious incident internationally, which caused serious injury, was in McMicken, Arizona in 2019. As a result, America, along with Germany, has some of the most effective BESS protocols in the world, which I think could be copied. Overall, BESS fires are high risk in their impact but low in incidence. The Faraday Institution estimates that only one in 40 million battery cells will experience failure resulting in fire. That is an exceptionally high standard of safety, but there are millions of batteries, so there will be accidents—and, of course, in a BESS scenario one battery can trigger another. Grenfell was one fire in one building, yet the ramifications continue today. It has left us with the huge cost of retrofitting large numbers of high-rise buildings across the UK built with similar cladding methods. Even a single failure can therefore undermine an entire industry if it turns out to be the result of a systemic mistake in design. The UK’s regulatory approach to BESS safety relies on performance-based regulations such as the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 and the Building Regulations 2010. They place the responsibility on the responsible person—the site owner—to ensure that adequate safety measures are in place, but they lack specific provisions tailored to BESSs. Too much reliance is being placed on individual owners to mark their own homework. The National Fire Chiefs Council provides guidance for the fire and rescue services, but that needs to be more comprehensive and updated constantly in line with changes in technology if it is to serve a proper regulatory purpose. On fire response regulation, recent changes to the International Electrotechnical Commission standards suggest a global shift towards mandatory water-based suppression and proactive risk mitigation, but that has not yet been echoed in UK law. There are also the environmental impacts. The Environmental Protection Act 1990 and the Water Resources Act 1991 provide a general framework for managing environmental impacts but, again, they do not specifically address the challenges posed by BESS fires. Existing regulators do not seem to know whose responsibility this should be. In a recent application for a solar park at Cleve Hill in Kent, which includes battery storage, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero stated that the Health and Safety Commission should be consulted on safety advice, but the HSC itself said that commenting on battery safety management plans was not in its remit. That confusion is not exactly reassuring. It is important to note that if the batteries themselves are not manufactured in the UK, the Government have limited scope to regulate. However, because batteries are produced under controllable factory conditions, their failure rate is low. The focus of UK regulation should instead be on the processes that can happen in this country, especially the design of the battery containers and the overall site. I understand from the Electricity Storage Network, which is the industry group for electricity storage in Great Britain, that it is currently talking to officials at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs about a new permitting system. It is also talking to the British Standards Institution about laying down new standards for design and emergency response. However, the Government have responded to all questions from myself and others saying that they consider the present regulatory regime to be “robust”. I am tempted to say that pride comes before a fall. In the last few weeks, a spokesperson for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has stated: “Battery fires at storage sites are rare in the UK. We already have high safety standards in place that require manufacturers and industry to ensure batteries are safe throughout their lifespan.” That is just too complacent. Fires as a result of cladding were also incredibly rare, but that did not save 72 lives at Grenfell. I and others have been asking for action for some time, but so far without success. It feels like the message still is not getting through. It is very concerning that many questions are passed from Department to Department, with no one seeming to be sure exactly whose responsibility it is. Because of inadequate regulation, some BESS units have already been fitted with inappropriate fire suppression techniques, which might actually make the problem worse, but they were installed in good faith by operators looking to do the right thing. Why are the Government so reluctant to act? I hope that the Minister will explain. Perhaps the Government are worried that regulations would slow down the planning process, but I would argue that clearer rules will actually make life easier for planning officers and councillors. Currently, they have to grapple with a complex technical subject for the first time each time—that is too much to ask of non-experts. I further suggest that it would be easier to win public consent if there were more clarity and consistency. Perhaps the Government fear stifling innovation in a new and rapidly changing industry. I wholly agree that any regulations need to be carefully drafted and have sufficient flexibility. Any guidance needs to cover a number of areas, including the transportation of batteries to the site, design and construction, firefighting, ongoing inspection and decommissioning. In the short term, if the Government are—for any reason—still reluctant to regulate, perhaps they could issue clear national guidelines that are capable of being updated annually. Enforcement might then take place through the insurance industry, which would be likely to insist that any new applications follow such guidelines. As no project can go ahead without insurance, this would be enforcement by the back door. Grenfell was a wholly predictable tragedy. A similar fire at Lakanal House in Camberwell, which killed six people, should have made us understand the risk, but that warning was not heeded and history took its course. We cannot go back in time to stop Grenfell, but we can act now to avoid making the same mistake again with battery energy storage systems.

