Laurence Turner MP: speeches

Speeches

• 10 Jun 2026 · Railways Bill · Hansard source

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  I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker, for being able to speak so early in this debate. I wish to focus on Government amendment 92, amendment 166 on devolution, which stands in my name, and the Transport Committee amendments on disability access. At the outset, I thank the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), for her leadership on this issue. Public ownership as a means to the end of improving passenger services has always implicitly been at the heart of this Bill, and Government amendment 92 makes that intent explicit. I warmly welcome its presence on the amendment paper. I hope the House will forgive a few words on the origins of this amendment. As the Minister said, a drafting issue was identified. In essence, although the requirement for public ownership was contained in other legislation, it was contingent on the circumstances of transition and on definitions set out in secondary legislation. I am sure that Members across the House will agree that, whatever their views on the merits of particular ownership models, such an important decision as public ownership or privatisation of the railways should be taken only by the majority consent of the whole House, and that is exactly what the amendment will achieve, safeguarding Great British Railways from the spectre of privatisation through the back door. I thank the Minister, the Minister of State the noble Lord Hendy and the Bill team for their constructive engagement on this issue. I am optimistic about the Bill’s devolution provisions and I hope that under them Birmingham and the west midlands can enjoy some of the improvements that passengers in London and Liverpool already benefit from. Great things were done in the past through the old section 20 agreements under the Transport Act 1968, not least the creation of the cross-city line which runs through my constituency, but such agreements proved impossible under the fragmented post-privatisation railway. I hope section 5 proves to be a worthy successor to Barbara Castle’s section 20. In the west midlands, we have a particular issue. We have a well-established devolved body, the West Midlands Railway Executive, which covers counties beyond the combined authority’s boundaries, such as Worcestershire, Warwickshire and Staffordshire. Clause 5, as it stands, specifies that devolution agreements will cover services in the area of a combined authority. It is important that such devolution agreements reflect the natural railway geographies of those areas, so I hope that reassurance can be given from the Government Front Bench. Several amendments would take forward the Select Committee’s recommendations on disability access. We can judge our transport services on the ability of all passengers to use them and the Bill contains some welcome provisions. Clause 18 states that GBR must “in particular” advance the interests of disabled people. I believe this is the first time any such commitment requirement has been set out in railway legislation. GBR will be subject to the public sector equality duty, but new clause 39 would ensure that when the passengers’ council is constituted disabled people are represented on that body in accordance with the old commitment, “Nothing about us without us”. I hope Ministers will look carefully at that issue. We heard from the Opposition Front Bench and the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover), that they wished to advance a passenger growth target. The hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage will know that that was the subject of some constructive disagreement on the Select Committee. Freight has historically been the poor relation on the railway network, in particular when it comes to pathing agreements. I fear that if a passenger growth target was in the Bill on the same basis and weight as the freight growth target, the advantages for the freight growth target in those decisions would be lost. That is an argument we heard in the Public Bill Committee’s evidence sessions from the Rail Freight Group.

• 10 Jun 2026 · Railways Bill · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend will have heard representations for ensuring that, under clause 5, devolution agreements must not be unduly limited, either by the Bill or its implementation. Is he able to offer any reassurances to Transport for West Midlands and other bodies that they will continue to be part of the conversation about how the Bill is implemented?

