Katie Lam MP: speeches

Speeches

• 23 Jun 2026 · Defence Spending and Readiness · Hansard source

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  As my colleagues on the Conservative Benches have already noted, today and previously, the defence of the realm is the first duty of any Government, and as a fundamental part of that duty, any Government must provide the people who volunteer to keep our country safe—at great personal risk—with the tools they need and the support they deserve. Our country is not kept safe by people in this place or by bureaucrats in Whitehall offices. It is kept safe by brave men and women who put their lives on the line because they believe in this country and want to protect it. They suspend their family lives, they risk their own lives, and they operate in incredibly difficult conditions, because they think that this country is worth suffering for—and even dying for. They do this of their own free will, and certainly not for any great sums of money. We are incredibly fortunate that anybody puts themselves forward to serve, and even more fortunate that over the years this country has produced many thousands of courageous, professional and dutiful people who have preserved the freedom of this country and, at times, the world. The very least that the British Government can do is to treat these people—our armed forces personnel—fairly, to honour the implicit promise that their service will be repaid with respect and protection, and to make sure that when orders are issued from on high, the people charged with carrying out those orders are not punished for doing so. Since the last election, we have seen this Government do exactly the opposite. Their Northern Ireland Troubles Bill is a direct betrayal of that promise, and it will see veterans dragged through the courts and hounded by endless inquiries, decades after their service. Those who served in Northern Ireland did so at incredible personal risk. They operated under intensely challenging conditions, the likes of which most of us in this place—save for some gallant Members—will never be forced to withstand. They did all this to keep our country safe from murderous psychopaths who wanted to undermine our democracy and tear our country apart through the use of terrorist violence, the assassination of police officers and the murder of innocent civilians. Over the course of their service, the vast majority of those who served in our security forces did so with incredible professionalism. They behaved according to rules of engagement that did not constrain their terrorist enemies. They followed orders and procedures designed to protect innocent life. When those standards were not met, people were held responsible. Again, no such internal scrutiny took place within the terrorist organisations that they fought. Indeed, under the terms of the Belfast agreement and subsequent legislation, IRA terrorists were given immunity from prosecution, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) set out earlier. Many were released from prison before their sentences had been served, despite having carried out terrorist attacks that killed civilians. That charity and forgiveness stands in stark contrast to the treatment in the opposite direction. Many of those who served have been hounded for decades by vexatious legal claims. They include people who served in our armed forces and those who served in the police in Northern Ireland, which was then called the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Typically, these challenges have been politically motivated and brought by people linked to the Irish republican movement, often to furnish the republican narrative that our security forces behaved unlawfully throughout the troubles. Such challenges are usually launched not on the basis of new evidence, but because of the retrospective application of human rights laws that were never designed to govern counter-terrorist combat. On the morning of 3 June 1991, three members of the IRA drove a stolen car into a small village in County Tyrone. It was their intention to murder a part-time member of the Ulster Defence Regiment, a regiment of the British Army made up of local recruits from Northern Ireland. On reaching the village, the car stopped. One of the men got out and pointed an assault rifle at the person he believed to be their target, but who was in fact a member of the Special Air Service in disguise. Believing that the decoy’s life was in immediate danger, other SAS soldiers, hidden on the first floor of a nearby hotel, opened fire on the IRA men. All three were killed. Investigation at the scene showed that two of those men, Lawrence McNally and Michael Ryan, were armed with assault rifles. The third man, Tony Doris, was not armed, which the SAS soldiers who carried out the ambush could not have known. The three IRA men who were killed that day set out to murder a part-time soldier, and the actions of the SAS were designed to prevent that murder from happening. Fortunately, they succeeded. That operation took place before I was even born, yet until earlier this year, the soldiers who took part in it were still being subjected to legal harassment for their actions that day. More than three decades later, lawyers with no specialist knowledge of military operations were asked to rule on whether those soldiers had behaved in accordance with human rights law, which was not designed for combat. Fortunately, the Court of Appeal determined that the SAS had acted lawfully, but other veterans have not been so lucky. This Government’s troubles Bill will mean more cases like that one, with more veterans dragged through the courts, hounded in the press, and forced to testify at countless inquests and inquiries. It will scrap the protections put in place by the previous Government and open the doors to a whole new wave of politically motivated prosecutions. The Government say that this is necessary because of our obligations under the European Court of Human Rights, but if protecting our veterans from vexatious prosecution is not compatible with ECHR membership, what better case can there be for leaving the ECHR altogether? Earlier this week, we heard that we would be rid of this Prime Minister, who has repeatedly let down those currently serving in our armed forces by refusing to provide them with the material support they need, as well as those who have served previously, through the disastrous Northern Ireland Troubles Bill. I hope that his exit foreshadows the exit of the Attorney General and the Northern Ireland Secretary, both of whom have been responsible for advancing and defending the Bill. They have been warned repeatedly about what an awful signal it sends to those who are currently serving. Why would anybody risk their lives if their own Government might throw them under the bus decades later? I only hope that the chaos in Government will provide the new Defence Ministers— whenever they arrive—with an excuse to drop the Bill for good, and that they will instead support the private Member’s Bill brought forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp), which I am honoured to support. Our Northern Ireland veterans made unimaginable sacrifices to keep us safe. It is not a lot to ask that we protect them from this nightmare in return.