• 3 Jun 2025 · Locked Child Trust Funds · Hansard source

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  My constituent has been through no fewer than eight Justice Secretaries, looking for a solution to the problem of locked child trust funds; he has had to start over again each time from scratch. Will the Minister give me and Mr Turner a clear understanding of what exactly the legal impediment is to a solution, and of what part of Government the objection is coming from, so that we can make a legal challenge to it, if necessary?

• 3 Jun 2025 · Locked Child Trust Funds · Hansard source

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  4. When the Minister of State for Courts and Legal Services plans to meet the hon. Member for Horsham’s constituent Andrew Turner to discuss locked child trust funds.

• 2 Jun 2025 · Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  For many years, rural bus services have been dying a slow death by a thousand cuts. In my constituency of Horsham, we have lost about a third of our services since 2010, and funding has fallen by as much as 43% in some areas. This is how it works: we cut the timetable, which means fewer people use the service, so we cut the timetable again—rinse and repeat. In many villages, it is simply impossible to live without a car. Even if we did put a bus service back into those villages, no one would use it because the only people who live there are car users. It is no wonder that economic inactivity in rural communities is nearly 2.5% higher than in urban centres. Good jobs and an education are literally out of reach. How can we reverse this downward spiral? It is clear that if local authorities step back and rely on commercial operators to decide routes by themselves, it is not going to work, but that is exactly what we are seeing in West Sussex. Commercial operators have to keep to their timetables or face a fine, but to achieve punctuality on the No. 17 route meant that the village of Partridge Green had to be dropped altogether at certain times of day. Pensioners now have to walk over a mile to the nearest stop or pay for expensive taxis. Residents were not consulted about the cuts, and they found out only a few weeks in advance, with no time to make other arrangements. Half the village turned out to a church meeting to protest, and if only we could have harnessed that enthusiasm in time, we might have saved the service, but of course it was too late. Now the same thing is happening all over again, with cuts to the No. 63 bus through another village, Slinfold, which will make it impossible for local commuters to link to Horsham station. Again the excuse was punctuality, again there was no consultation and again residents had just a few weeks’ notice. This gets to the heart of why our rural bus services have been in terminal decline. County councils, the bodies we would expect to have residents’ interests at heart, can all too easily hide behind a commercial bus operator and say that it is all out of their control. No one wants to admit responsibility. We all keep saying that we want to take traffic off the roads and cut pollution, but in reality, local councils such as West Sussex have been presiding over a policy of managed decline. Will the new Bill do enough to reverse it? The Bill certainly moves in the right direction by empowering local authorities to franchise routes, run their own bus companies and trial demand-responsive transport schemes, which are good building blocks for a more flexible, responsive system. However, when I look at West Sussex, it is clear that these freedoms by themselves will not be enough, even if there was more dynamic leadership in the council. Setting up its own bus service is a high-risk, high-investment strategy for a council. I can see how big urban centres may have the wherewithal to take advantage of these new rights, but more rural authorities such as my own are already on budgetary life support and there is no way they can take on such a gamble. This is going to take something more from the Government, and that something is more funding to kick-start a revolution. So let us fund bus services properly, empower local councils to make the right decisions and ensure that affordable, accessible transport remains a lifeline for all our communities.

