Julia Lopez MP: speeches

Speeches

• 4 Feb 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Amid the utter muck-storm of this week, it is World Cancer Day, when we should be thanking our incredible scientists whose breakthroughs give hope to patients at their lowest ebb. Does the Secretary of State think that her Government should charge VAT on medicines being supplied to those patients for free?

• 4 Feb 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I did not uncover any answer there. Charities and life sciences firms are telling me that this Government have begun to issue tax bills on free drugs, such that one company is stopping a compassionate access scheme and withdrawing two critical cancer drugs, and more could follow suit. This is a disaster for patients, a disaster for securing clinical trials, and a disaster for this Government’s cancer strategy. Will the Secretary of State and the Chancellor commit to stopping those bills as a matter of urgency, for the sake of patients and of our vital life sciences industry?

• 20 Jan 2026 · Mobile Phones and Social Media: Use by Children · Hansard source

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  I thank the Secretary of State for advance notice of her statement. What does an ailing Prime Minister do to demonstrate firm and decisive leadership? He launches a consultation, with a variety of options. What does he do when the Conservative party, the House of Lords, trade unions and more than 60 of his own Labour MPs line up against him on a tricky issue? Rather than take a clear position on a social media ban for children and getting phones out of schools, as the Conservative leader has done, this Prime Minister finds an unkempt meadow with some lengthy grass in it, and he boots the tricky issue right in. The House does not just need to take my word for it. One senior Labour MP has said that this consultation will “take too long”. Another said, referring to a social media ban, “The immediate reaction is that this is just a way of kicking it into the long grass.” There is a straightforward question that Ministers must answer today: is the Government’s apparent change of heart on a social media ban for real? Is this consultation a way of elegantly managing yet another U-turn, or is it simply a device to get the Prime Minister through the parliamentary week, while the position remains unchanged? If it is progress, it can be celebrated, but let us not forget that until very recently, the Prime Minister said that he was personally opposed to a social media ban for children. In December, the Culture Secretary confirmed that she is against one. The Business Secretary is opposed. The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister said on the media this very morning that the Government do not take a view. In fact, the only senior Labour figure we know who is clearly in favour of a ban is Andy Burnham. That is some leadership. What is the Secretary of State’s personal view, and what is her message to Labour MPs who would like to vote for a ban this week? Each of those rebel MPs will be asking themselves, “After the Prime Minister has Grand Old Duke of York-ed me up and down so many hills, can I really trust him to see this through?” That is especially so given that this same proposal was tabled previously, and Labour voted it down, just as it voted down our amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill on a phone ban in schools. It is just like when they were told not to support their own colleague, the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), when he had a private Member’s Bill on this issue. Knowing where the Secretary of State personally stands on a ban—not where she stands on a consultation and not what she thinks about having a variety of options—may help ease the minds of Labour MPs. What of the timeline? Does a three-month consultation mean that legislation to introduce a social media ban will be ready in time for the King’s Speech? If not, and if MPs do not vote for a ban this week, they will not have another chance to do so for 18 months. The opportunity to change things is now. How many on the Government Benches will take that chance? The Government must have a great deal of the evidence that they need. The Secretary of State’s predecessor commissioned a University of Cambridge review of children’s wellbeing in relation to smartphone use, messaging and social media, which was due to report in December. Can the Secretary of State tell us what the report said? The urgency is obvious. Everyone, especially parents, can see what social media is doing to children. It is not just exposure to extreme or explicit content, although of course that matters. The Online Safety Act 2023, which we introduced, is already addressing illegal material and age-gating, and that work is ongoing. However, the harm goes wider. Social media has created an anxious generation hooked by products designed to be addictive, displacing real-world activity and undermining attention, emotional regulation and mental health. Schools and families deal daily with the consequences: cyber-bullying, social anxiety and fractured concentration. China’s version of TikTok, Douyin, limits children to an hour a day and promotes educational content, but western platforms do the opposite: engagement loops are optimised for emotional arousal. We welcome scrutiny of those algorithms and steps to stop children’s data being exploited, but there is a simpler option, which is to keep children off these platforms altogether while allowing adults the freedom that follows. Conservatives believe in parental responsibility: we believe in freedom for adults, but we also believe in protecting children. We believe in policing age, not policing speech. It is not to strip parents of their roles and responsibilities to recognise that the online world can be a discombobulating nightmare to supervise. It is not to be a modern-day Mary Whitehouse to worry deeply about children being exposed to images and topics that they are simply not equipped to deal with. This consultation also includes a rethink on phones in schools. I see that the Education Secretary is present; for months she told us that it was a gimmick and unnecessary, although most secondary school pupils say that phones are still used extensively. By when will phones be banned in schools, and how quickly will Ofsted enforce that? Will it be enforcing against guidance or against the law, because guidance is simply not enough? We must be up front in saying that the challenges of implementing any social media ban are real. We support the Government as they navigate those challenges because we want this to work, but can the Secretary of State make it clear that digital ID will not be a requirement to pass age verification on social media sites? The truth is that the internet grew as a pioneer society, with consequences that we are all reckoning with. It now needs to be retrofitted with very clear rules for children. They need to be protected. Other countries are taking the approach of a social media ban; will this Government in the UK do the same?