• 17 Jun 2026 · Abuse of Customer-facing Workers · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Hobhouse. I congratulate the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Chris Evans) on securing the debate. As others have noted, the abuse faced by many people working in customer-facing roles is deeply distressing. We should all be concerned by the rise in abuse, threats and physical assault against people just trying to do their jobs. The trend cannot be divorced from the rise in so-called petty crime, including shoplifting, as several hon. Members have highlighted. According to a survey conducted by the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, in cases where retail staff faced abuse, 70% of incidents had been triggered by shoplifting. Of those incidents, two thirds were related to drug addiction or suspected drug addiction. Failing to clamp down on crimes such as shoplifting is not cost-free. It does not just make life terrible for the businesses that are the direct victims of the theft; it puts retail workers and the public at risk. The kind of people who are engaged in habitual shoplifting are often involved in other types of crime, and they represent a very real danger to us all. Unfortunately, under this Government’s Sentencing Act 2026, up to 12,000 of this country’s most prolific shoplifters will avoid jail altogether, leaving them free to not just continue stealing but abuse and harass retail workers. While prolific offenders walk free, law-abiding people face ever more rules and restrictions, and ever greater suspicion from the authorities. Instead of going after the hyper-prolific offenders who drive such a disproportionate amount of crime in this country, the state responds by making life harder for ordinary people. Is it any wonder that so many people now feel that they are living under something called anarcho-tyranny? In such circumstances, the state is either unable or unwilling to control violent crime, theft and genuine disorder. While failing to enforce the law against genuine criminals, the state vigorously and inflexibly enforces a mountain of complex, often seemingly arbitrary rules on ordinary people who work hard, pay their taxes and do the right thing. That can produce infuriating and ludicrous outcomes. Shop Around the Clock, a fabulous store in St Michaels in my constituency, is plagued by shoplifting. Suki, who manages the business, very kindly had me in for a morning shift last Friday. He told me that, despite years of reporting regular shoplifting to the police, the only time they had visited was to let him know that the pictures he had put up of regular thieves violated GDPR. He also walked me through his report to the police of the latest shoplifting incident he had suffered that Tuesday. The process was slow and repetitive—easily 10 times as long as it needed to be. For small business owners like Suki, who are already doing a million things at once, it is often hard to justify that wasted time. Especially given advances in technology, this seems a crazy way to insist that people record crimes. This is the experience of far too many people in Britain today. They feel their own behaviour is restricted, and they meet with resistance and hassle when they engage with the authorities, yet they see crime and disorder go unpunished. If they try to do something to stop the crime themselves, they are crushed. The rise in attacks against retail workers is one terrible manifestation of this, but there are many. This is clearly completely unfair but, fortunately, there is a solution. Speak to any member of the British public and they will be able to tell you exactly what to do: spend less time on policing speech and filling out paperwork and more time on catching thieves; give police forces the tools they need to tackle these crimes; and, when we catch a career criminal, make sure that they serve a proper prison sentence. Put simply, we can fix this problem by pursuing criminals, enforcing the law and letting law-abiding people get on with their lives. Given that so much of this abuse is triggered by shoplifting, and given how onerous the process of reporting it is, my main, specific question to the Minister is this: what kind of conversations has she had about changing the online reporting system, particularly in the light of technology innovations that could make it so much simpler and faster?

• 17 Jun 2026 · High Street Shops: Illicit Activity · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member is right that the common travel area presents particular challenges. It is crucial to maintain the sorts of relationships he is talking about in a way that keeps the public safe in Northern Ireland and the whole country. If high street shops are already laundering money on behalf of these gangs, they might also sell the things that the gang illegally imports. They might serve as points of contact for people who are looking to smuggle people into Britain illegally, as was highlighted by the BBC’s most recent investigation. Those shops might also help criminal gangs to bring people into this country by sponsoring their visas. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston (Neil O’Brien) has previously highlighted, many cash-intensive high street businesses sponsor an absurd number of visas. On paper, these people work for a legitimate high street business, but in practice many of them will be using that apparently legitimate employment as cover for their work as part of a criminal gang. Others may be working, or forced to work, for dramatically less than the minimum wage, which both exploits them and distorts the labour market. That happens everywhere in the country. In the stunning town of Tenterden in my constituency, Indian restaurant Badsha was recently found to have been employing illegal migrants for a fourth time, racking up £120,000 in fines and not paying a single penny. I would appreciate it if the Minister set out how the Home Office thinks about and plans to tackle the links between illicit activity on the high street, organised crime, immigration and people smuggling, and how the Department’s plans for tackling illicit activity on the high street take account of those links. Does it keep a record of how many businesses raided under high street organised crime operations were also registered visa sponsors? Does it keep a record of the visa status and visa type of those employed by these businesses? What proportion of high street businesses employing people illegally are repeat offenders like the one in my constituency? Will the Minister share what proportion of Operation Machinize targets in cases related to counterfeit goods, illegal tobacco or vapes, money laundering or the sale of drugs were also involved in illegal working, visa fraud or organised immigration crime and people smuggling?