• 22 May 2025 · Access to NHS Dentistry · Hansard source

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  Since being elected to represent Horsham, I have been approached by many residents facing impossible prices for urgent dental treatment. Annie is 67 and caring for a husband with terminal bowel cancer. You would think that she has enough things to worry about, but given the state of dental services in the Horsham area, she has been unable to find an NHS dentist within a 20-mile radius. Forced to go private, she paid £80 for an assessment and was then quoted £150 for an extraction. She asks simply: “When will an alternative to private dentistry be available?” I also heard from Sally. Her family were denied NHS root canal treatment, with an £800 private option as the only alternative. She asks: “How can we trust their advice when it feels like it’s all about the money?” Of course, this is a crisis not of dentists, but of dentistry. The NHS contract—based as it is on units of dental activity—is simply no longer fit for purpose, if it ever was. The conflict of interest between public and private is the result of more and more dentists being forced to subsidise their NHS contracts through private work. The Government have committed to providing more support and more urgent appointments, but it is hard to get enough new employees through the front door when so many continue to leave by the back door. In the area covered by my local integrated care board, there are more people leaving than joining across many key dental roles. Over a six-month period to the end of March last year, there were 41 general dentists in and 43 out; one orthodontist in and two out; 48 dental nurses in and 60 out; and 48 receptionists in and 54 out. In fact, five out of nine roles in dentists’ clinics have been losing staff faster than they can get new ones. The result is ever-declining access to NHS dental services, with children losing their teeth before they even reach the age of 10 and the horror stories of do-it-yourself dental treatment. I will leave the House with the words of the West Sussex local dental committee, which contacted me just weeks after my election last year regarding the NHS dental contract. Its warning was simple: “If we don’t act quickly, there may be very little NHS left to adopt a new NHS contract.” I accept that the present Government were not responsible for causing this problem, but they are responsible for fixing it.

• 22 May 2025 · School Teachers’ Review Body: Recommendations · Hansard source

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  Over the last six months, I have visited most of the schools in my constituency, and the message I am getting loud and clear is that they are on the brink, especially over special educational needs and disabilities provision. That threatens to throw into sharp reverse any progress on educational standards. I ask the Government to be honest about the real state of funding, and not to make statements that are not fully funded. That applies to statements on existing services, such as SEND provision, and on the cost of school dinners. I hold the new Government to a higher standard, and I ask the Minister to be completely honest about the real state of affairs.

• 21 May 2025 · Ukraine: Forcibly Deported Children · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. Like others, I congratulate the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Johanna Baxter) on securing the debate. We say that at the start of every debate, but this is different—it really matters. She has done a fantastic job since our visit to Ukraine, on which I joined her, not just by bringing the issue to national attention—we now see it in the national news—but by ensuring that it gains international traction. Until my visit, I knew nothing about this issue, and of all the things I saw this was the most shocking. I learned many things on the trip. The first thing, of course, was the hospitality. Wherever we went, there were fantastic people and such warmth—it was unforgettable. I learned also that life goes on; it is incredible how people can continue. There have now been three years of war, with drones dropping from the sky. We all downloaded an app that warned us about drone attacks and, believe me, it was going off all the time. Yet people went about their everyday lives: they went to work or to restaurants as if it was not happening. It was incredible. I was impressed by the ingenuity of the Ukrainian people, particularly at a secret drone factory that we visited. Ukraine has become the world leader in drone design and manufacture. It is the future of warfare, so we have a lot to learn from them, and we should be grateful to them for their work. We would not necessarily have expected that level of entrepreneurship in an ex-Soviet bloc state, which shows me that Ukraine belongs in the west and in Europe. I was struck by the commitment to cause. President Putin and others put about unpleasant stories that this was Zelensky’s war, that the people of Ukraine were not behind him and that he was forcing them into war. That is untrue. In every single community there are flags, memorial centres and graves. It is not hidden. It is in full and present view everywhere, and it is all the more impactful because, in the habit of the Orthodox church, they show pictures of the fallen. We also visited two hospitals where we saw young men in rehabilitation with very difficult injuries. I also took from the visit something more practical, which relates to international security. We have talked about the need for a European army, because of the pressure we are under, but that is our army: it is larger than all the western European armies put together already. Given the time it will take us to get an army together, we need to support Ukraine’s army, because that is our defence. There were lighter moments on the trip. I will never forget a night we had in Kyiv. We were in a lovely hotel, but unfortunately we spent half the night in a bomb shelter because of warnings. One of the MPs managed to get his laptop out, and we watched “Darkest Hour”. The parallels between 1940 and where we were in Ukraine were very striking. At the start of the war, I did not believe that it could get like this. Putin was putting out the story that Ukrainians and Russians were brothers—that they were the same people. I never imagined that things could get as violent, destructive and vicious as they have, but they did straightaway, as we discovered. The Bucha massacre, near Kyiv, was in the first days of the war. It is not as if it grew to that moment; it began with that moment. The worst crime of all, as we have heard today, is the systematic theft and abduction of all these children, clearly with the knowledge and instruction of President Putin. He brings shame on Russia, which is a great nation. I cannot imagine what it is like to know that your child is alive but with another family. I will say one last thing: besides all the other requests that have been made today, it has to be a precondition that there is no peace without the return of these children.

