Kevin Bonavia MP: speeches

Speeches

• 23 Jun 2026 · Fly-tipping: Residential Areas · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure, as always, to see you in the Chair, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) for securing the debate, because fly-tipping affects every community in this country. Stevenage was the country’s first post-war new town, which is great, because our forefathers and mothers planned a great new town, but there are many green spaces and woods between residential developments. I also have four villages in my constituency—Knebworth, Codicote, Datchworth and Aston—and each has similar issues to the town of Stevenage. Most of us are rightly proud of our communities, but a few people, who are not necessarily from our communities, wreck all that. Many of us go out week in, week out to clean up our streets. We have our Stevenage Wombles; just like Wombles across the country, they do sterling work, and I have joined them in the old town. Stevenage Labour party also has its own action team, which goes out once a month. We do our bit, and we go into the woods and clear them out, but do you know what? It is sometimes an impossible task. You try moving a fridge with just a few volunteers; it is just not possible. We have also found suitcases with things in them that I cannot possibly mention here. All of that is just not acceptable. People are reporting fly-tipping incidents. Just yesterday, on one of our Stevenage Facebook groups, a diligent citizen spotted an address on a TV licence letter and reported it straightaway. I know that our council will take firm and effective action, but it is dealing with 3,000 reported fly-tipping incidents a year and spending more than £1.6 million. Some Members have talked about funding. Yes, it is important, and we are fortunate in Stevenage that this Labour Government have increased our funding by 9% in the last year. That is great, but the extra funding needs to be matched with powers, so I am also grateful to the Government for their waste crime action plan. We have heard about some of the measures, which I fully support, including clean-up squads and taking away driving licences. However, how will the Government monitor these things, because they will vary across the country? What potential measures does the Minister have in mind to go further? My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes set out some interesting ideas today, which we should follow up. It cannot just be for councils to tackle this; we need private landlords to take action, we need to crack down on the gangs and we need to get the police involved. There is a lot more that we need to do For now, however, it is right that all of us in this place should place on record our thanks to all those in our communities who will not let their streets and green spaces be blighted by this scourge. I am glad that action has been taken, and I can only call for more.

• 1 Jun 2026 · Child Sexual Offender Data · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member is making a very clear and reasoned argument. Does he agree that everyone here cares deeply about this horrific crime, and that we should be thinking about how we can approach this together rather than attacking people over their party political positions?

• 18 May 2026 · Youth Justice · Hansard source

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  I recently hosted a screening of a short film called “The Orphan”, a dramatisation of a boy being caught up in county lines activity. It was directed by Leo Powell and supported by Stevenage borough council and across our local schools. I welcome the White Paper, particularly the new offence of child criminal exploitation and other early intervention measures, including the Turnaround programme. Will the Secretary of State say more about how that programme can help to tackle the disgrace of county lines?