• 17 Jun 2026 · High Street Shops: Illicit Activity · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Dowd. I congratulate the hon. Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger) on securing this important debate. For far too many people and in far too many places, the high street has become a visible sign of where the British state has lost control. People suspect that the cash-only takeaways, barber’s shops and vape shops that they see springing up on their high streets are symptomatic of a deeper rot. As the hon. Gentleman and many others set out, in many cases they are right. All too often, such high street shops are linked to organised crime, including through the sale of illicit or counterfeit goods, money laundering, immigration crime and people smuggling. Last month, the BBC uncovered that people smugglers are directing migrants to pay for illegal channel crossings using a network of high street businesses, including mobile phone shops. In 2024 alone, trading standards seized more than 1 million illegal vapes and 19 million illegal cigarettes. As the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Harpreet Uppal) mentioned, the National Crime Agency estimates that £1 billion of crime-linked cash is laundered through high street businesses every year. It is clearly difficult to produce reliable estimates of things such as money laundering, so the real figure may be even higher. The money laundered by such businesses often fuels human trafficking or the drug trade. The problem is only getting worse. According to one survey, 99% of trading standards professionals have seen an increase in the number of cash-intensive businesses opening on their local high streets in recent years. Cash-intensive businesses often provide the best fronts for money laundering and the trade in illicit and counterfeit goods. While businesses that do the right thing are struggling with ever more regulation and ever higher taxes, businesses with links to organised crime are thriving. To combat the rise in illicit activity on our high streets, we must understand the criminal networks that sustain that activity and the link in many cases between those networks and immigration. Let us imagine, for example, an organised crime gang involved in the drugs trade. When that gang sells drugs to people, payment will most often be made in cash, because cash is harder to trace. However, if that business wants to bring its cash into the normal financial system, it will need to launder the money so as not to provoke suspicion. If a person suddenly deposits tens of thousands of pounds with no clear income source, a bank will register that as suspicious, but not so if the money is deposited by a high street business. The gang might therefore set up a high street shop—something cash-intensive and with low overhead costs, such as a vape shop. The shop records its transactions but adds to those real purchases a series of phantom cash sales used to disguise the illicit cash raised by the sale of drugs. The deposit appears legitimate and can be backed up with paperwork. Once that cash is deposited, it can be paid out as profit to those involved in running the organisation, for example as a fake invoice to an overseas supplier that is paid out to a shell company registered abroad. The criminal gangs involved in the drug trade operate across borders both financially and physically. They will have overseas suppliers who provide them with the drugs that they sell. These supply networks are often sustained by links between people of the same nationality, ethnicity or even extended family. Often, these drug gangs are also involved in other kinds of cross-border smuggling—of counterfeit goods, illegal tobacco and, indeed, people.

• 11 Jun 2026 · Legacy of Jo Cox · Hansard source

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  I am sorry to say that I did not know the hon. Lady’s sister, but she sounds like a remarkable woman. I am one of two sisters, and I recognise very much from growing up the sort of family structure that the hon. Lady describes. What a testament it is to Jo as a person that, having grown up in such a family and known what the opposite of loneliness is—what companionship and family are—she thought first of people who did not enjoy that. That is a real testament to the person she was.