• 14 Jan 2026 · Science and Discovery Centres · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris. I congratulate the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr (Steve Witherden) on securing this debate and bringing parliamentary attention back to a subject that has not been properly considered for some years: the role of science and discovery centres within our tech and science ecosystem, the pressures they face, and the contribution they continue to make. I enjoyed hearing about the hon. Member’s connection to the Centre for Alternative Technology, which clearly has such personal resonance given his father’s link, as a founding member in the 1970s. I knew the hon. Member was a teacher, but I did not realise he was a drama teacher, which perhaps explains why he is so fantastic at carrying his voice in this Chamber and speaking with such incredible passion. I confess that I had not appreciated how extensive the network of SDCs is. The Eden Project, which I visited again last year, is just one of the 28 science and discovery centres spread across every part of the UK, and it is a perfect example of what these institutions do so well. It is a major visitor attraction, it is deeply rooted in its local economy, and it has scientific discovery and public engagement at the heart of its mission. These centres are not arms of the state; they are independent, agile and largely self-sustaining organisations, generating income through admissions, partnerships and commercial activity. Many SDCs were established around the turn of the millennium. Indeed, my first visit to the Eden Project was back in 2000, on my very first girls’ holiday. We did not, as Essex girls, choose Marbella; we chose Cornwall and Devon—very rock and roll. But the Eden Project really embodies the optimism of that moment. It is an old claypit, turned into a very future-focused and futuristic-looking plant wonderland with a scientific mission at its core. While there were early Millennium Commission grants and support, that funding rightly came to an end, and these centres have now operated for many years without routine public subsidy. That independence has been a strength, allowing them to innovate and respond quickly to new scientific developments and to retain the trust of the communities they serve. But there was always an understanding that the materials in the buildings designed for the SDCs would require renewal after around 25 years, which is now. Many centres have now reached that point and face major capital projects at exactly the same time in a far more difficult operating environment. SDCs are a distinctive part of our national infrastructure. They are the only places where cutting-edge science, public engagement and development of essential STEM skills come together under a single roof. Collectively, they reach more than 5 million people every year, and they have engaged with over a third of UK schools in the past two years alone. The hon. Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers) talked with beautiful passion about the role of science in his own life, having been fired up by an early visit to a planetarium. It was the same for the hon. Member for Gravesham (Dr Sullivan). We also heard from the hon. Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) about his connection to the Look Out; as he was speaking, I thought back to the time I was hit by a Segway in Bracknell forest, and I started to get PTSD. As SDCs rely on their own income rather than public subsidy, they have been particularly exposed to recent shocks, such as the pandemic and the energy price surge after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Although Government support schemes helped many organisations through that period, SDCs fell between several stools. They were not eligible for cultural recovery funding, and they did not have national lottery support either. They survived those challenges, but they did not anticipate facing simultaneous capital renewal pressures alongside the impact of the 2024 Budget. We have all spoken to hospitality businesses in our constituencies about the sharply rising costs, particularly when it comes to employing people, given the national insurance and business rates issues coming through. Those pressures are now pushing some of these science and discovery centres towards a tipping point. Two of the largest in the UK have announced significant redundancies. One set of accounts explicitly cites the inflationary impact of the Budget and increased national insurance costs, and 75 jobs have already gone at one centre. Some centres have warned that, without intervention, closures within the next 12 to 18 months are a real possibility. All of this matters because the mission of science and discovery centres is to make science, technology, engineering and maths more accessible, engaging and relevant to people from all backgrounds. They provide trusted spaces where the public can explore new technologies to understand their applications and build confidence in engaging with them—a recent example is a project to demystify AI. The hon. Members for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) and for Widnes and Halewood (Derek Twigg) mentioned how these centres play a critical role in the skills pipeline. Glasgow Science Centre’s learning labs programme has worked with thousands of teachers and reached over 100,000 pupils. That shows how these centres complement formal education and help young people to see themselves as future scientists, engineers and innovators. The hon. Member for Hexham (Joe Morris) talked about the importance of SDCs in challenging anti-science narratives. I congratulate him on his recent nuptials—I am sure Le Petit Château had a very lively night over the new year. Ministers have recognised all these strengths. The Secretary of State herself has spoken in this Chamber about the National Space Centre, which is in her own city of Leicester, and the role it plays in future jobs and prosperity. The constituency of the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray), who is one of her Ministers, neighbours the amazing Dynamic Earth SDC. I know his constituency is not close to Montgomeryshire, but I am sure he does not want to take on and disappoint the Welsh mafia, if I may say that, in this Chamber by not backing SDCs very fully. That touches the heart of the problem. These centres need a Department to recognise them, engage with them and champion them, and DSIT is their obvious home. These centres were born of a Government-led vision to create trusted environments for public engagement with science and tech, and they have built strong partnerships with universities, industry and local communities. They are ready to support national missions, but they need the Government to show them that ownership. I have a number of fairly straightforward questions for the Minister, which are reflective of the very disciplined briefing behind the scenes by the Association for Science and Discovery Centres. I would be grateful if he could let us know whether DSIT will formally accept responsibility for the sector and act as its champion across Government. Will Ministers meet SDC representatives as a matter of urgency? Will the Department consider whether underspends can be directed towards the £20 million that the SDCs believe is essential for capital upgrades, which they are confident they can match-fund through partnerships? Will Ministers engage directly with DCMS colleagues on opening up access to national lottery funding for science and discovery centres? Finally, will the Minister make representations to the Treasury about the wider impact of current tax and business rates policy on SDCs, which runs directly counter to what the Government say they wish to promote when it comes to science and technology? SDCs are a quiet success story. They are independent, entrepreneurial and deeply embedded in communities. They support public understanding of science, they develop future skills and they are inspirational to future generations. They are not asking to be taken over or paid for, and they know what to do when it comes to continuing their great work long into the future, but they need help with short-term challenges that are not of their own making. They are asking to be recognised, engaged with and enabled to continue doing what they already do well for the benefit of science, society and the economy.

• 12 Jan 2026 · Social Media: Non-consensual Sexual Deepfakes · Hansard source

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  I thank the Secretary of State for advance notice of her statement. Last week, public outrage was rightly expressed about the use of artificial intelligence to undress women and children in photographs by X’s AI assistant Grok. The use of AI in that way without consent is wrong. It is disturbing, and in many cases it is illegal. We support Ofcom in taking enforcement action where an AI tool is used to generate illegal content, especially of children. We support the Government’s stance on nudification tools. X itself has warned of consequences for anyone prompting Grok to make illegal content. The tools in question have been put behind a paywall, for the easy identification via name and bank details of anyone misusing them. Beyond the platform, however, the Internet Watch Foundation has identified cases where perpetrators have used Grok in tandem with other AI tools to generate category A material. As the Chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage), has rightly said, such mainstream AI tools must not become an enabling step in the child abuse production pipeline. Law already exists to deal with much of this, including the Protection of Children Act 1978, the Criminal Justice Act 2003, the Sexual Offences Act 2003, the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025—in which the Government voted against tougher amendments tabled by Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge—and the Online Safety Act 2023. Those laws should be enforced. We await Ofcom, the independent regular, setting out its next steps. Regardless of the law, it is right to expect AI companies to anticipate and prevent misuse of products before their deployment through rigorous red teaming. I accept that for a law to deter, the enforcement threat must be credible, but its use must also be proportionate. Notwithstanding the soft back-pedalling of the Secretary of State today, the Government’s appendage swinging over the weekend was extremely serious. Ministers mooted as an urgent remedy the banning of a site with 21 million monthly users in this country, despite another Minister guffawing that banning X was “conspiracy theory No. 3,627.” Since their invention, the internet and social media have been misused—often criminally—by people traffickers, paedophiles and fraudsters: the gutter dwellers of our society. Nobody is on their side, but Government have never before proposed blocking TikTok, Google or Facebook wholesale for the frequent and often flagrant misuse of their sites. That would be an extraordinarily serious move against a platform that can be used for good—for uncovering scandals, sparking democratic revolution, and allowing the free exchange of ideas, day to day, including those that we do not like. It is that very power for good that makes Iran’s mullahs reach to block the internet in the face of courageous protesters. This episode poses legitimate questions about who holds power in the internet age. Many worry about the accrued influence of big tech titans—me included—but they worry, too, about the power of Government to divert, hide and duck accountability. They worry about this Government. The uncomfortable truth for all of us is that some of this imagery sits in a legal grey area. What Grok has produced at scale in 2026 is a modern-day iteration of an old problem, from crude drawings to photoshop. Grok is not the only tool capable of generating false or offensive imagery, and not all of this content will cross the threshold into illegality. Plenty of it is sick, degrading and morally repugnant but does not cross the criminal threshold. What, then, is the Secretary of State proposing to do about the difficult enforcement choices that a regulator or police force must make? The risk is that, with finite resource, and in a highly politically sensitive environment, regulators could be diverted from pursuing the most abhorrent and dangerous crimes. If we wish to mitigate the risk to children, one simple intervention may help stop them sharing their own image too freely: raising the digital age of consent for social media to 16. The cross-party consensus is growing. The Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, agrees with that idea; does the Secretary of State? She knows that there are geopolitical consequences to her rhetoric. Figures close to President Trump have already threatened sanctions. Has the Secretary of State engaged with the US Government? Has she been advised on the nature of any retaliation, were the UK Government to block X? The US-UK tech deal has already been paused. We need clarity on what else is at stake. To conclude, the Tech Secretary has said: “We are as determined to ensure women and girls are safe online as we are to ensure they are safe in the real world”, so will she ensure that the Government enforce against themselves for their failure to advance the rape gang inquiry, their failure to stop puberty-blocking trials, their failure to implement guidance on single-sex spaces, and their inability to deport illegal migrants who have committed sex offences? This Government rightly worry about the online sphere, and we support them on that, but there is plenty to be getting on with in the real world.