• 3 Jun 2026 · General Strike Centenary Commemorations · Hansard source

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  That was an important intervention, and it is absolutely right that we remember the role of the Red Clydesiders and the members of the Independent Labour party, among whom Jimmy Maxton was so prominent not just in responding to the strike but in shaping the course of Labour history. In Birmingham, production continued throughout the strike at such employers as Fort Dunlop and the BSA, despite a strong response from members of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union. At Cadbury, more than 1,000 workers walked out. Although the firm’s Liberal owners were relatively sympathetic to the strikers’ cause, differences in turnout within the workforce were apparent from the beginning. The position at the Austin Motor Company’s works in Longbridge in my constituency was instructive. Herbert Austin had been a Conservative Member of Parliament. He had lost the King’s Norton seat two years before, but the factory remained a bastion of what has been called “cloth-capped Chamberlainism”. The universities provided many middle-class volunteers, who tried their hand at skilled manual work—sometimes with comically inept consequences; sometimes resulting in tragedy—so the factory swelled the ranks of the strike’s opponents. It is likely that more workers did strike than the company claimed, but they were comfortably outnumbered by the 400 men who volunteered as special constables. The politicisation of policing and the justice system during the strike left broken heads and bitter memories in many areas. For every account of friendly relations, which were real enough—in many districts, the police and strikers took pride in the fact that no violence occurred during the strike; the most famous example is probably the football match between strikers and the constabulary at Plymouth where the strikers won 2-1—there were more cases of police overreach and the denial of freedom of speech. The chief legal weapon ranged against the strike was the set of regulations expedited under the Emergency Powers Act 1920, which were debated in Parliament only retrospectively. It is necessary to quote regulation 21 to bring home just how loosely some of those powers were worded. It was made an offence for a person to cause, or attempt to cause, “disaffection among any of His Majesty’s Forces, or among the members of any police force…or among the civilian population”. Further, it was made an offence to possess “any report or statement”, the publication of which would cause such disaffection. The term “disaffection” was never defined, however, and the police had the power to raid premises on the basis that they might contain such documents. Although those powers were affirmed by Parliament mid-way through the strike, they were established by an Order in Council—that is, under the royal prerogative—and were in force before Parliament had a meaningful chance to debate or scrutinise them. It is no wonder that the then Home Secretary, William Joynson-Hicks, could reflect that the powers practically “made the Government dictators”. Many strikers were brought before magistrates simply for making statements of political opinion. As Miliband—Ralph, that is—put it: “Large number of arrests were made…often on the flimsiest of pretexts, and sentences to short terms of imprisonment were freely handed down by magistrates little disposed to sympathy with those brought before them.” To give one example, in Cumbria, a lead miner and branch secretary of the National Union of General and Municipal Workers posted handbills that encouraged members to refrain from enlisting as special constables. He was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment with hard labour. The headquarters of the Daily Herald , the only Labour-supporting newspaper of the day, were raided on the basis that seditious literature might be discovered. The Government attempted to prevent the publication of the TUC’s improvised news sheet, the British Worker , by commandeering paper stocks. The nascent BBC preserved its technical independence, following consultation with Ministers, through the expedient of denying its platform to critical voices, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) noted. As John Reith put it in his diary: “They”— that is, Ministers— “want to be able to say that they did not commandeer us, but they know that they can trust us not to be really impartial.” In Birmingham, after the local strike bulletin contained an erroneous—but, it seems, innocently arrived at—report that the Government had suffered a defeat in this House, the union’s entire emergency committee in the city was arrested, and the printing presses held at the Birmingham Labour party’s offices on Corporation Street were seized. One Labour councillor, Percy Shurmer, was dismissed and blacklisted by the Post Office on account of a speech made during the general strike, although he was later elected to this place as the Member of Parliament for Birmingham Sparkbrook. I can do no better than quote Dr David Torrance, who somehow manages to combine writing histories of this decade with his role as a subject specialist on the constitution in the House of Commons Library. In his excellent recent book on the politics of the strike, he put it this way: “If anything, it was the…government rather than the TUC which came close to behaving ‘unconstitutionally’ during the general strike.” The strike’s end and the final rift between the Miners’ Federation and the rest of the general council has been covered elsewhere, and I cannot do it justice in the time available tonight. It is sufficient to say, I hope, that the trade unions, having lacked a theory for winning the strike, also lacked a plan for ending it. At some firms, the unions were able to secure a return to work on the same terms as prevailed before and without victimisation, but other employers took the opportunity to reduce wages and settle scores. Some strikers never worked in their chosen occupation again. The Economic League, a professional blacklisting organisation, found new reach and strength, often in collusion with public bodies. An even harder fate awaited the miners, as they struggled on during those hot and hungry summer months, until they too were eventually forced to concede. In the most hostile districts, principally south Wales and Nottinghamshire, their independent associations were all but broken by the so-called non-political miners’ industrial unions—better known as Spencerism—which owed their position to the coercive enforcement of the colliery companies and the quiet backing of a fund instituted by Baldwin. It left a legacy of division that I think is comparable with the aftermath of the 1984-85 strike, which has still not entirely faded. If the House will indulge me, I have in my pocket a token of the Nottinghamshire Miners’ Association. It was a small token that hung around the neck of miners, and it is stamped “1925”. They were never made again, because it was too dangerous for men to identify themselves as members of a free union. In the months that followed the general strike, the defeated issued pamphlets and the victors issued commemorative truncheons. If the trade unions conducted inadequate soul searching before the strike, they made up for it later, asking themselves many inward questions. By contrast, the Government perhaps asked themselves too few. At the time of the 80th anniversary, we could still meet women and men who stood in their youth on the picket lines. Now, the strike has all but passed out of the outermost limits of living memory. The collieries are gone, the Austin works are gone, and so is much of the world that they sustained. It has sometimes been argued that the general strike had little long-term effect on industrial relations or political life, as great as the consequences for some individuals may have been; that the response of the Government was surprisingly restrained; and that the conflict, in its own peculiar way, represented a very British form of moderation. I think this is a misreading. The severity of the blows dealt to many of the strike’s participants disqualifies the last claim, and the strike fundamentally altered politics and industrial relations, too. It drove the unions closer to the Labour party, and it seems to have hastened Labour support in some working-class areas. For the ageing leaders of the new unionism, the strike marked the end of an era. It might be said that the spirit of 1889, already dampened by the war, was finally extinguished in 1926, giving way to a paternalistic and deferential internal style that dominated union politics and shaped the post-war consensus, until that too broke on the rocks of the prices and incomes policy 50 years later. Let us look at the official response. The Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1927 imposed restrictions on the political levy, and consequently upon political funding, despite the issue being of no relevance to the strike. That was undone in 1946 and reimposed in 2016, but we repealed those provisions again in December. In that sense, we are still contesting the battle lines drawn up 100 years ago. I think the best way we can remember the general strike’s participants—and I make no apology for placing the emphasis on the nearly 3 million coalminers, transport workers, printers, dockers and more who answered the TUC’s call—is by carrying forward some lessons from their times to our own. It seems to me that the strike raises questions for us that are immediate and vibrant. What should the roles and limits of the police and the courts be in the settlement of industrial disputes? What obligation does the state owe to its dissenters’ liberties in times of civil contingencies? Do our laws provide sufficient protection from the potential abuses by the Executive of prerogative powers? Those questions must be asked and answered another day. Tonight, it is enough to answer the question put at the start of this debate. In Idris Davies’s words: “Ay, ay, we remember 1926… And we shall remember 1926 until our blood is dry.”

