Louie French MP: speeches

Speeches

• 10 Sept 2026 · Social Housing Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend will be aware that the Mayor of London has been in power for over 10 years, and that London’s housing starts have fallen through the floor. Over 300,000 Londoners are estimated to be on housing waiting lists, the majority of them in Labour boroughs. Does he find the rhetoric today somewhat confusing, given that even though the Government have cut Sadiq Khan’s affordable housing target by 22%, he continues to miss it?

• 3 Sept 2026 · Building Homes and Renewing Communities · Hansard source

  More

  The Secretary of State failed to recommit to the 1.5 million new homes pledge in Labour’s manifesto. She also failed to mention the almost £5 billion that was provided to the Mayor of London by the previous Conservative Government and the fact that this Labour Government have been forced to cut the mayor’s housing target, given his poor record of delivery here in London. One way that the Secretary of State can help improve London’s family housing crisis is by giving local councils more powers to stop bad HMOs. They are destroying family housing in communities across the capital, particularly in outer London. Will she commit to that today?

• 8 Jul 2026 · National Youth Strategy · Hansard source

  More

  As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I congratulate the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Harpreet Uppal) on securing this important debate. We all recognise that this issue is increasingly important to our constituents across the country. I spend a lot of time discussing it as both the local MP in Old Bexley and Sidcup and a shadow Minister. I have had the pleasure of having young people on work experience with me this week to keep me on my toes. It has been a busy week. In 2022, the previous Government allocated £560 million over three years to fund the national youth guarantee, ensuring that young people aged between 11 and 18 in England had access to regular clubs and activities, something to do after school, experiences away from home and opportunities to volunteer. As part of that, we allocated £300 million to youth facilities, improving and developing 300 of them. We established the National Citizen Service; this Government cancelled it, but more than 750,000 young people participated in it and it had a 93% satisfaction rate—something this Government could only dream of. As the Government well know, youth charities, like all employers, are subject to national insurance contributions, and the increase in contributions requires them to find additional funds. According to the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, these changes could cost the charity sector an additional £1.4 billion a year. For smaller charities with limited reserves and core funding, that will seem like an insurmountable challenge. As has been mentioned, this has led to a reduction in provision. Youth work has huge economic benefits. Research has shown that every £1 of Government investment in youth work has a social return on investment of between £3.20 and £6.40. Moreover, it saves around £500 million annually by preventing antisocial behaviour, knife crime and associated criminal justice costs. As a Government, we established the youth investment fund, which delivered £300 million over approximately three years. This Government scrapped it, and announced a new national youth strategy, which analysis shows cuts the funding by around £50 million each year over the life of the strategy. Yesterday, my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti) and I hosted a roundtable with those from the enrichment sector—it is great to see some of them in the audience today. The renewed national focus on enrichment is welcome and timely, but access to enrichment remains uneven, and Government funding cuts will only make that worse. We agree with those we heard from yesterday that the challenge is how we ensure that fantastic youth enrichment provision is accessible for as many young people as possible across the country. As others have said, enrichment is not an optional extra; it is a vital way in which young people learn fundamental life skills that often cannot be taught in traditional learning environments. I have seen some of the Duke of Edinburgh work in one of my local schools, with pupils putting up tents and camping. The Duke of Edinburgh’s award celebrates a milestone next week—70 years—and I am sure that many Members will be there to support that tradition.

