Julia Lopez MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 17 Dec 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

  More

  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

  More

  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

  More

  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

  More

  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

  More

  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

  More

  rose—

• 8 Dec 2025 · Digital ID · Hansard source

  More

  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

  More

  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

  More

  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

  More

  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

  More

  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

  More

  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

  More

  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

  More

  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.

• 16 Oct 2025 · Ada Lovelace Day · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. I feel I should donate some of my minutes to some of the other hon. Members present, who, by the time they had finished their contributions, had effectively given a rap to the audience. [ Laughter. ] It was highly skilled. I loved the potted, warm biography of Ada Lovelace and the tribute to her own beautiful daughter by the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge). I was glad to hear of another father who has three girls, including chemists. My dad has three girls, but unfortunately one of them became an MP rather than a scientist—and this MP has not even got the brainpower to remember everybody’s constituency names, so I apologise. This morning I had the special privilege of visiting the Royal Society in St James’s, and I was lucky enough to get a glimpse of its incredible archive. Founded in 1660, the Royal Society is the world’s oldest continuously existing scientific academy. It was established by natural philosophers and physicists, including Christopher Wren and Robert Boyle. Its motto, “Nullius in verba”—“Take nobody’s word for it”—reflects the commitment to evidence and experimentation that has defined British science for over three and a half centuries. Archivist Keith Moore brought out the most incredible selection of gems, including the society’s founding register, which has the original signatures of Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday, Francis Crick and Stephen Hawking. It is simply extraordinary. The first female signature comes only after 1945, the point at which women could be admitted as fellows. Since then the register has included the Nobel laureate Dorothy Hodgkin, who revealed the structure of penicillin; Dame Anne McLaren, whose research laid the foundations for IVF; and Dame Sarah Gilbert, the Oxford scientist behind the covid vaccine. Margaret Thatcher, a chemistry graduate, is also listed, and this month we mark her centenary. These are utterly remarkable scientists, who stand on their own merits and happen to be female. Keith also shared with me a letter from Ada Lovelace herself, who happened to be born at the wrong time to be admitted as a fellow. It reads: “You were quite right to make your letter mathematical. I can understand that language better than any other.” Today, we mark Ada Lovelace Day, not only to highlight women’s contributions to science, but as an opportunity to encourage more women into STEM—and my goodness, what can be achieved by them if we do. Just recently, I found myself walking in the middle of a three-carriageway road junction next to the M25 as the junction 28 works neared completion. My guide was an inspirational young female engineer, around 30 years old. She had completed a degree apprenticeship in civil engineering, gone straight into the workplace and was now building the bridges and roads that impact thousands of my constituents’ journeys daily. That is a practical, clear example of success in getting women into STEM careers. Other examples have been cited today, including that of women in nuclear technology by the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour). Right now, however, there are too many young people leaving university to a very tough job market. At the same time, too many employers in STEM industries are wondering how to get people with the right skills into their businesses. We have to get much better at matching those two challenges so they can solve one another. Since 2010, successive Conservative Governments have worked on those challenges. Education reforms have raised standards, with a focus on maths, science and a knowledge-rich curriculum. Apprenticeships have been expanded, the apprenticeship levy introduced and skills bootcamps launched to support retraining in digital and technical skills. In my constituency, New City college has been awarded a prestigious accreditation as a STEM centre of excellence with strong industry partnership. I also have local job fairs to match companies such as AstraZeneca to young jobseekers in my constituency—other Members, including those elected in 2024, may wish to do that as they get more experienced. We have things such as the Women in Innovation programme to support hundreds of female entrepreneurs, with women-founded tech firms raising £3.6 billion in 2022. The STEM ambassadors network reaches thousands of schools, providing role models in science and tech. The STEM returners programme helps women resume careers after a break, which has been discussed by a number of hon. Members. Indeed, the hon. Member for Congleton (Sarah Russell) made an excellent point about free childcare for PhD students. I fully understand as a working mother the unbelievable costs of childcare but had not been aware of the issue in relation to PhDs. Will the Minister touch on that? We also have the Turing scheme, which funds international placements for students in STEM subjects, and we have heard about many other initiatives today. The former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), made mathematics a personal focus, recognising numeracy as the foundation of opportunity. The importance of maths was also referenced by the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom). There are still challenges, however, and we have heard some of the stats today, including from the Lovelace report and those cited by the Royal Society, which show the disparity between girls and boys in their interest in STEM subjects. Teacher recruitment in STEM subjects is an enduring challenge. The hon. Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) highlighted an example where he had provided inspirational leadership to a student simply by asking whether they had considered going into astrophysics at university. That is an incredibly insightful moment. What steps are the Government taking to get inspiring science and maths teachers into the classroom to encourage the next generation of female scientists and mathematicians? I am also keen to know what is being done to combat youth unemployment, especially among graduates, and on a new skills policy to match skills gaps, especially for those seeking to work in STEM subjects. Also, what are the Government doing to make sure that, in the long term, we retain our position as a leading science and technology nation, especially in the life sciences? We have seen particular challenges in that area in recent weeks, with the loss of important investments such as that of Merck in King’s Cross. From Ada Lovelace’s letter in the Royal Society archive to that young engineer I met building our infrastructure, I have seen what incredible scientists and engineers can do. I hope we will see many more young women with fantastic science and tech careers ahead of them, who will utilise their talent not just for themselves but for the good of others.