• 19 May 2025 · UK-EU Defence and Security Agreement · Hansard source

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  2. If he will make it his policy to negotiate a defence and security agreement with the EU.

• 19 May 2025 · UK-EU Defence and Security Agreement · Hansard source

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  The ill-advised decision to leave the EU in 2016 saw us leave the European Defence Agency at the same time. With defence expenditure rising at record rates across Europe in response to the invasion of Ukraine, the EDA has a vital role to play in our national security. What plans do the Government have to secure a more effective working relationship with Europe’s defence procurement strategy and to form stronger links with the EDA?

• 15 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Airports across the country are participating in the airspace modernisation review. However, there is a clear conflict of interest between environmental imperatives and profit motives. Will the Secretary of State undertake to introduce an independent member on each airspace review panel?

• 13 May 2025 · Local Housing Need Assessment Reform · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered reform of the standard method for assessing local housing need. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse. Everyone agrees that across much of the country, homes have become far too expensive either to rent or to buy. There is less consensus on the best way to get things back under control. I will argue that throughout the history of the standard method for assessing local housing need, that method has been part of the problem, not the solution. For a long time, the free market ideology we followed was to build houses randomly until the price came down. Ever since the days of Margaret Thatcher, who single-handedly killed off the public sector contribution, we have never got anywhere near to keeping up with demand. In recent years, the strategy has been to set stiff compulsory building targets and, to that end, the Government introduced the standard method. We were told that the method would produce clear, objectively determined house building targets for every local authority. We were assured that they would be equally and fairly distributed in line with genuine local need. We can now confidently say that that failed. Many authorities got nowhere near their number. Sometimes that was through dragging their heels, but often it was because their individual targets were outright bizarre and unachievable. Meanwhile, the system has kicked up terrific public anger and opposition, which in itself gets in the way of success. At times, the Government have resorted to wielding a bigger stick or they have backed off in the face of Back-Bench pressure. Under the present Government, we are heading back towards the big-stick approach. There is almost no attempt to win consent. I will argue not only that the standard method failed to do what it says on the tin, but that the failure was inherent from the first. It never stood a chance. Far from solving the affordability crisis, the method has significantly contributed to making that crisis worse, and it will continue to do so even under the remodelled version announced before Christmas, because it is based on a false premise. To be absolutely clear, this is not about national targets. Whether we aim nationally for 200,000, 300,000 or 400,000 homes a year is a separate debate, and I hope we will not get sidetracked by that today. It is easy to tweak the standard method to meet whatever national target we want it to meet, but in practice, national targets have been not much better than slogans, such as Boris Johnson’s 40 new hospitals, which never existed in reality. Instead, it is the local target as applied to individual planning authorities that matters. Broadly speaking, the standard method compares local house prices to local wages to estimate an affordability ratio, and it adjusts targets upwards if that shows prices to be unaffordable. The sums have been fiddled with many times since the method was introduced, and I do not doubt that such a process will continue. That is where the first big failure comes in: the standard method is supposed to provide an objective assessment of local housing need but, if we were honest, we would acknowledge that it is actually designed to reflect national need. For example, in my constituency, the growth target based on existing households should now be 527 a year, but our poor affordability ratio takes us all the way up to 1,329 a year, and that is before we add on more for our neighbours. That is a whopping uplift by any stretch of the imagination. The face of Horsham district is changing at breakneck pace. Villages such as Billingshurst and Southwater are on the way to doubling in size in less than a decade. That is not because Horsham is experiencing some kind of spectacularly large birth rate; it is just an arbitrary calculation. Once again, to be clear, I wholly accept that this is a national problem and that we need national solutions. Every area, including Horsham, has its role to play, but it is insulting people’s intelligence to describe that as a local need, when we plainly have nowhere near enough locals to go around, and they mostly cannot afford the new homes anyway. If we keep telling obvious lies to people, how will we ever win public consent? This brings me to the next big failure of the standard method, which is that there is no meaningful public scrutiny. Most local councillors do not understand how it works, sadly, let alone the general public. The standard method is never an election issue, yet it has a massive impact on our communities. In this case, ignorance is not bliss. It is a big reason why Conservative councillors have, election after election, proclaimed their commitment to allocating brownfield sites over greenfield yet somehow ended up doing the exact opposite. They cannot do anything to stop the logic of their own inflexible system. The standard method is a kind of mathematical bulldozer, sweeping aside our open spaces. The single worst failing of the standard method is that it fails in the very purpose that it was supposed to be designed for. In Horsham, as in many areas, the average price of a new house is higher than that of our existing stock. Ironically, the more houses we build, the worse our affordability ratio gets, and the higher our target will be next time around. The standard method does the exact opposite of what it is supposed to do. The more housing that is built, the more the method asks to be built, with no obvious mathematical limit. I stress again that I completely agree that building many more houses than we have over the last 40 years is an essential step on the path to affordability. However an obsession with one arbitrary number, without thinking what goes into it, does not work. It is actually getting in the way of success. We have to focus attention on the type of housing we are permitting, not simply the raw total. The standard method is based on a false premise, because many things affect prices besides the house building rate.