• 3 Jun 2026 · General Strike Centenary Commemorations · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend has displayed his customary ingenuity in mentioning Harlow. I believe that, as a new town, it did not exist at the time of the general strike—but I will come on to the points he made. Ranged against Ramsay MacDonald was, of course, Stanley Baldwin, a Conservative party leader who convinced many of his natural critics of his sincere desire to bring about industrial reconciliation, summed up by his famous declaration in this Chamber a year earlier: “Give peace in our time, O Lord.” —[ Official Report , 6 March 1925; Vol. 181, c. 841.] That apparently heartfelt plea masked a hidden ruthlessness, and an extraordinarily singular capacity for political calculation. In 1926 the Government made, not altogether comfortably, common cause with the coal owners who, taken together, could have been the archetypes of Baldwin’s famous description of “hard-faced men who look as if they had done very well out of the war.” The British coal owners, unlike their counterparts in America and Europe, mostly represented small concerns that had failed to adapt, amalgamate and modernise, and they would go unmourned when Parliament obviated their role 20 years later. Opponents of organised labour sometimes claimed that union leaders sought national confrontation, or that they wished to supplant the authority of Parliament with that of the TUC general council, but those wild words had foundation only in the imagination of their accusers. As Jonathan Schneer’s brilliant and evocative new history of the strike shows, they spent the weeks before the strike exhaustively, even desperately, trying to prevent the breakdown of talks and searching for some compromise, some new formula, and a negotiated path through. The way in which they convinced themselves that settlement was possible, as they masked their private doubts of the likelihood of victory and tried to balance what were probably irreconcilable internal and external forces—often in the small hours, and often in rooms not far from this Chamber—as the clock ran down, will feel familiar to many who have had the privilege and responsibility of trade union office. But such doubts cannot have been at the forefront of the minds of the great majority of the nearly 3 million men and women who answered the stoppage call on 3 May. They did so at great personal risk to their livelihoods and pensions. In that hot spring, many of them wore their war medals as a conscious rebuke to those who charged them with a lack of patriotism, and even with falling under the influence of a foreign power. It is easy to see why so many strikers thought that victory was imminent and assured. In Birmingham—then, as now, inland transport’s great, interlocking heart—it was said that neither bus, tram nor train moved on that first day. “Every man in every union involved is out,” the city’s trades council enthusiastically, if somewhat improbably, reported to the TUC. That claim, incidentally, committed the sin of omission, because many women joined the strike. At the Joseph Lucas factory they were led by Jessie Eden, an imaginative version of whom was immortalised as a character in “Peaky Blinders”. Some officials actually had to coax members who had not been called out to remain at their work, with mixed success. Most strikers could see neither the depth of their opponents’ preparation nor the lack of their unions’ own. In truth, most union leaders and the members of their executives expected the Government to resume negotiations swiftly, and extend the subsidy until the mining industry could be reorganised along the lines of the Sankey and Samuel commissions. They did not perceive, until it was too late, the Government’s hidden determination to force not settlement but surrender. While the TUC and the newly constituted local committees attempted to resolve profound logistical problems on the fly and to adapt sometimes confused central instructions to local circumstances, the well-resourced and carefully attuned Government machine sprang into action. In Birmingham—the city of a thousand trades, where general unionism and the centralising and organising tendencies that it represented had long struggled to prosper—the response to the strike was uneven from the start.