• 13 Oct 2025 · Digital ID · Hansard source

  More

  Nearly three weeks ago, the Prime Minister unveiled a plan for mandatory digital identity that will fundamentally shift the balance of power between citizen and state. He did not announce it here in this House, but at a love-in of the progressive left, sponsored by Labour Together and haunted by the ghost of Tony Blair. The justification was his own catastrophic failure on migration. He knows it will not stop the boats. When Brits are forced to have ID as illegal migration continues unabated, it will simply confirm fears of a two-tier society, fuelling the division and conspiracy theories that he so arrogantly claims he is the antidote to. What a cynical mess. Can the Secretary of State set out how the scheme will identify illegal migrants working in the black economy, when their gangmasters are experts at avoiding any state interaction? She rather slinked away from those key points in her wonderfully innocuous statement about making it easier to join libraries. We have in the official press release this glorious piece of doublethink: “It will not be compulsory to obtain a digital ID but it will be mandatory for some applications.” When employment itself requires Government-issued identity, you cannot meaningfully consent—unless, of course, you never want to work. Here is the fundamental issue: in a free society, the burden of proof has always rested with government to justify its actions to earn our trust. Mandatory digital identity reverses that. While today the scheme focuses on work checks, Labour says it wants to extend this type of mandate into more areas of our lives. Which areas? Where does it stop? I understand that even 13-year-olds are now being considered. What about those without digital access? Labour has deprioritised gigabit roll-out and published a very worthy digital inclusion action plan without any action. The Prime Minister points to Estonia and India as models we should seek to replicate, despite serious cyber vulnerabilities. The UK’s own sign-on system was breached during red team testing this very March. When 2.8 million people petitioned against the plan, the Government assured them that they would adhere to the highest security standards. Can the Secretary of State confirm to us here today that the system on which her mandatory ID will be built already meets those standards, and that the National Cyber Security Centre will publicly back her up? This crafty scheme was not in Labour’s manifesto. Even the Cabinet think the whole thing is a fantasy. The Secretary of State cannot even bring herself to tweet about it. Why does the Prime Minister keep handing her his steaming messes to scoop up? The migration argument has totally bombed—we heard it here today. She and the Prime Minister are now reframing this whole thing as the route to better online services—no more rifling around for utility bills; not an ID, we hear today, but a key. They are deliberately conflating two very different things. Better and more convenient online services were already coming in. We already had right to work and rent checks, convenient DBS—Disclosure and Barring Service—checks and driving licence renewals, all designed with choice, consent and privacy in mind, paper options retained, nobody forced down the digital route and trust as the key, and private identity providers enabled. This is not about Luddites versus modernisers; this is about the fact that Labour cannot resist its big fat socialist dreams: centralised databases, state mandation, big money, the exclusion of private sector expertise. Why create this honeypot for hackers? How much will it cost? Why should we trust Labour to be the verifier of someone’s identity, when during the passage of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 it would not even commit to recording someone’s sex accurately? Let me be clear: Conservatives oppose mandatory digital identity in principle and in practice. If we believed it was necessary, we would have introduced it in government. We chose not to because you can deliver better online services without resorting to a costly, controlling, complex and risky system. This is a cynical distraction from a desperate Prime Minister. He wants people to believe that mandatory ID will fix his migration mess, but it will not. Channel crossings will continue until he introduces a real deterrent, but he has not got the guts to take on the lawfare industry that made him. We believe that government should empower citizens, not the other way round; that government should earn citizens’ trust, not the other way round. Only those entitled to benefits should receive them and those with no right to be here must leave, but those imperatives are not best delivered by controlling British people instead of those who do not play by the rules. The Government who promised to tread lightly on our lives have got their boots out. Will the Secretary of State now kill this plan, rather than be the sacrificial lamb for another of this Prime Minister’s grubby mistakes?

• 11 Sept 2025 · Life Sciences Investment · Hansard source

  More

  (Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology if she will make a statement on the cancellation of life sciences investment.