• 6 Jan 2026 · Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill · Hansard source

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  Happy new year, Mr Speaker, and thank you for putting the heating on. I am grateful to the Minister for setting out the Government’s rationale for this legislation in the Secretary of State’s stead. I do not know why the Minister was demoted either, but I want him to know that we appreciate him. The official Opposition recognise the scale of the cyber-security challenge that the country faces. If the pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital technology at a pace we had never before seen, then the advent of artificial intelligence will embed that technology into our economy in wholly new ways that bring not only opportunity but unprecedented risk. AI and automation will not only transform productivity but equip hostile states, criminal gangs and opportunists alike with tools capable of eroding our national defences at speed and at scale. It is right that Parliament legislates to raise the collective security bar. We on the Conservative Benches support that principle. However, legislation of this kind does not come around often. Cyber law takes time to develop, and once the Bill passes, it is unlikely that Parliament will return to this territory for some years. That means that we must ask two simple but very serious questions today: will this law work and is it enough? Before we answer those questions, it is worth reminding ourselves of the real-world consequences of failure. Cyber risk is neither abstract nor theoretical. Last year, the UK experienced what is widely regarded as our most economically damaging cyber-incident to date when Jaguar Land Rover suffered a major attack. That was not a sophisticated act of cyber-warfare against the state—although such acts are happening with increasing regularity—but was carried out by a band of hackers. The consequences were enormous, however. For five weeks, Jaguar Land Rover was unable to operate its automated manufacturing lines, cyber-related costs mounted to nearly £200 million, and national economic output was visibly affected in that month alone. The real damage did not stop at the factory gates: hundreds of small and medium-sized enterprises in the supply chain—many of them operating on thin margins—were pushed to the brink, workers faced uncertainty and contractors had their work paused. Ultimately, the Government had to step in with a £1.5 billion loan guarantee to prevent wider economic fallout. When we consider the Bill, we must ask whether it would do anything to strengthen our collective resilience. That is one of the tests that this legislation ought to meet, and it is not yet clear that it does. Indeed, the attack on JLR would not have been stopped, as the Minister himself has made clear, because it would not have been in scope. The cyber-threat landscape is evolving at an extraordinary pace. New research shows that cyber-attacks now cost our economy nearly £15 billion every year. High-profile breaches of businesses such as Marks and Spencer and the Co-op have demonstrated how quickly consumer confidence, jobs and supply chains can be put at risk. Last year alone, insurers paid out £197 million to help businesses recover from cyber-incidents. In fact, the collective cyber insurance bill of the FTSE 100 is now larger than the defence research and development budget. The Bill seeks to respond to one aspect of that reality by expanding the scope of regulation. Data centres, managed service providers, load controllers and designated critical suppliers will now fall within its ambit. That is a welcome acknowledgment that digitisation has introduced systemic risks that the original NIS regulations of 2018 did not adequately cover. The Bill also strengthens the powers of regulators, introduces cost recovery mechanisms and tightens incident reporting requirements. Those measures are intended to modernise our cyber framework and address clear shortcomings identified in reviews of the NIS regime in 2020 and 2022. On paper, that all sounds sensible, but intent alone is not enough, which brings me back to our central concern: whether this law will work in practice in raising the standard of our collective resilience. The uncomfortable truth is that, in some of the most high-profile cases of cyber-attack, the penetration of systems was carried out by attackers using valid credentials. That means systems behaved normally. The breaches looked like legitimate access until it was too late. Human frailties were exploited: help desks were persuaded to reset passwords, and staff and contractors were impersonated. This Bill would help mainly after an attack—not before—by mandating reporting, improving intelligence sharing and increasing accountability.

• 6 Jan 2026 · Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill · Hansard source