• 21 Jan 2026 · Waste Collection: Birmingham and the West Midlands · Hansard source

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  I am most grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving way; she is indeed being generous with her time. I listened to her comments about the former Mayor of the West Midlands with half a smile on my face; in my constituency I find that I have to chase up on endless promises made to my constituents about things that would be delivered—promises that were as real as fairy dust. However, that is a topic for another day. Does the right hon. Lady accept, and I say this as a former trade union official, that there are only ever two parties to a dispute? In this case, they are the union and the council. Those are the two parties who need to sort out this dispute. To suggest otherwise gives an impression to our constituents that is not accurate.

• 21 Jan 2026 · Waste Collection: Birmingham and the West Midlands · Hansard source

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  I am sorry to have missed the start of the right hon. Lady’s speech. I am listening carefully to what she says. I am curious to know whether she raised concerns about the cancellation of services in Birmingham in the days when the authority was suffering the sharpest cuts in funding of any metropolitan council, amounting to 40p in the pound for every Brummie.

• 20 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I must say, I think I must have been listening to a different set of evidence today than the shadow Minister, but there we are. I want to raise devolution, and specifically clause 5. There is a lot of history to the clause, and a line of continuity with the old section 20 of Barbara Castle’s Transport Act 1968. A lot of great things were accomplished under that legislation, including the creation of a cross-city line in Birmingham, but then privatisation came along. There was an attempt to do something similar under section 13 of the Railways Act 2005, which frankly did not work; there was never a single agreement signed. What lessons have been learned about what went right in the past and what went wrong with the 2005 legislation, when it comes to clause 5 of the Bill? Keir Mather: I suppose that, in the 2005 Act, section 13 was not only really narrow in scope, in that it covered only franchised services, but represented a significant watering down of relationships between the rail industry and passenger transport executives. The difference with clause 5 of the Bill is that it is significantly wider in scope, to ensure that partnerships under GBR cover the full rail offer, rather than focusing only on services. There is an important point around corporate structure. It is right that the corporate structure is not laid out in the Bill—no piece of rail legislation in 113 years has done that—but what has come out quite consistently in the testimony of the mayors, and in the broader points made around devolution, is that, whether it be on the MCA basis or on the local authority basis more generally, people want GBR’s structure to be flat, and responsive to dynamic changes both in demographics around housing and your ability to get to Everton stadium when the rugby league is on, which is of personal interest to me. I think the point is very well made, and it is certainly taken by me as the Minister, that democratic accountability means that the operational reality of GBR should be diffuse wherever possible. People do not want to see a replication of a centralised model of the past.

• 20 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Picking up on a point that was made by witnesses on our devolution panel, the geography of, say, West Midlands Rail Executive does not overlap entirely with the geography of the combined authority. Similarly, there might be a case for reaching a clause 5 agreement with more than one mayoral authority at the same time. Does the clause as drafted allow the flexibility to reach an agreement directly with, say, West Midlands Rail Executive, or a combined agreement with the East Midlands combined county authority covering the cross-country service? Keir Mather: I think we have been really clear, and the provisions in the Bill support this, that GBR needs to be organised locally so that it can work really collaboratively with local leaders, and it is through the business units that it has to devolve that responsibility to as close to decision-makers as possible. MCAs are the right level, in terms of being a catalyst for economic and housing growth, but you are right that the challenges around rail infrastructure and service provision, even though the solution to a lot of them may be set by MCAs, are inherently cross-border. I would expect GBR to be able to fulfil a role in facilitating the ironing out of those differences, for the good of everyone, on a cross-border basis.