• 10 Jun 2026 · Water Supply in Kent · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to speak with you in the Chair, Mr Twigg. I thank the hon. Member for Ashford (Sojan Joseph) for securing the debate. For people in the Weald of Kent, problems with the water supply have become depressingly common. The most recent outages, last month, left thousands of people without water or experiencing severely low pressure during a heatwave. South East Water, which covers the Weald of Kent, said that it had planned for the heatwave, but thousands of people across the Weald were still once again left without running water, unable to wash, cook, or run their businesses or farms. That followed a larger outage earlier this year, which left tens of thousands of people across Kent and Sussex without running water for days. That time, South East Water blamed a freeze and thaw event and the impact of Storm Goretti. Come rain or shine, there are clearly serious problems at South East Water. On both occasions, but especially in January, communication was poor or non-existent. South East Water was unable to answer even basic questions, such as, “If I send my constituents to this bottled water station, will there be any bottled water for them when they get there?” The company took days to respond to emails to its supposedly instantaneous email address. It simply had no idea what was going on. For far too many people, this intermittent service and poor communication are part and parcel of life in the Weald of Kent. Earlier this year, I ran a water survey to ask people about their historical experiences with South East Water. Nearly 3,000 households responded, and it was immediately clear that the catastrophic handling of January’s outage was not a lapse in form. The company has been providing a terrible service for years, and people are absolutely right to be fed up with it. One disabled resident reported that, despite being on South East Water’s priority list for receiving bottled water during times of crisis, they received no water at all for the duration of the outage. Farmers, who simply cannot afford to have water shut off for days on end, reported that farms and livestock did not even seem to be a consideration. One local farmer reported that, despite many hours on the phone, South East Water were “totally unhelpful and rude, suggesting [that] I go and pick up a pack of water”. To put that into context, this farmer pays for 250 litres of water a day. The company told him to go and pick up a pack of water. The sheer volume of the individual stories was horrific—one woman who had just given birth to children had to take her toddler in the back of the car to the bottled water stations, because she was on the vulnerable list, but deliveries had not been made. Of those who responded to the survey, four in every five said they had been left without running water over the past decade, and four in 10 said that they had been without running water four or more times over that same period. That is absurd in 21st-century Britain. Those self-reported experiences have been mirrored in recent months by a number of official inquiries into South East Water’s performance, both historically and in relation to the January outages. Ofwat has recently proposed a £22 million fine following supply failures between 2020 and 2023, noting that South East Water “has not taken ownership” of the underlying issues that caused the outages. Given the recent outages, it is clear that it still has not learned a thing. The report produced by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee was perhaps the most damning. It described the company as “devoid of proper leadership” and as “an unaccountable clique.” I thank the members of the Committee for their work in scrutinising South East Water’s leadership, particularly my hon. Friends the Members for South Northamptonshire (Sarah Bool) and for Bridlington and The Wolds (Charlie Dewhirst). In the light of those reports, both the chairman of South East Water, Chris Train, and the CEO, David Hinton, have resigned. That was a long time coming. Given their handling of the outages in January and the way they responded to the subsequent investigations, it was clear that change at South East Water was impossible under their leadership. They had shown no understanding of why they had failed, and no appreciation whatsoever of the harm they had caused to the people who rely on their service. Although the resignations are very much welcome, the problems at South East Water did not start with Mr Hinton’s appointment as chief executive and will not automatically end with his resignation. As the results of the survey demonstrate, the issues at South East Water are endemic. I hope the company will use the change of leadership as an opportunity for true transformation and to review how it operates, plans and communicates with the public. I want to use this opportunity to urge the regulator and the Minister, who I know is very focused on this issue, to do everything they can to encourage the company to go through a proper period of transformation. In this place and elsewhere, we will continue to hold it to account. However, it is important that South East Water is not just punished retrospectively, or after the fact, for its failures. Instead, we must ensure that it is taking the right steps to stop this problem becoming a permanent feature of life in the Weald of Kent.

• 8 Jun 2026 · Immigration Rules: Economic Impact · Hansard source

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  The latest estimates indicate that 627,000 non-EU migrants, mostly from low-income countries, came to the UK between December 2024 and December 2025. Meanwhile, 61,000 Brits aged 16 to 24 left the UK, as did another 65,000 aged 25 to 34. In recent years, for every young Briton who has been employed, 27 young migrants from outside the EU have also joined the workforce. Does the Home Secretary accept that mass migration has wrecked economic opportunity for young people? How will that inform any changes that she makes to the immigration rules, given that almost two thirds of a million non-EU migrants came to this country last year?

• 8 Jun 2026 · Water Companies · Hansard source

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  I know that the Minister is acutely aware of the terrible problems we have had with South East Water; we have discussed it recently. It cannot supply water in the winter because it is too cold. It cannot supply water in the summer because it is too hot. The chair and the chief executive have both stood down, but that is a necessary condition for the company to be transformed, not the transformation itself. Can the Minister give us any update she is aware of on how the recruitment process is going to appoint their successors and what role the regulator and the Department will play in that process?

• 19 May 2026 · Energy Security · Hansard source

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  As I just said, 80% of houses use gas for heating. We cannot simply substitute that for renewables—it is impossible. Returning to the issue of energy independence, producing more gas domestically would also make us more resistant to global shocks. We would be far better served if companies that provide energy in Britain were bidding on gas produced in this country, rather than gas produced halfway around the world. Not only would bills come down, but we would mitigate the risk of sudden cost increases as a result of supply restrictions elsewhere. Yet the Government are proposing a policy that would achieve exactly the opposite. The demand for gas is not going away, much as the Government might wish that it were. Even if British homes move away from gas in the long term, it is absurd to impose higher bills on them in the short term in the name of ideology. Those on the Government Benches often talk of sustainability, but there is nothing sustainable about this situation. Families across the country are facing higher bills and extra taxes to fund this Government’s ideological commitment to intermittent energy sources. Many will be forced to do things such as postpone holidays or delay moving house to be able to afford the increasing costs imposed on them by this Government. Meanwhile, businesses are being forced to cut back on staff or shut their doors altogether, because the cost of doing business is now simply too high. That means local pubs, family farms and nursing homes all being forced to shut up shop. For industrial businesses in particular, the situation is even worse. These are businesses in sectors such as AI and high-skilled manufacturing that can provide some of the best paid and most durable jobs, revitalising whole communities and enabling people to build successful lives for themselves. While China and India fuel their industrial expansion with new coal-fired power plants, British industry faces some of the highest energy prices in the developed world—they are the highest in Europe, and they are more than double the price paid by industrial businesses in the United States. We cannot hope to sustain an industrial base in this country, let alone grow it, while the price of energy is so vulnerable to global shocks. Why would anybody start a new industrial business in Britain under these conditions? If this action is being taken in the name of climate change, it is proving to be a catastrophic failure. In the eight years between 2013 and 2020, China pumped out more carbon emissions than Britain has produced over the past 250 years. That is not just because China is a bigger country—per-person emissions from China are more than double those in Britain. We are sending our emissions abroad to countries such as China without making a dent in addressing global climate change, and British families and businesses are left to pick up the tab. The Government’s plans on energy policy will leave us more dependent on overseas imports and will leave the British people worse off financially, without making any noticeable impact on global climate change. If the Government genuinely want to advance our energy independence, we welcome that, but they will not do so by wrecking domestic production and leaving us reliant on imports from abroad.