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  Absolutely. The hon. Gentleman is correct: this is fundamentally about culture—that is the point that I am making. We can pass as many regulations as we like, but a lot of the holes in our cyber-security systems come down to human frailties. That means this challenge is not just about new laws but about changing a number of things to make us more resilient. It is right not to dictate technical standards in primary law that will soon be outdated in the fast-moving world of technology, so the question is whether this law has the right mix of carrot and stick to make affected firms act in a way that raises the security bar—there are several areas where we fear it may not. First, there is potentially an enforcement paradox. The Bill expands regulatory powers and increases the scale of potential fines, but the evidence from the existing regime does not suggest definitively that fines and new regulations deliver us greater cyber-resilience. Under the current NIS regulations, enforcement has been slow, inconsistent and often toothless. Very few significant penalties have been issued. Where they have been issued, the delay between incident and sanction has sometimes stretched beyond two years. That delay matters, because it actively undermines deterrence and disconnects accountability from operational reality. Simply widening the scope of regulation without ensuring that regulators are properly resourced, empowered and required to act quickly risks creating obligations that exist on paper but lack any real-world bite. We also have concerns about the Bill’s cost recovery model. Funding regulators through levies on the organisations that they oversee risks unintended consequences in terms of improving our resilience. For large firms, the cost burden may be manageable, but for smaller enterprises it amounts to an additional operational tax that could divert scarce capital away from cyber-defence, staff training and innovation. There is also a structural risk here. Regulators that are reliant on fee income might face incentives to expand scope and complexity unnecessarily, creating bureaucratic drag that crowds out voluntary, market-led initiatives, which often raise standards more effectively than prescriptive regulation. More generally, I worry that this Bill will play into tech monopolies. The companies that thrive in this kind of environment are those with big compliance and legal departments. That concentrates risk and makes our tech economy less diverse, with serious implications that I shall come on to. There may be reporting challenges too. A two-stage reporting process within 24 and 72 hours may be achievable for large, well-resourced organisations with in-house cyber teams, but for smaller operators it risks creating a compliance culture focused on speed, not substance. There is also the danger of duplication. Many organisations already face overlapping reporting obligations under UK GDPR, sectoral rules and existing legislation. Without simplification and proportionality, the administrative load could be significant, once again diverting attention and resource from the very cyber-threat management that the Bill seeks to improve. We need to avoid this legislation becoming a “something must be done” Bill that totally misses the mark. The Bill also fails to grapple properly with the human factor in cyber-security, which has already been talked about by the hon. Member for Harlow (Chris Vince). Technology alone does not keep organisations safe; governance matters. Yet board-level ownership of cyber-risk is moving in the wrong direction. Only 27% of businesses now have a board member explicitly responsible for cyber-security, down from 38% just three years ago. Without mechanisms to ensure senior accountability, fines risk becoming little more than a cost of doing business. Directors remain insulated while operational teams are left to carry the can. National cyber-resilience depends not just on systems and software, but on leadership, culture and accountability at the very top. For those reasons, ahead of Committee consideration, we on the Opposition Benches are examining how the legislation can be strengthened, while continuing to support its core objectives. In the meantime, regulators must be properly equipped with the right powers, resources and clarity from Parliament on the intent of the law. Sanctions must be applied swiftly and consistently, and guidance must be clear, so that enforcement is credible and deterrence is real. The Government should also look at how reporting obligations are calibrated. A one-size-fits-all approach might place disproportionate burdens on smaller firms, and it might be better to ensure that reporting thresholds reflect the size, complexity and risk profile of an organisation. Equally, the funding of regulators must be transparent and predictable. There have to be safeguards against regulatory expansion for its own sake and firm assurances that funds raised are reinvested directly into improving national cyber-resilience, not absorbed by administrative overheads. While the Bill rightly prioritises critical national infrastructure, it cannot afford to ignore high-risk sectors that sit beyond its immediate scope. There is also a major role for market-based solutions. Cyber insurance, sector-wide intelligence sharing and collaborative resilience initiatives can all complement regulation. These tools can reduce risk and improve preparedness without adding unnecessary legislative complexity. The review cycle set out in the Bill may be too slow for the threat landscape we face and the pace of technological change. Annual or biannual reviews might allow Parliament to scrutinise effectiveness, respond to emerging threats and ensure that the legislation remains fit for purpose. Let me make some more general points about the Government’s approach to cyber-security and resilience, and issues about the risk of dependence and threat from adversaries. I see no evidence from this Government that they are thinking with any clarity about the risks of long-term technological dependency and lock-in—quite the opposite, in fact. Large parts of our economy now depend on secure, high-quality digital infrastructure, and that reliance will only increase as AI advances. Whoever provides that infrastructure will wield huge future leverage. It was that reality that ultimately drove the change of heart over Chinese tech sitting at the core of our 5G telecom networks a few years ago. However, the Government are seemingly betting every chip on US hyper-scalers. They provide our data centres, supply the platforms on which Government Departments are run and, more often than not, are the ones winning all the Government contracts. These investments will provide our companies with things that they need, from compute power to increasingly sophisticated AI platforms, but the UK is doing little simultaneously to mitigate our increased technological dependency. When I say “technological”, we need to understand that technology is what we now run our defence systems, factories, energy networks and communications on. Technology is the plumbing of our nation. During September’s much crowed-about state visit by President Trump, this Government were visibly begging for good economic headlines after the humiliating resignations of the Deputy Prime Minister and the ambassador to the US, not to mention the uncontainable mess of the Chancellor’s first Budget and the threat of her second Budget. The US-UK tech partnership was the result, with a huge amount of smoke and mirrors deployed over what it actually contained. Whatever substance lay within it, we heard just before Christmas that it had been paused, used as leverage by the US while other trade negotiations were under way. I am not criticising the US Administration for skilfully playing their hand in their national interest; I am asking this Government rapidly to wake up to the reality of a new world in which the post-war settlement is coming to an end—one that has been giving clues to its existence for many years, since long before President Trump came into office. The United States remains a vital ally, but in this new era Britain must be very clear-eyed about risk, the reality of hard power and the need to protect our sovereign interests. Cyber-risk requires as much thought about the fundamentals of plumbing as it does about the laws that try to manage how humans use or exploit technology. The UK Government have a vast procurement budget for which our own firms ought to be able to make a successful bid, but UK tech tells me consistently that, for all the talk in the Government’s AI strategy of sovereign tech capability, it has not got a look-in since Labour has been in power. I am concerned that this Bill should not introduce new, burdensome regulation for UK firms in a way that benefits non-UK incumbents with giant compliance teams and legal resources in a way that would exacerbate the risk of vendor lock-in. Let us turn to another risk. The private sector will have noticed that the new obligations in this Bill broadly do not touch the public sector, where cyber-risk remains red-light-flashingly large, notwithstanding the public cyber strategy that was thrown out today in implicit acknowledgment of that gaping hole. Knowing that the public sector holds such enormous cyber-risk, this Labour Government choose not to minimise it, but to create a brand-new one—a hulking great identity system mandated for anyone who wants a job and, we now hear, possibly for new-born babies. It is mandatory identity by stealth, not consent, and with no honesty about it. It is not to be against the ability of people to verify themselves digitally for banking, to access certain online services or to stop fraud to think that Labour’s mandated digital identity plan is a complete rotter. The Association of Digital Verification Professionals called what Labour inherited on digital identity a “world-leading model for data sovereignty that digitised liberty rather than diluted it”. The citizen, not Government, would be in control. This naive Government are crowding out private sector expertise and making everyone have one of these identities by stealth. They have no idea what this system will cost, and they will not be honest about what it will be used for. What of the cyber-security of this system? The system on which this digital identity will be run was breached during red team testing last year. When I asked the Secretary of State if that system has now met the National Cyber Security Centre’s cyber-security standard, no answers came. Whistleblowers have continued to speak out about the vulnerabilities of the system, and there is no sense whatsoever from Government that the dodgy digital identity plan will be paused until such a point when they are confident about cyber-security.

• 6 Jan 2026 · Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill · Hansard source

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  I welcome the strategy, but I have not yet had a chance to have a good look at it, because the Government always seem to publish these sorts of documents right at the last minute. The only way to get any information out of this Government is to apply some pressure in this House, and then, remarkably, things come flying out of the cupboard. I will be very interested to see what the strategy looks like and whether it is up to the challenge we now face. The problems and risks of cyber have increased markedly since we were in Government because of the advent of AI technology—that technology is changing the picture very rapidly, just as the defence picture is changing very rapidly. My concern is that this Government are not taking seriously enough the various defence and security challenges that this House faces; they are prioritising spending on welfare payments, union payments and all manner of other things. It is one thing to get a strategy out of the door; it is another to put in place the measures that will implement that strategy. Basically, all we have seen over the past 18 months is strategy documents, without a great deal of delivery. That is one of the reasons why the Government are so rapidly losing public confidence. In conclusion, we support this cyber Bill in principle—the threat is real and growing, and it demands action. However, it is only a tool, not a cure-all. A Government who are trying to close down gaps in one place while wilfully opening up huge new risks in a different corner are being negligent in their approach. Furthermore, if this legislation is to command confidence, it must be practical, proportionate and genuinely effective. Without meaningful improvements, the Bill risks placing new burdens on business while delivering only marginal gains for our national resilience. Cyber-security is a shared responsibility between Government, regulators, industry and the public, but leadership must come from the top, and that is where this Bill currently falls short. With the private sector taking the lion’s share of the load while gaping holes remain in public sector cyber-defences, the Bill begs obvious questions about the confidence that citizens should have in flagship Government projects such as the Prime Minister’s mandatory digital identity system. As it stands, the Bill would not have prevented high-profile cyber-shutdowns such as Jaguar Land Rover’s, it does little to address the chronic vulnerabilities in the public sector, and it certainly will not make Labour’s dodgy ID database any more secure. That is why, as the Bill progresses through Parliament, we will be pressing this Government to ensure that it delivers genuine security, proper accountability and raised cyber-defences across the board, while taking them to task on major mistakes such as mandatory ID. Cyber-security is no longer a niche compliance exercise; it is about protecting the fundamental economic and defence interests of our nation.