• 20 Jan 2026 · Railways Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Good morning. I first have a couple of questions to Mr Larkinson, but if other witnesses wish to come in, please do so. Mr Larkinson, in the ORR’s last annual report and accounts, it stated, “we began engaging with infrastructure managers on how to reduce the administrative burdens we impose”— in the context of the Bill and rail reform. I do not mean to suggest that “burdens”, as expressed here, are always entirely one-sided, or that the ORR is doing anything other than working within the framework that has been established for it. Can you tell us a bit about what these “burdens” are, and what potential benefits might accrue from their removal? John Larkinson: That work comes from the Government’s overall review of regulators and the remit that they have given to all regulators to look very carefully at administrative burdens imposed on regulated companies. We are the regulator that that applies to. The target is to reduce the administrative burden by 25% by the end of this Parliament. We are working on that process as set out by the Government and have already put a whole section in our business plan about the work that we are going to do. On that basis, we have had conversations with the companies that we regulate, such as Network Rail, about areas where we might be imposing unnecessary administrative burden, which is something that is always good to come back and look at. Interestingly, we have had different responses from the different companies that we regulate, including, “We do not see any massive excess of administrative burden.” In the case of Network Rail, we have already identified some areas, such as the amount of data we require and the way that data is transferred around us—areas where things can be made faster and less resource intensive. So yes, we are getting on with it and reporting back. Indeed, I was at the regulators council with the Secretary of State for Business and Trade and the Chancellor reporting back about a week and a half ago.

• 14 Jan 2026 · Northern Powerhouse Rail · Hansard source

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  A little more than two years have passed since the last Prime Minister chaotically took the axe to HS2 north and east of Birmingham, and the mayor at the time, Andy Street, failed the test of leadership and failed to stand up for our region. There is an obvious link between the east-west connections the Secretary of State has been talking about, and the south to north connections along the west coast main line. Will she and her Ministers meet and engage with west midlands MPs about the capacity issue she has set out, and can we not lose sight of the importance of the west midlands to east midlands connection, which is as slow as the connections in the north?

• 10 Dec 2025 · Cammell Laird Workers’ Imprisonment: Public Inquiry · Hansard source

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  I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate and on again reading into the record the names of the 37. I hope I might put two sentiments of my own on the record. First, I pay tribute to the work of Eddie Marnell who, over many years as a member of GMB’s north-west and Irish region and central executive council, championed their cause outside this House and, through the union, inside it. I also pay tribute to the work of my former colleagues at GMB; I can attest to the many hours that have been spent in support of that cause, and I understand that the union is due to meet the campaign again in the new year.

• 12 Nov 2025 · Taxes · Hansard source

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  When Opposition Members talk about defenestration, I do listen—because of their greater expertise in these matters. And, of course, “What’s past is prologue”—the hon. Gentleman tempts me to get on to the Zinoviev letter, but that might be one for another day. However, I have actually made only one brief reference to the last Government’s record. We are scrutinising their motion and their proposals; this is an Opposition day debate, and that is a proper function of Parliament. The other part of the Opposition’s document that I want to comment on is their intention to axe 132,000 civil servants. Some of those people are my constituents—as has already been noted. Not only is this pledge a rehash of a “here today, gone tomorrow” promise once announced by Boris Johnson and never seen again, but it is unclear where exactly the Opposition see those job cuts falling. Is it the additional trade and customs officials hired since 2016? Is it the additional Department for Education staff hired as a result of academisation—effectively a transfer of functions from local government to central Government? Is it the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government staff hired as a result of the growth in statutory burdens on our local authorities? I think all our constituents who work in those roles deserve at least clarity on what the Opposition’s intentions are.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for proving my point exactly. I will happily tell him that since becoming a Member of this House, I have not received a penny in political donations from trade unions. My constituency Labour party received a donation before the election, but that is an entirely different matter. I have only one matter to draw attention to in my entry on the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, which is my chairship of the GMB parliamentary group, which is an unpaid role. We are asked today to consider a number of amendments that directly contradict our manifesto commitments. Lords amendments 61 and 72 on political funds are a case in point. In the other place, the noble Lord Burns gently questioned whether this was a manifesto issue, but the Make Work Pay document, which our manifesto said would be implemented in full, clearly said that the Trade Union Act 2016 would be repealed. That must include this provision. The amendments before us seek to preserve the punitive restrictions that were originally imposed as retribution in 1927 and repealed in 1946, after which we had 70 years during which arrangements worked effectively. The actual impact of these amendments, were they passed, would be the same as any arrangement that moves from opt-out to opt-in, which is a reduction in the ability of working people to speak with a collective voice. Let us not forget that trade union political funds do not exclusively fund donations to parties. Look at the campaigns that have been run and the cross-party support they have won, such as GMB and Unison’s “Protect the Protectors” and GMB’s campaigns on domestic defence manufacturing—two campaigns that the Conservatives came to support—as well as USDAW’s “Freedom from Fear”, and the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004, the result of Unite’s campaign in the aftermath of the Morecambe Bay disaster, in which so many cockle pickers tragically and disgracefully lost their lives. Even today, in this place, trade union funding helps to address the abuse that has occurred within the confines of the estate, and which there is a risk will continue in the future. Trade unions are democratic bodies. Any member of a trade union can demand to see the receipts of political expenditure, and decisions on party donations are taken on a collective basis. When that provision was originally repealed, the Attlee Government’s Attorney General of the day said—I think this bears repeating today—that the Conservatives relied on the “old delusion that the Labour party was being built upon the hard-earned pennies of honest Conservatives who were too timid to declare their true political colours and were being bullied by horrid, nasty trade unionists into supporting the political funds of a party to which they were so much opposed.” Anyone who has worked with trade union members will recognise that to be a delusion indeed, and we have heard much of that delusion from the Opposition through the passage of the Bill. I was going to make similar comments to those my hon. Friend the Member for Tipton and Wednesbury (Antonia Bance)—who is both honourable and a friend—made in respect of Lords amendment 62, but she covered it expertly. I will finish by talking about Lords amendment 121B on the school support staff negotiating body, which has not been discussed so far today. I recognise that this amendment is substantially different from other amendments that have been sent to us on this matter, but I still believe that it is unnecessary. First of all, the overwhelming majority of academy employers do subscribe to the National Joint Council terms and conditions for school support staff—terms and conditions which, as has been widely recognised for more than 20 years, are out of date in respect of school support staff. The effect of Lords amendment 121B would to be to create a two-tier arrangement between school support staff in local authority maintained schools and academies. It states that employers could introduce terms and conditions. I am concerned about the potential contradiction with the provisions in the Education (Schools) Act 1992, which that require such changes to be made on a collective and not a unilateral basis. Furthermore, it states that terms and conditions that could be changed should be “in aggregate” an improvement. That clearly leaves room for employers to introduce a weakening to some areas to the detriment of the 1,700 school support staff in my constituency. I am proud to have had an association with this Bill, and I look forward to rejecting those specific amendments tonight.