• 19 May 2026 · Energy Security · Hansard source

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  Time and again over the past few months, and, indeed, in this debate, we have heard Ministers talk about the importance of energy independence, and they are right to do so. No country has ever succeeded without cheap and abundant energy. For energy to be cheap and abundant, its supply must be reliable. If we are dependent on energy imports from overseas, the supply of energy will necessarily be unreliable, as the disruption caused by recent events in the Persian gulf has made abundantly clear. But it is profoundly dishonest to talk of energy independence while making us more dependent on energy imports from abroad. That is exactly what the Government’s plans to ban new North sea oil and gas would do. They should, at the very least, be brave enough to admit that to the public. Ministers say that there is no point in using our vast oil and gas reserves; they say that energy prices are set entirely on the international market, which means that increasing our domestic supply would have little to no impact on the overall prices. But that is not true. Gas is a highly localised market, specifically in the case of liquefied natural gas, which is gas that is turned into liquid, loaded on to ships and transported globally. The further those ships have to travel, the more expensive it becomes to deliver. If we rely on gas imports from the rest of the world, we will need to spend more money to bring that gas to Britain. The vast majority of homes in the UK—87%—use gas for heating. We currently import half of the gas that we consume. If we produced more gas domestically, it would be cheaper to buy gas, meaning that heating bills would, in fact, come down.

• 19 May 2026 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Minister to her place. Almost the first thing the Prime Minister’s new adviser on women and girls did after she was appointed was to say on social media that Arooj Shah, the recently defeated leader of Oldham council, should be given a peerage. She did so despite the fact that Shah spent years trying to block a full inquiry into rape and grooming gangs in Oldham. What does the Minister think that says to victims and survivors, and how can they and the public trust the new adviser now? I would also be interested to know whether the Minister agrees that Shah should be made a life peer.

• 14 May 2026 · Supreme Court Dillon Judgment · Hansard source

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  As the Secretary of State has laid out, the Supreme Court in its Dillon judgment was not able to rule on whether the immunity provisions of the legacy Act were compatible with the European convention, because the Government withdrew that appeal when they came to power. But the right hon. Gentleman must recognise the fear and anger of our soldiers and veterans in response to the changes that the Government have proposed. If the Government felt it was at all possible that these protections for our soldiers and veterans might be compatible with the ECHR, why not test that in the courts? If the Government are convinced that it is not, what better case could there be for leaving?

• 27 Apr 2026 · Dunmurry Police Station Attack · Hansard source

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  We can all agree that the public should be protected from anybody who is willing to use violence against innocents and the police to get what they want, but I wonder how the right hon. Gentleman intends to enforce that. What message does he think it sends to those who have had the courage to protect the public, including British soldiers during the troubles, when this Government are making it easier for them to be dragged through the courts decades later?