• 6 Jan 2026 · Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is wilfully misinterpreting what I am saying. There is not an issue with having systems tested; there is an issue with the fact that the system test failed. There is no evidence that the Government have therefore acted to deal with those systemic failures.

• 6 Jan 2026 · Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill · Hansard source

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  The whistleblowers continue to raise serious concerns about the structures upon which the Government’s digital identity platform will be built. The hon. Member looks absolutely outraged that I might suggest there are some concerns about the cyber-security risk of a national, mandated digital identity platform. I find it extraordinary that he suggests that I am expressing concerns that a system might be tested. Of course every system must be robustly tested—that is not the point I am trying to make, and the hon. Member is being wilfully ludicrous in suggesting otherwise. This Prime Minister cannot run an economy, keep promises or control his Back Benchers, or his Front Benchers, so how on earth does anybody think he can run a secure digital identity system? At the same time as risking technological lock-in by friendly allies, we are creating new vulnerabilities for adversaries to attack. Just before Christmas, UK intelligence agencies warned about increasing, large-scale cyber-espionage from China, targeting commercial and political information. We discovered from Ministers that the Foreign Office itself was the subject of a major cyber-attack in October, which officials believe was carried out by Chinese hackers, and this came in the midst of a major row between the Government and the Crown Prosecution Service about the prosecution of spies operating here in Parliament. We will be looking closely at this legislation to identify where the Government should be addressing this cyber-reality with much greater force. An approach to cyber-resilience that looks only at introducing new regulations and compliance burdens without thinking through risks such as a mandated identity scheme, dependence on non-sovereign suppliers, the malign intent of other nations, and a failure to build up our own workforce and skills is one that will fail.

• 6 Jan 2026 · Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill · Hansard source

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  As my right hon. Friend is aware, local government is outside of the scope of the Bill, but it is a very juicy target—much of the public sector remains a very juicy target. In acknowledgment of that, the Government whipped out a strategy very quickly this morning that is meant to give us assurances about the public sector’s cyber-resilience. I am not sure that that strategy will provide much reassurance, which is why it is important to understand that this Bill can only be one part of a much wider arsenal to tighten gaps where they exist, in both the private and public sectors.

• 17 Dec 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  If we are making Christmas jokes, I think this deal is all tinsel and no tree. The problem is that Labour trumpets about these deals and is then completely sketchy about what has actually been agreed—just like the US-UK tech deal: we now find out from President Trump that he has put that deal on ice. Can the Secretary of State confirm that, despite all the golden carriage action in September and the Prime Minister honking on about his negotiating skills, the Prime Minister has actually nailed down none of the key details on pharma, no zero-tariff pact on steel and no deal on tech?

• 17 Dec 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Ministers are making very big claims about the pharmaceuticals deal with America, to make up for the billions lost in life sciences investment under Labour. Life sciences firms are telling me that unless the Government reveal what is actually in the deal, those claims are completely hollow. Can the Secretary of State reveal—she could not tell us this two weeks ago—how much the deal is costing the NHS and when she will publish the full legal text, so that we know the details of what the most favoured nation mitigations actually are?