• 4 Nov 2025 · Supporting High Streets · Hansard source

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  I was initially surprised to see this motion on the Order Paper, given that it is essentially a resubmission of a motion previous submitted by the Opposition and rejected by the House in February, but I should not have been. After all, they do say that culprits often return to the scene of the offence, and when it comes to the current parlous state of many of our high streets, the Conservative party is especially culpable. But really we should be grateful: today’s debate has been an opportunity to talk about the high streets in many of our constituencies that were so badly let down under 14 years of Conservative administration. Northfield high street is home to some excellent and specialised vendors, but the street is tired in too many places, and problems relating to homelessness, addiction, shoplifting and other forms of crime stretch back many years. Three years ago, it looked as if the tide would turn, when great hopes—encouraged locally and nationally by the Conservatives—were raised over round 2 of the levelling-up fund. A bid was prepared for £11 million to regenerate the high street, but those hopes were cruelly dashed and not one penny of that funding was allocated to the city of Birmingham. Instead, much of that funding was redirected to leafier and more affluent parts of the country, as the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak) so memorably boasted. Our high streets are still dealing with the legacy of the hollowing out of West Midlands police in the 2010s, when the force lost 1,200 police officers and police community support officers. The local authority suffered the sharpest cuts to spending power of any unitary council over the past decade. Attempts were made to distract our constituents from the slow deterioration, with grand visions of schemes that were as solid as the wind. Five years ago, the then Conservative Mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street, published a transport map of the region as part of his election campaign. It detailed a prospective new metro line down Bristol road and through Northfield high street, but that metro extension was not mentioned again after the election and, as far as I can tell, no serious development work was ever done on the idea. I have had to spend too much time since last July chasing ghost trains, spectral station upgrades, and phantom tram lines, and that approach has continued today with the will-o’-the-wisp pledge to abolish rates completely. That will not convince a single business in any of our constituencies. That is why today’s motion is so risible: it is the political equivalent of returning once more to kick the cracked paving stones, the empty units, and the broken bus stops that the Conservative party left behind. I am glad that, under Labour, progress is now being made. Capital funding has been secured for infrastructure works on our transport network, which will mean more money in people’s pockets and greater footfall. Crucially, £20 million has been committed over 10 years to the Hawkesley estate through the pride in place funding. I am grateful to the Minister with responsibility for high streets, my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Peckham (Miatta Fahnbulleh), for promising to visit the constituency. When she does, we will talk with local businesses about credible policies that will assist their current position. These are real measures that will help businesses, not the fantasies of Conservative Members, who broke Britain but have come to the House today with not a hint of self-criticism, with no credibility and with no shame. I will finish with a few words about the Employment Rights Bill—I draw attention to my connection with the GMB trade union. It is welcome that the Liberal Democrat amendment to the Conservative motion seeks to strike out the words about the Employment Rights Bill. I hope that represents a change in approach, and that Liberal Democrat Members will not again line up with the Tories and Reform when the Bill returns to the Division Lobbies tomorrow night.