• 22 Apr 2026 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  I was very sorry to hear the story that the hon. Member for Reading Central (Matt Rodda) shared. I will speak about a different aspect of the Bill: schools and admissions. Good schools, and the good teachers who run them, are exceptionally precious. At its best, a good school truly can transform the lives of its pupils by fostering their natural talents, by helping equip them to tackle challenges and by expanding their intellectual horizons. When good schools are working well, they should be able to grow, so that more parents can choose to send their children to a school where their talents can be cultivated and their interests encouraged. That is a simple principle—one that Members from across the House, and indeed everyone everywhere, should be able to agree to. A good education should not be the preserve of only those children who have parents who can afford to pay for one. Enabling more pupils to attend the best schools in the state sector means that that kind of education can be offered to more children, yet, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott) has set out, the powers that this Bill will create on pupil admissions will achieve precisely the opposite. They allow the Government and regulators to limit the growth of good schools, or even force them to shrink, in order to make sure that schools that are performing less well can stay open. The most generous interpretation of the Government’s intentions is that this change is being made in the name of bureaucratic convenience. As the number of pupils entering the school system falls, it is true that local authorities will need to make decisions about which schools remain open and where. The Government Minister responsible for defending this legislation in the other place said that the proposals are “very much a function of the time, in terms of demography, that we find ourselves in.” —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 20 April 2026; Vol. 855, c. 541.] Even if that was the case, it would be completely absurd to tackle this problem by limiting the growth of good schools in order to make life easier for bureaucrats in local government, and for headteachers at schools that are not performing well. Wherever possible, surely we should be enabling the growth of good schools so that they have the capacity to take on more pupils, if and when schools that are performing less well need to reduce their numbers. If parents make decisions that they believe are best for their children, who are bureaucrats to tell them otherwise? In practice, limiting the growth of good schools will keep more children trapped in failed schools for longer, deny them the opportunity to flourish and deprive them of the firm foundations for life that a good education can provide. Even if this was being done in the name of bureaucratic convenience, it would be grotesque, but I fear that the reality may be even worse. Since this Government came to power, we have repeatedly seen the Department for Education take steps that undermine the progress made by the last Government in this area, including by making it harder to turn failing schools into academies. Time and again, we have seen this Government put their ideological instincts ahead of what works in practice. Regardless of whether their proposals are motivated by ideology or convenience, the result will be the same: fewer children able to attend good schools, depriving them of the strongest start in life.

• 22 Apr 2026 · Draft Asylum Seekers (Reception Conditions) (Amendment) Regulations 2026 Draft Immigration and Asylum (Provision of Accommodation to Failed Asylum-Seekers) (Amendment) Regulations 2026 · Hansard source

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  It is, as ever, a pleasure to have you in the Chair, Sir Jeremy. The power given to the Home Secretary by these regulations to suspend or discontinue asylum support in cases where asylum seekers are working illegally is welcome. It is also right to remove the existing duty on the Home Secretary to offer asylum support in all cases. Those are both improvements on the existing system. Clearly, if people come to this country to seek asylum, they should at the very least be expected to abide by the rules that govern that process. Although the changes are welcome in principle, criticisms raised by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee highlight a broader problem. The changes that the Government are proposing today will not, without changes to the wider legal regime, change the incentives for people who come to this country illegally or under false pretences to seek asylum. The Committee noted that illegal working cases—the ones we know about, that is—accounted for just 0.3%, or one in every 333, of asylum seekers receiving support. The number of asylum seekers working illegally is likely to be far higher in reality, and it is absolutely right that we deal with those cases, but these regulations alone will not create a meaningful deterrent for people who plan to come here illegally to seek asylum. Government Ministers say that they are developing a policy to address the problem, yet the indications so far suggest that we can expect to see tweaks at the edges of the system; what we need, and what the British people deserve, is a total overhaul. That would include preventing illegal migrants from ever seeking asylum in this country—a position legislated for by the previous Government but repealed by the current one. It would include being willing to remove people who come here illegally and return them to their home country or a safe third country—a position impossible under the current system, which the Government have committed to maintaining. We cannot seriously hope to remove people who come here illegally while remaining a signatory of the European convention on human rights and while the broken immigration tribunal system still has the final say on who can stay in our country. Yet the Government have committed to maintaining both. The changes I have mentioned would create a real deterrent for people who might otherwise be tempted to break into our country and abuse our good will. The measures before us today are positive, but they will not address the broader problem. The Government should focus first and foremost on the greater steps that we can take to secure our borders and end this problem for good.

• 22 Apr 2026 · Draft Asylum Seekers (Reception Conditions) (Amendment) Regulations 2026 Draft Immigration and Asylum (Provision of Accommodation to Failed Asylum-Seekers) (Amendment) Regulations 2026 · Hansard source

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  Could the Minister give us a quantitative way in which we can judge whether that has been a success, so that we can decide whether further steps need to be taken? How many people coming here illegally would he be able to tolerate—would enable him to decide that actually that is okay?