• 7 Jul 2026 · Future of British Horseracing · Hansard source

  More

  As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris. I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and highlight that I have visited and met a number of trainers in my two years as shadow Minister, as well as with the APPG. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) on securing this important debate. No one can doubt the passion with which he speaks for British horseracing, racing more widely, and his constituents, who have raised concerns about the future of Kempton Park racecourse and the sport more broadly. Dare I say that he might have a future in commentary, given the opening of today’s debate? So watch out, Ruby Walsh! It was very impressive. Like my hon. Friend, I enjoyed the King George and seeing Harry Redknapp being the winning owner. In fact, I have enjoyed going to Kempton over the years. It means a great deal to a large number of people—not just the community immediately around the racecourse, but the wider London and south-east community, which sees Kempton Park as one of its home courses, alongside Lingfield, which is slightly closer to where I live in south-east London. I understand my hon. Friend’s concerns about the development proposals that might come forward and this Government’s weakening of green-belt protections, an issue that I have raised on several occasions as the shadow Sports Minister. We are talking today about the impact that this might have on British horseracing, but the concern is felt across all of British sport. In particular, part of the broader concern around the impact on planning protections is the future of Sport England. If we are going to continue to have great British sports, we must ensure that future and current generations have somewhere to go and watch sports, whether that is at the elite level, as we are talking about today, or the grassroots. I hope the Government listen carefully to that concern. It is not just a Department for Culture, Media and Sport issue, but a local government one. The concern is felt across this House and across a number of sports. More broadly, today’s debate is about the future of British horseracing as a whole. I enjoyed the contributions from a number of Members who I know care passionately about the sport and work very hard as part of the APPG. Horseracing is one of Britain’s greatest sporting success stories. It is woven into our national identity and remains one of our most successful global sporting exports. It is also of enormous economic importance, particularly to our rural economy. British horseracing contributes around £4.1 billion to the UK economy every year, supports more than 85,000 jobs and generates around £300 million annually in tax revenues for the Treasury. More than 500 training yards and 660 stud farms support rural communities across the country. More than 5 million racegoers attended Britain’s 59 racecourses last year, with attendances increasing by 5% year on year. The industry’s value extends far beyond those headlines, as we all know. It supports hotels, pubs, restaurants and countless small businesses across the country. It provides opportunities for people from every background, with institutions such as the National Horseracing College, which we have heard about, and the British Racing School. British breeding attracts significant international investment, and our welfare standards are rightly regarded as the best anywhere in the world. In fact, since 2000, British horseracing has invested £63 million into veterinary research, which has helped to reduce fatal injuries on the racecourse by around a third. Alongside a number of Members who have spoken, I have had the privilege of visiting some horseracing facilities across the country. As the shadow Minister with responsibility for sport and gambling, I recognise the unique relationship between horseracing and betting. Unlike almost any other sport, horseracing’s finances are fundamentally intertwined with a well-regulated betting industry. Media rights, sponsorship and the horserace betting levy contribute around £350 million every year to British horseracing. I smiled when listening to some Members argue that we should have tighter regulations on gambling but who then also complained about a reduction in funding for horseracing. For me, that position is classic—it is a certain party trying to look both ways. I do not think that most people in racing recognise that position, and we have to be honest about the trade-offs at play. We support evidence-led, proportionate regulation that protects the most vulnerable people while allowing the 22.5 million adults in Britain who bet each month to do so safely. Today, the Gambling Commission has announced that following a protracted pilot period, there will be a phased introduction of affordability checks over the course of an implementation period of an unspecified length. That has already caused huge concern. We had hoped that the Government and the Gambling Commission would reflect seriously on this issue, but unfortunately, that has not been the case. On a number of occasions, I have raised my concerns about the lack of Government oversight of the decision made by the arm’s length body, which was also raised by the hon. Member for Liverpool Walton (Dan Carden). It seems a complete dereliction of duty from the Government, and DCMS in particular, to have allowed the Gambling Commission to go ahead without bringing the plans back to Parliament following the pilot. It is deeply concerning to me as a shadow Minister, and it is deeply offensive to this House, whose elected Members would like to scrutinise these decisions on behalf of the British public. It is disappointing that this decision has gone ahead, and there will be severe financial consequences and implications for the sport of horseracing and jobs in this country. We can look at a variety of aspects of this issue. There is an element of intrusion into the lives of people who just