• 15 Dec 2025 · Online Safety Act 2023: Repeal · Hansard source

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  I agree, and I am interested to hear what the Minister has to say about VPNs—whether they should be age-gated, whether we should look at app store controls so that parents have to consent to children downloading VPN apps, or whether there are other, more effective ways of doing that. The sites that we have talked about may be smaller community forums, or they may be volunteer-run, but they are often mid-size tech companies that do not have the resources that the social media giants have to navigate the legal risks and intricacies of the Act without diverting precious capacity that might otherwise be used to innovate and expand their businesses. I have talked to some of those businesses. They may have one person who can do legal compliance; if they are looking at the next stage of the OSA’s implementation, they may be pulled off other work that is helping to grow the economy. We have to take that very seriously and look into it. A lot of those sites are effectively no risk whatever, and the OSA is probably too burdensome for them. We do not want the Act to stifle our vital tech sector. Concerns have been raised about freedom of speech and user privacy. I can understand those concerns in principle; particularly when age verification first came into place over the summer, there were instances where there was a practical impact and posts were restricted. However, it seems that those early examples have been recycled many times to suggest that the Act is having a wholesale dampening effect on what people feel confident saying online, and I am not sure that that is actually the case. Those concerns are often conflated with other issues, such as the policing of tweets, non-crime hate incidents, the application of legislation such as the Public Order Act 2023, and outrageous cases of state overreach, such as that of Graham Linehan. We must also be mindful of those who seek to exaggerate those concerns for the sake of big tech’s commercial interests. I note the comments that the hon. Member for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton (Jim McMahon) made about the power that platforms hold. On the other side of the ledger are worries that it remains relatively straightforward for under-18s to access pornography. There is no foolproof way to age-gate the internet. We have to see the Online Safety Act as a first step in a pushback against the wholly unacceptable situation that we witnessed previously. Of course some children seek out material and will continue to do so with determination, but far too many had previously been stumbling across explicit or illegal material by complete accident. Studies that have already been cited today suggest that 41% of children first encountered porn on X, rather than seeking it out. If the Online Safety Act has a material impact on reducing that risk, it will have served its purpose. The hon. Member for Milton Keyneps Central (Emily Darlington) provided some truly shocking statistics and rightly said that we are putting porn back on the top shelf. As she was saying that, I thought back to the advent of magazines such as Z oo and Nuts when I was a teenager. They were seen as having dreadfully explicit content that was far too readily available, but they seem quite quaint when we think about what children can access now. Pornhub reported a 77% reduction in visitors after implementing age verification measures, but it is important to note that the traffic previously going to such sites has not simply disappeared. A chunk of it has shifted to smaller sites that may be riskier because, in some cases, they think they can financially benefit from not implementing age-gating, which is against the law. Those sites need to know that Ofcom fines are coming. No website should assume that it can sidestep its legal duties. The fines are designed to outweigh any short-term commercial advantage gained by ignoring the law. I do not believe that the best way of dealing with these concerns is to repeal the Online Safety Act, and nobody in the Chamber has advocated for that, but it is for us to review it and to work out how to tighten up child safety while being honest about the aspects of the law that need to change. A very long and winding road led to the previous Conservative Government passing the Act in 2023, but it was one of the first markers on internet regulation to be put down globally that said that the status quo—children having easy access to illegal explicit content—simply could not continue. As the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) suggested, we cannot have untrammelled freedom for adults in this space, because that status quo caused significant harm to children. It is right that we now expect more from social media platforms, which were given an opportunity to self-regulate and were found wanting. The Act has driven them to make design changes to help parents, children and teenagers, including Meta’s teen accounts and some aspects of Roblox. Without those protections, more children would encounter harmful content, receive unsolicited contact from adults, and access material that encourages self-harm, eating disorders or even suicide. Families would also continue to face barriers when seeking answers from tech companies following tragedies. Pressure on those companies will continue for as long as we see technology’s pernicious effects on our children, including a chatbot’s recent encouragement of a teenager into suicide. Despite the criticisms levelled at this law, it remains popular with parents. Parents must remain sovereign in how children are raised, and they must have the parenting confidence to deny phones and social media to their children, but no matter how involved or savvy parents are, they need help with these challenges—challenges that creep into the heart of people’s homes in a way that we have not seen before, and find their way to children through what other children may be sharing with them. During the years that the Act was being drawn up, we made a lot of changes, including removing the provisions relating to legal but harmful content in 2022. That is good because, as we can see, Ofcom has an enormous job on its hands dealing with some of the biggest online problems, such as age-gating pornography. Had we taken an expansionist approach, we would now be facing far greater problems around free speech, and Ofcom would have an even heavier role—not to mention workload—as arbiter of the public square. Hon. Members need to think about that carefully: the OSA became a Christmas tree on which everybody hung their niche, individual concerns, and it became unimplementable. If the Labour Government wish to go down a more restrictive route in some of these areas, they have to be mindful of that risk. They need something that can actually be implemented in law and they need to resource the regulator to implement it. Long before the Act was brought in, the status quo was also having a negative impact on journalistic content. There is lots of discussion about freedom of speech, but I recall having discussions as a media Minister with traditional news content providers that were extremely frustrated by west coast content moderators arbitrarily taking down their content with no opportunity to appeal. With this legislation, we introduced must-carry provisions that would give proper news content providers a greater chance of their content being visible, which is important for journalistic credibility and to make sure that we have truth in online spaces. As I have said, the Online Safety Act represents the start of a journey as countries grapple to find the right framework through which adults can retain their freedom on the internet while children are treated as children. This debate is particularly timely as a new social media ban was introduced in Australia last week. My party will be watching that closely, but concerns about social media and mobile phones go far beyond the ability to access porn or illegal content. As a party, the Conservatives are concerned about the impact of social media and smartphone use on children’s mental health, education and social development. I suspect that any hon. Member who has recently been to a school in their constituency will have heard about the challenges to the learning environment, the challenges of the social interactions between children, and the challenges that parents are facing at home, which go way beyond the issue of illegal content. We have also heard other concerns. I liked the way the hon. Member for Worcester (Tom Collins) described it as “a veritable chemistry lab of…psychoactive substances”. He also made some interesting observations about safety and how, as a democracy, we must think very carefully about broader harms. The Act will be statutorily reviewed next year. I would welcome the Minister telling us whether the Government are examining the measures that have been discussed today, including whether GDPR protections on the processing of children’s data might be raised from age 13 to 16. Age-gating also needs attention. Reports of VPN use suggest that children have been circumventing protections, and we must consider whether age-gating should be applied more comprehensively, including to VPN use or via app stores or at device level to close those loopholes. Adults also need to be assured of the privacy preserving nature of the age verification tools that they are using. There are concerns about the volume of sensitive data being collected. As I have described, we also need to ensure that low-risk tech firms are not being disproportionately burdened. They did a huge amount of work before the July phase of Ofcom’s introduction of age verification, and they are worried that they will need to make a further step change for regulatory compliance, given the burden that will place on them. Regulation has to remain proportionate, targeting high-risk sites and services without undermining innovation or our competitive position in tech. We also need to examine, as has been discussed many times today, the emerging technologies such as generative AI and chatbots —as was suggested by the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed) and the hon. Member for Worcester. The legal position under the OSA is not yet entirely clear, but children are increasingly exposed to AI-generated content, and we need to know if the Act is flexible enough to deal with innovations of that kind. As hon. Members have described today, the Online Safety Act is a necessary first step, but it is only the beginning of a much longer fight to protect childhood. We have to create the space for childhood and adolescence away from screens, with all the richness and stimulation that the real world can bring. Parents ultimately can never cease their vigilance. The internet cannot be made wholly safe, and we cannot be naive about that. Ultimately, parents have to remain the ultimate backstop to make sure that their children are safe online—but they need help. It is our role as legislators to provide some of those tools and that assistance to help children through their childhoods. I hope that we look back at the time before the Online Safety Act and wonder how we ever allowed children to be exposed to the unbridled internet culture that has hitherto been the norm. To return to the opening remarks of the hon. Member for Sunderland Central, the internet has led to the creation of new bonds and a huge multiplication of opportunity, but simultaneously the opportunity for harm. Sometimes we need to make a choice, and while the Online Safety Act is undoubtedly imperfect, the imperative to protect children will always take precedence. If social media platforms are held to greater account, so be it.

• 15 Dec 2025 · Online Safety Act 2023: Repeal · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John, not least because it means that you cannot speak. I think you would happily take up a good hour of the debate talking about the perils and ills of the internet, and how it needs to be shut down, so that is probably for the best.

• 15 Dec 2025 · Online Safety Act 2023: Repeal · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Lewis Atkinson) on introducing the debate. He made a particularly excellent contribution to last week’s petition debate on mandatory digital identification; although his party’s leadership may not have thanked him, I am sure his constituents did. He is right that the internet allows unprecedented connection, which is for good, but also for ill. Our job is to balance that inherent tension, while recognising that sometimes there is no balance to be found and that we have to make a choice when it comes to children being served a toxic online diet of extreme content. When we were in government, that choice was the Online Safety Act, about which thousands of petitioners have raised concerns, believing that its breadth and scope are having too restrictive an effect. I have some sympathy with those concerns, because the Act is large and very complex; although it is proving effective in protecting children in many ways, the implementation undoubtedly comes with challenges, whether that is VPN usage or the inadvertent capturing of no to low-risk sites in compliance duties.

• 8 Dec 2025 · Digital ID · Hansard source

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  rose—

• 8 Dec 2025 · Digital ID · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) for his powerful introduction —he is certainly no tin of beans. He highlighted that this debate has united every party in this Chamber, including the Labour party against the Labour leadership. I commend hon. Members for the powerful contributions that they have made. I have to confess that I disagree with nothing that was said by the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins), which is a unique thing—people will fear a coalition again. I even have some admiration for the glorious fence-sitting of some of the Labour MPs who still harbour some ambitions under this Government. We are here because so many of our fellow citizens are demanding that the Government abandon their dodgy plan for mandatory digital ID. This is one of the best-supported petitions ever—nearly 3 million people are asking, very simply, for their relationship with the state not to be fundamentally rewritten without their consent. At the instigation of no one—apart from, perhaps, Tony Blair—the Prime Minister sprung his sneaky ID scheme on us in September in what by now has become a familiar pattern. A gaping hole emerges in Labour’s handling of an issue—in this case on migration, but it could equally be justice or the economy—at the same time as they are running some kind of personnel meltdown, such as a Deputy Prime Minister ducking tax or a Chancellor leaking a Budget. And voilà: out shoots from Downing Street some cack-handed policy announcement to get us all talking about something else. Before we know it, we are hurtling toward mandatory ID, fewer jury trials, a horrible menu of new taxes on working people, and, who knows, maybe soon our return to a customs union on whose rules we will have zero say. That is why today we find ourselves debating the imposition of a mandatory ID, despite it being a platform on which no Labour MP in this Chamber was honest enough to stand, and a hapless Minister is left to field questions about the dead cat that his leader just threw on to the table, which is now getting smellier.