• 13 May 2025 · Local Housing Need Assessment Reform · Hansard source

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  For the individuals who benefit, no one can argue with it. It is the same with the sale of a council house—if you are the family that gets it, it has clearly given you a massive uplift. What I am saying is that we have a national societal problem to solve in the housing market in general. We have a certain amount of money to put towards it. That was a subsidy. There are far better things to do with that subsidy that do not inflate prices further, as that simply eats up the subsidy. As I was saying, putting all that together, it is clear that the standard method is getting its social sums wrong. The affordability ratio is actually a lousy proxy for actual housing need. What we need to do is factor a proper analysis of local housing conditions back into the system. That should include an assessment of local homelessness rates, the need for social housing, pensioner poverty and all the other factors that make communities tick. We also need to find a clear role for neighbourhood plans. Neighbourhood plans started as a great way to bring local consent and local knowledge into housing, but from the day the standard method was introduced, they have been effectively overruled. In the latest planning reforms, they were completely marginalised and were not even mentioned. How can we change the standard method to do the job it is supposed to do? I suggest at least two inputs: a local needs calculation, which focuses on helping local people into the homes they need, and a national needs top-up. Having a separate national needs figure will help us to focus on the delivery of new towns. When our housing needs are as great as they are, new towns are essential. In contrast, the standard method spreads targets indiscriminately across every area. It leads to endless incremental add-ons to existing settlements until they begin to lose their identity altogether. In rural areas such as mine, the standard method has an inherent tendency to create low-density suburbs. Not only do they tend to be more expensive houses, but they use two or three times as much land as they strictly need to.

