Luke Taylor MP: speeches

Speeches

• 16 Mar 2026 · Lord Mandelson: Response to Humble Address · Hansard source

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  We may debate whether the Prime Minister’s appointment of Peter Mandelson showed a weirdly rushed, catastrophic lack of judgment or just a stunning level of disengaged naivety. Either way, the British public are rightly wondering whether decency in public office is just too much to ask. I reassure them on behalf of the Liberal Democrats that no, it is not too much to ask. As well as confirming that Mandelson’s ongoing relationship with a convicted sexual predator was known, the files also revealed that he was given top-level briefings before his vetting was finished—a vetting process that clearly failed by any measure. Trust in politics is already stretched thin, and I am sure that everyone in this House wants to see it restored. If the worst fears of this sorry saga are found to be true, that trust will take another body blow, boosting only the populists on the left and the right. I therefore ask the Minister, if the Prime Minister really wants to rebuild trust and ensure that the proper procedures are always followed, will he commit to taking up Lib Dem calls to make the ministerial code binding in law, and will he refer himself to the independent ethics adviser to determine whether, in the course of this long, sorry saga, he has breached the code or not?

• 16 Mar 2026 · Lord Mandelson: Response to Humble Address · Hansard source

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  The Prime Minister.

• 11 Mar 2026 · Royal Mail: Universal Service Obligation · Hansard source

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  Residents across my constituency, particularly those in the SM1, SM2 and SM3 postcodes, have been reporting issues with their deliveries for years. Local social media is full of people reporting one-day-a-week deliveries and asking which other roads that is occurring on. I have visited my delivery office for the last two Christmases, meeting hard-working posties who have been let down by the system. Let me give a particular shout-out to Timmy, who has been delivering to my road for decades and is approaching retirement—my congratulations to him. Will the Minister add Sutton to the list for his agenda this afternoon? Can he also report back next Wednesday in the Westminster Hall debate, which I imagine he will be coming to, with clear actions from his meeting this afternoon?

• 11 Mar 2026 · Protest Policing · Hansard source

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  I thank the Home Secretary for this action, which is proportionate; she seems to have been taking lessons from the Liberal Democrats on that. I reiterate Liberal Democrat calls to proscribe Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and encourage her to come forward with a timetable for that legislation to be delivered. What steps have been taken to ensure effective policing of the static protests, which will go ahead on Sunday, to protect Londoners and our police from potential clashes?

• 9 Mar 2026 · Middle East: Defence · Hansard source

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  Trump and Netanyahu’s illegal war on the Iranian regime has shocked and disgusted our constituents, just like the Iranian regime’s crackdowns on opposition protests for decades. The horrors that we have seen reinforce the feeling in this country that international events are happening to us, and that since Brexit and since Trump re-entered the White House, we have had much less say in our future and security. Will the Secretary of State listen to Liberal Democrat calls to empower us to take back control of our fate by issuing defence bonds, which would raise the cash we need to meet our defence spending, and by rebuilding our place in Europe through deeper co-operation with our European neighbours to reduce our dependence on the mad king in the White House?

• 4 Mar 2026 · NHS Capital Spending · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Mr Western. An MP Josh Taylor—that would be a beast, would it not? It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship. I thank my constituency neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Bobby Dean) for introducing this incredibly important debate. He and I have written op-ed articles for our shared local newspaper in recent weeks, describing our constituents’ despair at the state of emergency care and facilities at St Helier hospital. When I posted my article on Facebook for local residents to read, somebody commented on my post to say that they were fed up of the endless discussions on the topic, and they rightly pointed out that St Helier has been a totemic issue in Sutton for decades. They angrily demanded action, not words, from us all to get something done about it. The truth is, I could not remotely fault my constituent for their outrage at the imbalance of words and action that they, and everybody in Sutton, have had to live with for far too long. This is what happens when Governments fail to act; people lose faith that the system and their politicians can deliver results. When people hear grand words but see no action, it is no wonder that politicians are the least trusted profession in the UK. Before I was elected I was an engineer, which is one of the most trusted professions. Then, with the support of more than 16,000 of my constituents, I instantly became a member of one of the least trusted—it is a funny old world, is it not? When the policy area at hand is something so visceral as whether people and their families can go to their local hospital safe in the knowledge that it is equipped to care for them properly, that loss of faith is absolutely corrosive to all faith in politics.

• 4 Mar 2026 · NHS Capital Spending · Hansard source

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  It would be remiss of me not to ask at this point, while the hon. Gentleman is speaking about transparency and funding for hospital projects, about the previous Government’s imagined 40 new hospitals. I invite him to give some transparency as to where the money to fund that hospital programme was supposed to come from and where it ultimately disappeared to. My residents are still suffering from the impact of his Government’s not providing that money. Can he expand on what happened to that money, which never arrived?