• 3 Nov 2025 · Defence Sector: Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  I draw attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests in respect of the GMB, a defence manufacturing trade union. Defence is an engine for growth, but skill shortages remain. What steps are being taken to increase the number of high-quality apprentices? If I may, Mr Speaker, can I also ask the Minister to join me in congratulating my constituent Andy De Comyn, whose design has just been chosen for the proposed national memorial to all members of the parliamentary community who have fallen in conflict?

• 20 Oct 2025 · Maccabi Tel Aviv FC: Away Fans Ban · Hansard source

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  The people charged with the protection of public safety carry a heavy burden, and not all the information that they consider has yet been laid out in the public domain. However, I have deep concerns about the principle of block-banning entire groups of opposition fans—some of whom, let us not forget, may be UK residents or nationals—and about some of the descriptions of Birmingham in parts of the press and other areas of our political life that are not a true account of our city. Does the Secretary of State agree that Birmingham overwhelmingly remains a diverse and welcoming place, and will she join me in commending the calm leadership that the council leader, John Cotton, has brought to bear by calling for a review?

• 15 Oct 2025 · Pride in Place · Hansard source

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  I warmly welcome the £20 million pride in place funding for the Hawkesley estate in my constituency. It stands in stark contrast to the hopes and expectations that were allowed to be built under the last Government for £11 million for Northfield’s high street in the second-round bid for the levelling-up fund, which were cruelly dashed when not one penny was allocated to the city of Birmingham. Does my hon. Friend agree that this will not be, and cannot be, some lengthy bureaucratic process? Of course our councils must be essential partners, but will she confirm that the priorities will be set in the communities themselves?

• 11 Sept 2025 · Regional Transport Inequality · Hansard source

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  Does the shadow Minister agree with his predecessor—the last Conservative Rail Minister, Huw Merriman—who said this: “Whilst it’s legitimate to debate the terms of the deal, the demonisation of train drivers and those onboard and at stations, who carry out a difficult and skilled job for the safety of passengers, is completely unfair. These people work hard and should be shown more respect.”?

• 11 Sept 2025 · Regional Transport Inequality · Hansard source

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  rose —

• 11 Sept 2025 · Regional Transport Inequality · Hansard source

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  I will do my best to speak at high speed, Madam Deputy Speaker. I want to say a few words about my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood): she was an outstanding Minister and the Department’s loss is the Whips Office’s gain. She will be much missed on the Transport Front Bench. I am grateful, too, to my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Catherine Atkinson) for securing this debate. She and I represent constituencies in the squeezed midlands—regions home to 10 million people that have historically been denied a fair share of funding and political attention. As has been noted already, the east midlands receives the lowest transport funding per head of any region, although the west midlands held that unhappy status until recently. The rail line between Birmingham and Nottingham is slower, mile for mile, than that between Manchester and Leeds. The west midlands has the lowest share of public transport journeys of any English region, followed by the east midlands. That fuels congestion, road safety problems and potholes. Birmingham’s roads are a special case. We have one of the last private finance initiative contracts in the country. When originally issued, local government austerity and the high inflation of the early 2020s were not foreseen. The previous Government tried to withdraw support for the PFI contract without a clear plan, which was ruled unlawful. I know that the new Minister will be looking at that closely, and I look forward to working with him to get a fair deal for Birmingham. Most public transport journeys are by bus and half the industry’s income now comes from public funding, yet public accountability lags behind. This summer, National Express announced major changes to the X20 and 61 routes. People in Allens Cross and parts of the New Frankley estate lost their direct connection to Birmingham, and some older residents no longer have direct bus access to the Queen Elizabeth hospital. I am grateful to the hundreds of people who signed petitions, including one that I organised. I have met National Express and Transport for West Midlands, and I hope that we can find a way forward. Significant investment has been announced for commuter rail. I have spoken frequently in this House about rebuilding Kings Norton station as part of a midlands rail hub. In the interest of time, I will only say how grateful I am that Ministers listened; I hope that we can make progress on restoring that service’s frequency. Finally, we must be ambitious. Birmingham Corporation Tramways once ran services to my constituency. The original 1984 vision for a revitalised metro included a loop serving Northfield, Longbridge, Frankley and Rubery. That vision was right, and I hope that we can find funding for a feasibility study for a south Birmingham extension. Regional transport inequality hinders economic growth and denies opportunities to my constituents. I am glad that the House has had the chance to debate this issue. I think this is my stop, so I will.