• 13 May 2025 · Local Housing Need Assessment Reform · Hansard source

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  Yes, it makes strategic planning very difficult. Provision of infrastructure, particularly in rural areas, is a major problem and not sufficiently built into the planning system to compensate for it. It is easier in urban centres where the infrastructure is already in place. This is the reason we have contrived to have perhaps as many as 1.5 million unbuilt permissions nationally, at the same time as a national housing shortage. That is because too many of them are permissions for unaffordable and, therefore, unbuildable homes. There is a degree of land banking but, for the most part, developers build as fast as they can sell. If they are serving only the top end of the market, that will be slowly. As Oliver Letwin described in his excellent 2018 report, sadly unacted on by the Government of the day, we need far greater variety in housing type. As much as 80% of housebuilding is aimed at the top 20% of the market. The fastest way to fix that is to build a guaranteed quota of social housing. My party is asking for 150,000 a year. I guarantee they would be snapped up like hot cakes, as fast as they could be built. There is a fundamental difference between permissions and actual, physical houses. If all we ever think about is permissions and alleged impediments to permissions, we will never get to grips with the problem. Wrong permissions do not increase supply, they suppress it. Wrong permissions bake high land prices into the system. Handing out more permissions like confetti simply chokes the system with unbuildable sites that will hang over the market for a generation. There are lots of ways the standard method could be reinvented, but any future form must empower local authorities to deliver social housing in significant numbers from day one. How we do that is up for grabs, but somehow it must be done.

• 13 May 2025 · Local Housing Need Assessment Reform · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for his reply and all Members for their very interesting contributions. One thing that is really striking is that we see the same problem up and down the land. It may manifest itself locally, but it is a national problem. Like many Members of this Parliament, I come from a local council background—I was the cabinet member for planning in Horsham district council—so I have personal experience of trying to get what we needed for the community out of the plan and developers. It was a battle. My reaction to the changes made to the standard method and to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which is currently in Committee, is to say, “Would that have given me the tools I needed to do the job? Would it have improved my chances?” I feel that the answer is, “Not really, no.” That is the standard by which I judge it. Changes to the standard method could really enhance—make or break, actually—what the Government are doing in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. It is not just a technicality on the side, but a crucial interface. I realise that the Minister will be a bit distracted, given that the Bill is going through Parliament right now, but I hope that in the fulness of time he will take a closer look at the measure, because it can be revised at any point and does not require legislation. I again thank everybody for a very good-natured debate. Question put and agreed to . Resolved , That this House has considered reform of the standard method for assessing local housing need.

• 13 May 2025 · Local Housing Need Assessment Reform · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend, who makes a very good point. The system is working almost to the reverse of what was intended. In my constituency of Horsham many people either work for London businesses or perhaps have traded down from a more expensive London property. From their point of view, Horsham represents excellent value. The official affordability ratio does not reflect real working conditions in Horsham for locals, and therefore overstates local targets. Local councillors all strive to get the best for their communities, but the way we receive targets under the standard method destroys our negotiating position with developers. Developers are not stupid. They can work out as well as anyone else how many sites are needed to meet our targets. They have no need to concede on civil amenities or on affordable housing because they know that, at the end of the day, they have got the council over a barrel. I have no issue with a private developer seeking to make a profit—what else do we expect them to do?—but do not rely on them to do social planning. In areas like Horsham, years of free market ideology have turned councils into mere editors of private developer proposals. We build on greenfield sites because they are the only ones that get presented. There is literally nothing else to choose from in Horsham. The free market approach to affordability does not work for the housing market. Competition has driven prices up, not down. In Horsham we would arguably be better off if we granted a monopoly to one single developer and let them push down local land prices. To add insult to injury, we also have the standard method’s bullying friend, the housing delivery test. I am not sure whether there ever was a carrot in this process, but the HDT is definitely the stick. Failure to meet targets can ultimately result in losing local control over planning altogether. It is a Catch-22 situation: the developer controls the rate of delivery, but the council pays the price if targets slip. Heads they win, tails we lose. In fact, the single biggest factor that influences prices has nothing to do with house building. It is availability of credit. If interest rates were to double tomorrow, the price of a mortgage would soar and we would see a house price crash, yet all that would happen without a single new home being built. A succession of policies under the Conservatives only served to make the problem worse, not better. Subsidies such as Help to Buy or stamp duty holidays simply inflated prices further, like a giant Ponzi scheme. The market adjusts, and the subsidy ends up in the pockets of developers until the next upward turn in the spiral. Therefore, any analysis of UK house building must take into account the key role of finance. Since Thatcher, houses have come to be seen not simply as homes but as investments. In line with that, the explosion of the buy-to-let market in the 1990s correlates suspiciously closely with overall house price inflation. Older generations benefited from decades of property asset inflation, but today it is getting harder and harder to board that train. Putting all that together, it is clear that the standard method is getting its social sums all wrong.