• 13 May 2026 · Debate on the Address · Hansard source

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  I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Bradford West (Naz Shah) and for Harlow (Chris Vince). The hon. Member for Bradford West gave us a personal tale of strength through adversity, which should remind us why, as she said, this is the greatest country to live in. She spoke as a true patriot, and about a patriotism that is there for all of us if we choose to use it. We often have rivalries in the Chamber: my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow is a proud advocate for his new town of Harlow, and I am a proud advocate for the first new town in the UK, Stevenage. He has done so much for Harlow, including running for a good cause in Harlow. This Saturday I will join a resident of Stevenage, Luke Weynberg, who is running an ultramarathon, which is even further than a marathon, around Fairlands Valley Park in Stevenage. When I say I will join him, I mean for the park run bit. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow, each of us in this Chamber, for all our political differences, is proud of the constituents we serve. When we come together in this place for big moments, as we have done today, we should think about the country as a whole, not about what divides it. I congratulate His Majesty the King. As has been said in this Chamber, he has recently given speeches of great depth, humour and wit, and I thank him for it. His speech to us today, as is normal for speeches in these buildings, was very serious. It was a serious speech for serious times. I recall his opening words: “An increasingly dangerous and volatile world threatens the United Kingdom… Every element of the nation’s energy, defence and economic security will be tested.” How true that is. It demands more than warm words in response: it demands strength, and it demands a Government who act. The world has changed—it is harder, less stable and less predictable—so we cannot treat security as something distant or optional. This Government are committed to investing in our nation’s security and, indeed, in the security of each of us in our own life. It was a Labour Government, from 1945 onwards, who recognised the threats that our country faced following a devastating war and with an uncertain future. Among their many responses, they built new towns, such as Stevenage, to deal with the housing crisis—a crisis we face again today. Our new towns provided jobs, security and hope for the future. Some of those jobs, both in those days and to this day, have been in the critical defence sector that this country and the rest of the civilised world need. Security is what we need today, but it cannot just be a slogan; it must be a plan that runs through everything we do. I am pleased that this Government are bringing forward the Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill, because the systems that we rely on every day are now targets. Data centres, communications networks, the digital backbone of our economy—if any one of those things fails, everything else will follow. That is why we are also acting where security starts in the real economy. When British Steel was pushed to the brink last year, this Government stepped in and saved it. We protected jobs and we protected capability. We acted because the industrial base is not optional in a more dangerous world. We cannot defend a country that cannot build. As the Prime Minister said earlier today, we need sovereign capability for that. Steel, engineering and precision manufacturing all feed directly into the defence supply chain. In Stevenage, that chain ends with highly skilled workers building and upgrading some of the most advanced systems in the world. At MBDA, workers are retrofitting Storm Shadow missiles—systems that are in use right now, protecting Ukraine’s civilians as they sleep. That is what industrial policy and national security look like when they are joined up: British steel, British engineering and British workers delivering real deterrence. Security means ensuring that we are ready. The Armed Forces Bill will give us new powers to mobilise reservists and former personnel when the country needs them, because deterrence works only if it is credible. Credibility does not come from words alone; it comes from capability. It comes from the knowledge that this country can act, scale up and sustain itself in a crisis. We can see that credibility not only in what we deploy, but in what we build at home. In Stevenage, alongside the missile defence systems, we can see the next generation of secure military communications being developed at Airbus, connecting our forces and our allies securely in real time. Security must also start at home, in the domestic field. A national security Bill will criminalise the glorification or normalisation of serious violence, because when violence is excused or made acceptable, that creates the conditions for more of it. We saw the consequences of that in Southport, and we cannot allow it to take root in our society. The same applies across all our streets, where policing must keep pace with modern threats. In Stevenage, we have seen what proactive policing looks like. Under Project Vigilant, trained officers are out in our town centre identifying predatory behaviour before it escalates, intervening early to prevent harm and to protect women and girls. We are acting on organised crime, too. A recent operation targeting county lines gangs operating in Stevenage led to 19 arrests, with weapons seized and more than £27,000 taken off our streets. That is the reality of the threat. If people do not feel safe where they live, national security means nothing. The police reform Bill will build on that approach, giving our officers the tools they need to do their job, strengthening forces and creating a national capability to go after the most serious criminals. Security also means being honest about the threats that we face from hostile actors. The tackling state threats Bill will give us the power to act directly against state-linked organisations that operate against our interests. It will mean that this Government can and will proscribe the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as the terrorist organisation that it is. When organisations use violence, intimidation and terror, whether or not they are backed by a state, there can be no grey areas. Proscription is not optional; it is essential. The threats that we face today are not always conventional. They are covert, they are persistent and they are designed to exploit any weakness. That includes our digital infrastructure, which is why the Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill is so vital. Security is not only about stopping threats; it is also about building strength. In Stevenage we can see that strength in our life sciences sector. At the Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst, the UK-based CAR T-cell therapy company Autolus is developing advanced programmed T-cell therapies and is at the forefront of a revolution in cancer treatment. That is British innovation at its best: highly skilled jobs, world-leading science and life-changing outcomes for patients. A country that leads in science, in manufacturing and in innovation is a country that is more secure, more resilient and better prepared for the shocks that we know are coming. Those shocks are real. War has returned to Europe. Ukraine has shown us that peace cannot be taken for granted. The middle east has shown how quickly instability spreads, from conflict abroad to pressure on energy markets and prices at home. Some of the most serious threats are the ones that people never see: cables beneath our seas, networks under constant pressure and hostile states probing for weaknesses every single day. We have already seen that in action. Just weeks ago, Russian submarines were detected operating over critical undersea infrastructure in waters around the United Kingdom and our allies. Let us be clear about what that means. These are the lifelines of our country. The vast majority of our data flows through those cables. Our energy supplies depend on them; our economy depends on them. This was a deliberate act by the Russian state to test our defences, and we must call it out for what it is: it is unacceptable, it is hostile and it will not be tolerated. Our armed forces tracked those submarines, exposed their operation and forced them to withdraw. The message to the tyrant Putin was clear: “We know what you are doing, and any attempt to damage our infrastructure will have serious consequences.” In the modern world, there is no warning sound and there is no clear beginning. The attack comes quietly, and if we are not ready, we will feel the consequences before we even see the cause. Let us be clear that security is not in one policy or Department; it is and must be a national mission. It runs through defence, policing, industry, science and the strength of our communities. It is about whether people feel safe on our streets, secure in their jobs and confident in their future. That is the first duty of Government. When we take it seriously, act and build the strength that we need, places like Stevenage show exactly what that looks like in practice. We will not just endure in a more dangerous world; we will lead Britain through it safely and securely.

• 15 Apr 2026 · Police Federation · Hansard source

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  I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s experience and advocacy of police officers throughout the country. In my constituency, local officers from the federation have been supporting police officers. This debate is not about them, but how can we support them by giving them more choice?

• 2 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill · Hansard source

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  Does the shadow Minister not accept that the crime of impersonation is vanishingly small in this country, so what problem is he actually trying to fix? [Interruption.]