• 21 Apr 2026 · Peter Mandelson: Government Appointment · Hansard source

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  Yesterday, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and I both asked the Prime Minister whether he knew about Peter Mandelson’s role as a director at Sistema when he appointed him to be the ambassador to the United States. Given that the Prime Minister did not answer our question then, I will repeat the facts of the case and ask the Minister for clarification. From 2013 until at least 2017, Peter Mandelson served as a director for Sistema, a Russian conglomerate that invests heavily in Russia’s military industrial complex. This means that Mandelson remained a director at Sistema after Russia’s annexation of Crimea. It also means that he would have maintained close contacts with figures linked to the Russian Government, including Sistema’s former chairman Vladimir Yevtushenkov, who is currently subject to sanctions as a result of his links to Vladimir Putin. Any sensible Prime Minister would want to consider the facts carefully before appointing somebody to a sensitive diplomatic post and would give proper consideration to whether those relationships would leave that person exposed to Russian influence. This is particularly true in the case of Peter Mandelson, who has a long history of improper financial conduct. In November 2024, the Cabinet Secretary advised the Prime Minister to conduct security vetting on prospective candidates before appointing anybody to the ambassador’s post in Washington. In December 2024, the Prime Minister ignored that guidance and appointed Peter Mandelson anyway. In January 2025, the Prime Minister repeatedly insisted before the press and the public that Peter Mandelson had passed security vetting, despite the fact that that was not the case. When asked yesterday, he twice refused to confirm that he knew about Peter Mandelson’s links to Sistema, despite the fact that the advice that he received in December 2024 explicitly pointed it out. The advice included the following quote: “Mandelson served as a non-executive director of the Russian conglomerate Sistema, which is itself the majority shareholder of RTI, a defence technology company…Mandelson remained on the board until June 2017, long after Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.” Either the Prime Minister is still reluctant to share with us all the information that we deserve, or he did not read the advice he was given—despite insisting repeatedly that his decision to appoint Mandelson was based on that advice. In light of this, can the Minister tell us definitively this afternoon whether the Prime Minister considered these facts about Peter Mandelson’s role at Sistema when appointing him—yes or no? If he did not, why did he not read his brief? If he did, why did he not consider it sufficiently concerning to abandon, or at the very least pause to reconsider, the appointment of Peter Mandelson to arguably our most important and security-sensitive ambassadorial role? The Prime Minister has spoken extensively about what he did not know, but we and the British public are incredulous that he did not ask. We know that the Prime Minister knew about the Russian links, so what questions did he ask about those facts? What questions did he ask officials? What questions did he ask Mandelson, or did he simply not want to know?

• 20 Apr 2026 · Security Vetting · Hansard source

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  My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition asked this question, but I do not believe that she received a response. Was the Prime Minister aware that Peter Mandelson was a director of Sistema before he was appointed?

• 15 Apr 2026 · Pension Schemes Bill · Hansard source

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  As my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately)—my constituency neighbour—has repeatedly and effectively highlighted, the mandation power in this Bill is a shocking power grab. She is also right to say that, regardless of the apparent guardrails that the Government have now introduced, it is still totally indefensible. Those in the other place are absolutely right to return the Bill to us to reconsider, and it is in support of Lords amendment 15 that I will speak today. The power to direct investments is not just flawed in its implementation; it is wrong in principle. When people put aside money for their retirement and entrust it to a company to manage, they very reasonably expect their savings to be invested by whatever company they have chosen, and in line with whatever instructions they have given about their preferences and risk tolerance. Shockingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, this Government do not agree. Instead, they think that Government Ministers should have the power to direct pension investments. They want to give themselves the right to direct private pension providers to make decisions that are not in the best interests of their clients. If Ministers think that people’s money should be invested in British assets, even if doing so will leave them with less money in their retirement, this Bill will give them the right to force private companies to invest accordingly. You can work hard for a lifetime and save a little at the end of every month, but at the stroke of a pen, Ministers will be able to decide where that money goes, even if that means that you will end up with less. The Government are right to identify that British assets are not always the most attractive investments, but the solution is not to force people to invest in them anyway; it is to make the British economy a better place to operate and grow, to allow people to take risks and to allow businesses to do what they are good at, so that people choose of their own free will to invest here. The money that people earn belongs to them, and it is theirs to do with as they wish. It is not simply a tool that this Government or any Government can use to achieve their ideological aims, and that should be true of every pound that people earn. It is a complete farce to suggest that, by limiting the extent to which Ministers can mandate how people’s money is invested, the Government have addressed concerns about this mandation power. These so-called guardrails will be cold comfort to people across the country who are worried about whether they will have enough money to retire comfortably, and who are worried that their efforts will be frustrated by Ministers pursuing ideological aims. I hope that Members across the House will reject this power grab altogether. It cannot be right to punish those who work hard and save what they can.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T9. The changes that the Government made in January to prioritise British graduates for NHS training places were very welcome indeed, but the current system of random allocation demoralises and disincentivises our brightest graduates, and it causes profound uncertainty for people at the start of their career. Will the Secretary of State consider changing the process, so that those places are instead allocated on merit?

• 18 Mar 2026 · Fuel Duty · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is giving an excellent speech as usual. Is she aware of analysis from the Taxpayers’ Alliance that says the average household will pay £40,000 in fuel duty over a lifetime under the Chancellor’s plans? That is several thousand pounds more than the median disposable income for a household. Does she feel, as I do, that this is an unsustainable burden on people who are already struggling to get by?

• 17 Mar 2026 · Rural Roads · Hansard source

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  It is always a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Shropshire (Stuart Anderson) for securing the debate. The condition of rural roads is an ever-present issue for those of us who represent rural constituencies. In the Weald of Kent, where we have mile after mile of country lane used by massive lorries that have crossed the channel and are hoping to avoid traffic on the main routes, the situation is especially dire. I visited the Falkland Islands on a parliamentary trip last year, where many of the roads have not even been fully laid. When I explained to the officer driving the car where I lived, he said, “Ah! I know your constituency. It’s the only place in the world I’ve been where the roads are worse than here.” I sent a survey to every household in the Weald of Kent last year. Of the 1,500 responses I received, street works were mentioned more than 500 times. I do not have time today to talk about all the challenges that they pose, but the Transport Committee, of which I and the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover) are both members, published a report on that last year. I would love to hear an update from the Minister on the Government’s response to that report.