• 8 Sept 2025 · Indefinite Leave to Remain · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard. I echo the welcome that has already been extended to the Minister of State, Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North and Kimberley (Alex Norris), in his new post. I know that he will bring to this position the same qualities of diligence and collegiate working that characterised his approach at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Given the level of interest in today’s debate, I will speak only about and in support of the second petition that we are considering, which is on the Hong Kong BNO visa. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Ben Goldsborough) for the able way in which he has led this debate, and the Petitions Committee for making it possible. I also thank the 635 people in Birmingham Northfield who signed the petition, and the dozens of people who have made representations at constituency surgeries and in writing. I can do no better than to quote one of them: “Since settling in Birmingham, we have purchased our own home and integrated into the community. Two of us are working in the NHS. We made this move not out of convenience but out of necessity, fleeing the erosion of human rights in Hong Kong. Incidents such as the firing of pro-democracy campaigners, prosecution of journalists and the enactment of the article 23 law have only reinforced the difficult choice we made to leave.” Our Hongkonger constituents who are watching this debate should know that they are welcome here and are valued members of our communities. We should also recognise that Hong Kong is clearly a special case. The statement that I have just quoted is not only a commentary on the deep links of culture and history that bind us together, as important as those links are. The practical reality is that although we might wish that the Chinese Government’s tightening repression at home and abroad might lessen within the next 10 years, such hope is contradicted by all the available evidence. We need only look at the fate of the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions, the organising centre of independent labour, which was linked indelibly to the democracy movement. It was coerced into dissolving itself in 2021. Its leaders are now prosecuted and persecuted, including through abuse of the international arrest warrant system. They are people such as Christopher Siu-tat Mung. Some Members of this House will have heard him speak at the conferences of the TUC, the GMB and other UK labour organisations. He was forced into hiding here in the UK under the protection of the Home Office after a bounty was issued for his arrest. I have spoken to a number of my constituents who share the concern that they may themselves be targeted and subjected to surveillance. They deserve to have that fear lifted—the fear of return to Hong Kong or relocation to another country that may offer lesser levels of protection. There are other important issues that we could talk about today, such as the need for progress towards greater UK recognition of Hong Kong qualifications, but, on the substantive issue—the subject of the petition—the Government have said that they will set out their approach to particular visa routes over the coming months. While I do not necessarily expect the Minister to pre-empt that announcement today, I do ask that he acknowledges the strength of feeling shared by so many Members in this debate, that he makes sure that the arguments made today are given full attention by the Home Office, and that our constituents will be given that certainty as soon as possible.

• 3 Sept 2025 · Property Taxes · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member tempts me to get drawn into a discussion to which, in one minute and 30 seconds, I do not have enough time to do justice. Of course we need a bin service that is fit and decent—I have spoken about that many times in this House. What my constituents did not need were the sharpest cuts in resourcing of any unitary authority in the entire country, coupled with the sharpest increases in council tax, and those were signed off by Conservative Ministers. I have in front of me the impact assessment of the 10% council tax increase from January last year, which says: “The decision for Ministers across Government, as No. 10 and HMT clearance will be needed, is whether to grant these increases.” That is the legacy of the hon. Member’s party for my constituents: the highest spending cuts and the highest tax rises. The last thing they need is a return to the failed approach of the Conservatives, who deserve to be reminded of that every time they bring such a debate to this House.

• 2 Sept 2025 · English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill · Hansard source

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  For many years under the Tories, the west midlands was at the bottom of the league table for regional transport investment, but Mayor Richard Parker has secured £2.4 billion of investment to extend the metro. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the powers in the Bill will make it easier for combined authorities to deliver these kinds of projects in the future, including, I hope, further extensions of the metro to south Birmingham?

• 7 Jul 2025 · Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life · Hansard source

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  I strongly welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement. Under the Conservatives, 40 Sure Start children’s centres in Birmingham were shut down, including seven in my constituency, with devastating consequences for thousands of children who needed that support. I am so glad that Labour is taking action to turn the tide. Will she confirm that when funding allocations are made at local authority level, factors such as population size and child poverty rates, which are particularly important in an authority like Birmingham, will be taken into account?