• 8 Dec 2025 · Digital ID · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and he spoke powerfully in his contribution. I am sure that today we will hear no answers from the Minister, because behind this policy sits no plan at all. No Minister has any idea how much it will cost—the OBR reckons it will be £1.8 billion.

• 8 Dec 2025 · Digital ID · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member makes a powerful point. The truth is that channel crossings will continue until the Prime Minister puts in place a real deterrent and accepts that the “smash the gangs” plan is nothing more than a slogan. By pretending that his ID scheme is the answer, he fuels public distrust. When the crossings continue but law-abiding British citizens are allocated a mandatory ID, people will feel, rightly, that it is one rule for them and another for rule breakers—a loss of liberty for everyone because of a group of people who have no right to be here. At least Ministers seem to recognise the emptiness of the migration argument, because none of them seems to use it any more. To add to the despicable dishonesty of the plan, it is now being presented as a benevolent effort to improve online services—no more rummaging for utility bills. The Prime Minister’s chief of staff even insists it will be a matter of choice whether to have a digital ID. How disingenuous! First, to oppose digital ID is not to oppose the modernisation of Government. It is not to oppose great online services for people. It is to say that we do not need a monopolistic Government ID scheme, which is mandated if people are to have those online services, and nobody should be suggesting otherwise. The Association of Digital Verification Professionals has called what Labour inherited from our party “a world-leading model for…data sovereignty” that digitises liberty rather than dilutes it. In government we were able to provide trusted, simple and secure services without everyone being mandated to have a digital identity. Paper options were retained. Nobody was forced down the digital route. Privacy-preserving private identity providers, now absolutely hopping mad about Labour’s plan, are recognised as a way of giving citizens choice when it comes to digital credentials and dispersing central power. Let us turn to the idea of choice and consent. If a Government-issued digital ID is mandatory for anyone wishing to work, then if someone wants a job they have no choice but to have one. At a time when Labour has made it more expensive and much riskier to employ people, they now want to add an extra hoop for everyone to jump through. Never mind the digital divide, either. Thousands of adults do not have smartphones. Labour has deprioritized gigabit rollout; its digital inclusion plan is a £9 million fig leaf. It is not bridging the digital divide, but widening it. Conservatives oppose the Prime Minister’s mandatory ID plan in principle and in practice. It would alter the balance between citizen and state in a way that this Government have no mandate for. Conservatives believe that Government should empower citizens, not the other way round. Before this House takes another step down this path, I ask the Minister to answer the following questions clearly and directly. Will the Government bring this matter before the House for a vote, and when can we expect digital identity legislation to be put before us? How much will this scheme cost? If the true figure is not £1.8 billion, what is it? Are Ministers creating a single centralised database—yes or no? Who will be forced to have a mandatory ID and from what age, because we hear that it could be mandatory from the age of 13? What personal information will be collected? Will biometrics and addresses be included? What security guarantees will the Minister put his name to when it comes to the robustness of this system? Nearly 3 million people want answers to those questions and more. This Government have delivered nothing of what they said they would deliver— growth, political stability, competence—and delivered plenty that they never sought permission for. They are a Government who do not have the competence to run a bath, let alone a secure national identity scheme. It seems that many Labour MPs, including those in this Chamber today, now agree. Every day, they are openly jostling and gossiping about the Prime Minister’s demise. If they had any sense, they would make sure that this scheme dies with the expiry of his leadership and that any of the thrusting leadership contenders make a clear promise not to resurrect it. The Prime Minister’s plan is unimplementable and utterly unloved, and it will be totally useless in delivering against its own objectives. So, before Labour sprays inordinate amounts of political capital and taxpayer cash on this digital ID dodo, it must wake up to that reality.

• 8 Dec 2025 · Digital ID · Hansard source

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  One challenge is that we have had so few of the facts, because this is such a thin plan. The other challenge is that although there are people who support digital identity as a concept, this is about choice and the fact that this Government have no mandate for what they are doing. I do not think that the hon. Member and I are coming from that different a place, in so far as it should be people’s choice whether they have digital identity verification or not. This Government are proposing to rob them of that choice, and that is why the people in this Chamber are united.

• 8 Dec 2025 · Digital ID · Hansard source

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  I completely agree. On the one hand, the Government claim there is no money left. On the other hand, they can suddenly find billions for bizarre schemes or the Chagos islands, or create policies on the two-child benefit cap that they could not previously deliver. They are just so intellectually inconsistent. The OBR, as I say, reckons the scheme will cost £1.8 billion. Privately, Ministers are briefing that that is completely inaccurate. We have not even begun scoping it yet. I am told the Treasury and the Cabinet Office are now in a stand-off with one another about who will pay for this dreadful thing. Neither wants it, particularly as the Cabinet Office will then have to make cuts to other, much more effective digital projects, the kinds that would actually deliver better services. No one will answer straight questions about how secure the digital ID will be, or into which areas of our lives it will creep. The Prime Minister tells us that digital ID will be mandatory only for anyone who still wants to work in Labour’s welfare Britain. Yet in the next breath he suggests that childcare, welfare and wider service access will all require it. This is precisely how state overreach begins: with reassurance in one sentence and expansion in the next. It was very interesting to hear hon. Members making points about the police being able to access digital ID, or even about people needing it to go to the cinema. There have been no answers on the robustness of the Government’s cyber-security. This Government could not even keep their own Budget secret, and now they want us to trust them with this new system. Ministers point to Estonia and India as models, yet Estonia has suffered repeated breaches. India’s system, the largest ID system in the world, led to the largest ever data breach in the world, with citizens’ data sold on the dark web for the equivalent of £5 or £6. AI is now giving cyber-attackers the upper hand. We have been given no sense of the extent to which digital ID will stem illegal migration, which was the Prime Minister’s excuse for introducing the idea in the first place. Ministers cannot even give an estimate, and that is for a simple reason: because it will not reduce migration. Can Ministers explain why those who enter the country by dodging the rules will suddenly become models of civic compliance, or why European ID schemes have done so little to stem illegal migration on the continent?

• 12 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Team UK, not Team Keir—I understand. The whole mandatory ID scheme hangs on the promise to curb illegal migration, but the Secretary of State can provide no numbers on that—not a percentage or even a range. Labour has already made employing Brits harder and more expensive, and now people will not be able to get a job if they resist a mandatory digital identity that will not stop the boats. Did the Prime Minister take this project away from the Secretary of State because he has no faith in her, or because she cannot bear to repeat his guff?

• 12 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  It is very tempting to ask the Secretary of State whether she is on Team Wes or Team Keir, but from the sounds of it today, she is on Team 4% Kendall. I will ask instead about one of the Prime Minister’s most cynical bloopers: mandatory digital ID. The Prime Minister says that mandatory digital ID will curb illegal migration. By how much will it do so by the end of this Parliament?