• 11 Sept 2025 · Life Sciences Investment · Hansard source

  More

  Last night, US pharmaceutical giant Merck cancelled the construction of a £1 billion drug research centre in the Prime Minister’s constituency. Eight hundred jobs that were going to be provided have now evaporated; 125 scientists were to be employed—no longer. The message from Merck executives was unsparing: simply put, the UK is not internationally competitive. The Government must wake up now. If AstraZeneca’s announcement on investment was the canary in the mine for UK life sciences, last night’s announcement should be a klaxon sounding across Whitehall. Will the Minister assure us that he is arranging urgent meetings with Health, Business and Treasury Ministers today? The facility was going to specialise in diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis. It was going to feed into the work of a cluster of life sciences bodies, such as the Francis Crick Institute. Did the Government engage with Merck before its decision? What damage will this cause to research and medicine access for our constituents who are affected by those conditions? The Government told UK taxpayers that their devastating national insurance hike would boost the NHS, but NHS leaders admit that the money has gone on national insurance, wage deals and drug price inflation, not better services, and there is no money left for negotiations with life sciences companies. In fact, life sciences have faced a £1.6 billion tax bill and a real-terms cut to research and development. What are Ministers in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology doing to push the Health Secretary for progress on health data, advanced therapies, price negotiations and regulatory reform of the kind that will improve our life sciences offer? For the last year, Labour has dined out on deals secured by the last Conservative Government. We were promised that a US-UK trade deal would open doors for business. Instead, American firms are cancelling projects, and our ambassador, who should have been batting for Britain, was battling for survival. Now that Lord Mandelson has slinked away—again—who is speaking to the Americans about this collapsed deal? What will the Prime Minister be doing ahead of President Trump’s state visit to help UK life sciences? I welcome the Minister to his place, but where is the Secretary of State? In her very first week, she has overseen a £1 billion investment collapse. If she does not understand that this is the most important thing in her brief right now, and if the Government do not change course, it will not be the last deal to collapse.

• 11 Sept 2025 · Life Sciences Investment · Hansard source

  More

  I hope you will give me the same flexibility if I go a little over my time, Mr Speaker.

• 10 Sept 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

  More

  Thank you, Mr Speaker. I welcome the new Secretary of State to her place and, of course, I welcome her stellar team. The Minister of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray), is so hot that he snared two jobs from the guy who just fired him. The Tech Secretary replaces the Ozempic of Whitehall, the right hon. Member for Hove and Portslade (Peter Kyle), who claimed that his digital plan would shear £45 billion of fat from the Government. By how much did it cut the civil service?

• 10 Sept 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

  More

  I fully agree with the right hon. Lady, but the number of civil servants has risen to a 20-year high under Labour. If somebody in the private sector led a reverse efficiency drive, they would get sacked; Labour made the person responsible Business Secretary. For a welfare meltdown, you get to be the Minister for the future, but while AI is screaming for cheap electricity, the Prime Minister cannot sack his failing Energy Secretary. Why should the tech sector believe that this is a Government of delivery?

• 14 Jul 2025 · UK-France Migration: Co-operation · Hansard source

  More

  I fear it is another week, another fig leaf from this Government on small boat crossings, which are up 40% under Labour. I hope this French deal works, but as my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) says, the numbers of returns need to be very substantial, not just a modest pilot. We are also now waiting to hear from the EU about whether it will approve this very modest UK-French migration deal. We know from experience that the EU tends not to give such approval without extracting a heavy price, so can the Home Secretary guarantee that the UK will not sign up to any element of the EU pact on migration and asylum, when it launches next year, that could see us accepting much larger asylum transfers from the continent?

• 14 Jul 2025 · High Streets · Hansard source

  More

  14. What steps she is taking to support high streets.

• 14 Jul 2025 · High Streets · Hansard source

  More

  I hear what the Minister is saying, but our high streets are under enormous pressure because of Labour’s jobs tax and cuts to business rates relief. As good tax-paying shops shut down, they are being replaced by dodgy front businesses. To fight that in my constituency, Havering trading standards last week seized £17,000-worth of illicit goods from one shop in Upminster through a collaboration between the council, the public, the police and me as the MP. This vital work is at risk because the Government are planning to shift council grant money away from the capital and up to places in the north of England. Can the Minister assure me that Labour is not, in the Mayor of London’s words, planning to “level down” the capital by threatening resources for councils here?

• 7 Jul 2025 · Government Performance against Fiscal Rules · Hansard source

  More

  The Chief Secretary to the Treasury seems to have only one line to survive this urgent question on behalf of the Chancellor, and that is to make reference to the former Prime Minister. Can he answer a simple question, to which we have already heard the answer today? Are Government borrowing costs higher now under him, or under the former Prime Minister in September 2022?