• 2 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill · Hansard source

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  We have just heard the Conservative definitions of a child and an adult, but according to the law in this country, there is no single definition. The age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales is 10, the driving age in this country is 17, and the voting age has gone down over the decades. Surely we should be thinking about what it means to be able to vote. By bringing the voting age down to 16, we are bringing that to people who have the capacity to vote and who actually will vote. There is also evidence out there that 16-year-olds voting in Scotland are more likely to carry on voting. Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that that will be of benefit to our country—to the United Kingdom as a whole?

• 18 Dec 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls Strategy · Hansard source

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  May I add my personal tribute to the Minister? This work is a huge achievement for her, but not just for her; she is doing it on behalf of all women and girls in this country. She said that all of us across the country have a role to play, as individuals or organisations. She will recall that in Stevenage we have an amazing charity called Survivors Against Domestic Abuse. One of the challenges it faces is that many victims keep going back again and again, because the justice system is not strong enough for them. I am sure that SADA will welcome domestic abuse protection orders. Will she explain to SADA and other organisations how this Government will help them to provide support to women and girls who need it?

• 4 Nov 2025 · Supporting High Streets · Hansard source

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  This motion is a masterclass in political gaslighting. It claims to support high streets, but proposes slashing public investment, scrapping workers’ rights and deregulating the very protections that keep our communities safe. It is not really a motion; it is a demolition notice for our high streets and our town centres. Neglect, not regulation, is the real threat to our high streets. Under the previous Tory Government, shoplifting rose by 71%, street theft increased by 59%, and violence against shop workers hit 2,000 incidents per day. This is the legacy of the Conservative party—a record of abandonment and inaction. The Conservatives let crime spiral and neighbourhood policing collapse. This Labour Government are reversing that damage. Through the safer streets summer initiative, more than 500 towns, including my town of Stevenage, are seeing a surge in visible policing, targeted enforcement against shoplifting and antisocial behaviour, and bespoke local action plans to tackle violence against shop workers. This is not a short-term stunt; it is the first wave of Labour’s neighbourhood policing guarantee, backed by a £200 million investment this year alone. This Government will deliver 13,000 new officers and police community support officers by the end of this Parliament and £5 million for our pride in place programme, giving communities the power to reclaim boarded-up shops, save derelict pubs and block unwanted gambling and vape outlets. This means boots on the ground—not empty promises—restoring safety and confidence to our high streets. This motion offers slogans about energy bills, but it is Labour that offers systemic reform. We are reforming the energy market to make it fairer and more transparent for businesses and accelerating clean, home-grown energy to reduce long-term costs and dependence on volatile fossil fuel markets. We are not capping chaos; we are ending it. The Opposition attack the Employment Rights Bill—a Bill that bans the fire and rehire practices that caused the exploitation of so many workers under the previous Government, introduces bereavement leave for grieving parents after pregnancy loss, ends non-disclosure agreements that silence victims of harassment and discrimination, and lifts standards for thousands of my constituents in insecure work. The Opposition call it red tape; I call it basic decency. The Bill will reward decent employers by punishing the bad behaviour of others. In their motion, the Opposition talk about protecting post offices, pubs and pharmacies, which we all want to do. But how dare they? How dare they preach about protecting post offices? The Conservative candidate in a by-election in the Roebuck ward of Stevenage sent out leaflets to my constituents falsely insinuating that the local post office was closing—this was scaremongering. I checked with the post office, and there was no threat of closure. It was part of a national campaign by the Conservatives, telling people, “Your local post office is being closed,” with no evidence behind it. It is merely a cynical attempt to mislead voters.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Neighbourhood Policing · Hansard source

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  I commend the Government for their commitment to neighbourhood policing, not least the proposed powers in the Crime and Policing Bill that will empower officers to stop antisocial and illegal e-scooter riding, which has been a dangerous blight across Stevenage town centre. However, does my right hon. Friend not agree that we should be giving police the legislation and guidance they need to keep our local neighbourhoods safe, rather than arresting individuals for posting on social media views that, while considered offensive by some, are nowhere near the bar for inciting criminal behaviour?

• 15 Sept 2025 · Neighbourhood Policing · Hansard source

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  18. What recent progress her Department has made on improving neighbourhood policing.

• 21 Jul 2025 · Asylum Hotels: Migrant Criminal Activity · Hansard source

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  We have heard Conservative and Reform MPs decry legislation that they say is stopping the problem being fixed. They talk the talk, but they do not actually vote for legislation. The shadow Home Secretary, with an angry face, was going on about what is happening in hotels, but it was his Government’s policy that set up hotels as hostels for asylum seekers. This Government have said that they will end the policy. Can the Minister set out the Government’s sensible approach—not gimmicks—to end the use of hotels as hostels?

• 14 Jul 2025 · Leasehold Reform · Hansard source

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  My constituent Ed, a leaseholder in Monument Court, Stevenage, has been trapped for years in an unsellable flat after the building failed its EWS1 assessment because Higgins Homes had not followed its own architectural plans. He has faced uncapped and unregulated service charges and utility billing, and the threat of disconnection, while seeing the saleable value of his property decrease by more than £70,000. Will the Secretary of State consider introducing a statutory route through which people like Ed can pursue legal action against a developer without bearing the full cost burden?