• 17 Mar 2026 · Transparency in Court Proceedings · Hansard source

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  In February, the Government ordered Courtsdesk to delete the largest archive of court records in the country—an essential tool for transparency in the justice system. The Government changed their minds about that, which was incredibly welcome, but we do not yet have a clear sense of what they intend to do with that archive or how they intend to move forward. Could the Minister assure us today that Courtsdesk will not be compelled to delete its archive in the future and confirm whether it will be allowed to continue operating its services?

• 12 Mar 2026 · Defending Democracy Taskforce · Hansard source

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  There is much to welcome in the Security Minister’s statement. I thank him for advance sight of it and, more broadly, for his update on the work of the defending democracy taskforce, and I join him in remembering our colleagues who lost their lives in service of the public. As the Minister rightly notes, all of us in this place have a sacred duty to protect and uphold the democracy that has made this country so great for so long. Mr Speaker, I know that few understand that as well as those in the Speaker’s Office, yourself and all three Madam Deputy Speakers, so let me take this opportunity to thank them on behalf of all Members here for everything that they do in public and in private to keep us all safe. Targeted and serious intimidation of democratically elected politicians, particularly where that intimidation escalates into credible physical threats, is a serious impediment to the functioning of our democracy. It is of course right that criminal behaviour is prosecuted and punished. At the same time, we have a duty to ensure that the policing of genuinely criminal behaviour does not stray into the policing of free speech or free expression. In individual cases, that can be a challenging balance to strike, and I trust that the Minister will approach those cases with the appropriate caution and sensitivity. While many aspects of the Minister’s statement are encouraging, I am concerned that other members of this Government have failed to approach this issue with the necessary caution or candour. We must be honest about the fact that, while violence against elected politicians can come from a wide variety of groups, the single biggest extremist threat to our country remains the threat of extremist Islamist violence. That threat is intimately tied up with a growing tendency towards sectarian politics in some parts of our country. As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said recently, separatism is on the rise in our country, because “for too long, Britain has been complacent about our culture and too tolerant of those weaponising identity politics for their own gain”. Yet, in their cohesion strategy published earlier this week, the Government seemed unwilling to deal with the threat head-on. The strategy openly acknowledged the existence of “communities in the UK living segregated or parallel lives”, but rather than dealing with that problem directly, the Government have proposed a package that may only make this problem worse: more diversity, equity and inclusion in the public sector and an attempt to smuggle in so-called social engineering under the guise of social cohesion; advisory boards designed to manage tensions, when it was exactly that focus on managing community tensions that allowed rape and grooming gangs to operate unchecked for so long in towns and cities across our country; and a new, rebranded Islamophobia definition to be issued as guidance to public servants, which will have a chilling effect on their behaviour. The strategy will make it harder to have open, public discussions about subjects like female genital mutilation, grooming and rape gangs, and extremism, including any threats that it may pose to our democracy. We have already seen that creating conditions in which people fear being branded as racist for keeping the public safe can create horrific outcomes. We must never again allow guidance like this to create a culture of fear, which breeds inaction, cover-up and denial. The cohesion strategy is a recipe for further suppression of discussion of the threats that face us today and their root causes. We will not make the truth disappear by discouraging people from talking about it. That has never worked, and it will not work now. Again, I thank the Minister for his statement and for his work on tackling criminality towards elected officials. Can he assure us that his colleagues in Government are as committed to dealing with this problem at its root as he seems to be?

• 11 Mar 2026 · Finance (No. 2) Bill · Hansard source

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  Since the Government announced their tax raid on family farms, they have made numerous false claims about the policy and what it will mean for farmers. Raising the threshold, as the Government propose today, does not fix the fundamental wrongs at the heart of this awful policy. I will speak in favour of amendment 6, tabled in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild), which would remove those problems altogether by doing away with this pernicious tax. What are the claims? The Government have claimed that farmers are rich and so can afford to bear the cost of tax increases. To the surprise of nobody who actually works on a farm, that myth is born of a fundamental misunderstanding of how agriculture works. A farm is not simply another asset like a share portfolio where we can sell a little today and buy a little tomorrow. The assets of a farm—primarily its land, its crops or livestock, and its equipment—are huge long-term investments, completely inseparable from the ability to produce whatever it makes. There is often little relationship between the value of the land held by a farmer and the profitability of that farm. That is particularly true at a time when, to sell their produce at all, farmers must abide by a seemingly endless list of regulations, all of which drive up costs and reduce profit margins. Farmers tolerate a rock-bottom level of return on investment that most businesses would never consider.