• 13 May 2025 · Ukraine: Diplomacy · Hansard source

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  7. What diplomatic steps his Department is taking to support Ukraine.

• 13 May 2025 · Ukraine: Diplomacy · Hansard source

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  Last weekend the Prime Minister said that the UK would do all that it could to support Ukraine. If that is the case, why do the Government continue to prevaricate over seizing billions of pounds in frozen assets held in UK banks, which could be used to build Ukraine defences? The longer we delay, the more likely it is that those funds will become wrapped up in other negotiations and we will lose the chance altogether.

• 12 May 2025 · Personal Independence Payment: Eligibility Criteria · Hansard source

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  The Government say that their PIP reforms will help people into employment, but the Multiple Sclerosis Society says that 60% of sufferers believe those reforms will make it harder for them to find work, not easier. An estimate must have been made of what percentage of claimants will feasibly enter employment as a result of these reforms. Will the Minister share those figures?

• 12 May 2025 · Personal Independence Payment: Eligibility Criteria · Hansard source

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  10. What estimate her Department has made of the potential impact of changes to the eligibility criteria for personal independence payment on the number of people receiving that payment who will move into employment.

• 6 May 2025 · Parking Regulation · Hansard source

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  In Horsham town, in my constituency, we have a central car park outside a Sainsbury’s, which is operated by a third-party contractor. The number of disputed tickets is out of control. Does my hon. Friend agree that the voluntary code of practice, which was introduced last year, seems to have made absolutely no difference? I can detect no reduction in the difficulties being created.

• 6 May 2025 · Dedicated Schools Grant · Hansard source

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  In West Sussex, the deficit on our DSG grant is £130 million, and that will potentially double by next year. Despite that, SEND provision, which is the main driver of that deficit, is deficient across the district. So many schools approach me on this subject. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to not only find a way to wipe out the deficit but remove the fundamental cause, which is the ballooning cost of SEND provision?

• 29 Apr 2025 · Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill · Hansard source

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  When it comes to public money, everyone accepts the importance of preventing fraud; there is no dispute about that. The mere thought that our benefit system could be exploited loosens the cement holding our welfare system together. However, if we look back in history, there has been a track record of fraud recovery measures not delivering what was hoped. This measure will also probably never save the £1.5 billion that is expected of it, so I ask: will the alleged rewards of this legislation ever match the scale of the imposition on our civil liberties, and are we really going after the right targets? We all want to catch deliberate and professional fraudsters, but they are precisely the people who are astute enough to change tactics, set up separate bank accounts, and avoid suspicion. Instead, it will be the innocent and the accidental claimants who fall into the trap. The implicit assumption is that we should trust in the DWP as a completely error-free organisation across the entirety of its massive operation. But the DWP does make mistakes. It makes mistakes all the time. And even when it knows that it has made a mistake, and it has been told so, it is very capable of making the same mistake all over again. In my constituency of Horsham, Anthony and his husband were accused of providing misinformation to the DWP and were overpaid £10,000 as a result. Anthony protested without success. After a long fight the case went to appeal. The tribunal wasted no time deciding in his favour—it was an open and shut case. But then, earlier this year, Anthony and his husband were migrated over to universal credit. After confirming all details were correct, the DWP overpaid them again, and then sought to claw the money back over the following months. The DWP’s mistake, but Anthony pays the penalty. The DWP has its rules, but real life does not run in straight lines. Real life is messy. How can we possibly rely on the DWP to mark its own homework when we know that there are just four fraud advisers per regional office to handle cases flagged by frontline staff? Yes, there are some checks and balances within this legislation, but what is really needed is a profound cultural change within the DWP, and that is much harder to achieve. The common experience of people who have to deal with the DWP on a daily basis is that they feel that it is always looking to catch them out. Years and years of inflammatory rhetoric under a succession of Conservative Governments have convinced people to regard the DWP as their enemy, not their friend. If anything, the Bill digs that hole a little deeper. What concerns me most about the Bill is its extreme overconfidence. It assumes that Government agencies always get things right and that individual citizens are to be automatically treated as objects of suspicion. In Committee, the Government were resistant to any amendments except their own, so I very much hope that they will reconsider today and accept the Liberal Democrat amendments.