want to bet safely with their well-earned money in a safe environment. I think we can all see the risk of consequences. I remember a debate in this place during the last Parliament. I was one of the few Members in the room without a horse track in their constituency, or any ministerial or shadow ministerial responsibilities, but I raised the same concerns about the impact of such a policy on British horseracing. Let us consider the amount of money that is spent in a week at Cheltenham or Aintree. We could see these regulations being triggered very quickly, which would lead to more and more people being driven to the illegal black market. That should be a concern for every single Member of this House; regardless of their perspective on gambling and horseracing, that is the biggest threat to gamblers and to people suffering from addiction in this country. Because of the potential unintended consequences, we must not continue with this policy. I find it completely unacceptable for Members to stand up in this place and advocate for British horseracing and for safe, regulated gambling in this country, but then to continue to put in the way hurdles and obstacles that drive the black market in this country. Enough is enough. We have to be honest about the decisions we are making as policymakers, and we have to be honest that the Government are ducking decisions and allowing the Gambling Commission to make them without the scrutiny that there should be from this elected House. Around 120,000 horseracing bettors could face enhanced financial checks, and the majority are expected simply to refuse them, which will reduce betting turnover and cut levy income for the sport, all while moving those punters into the black market, which is growing significantly under this Government. The previous Conservative Government made it clear that these checks should only proceed if they can be delivered entirely frictionlessly, yet following the Gambling Commission’s pilot, decisions were delayed and independent analysis was not fully published. More concerningly, this policy has now been signed off for implementation without key stakeholders in horseracing and betting being able to see that vital evidence, such as NatCen’s independent review of the pilot. The Gambling Commission is now operating beyond its remit, and it must be brought to task by this House or by the Government. I hope that the Minister will agree that like other policies introduced from the gambling White Paper in 2023, this decision needs to have full and proper parliamentary scrutiny. I appreciate that the Minister and the Department are very busy with another race that is currently under way to decide who will be the future Prime Minister, as well as, perhaps, the race to be the future Member of Parliament for Clacton—I understand that has been set off while we have been in this Chamber. However, the fact that this decision has been taken unilaterally by the Gambling Commission shows a clear abdication of duty by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. I believe, sadly, that DCMS has failed to grasp and deal with the necessary details in this case. The situation is quite simple. The checks being proposed have been proven by the Gambling Commission’s pilot not to be “fully frictionless”, which had been promised by Ministers in this Government as well as in the previous Government. Evidence suggests that illegal betting has expanded dramatically in recent years, as more and more burdens and taxes have been placed on the regulated market, directly resulting in significant migration away from it. I have said a number of times that I have no problem with bashing the bookies, but I want that to be done in the most traditional sense—that is, by those who have a bet on the horse that they want to win—and not by the Government continuing to drive this underground, illegal, black market trade, which we know is fuelling some very dodgy characters overseas. As we know, illegal operators pay no UK tax. They make no contribution to horseracing. They provide none of the consumer protections required of licensed operators and they create serious integrity risks for the sport. The Treasury is already estimated to be losing around £300 million annually because of this illegal activity, and that figure is only likely to increase because of punitive tax rises by this Labour Government and the introduction of these financial checks. The Government cannot claim that they have not been warned—I have spent the best part of two years warning them that this will only get worse, and I know that there are Labour Members in this House who share my concerns. If we generally want consumers to remain protected, we should encourage them to stay within the regulated market rather than unintentionally pushing them elsewhere. The horseracing industry also needs and deserves clear engagement from the Government, so I hope that the Minister will answer a number of questions, all of which are fairly straightforward. Will the Minister commit to stronger engagement with the British Horseracing Authority and the wider industry, regardless of who is in No. 10? Will she ensure that the “Anti-Gambling Commission” publishes a full update on the financial risk assessment pilot before any further decisions are made? Will she require that the Gambling Commission publishes an implementation timeline for these intrusive checks? Will she also say what steps will be taken to ensure that answers from credit reference agencies will be consistently given with results, and that there will be no discrepancies between agencies’ recommendations? Finally, will she work across Government to ensure that British horseracing continues to receive the scrutiny and support deserved by an industry that contributes billions to our economy, sustains tens of thousands of jobs and forms such an important part of British sporting heritage? I urge the Government to heed my words today and to do all they can to support British horseracing traditions.