• 22 Oct 2025 · Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for his statement—or perhaps I should call him October’s cover star for The House magazine. The Conservatives back today’s motion on the life sciences innovative manufacturing fund. It is a no-brainer, because the fund was established by us in government when my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) made £520 million available for life sciences manufacturing over five years—from 2025 to 2030. Funnily enough, it is the exact same amount that is being reheated today. That fund built on a series of smaller, highly successful interventions that managed to attract £850 million of private investment for the £64 million of taxpayers’ money that we deployed. The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry called the fund a step change in ambition and something that would strengthen our manufacturing base, addressing the weaknesses we saw during the pandemic in our supply chains. It was good for jobs, for health security, for our life sciences and for Britain. So yes, we support this fund because we designed it. Let us be clear about what is happening here. The Minister is simply uprating for inflation the threshold at which payments must be approved by Parliament. That is fine and all very sensible, but what it is not is anything new. It is not new money. It is not Labour innovation or a sign that this Government are suddenly getting really serious about growth, and it is not the route to dealing with the crisis facing life sciences right now. It is what we were doing but in different wrapping paper. They have plonked a bow on it and called it a new strategy. Let me tell you what I reckon has happened here, Madam Deputy Speaker. An edict has gone bouncing around Whitehall from the Treasury and No. 10 as the November Budget disaster looms, saying: “We need some growth announcements. Departments, please feed the comms grid. We need to give the markets and the OBR some confidence that we are serious about growth.” It is worth reminding the House what happened yesterday. UK Government borrowing figures in September hit the highest level for the month in five years. This is truly terrifying stuff. I think the Secretary of State has gone and asked her officials, “What have we got in the cupboard to announce?”, and they have said, “Minister, we have a statutory instrument to table at some point. Do you want us to shove a bit of lipstick on it?” We have the spectacle of Ministers coming to the Chamber to tell us that a humble statutory instrument to uprate for inflation something already in the pipeline is a grand plan. In no way at all does it shift the dial on life sciences, because it is already baked in. This is not a Government who are serious about growth. Let us look at what happened to the life sciences manufacturing fund when Labour took office. In early 2024 we used it to negotiate a £450 million vaccine manufacturing investment by AstraZeneca in Speke, Liverpool. That meant real jobs, real regional investment and greater resilience for our country. After that, AstraZeneca announced another £200 million investment in Cambridge, which meant 1,000 jobs. To drive that investment and growth, we also delivered one of the most competitive business tax regimes through policies such as full expensing. Then the general election happened and our new Chancellor, in her infinite wisdom, put a pause on that investment—supposedly to get better value for money and fill the fantasy £22 billion black hole in the public finances. We all know what happened next. AstraZeneca pulled the £450 million investment, despite issuing private warnings to the Government that it needed certainty for business planning. But do not just take my word for it. When announcing Speke’s culling, AstraZeneca said that “the timing and reduction of the final offer compared to the previous Government’s proposal” was critical to losing that £450 million investment. What else has happened since Labour took office? AstraZeneca paused the £200 million Cambridge investment. We lost Merck’s £1 billion King’s Cross R&D hub, which was cancelled after eight years in development. That is £1 billion, and the Secretary of State had nothing to say about it—diddly squat. Eli Lilly has put its £279 million research incubator in London on hold. Sanofi has said that it will not consider “any substantial investment” in UK R&D under current conditions. In fact, industry has warned that the UK is becoming uninvestable for the life sciences. Does the Minister know how many meetings the Secretary of State has had with life sciences companies in the past month? As I understand it, the answer is very few. What has she been doing to rally colleagues across Government and make clear to the Chancellor, the Health Secretary and Prime Minister the scale of the peril? I have been looking at her statements, and it is not at all clear to me that she has been doing anything. The fund, which we support, is a capital manufacturing fund. It helps de-risk certain projects and reduces borrowing for companies, but it does not fix the fundamental problem of the commercial environment for medicines in the UK. We all know that Labour has made the commercial environment worse in many ways, such as through national insurance rises and other tax increases, and that has also made successful people not want to base themselves here. There are also long-standing issues that need fixing here, including drug pricing and the voluntary scheme for branded medicines pricing, access and growth—VPAG—rebate, which risks becoming a tax on innovation. But the Labour Government have screwed the public finances so badly that they have nowhere to go on these issues, not least because the NHS has had to spend a large chunk of the money that the Government have taken from our constituents. They took a lot of money from our constituents and told us that it would make this big difference to the NHS, but the money went on wage deals in the NHS and national insurance rises. [ Interruption. ] Labour likes to talk about the tough choices it has made to the NHS, but I would ask Government Members to ask their constituents whether they are really seeing a tangible difference in the NHS. The Government have taken a hell of a lot of money from everybody and it is not working. Normally I would be glad for the ability of the NHS to use its collective bargaining power to keep drug prices low, but there is now a real risk that life sciences companies will not be bringing new medicines to market in our country. That means my constituents and your constituents not getting cutting-edge treatments. It means pain, heartache and ill health, and it means that the life sciences industry that has served us so well is ebbing away and taking the high-quality, high-value jobs with them. This is a crisis. I must ask the Minister: can this fund succeed when the wider tax environment stands as is? The issue of medicine pricing is fast coming to a head as President Trump plays hardball on drug costs. The US Administration have alighted on the UK’s low drug prices and are using them as a bargaining tool against the threat of tariffs. This Government have boasted of their special relationship with the US, and we have had endless excruciating shots of the Prime Minister prostrating himself before the President. Can the Minister tell us how that relationship is benefiting the life sciences, because I cannot see it for myself? Can the Minister tell us whether the Secretary of State is aware that it looks as though His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has decided that companies providing medicines for clinical trials or compassionate use under the early access to medicines scheme should now be billed for VAT? That is a tax on medicines that are being provided for free. Apparently, one company has already received a bill and more are on their way for others. This could affect trials and people’s access to medicine. Will the Minister please commit to looking into that urgently as Labour scrabbles around for more revenue? Will he also ask HMRC to publish guidance confirming that in fact the early access to medicines scheme falls outside the VAT deemed supply rules? Will the Minister tell us how much of the £520 million has been spent to date? What is the current investment pipeline? How does it compare to the one he inherited? Will he update the House on the current state of negotiations between industry and Government on the VPAG scheme and medicine pricing, and with the US on tariffs? What conversations—if the Minister knows—has the Secretary of State had personally with the Health Secretary and the Chancellor on these issues? This is an extremely perilous situation for our life sciences firms and for patients’ access to new drugs. Britain’s life sciences sector is worth over £100 billion to our economy and supports about 300,000 jobs. It is massive. It is one of our defining national strengths: a source of innovation, prosperity and national pride. Of course, it is also the key to better health for our constituents and people across the world. The life sciences innovative manufacturing fund remains a Conservative achievement, but unless the Government act swiftly to restore competitiveness and rebuild investor confidence, we risk losing our place at the forefront of global life sciences. I am afraid that no amount of rebadging, repackaging or recycled announcements will change that.