• 28 Apr 2025 · Scientific and Regulatory Procedures: Use of Dogs · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Ms Jardine. I am grateful to speak in this very important debate. Every year, thousands of dogs are subjected to scientific experiments in the UK, often in the name of drug development. For many this raises serious ethical questions about the use of animals for human gain. Is an animal’s suffering worth the benefits to scientific discovery? For others, science and not the animals are paramount; the end justifies the means, as it were. However, animal testing does not deliver robust and useful scientific data. In fact, drug research on dogs tells us very little about whether a drug will work for humans, so campaigners argue that it is time to end animal research. Dr Jarrod Bailey, a geneticist, put it plainly: different species react differently to diseases and treatments. In other words, what works in dogs might not work in humans. In fact, drugs that pass animal tests fail in human trials 92% of the time—a staggering and costly statistic. In toxicity testing, even when dogs show no toxic response it barely improves our confidence that the drug will be safe in humans. It improves it from 70% to just 72%, which is barely noticeable. Is that really a sound basis for human medicine? Fortunately, science offers us a better path forward. Human-specific technologies such as organ chips are revolutionising drug development. Those miniaturised organs mimic how real human organs react to treatments and can be patient-specific. They have shown 87% accuracy in detecting drug-induced liver toxicity, which is a dramatic improvement over animal models. If adopted widely, these tools could create over $24 billion through research and development in the US. The US Food and Drug Administration has recognised that. Through the FDA Modernisation Act 2.0, the agency has removed the legal requirement for animal testing in drug trials. A third Act is already in the works to accelerate the validation and adoption of human-specific methods such as organ chips. In the UK we are lagging behind, not because of legal barriers, but perhaps because of entrenched industry habits, financial interests or even cultural resistance in the research community. We can change that—gradually, responsibly and strategically. I am calling for a phased approach to end the use of dogs in UK research. That means increased investment in modern human-relevant alternatives and a national commitment to shifting away from outdated animal models. When the practice of animal testing is scientifically flawed, it is also undeniably ethically indefensible. Animal suffering for unreliable and inapplicable data cannot be justified when we have the tools and knowledge to do better. Let the UK be a leader, not a follower, in creating a more humane and effective future for our scientific research.

• 23 Apr 2025 · Hospitals · Hansard source

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  In my constituency, there has been a popular campaign for a general hospital for many decades without success. Given that we did not even make it on to Boris’s fantasy list of 40 hospitals, we are certainly not going to succeed now. In the absence of that hospital, what we need is a strategy to move more of the treatments for which distance really matters into smaller local clinics. In Horsham, that might include wound dressing and sexual health services. Does the hon. Member agree that if we are going to continue to be denied the hospital we deserve, the kind of localised treatment strategy he is suggesting could be implemented at very low cost?

• 22 Apr 2025 · Residential Estate Management Companies · Hansard source

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  In my constituency of Horsham, we have many similar examples. Would my hon. Friend agree that although we certainly need legislation, the industry could act right now by introducing a voluntary code of practice? The industry does not have to wait for legislation; it should hear the call from across this Chamber.