• 4 Mar 2026 · NHS Capital Spending · Hansard source

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  I could not agree more with the hon. Member’s point. When the condition of an asset does not attract staff, particularly in more deprived areas, the challenges will be greater. Those compounding challenges are borne out visibly through the physical asset, and everything becomes much more difficult. I should not have to be here making points about political faith and delivery—or the economic arguments that have been made by other Members—but I will make the important humane case, based on the experiences of my constituents. I recently did a health survey where residents wrote in and told me their stories. One of them was a woman whose husband spent 54 hours in A&E with sepsis, lying on a trolley in a room so small it could have been a broom cupboard. Another, who is in her late 80s, sat waiting on a chair for 10 hours after a suspected heart attack, while another woman, who was unable to sit on a chair because of her pain, had to lie on the floor crying and wait for several hours. Almost half of those who responded to the survey said that they had waited for more than four hours in A&E at St Helier hospital. We have the NHS numbers, too: across the Epsom and St Helier trust, 18,600 people waited for more than 12 hours in 2025. That is sickening; it is an example of a system that is not working. “Sickening” is the right word: like thousands of people across Sutton, I am sick to the back teeth with the endless delays that have got us here. There is another important angle. In almost every one of the stories I was told, there was nothing but deep appreciation for the dedicated staff on the estate, many of whom the respondents credit with saving their lives in spite of—not because of—the conditions that they find themselves in. How can we keep recruiting into the NHS or uphold its public image if these are the conditions that we are expecting staff to work in? This is normally the part of the speech where I talk about the Government’s awful inheritance from the Conservatives, but I do not feel like making that point any more, because the people of Sutton have had enough context-setting and this Government is almost two years old now. I thank the Minister for her discussions of this topic with me and other colleagues. I feel that we are engaging openly and positively, and I want to make that very clear for the record, but I ask the Government to listen to the pleas of our constituents, and to please provide the money to expand our emergency department. At risk of returning to my point about trust, if we do not fix this, we risk a catastrophe in Sutton that might undermine the faith of my residents and the broader public in the entire model of the NHS. My speech has been about expanding, refurbishing and fixing St Helier hospital, but there is the separate issue of the real and urgent need for the specialist emergency care hospital that our NHS and residents were promised by the previous Government. We need that too, and we need it quickly. The expansion of our A&E would complement the provision in Sutton, and it needs to be brought forward.

• 4 Mar 2026 · China: Foreign Interference Arrests · Hansard source

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  I join all colleagues in the Chamber in expressing my shock about the news this morning. I am also disgusted that the Chinese state has targeted the partners of sitting and former MPs. From a personal perspective, may I ask the Government and the Minister to ensure that those affected are supported, following this utterly outrageous targeting of those closest to them? On the practicalities of what this may imply, can the Minister reassure us all that if the inquiry suggests that any information accessed through a sitting or former MP affected the Government’s decision on the Chinese embassy, that decision will be paused, reviewed and potentially reversed?

• 24 Feb 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T10. Children’s cancer services are due to move from the Royal Marsden to the Evelina hospital next year. Concerns have been raised with me about the provision of a teaching space for children undergoing cancer treatment and its provision in the new plans. Will the Minister meet with me to discuss that transition and confirm that the Department of Health and Social Care is working with the Department for Education to ensure that a high-quality hospital school is provided at both sites during the transition?

• 24 Feb 2026 · Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor · Hansard source

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  rose —

• 24 Feb 2026 · Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor · Hansard source

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  I hope this intervention adds to my hon. Friend’s point. Does she find it ironic that the only person who has been imprisoned as part of the Epstein scandal is a woman?

• 24 Feb 2026 · Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister—I am not sure whether I do thank him—but I want to push back gently on that, and I would be interested in his response. Does not the fact that we have had 15 years since Andrew resigned in disgrace and it did not come before Parliament demonstrate that there is such a reluctance, or is it a true misunderstanding of process that that did not come before the House for us to discuss and really get into the weeds of the matter? Does he not see that as demonstrating the need for a change in the process, or at least an acknowledgment that we need to be digging deeper into these issues?

• 24 Feb 2026 · Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor · Hansard source

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  I completely agree with my hon. Friend. I thank the Minister for his early acknowledgment of support for the Humble Address. He has engaged constructively with comments about its scope and exactly what it says. I thank him for his supportive attitude, as there has been across the Chamber. To return to the point about negative privilege and the fact that we cannot speak freely and have had to use a gymnastic approach to get to the point where we are today, I have submitted a number of requests for urgent questions to the Speaker’s office, which completely understandably has not managed to justify a discussion of the scandal as it has unfolded. By necessity, we have had to phrase the motion as an examination of the prince’s arrangements and his use of property, and there have been all sorts of confusing attempts not to discuss certain matters, which, as has been mentioned, have precluded us from doing so.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor · Hansard source

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  Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. You will have to forgive me for dancing around to aid my pained back. “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” That quote from 1887 is of the British historian Lord Acton, and its explains how power in its most essential form inevitably corrupts. Today we are discussing how that absolute power, that feeling of invincibility, has led to the behaviour that Members across the Chamber are all so utterly disgusted by. I speak on behalf of all residents who have been in touch with me over the last few weeks, whether they are a republican, a monarchist or ambivalent to the general principle. We see a scandal that is not just engulfing Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, but dragging in the integrity of the wider royal family. As was said correctly by the hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion (Siân Berry), we must ask who knew what and when. What was known about the £12 million that was paid out to Virginia Giuffre in 2022, and how was that allowed to be used to settle a civil suit concerning allegations of Andrew’s alleged offences? How was that allowed to happen in the first place? As my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) has said, we have seen one friend of Epstein lobbying for a job for another friend of Epstein, and a 12-year relationship that benefited them both financially, which has resulted in two arrests for misconduct in public office. This Humble Address refers to how that began, and it is absolutely the right place to start. As a politician, trying to convince the public that we are here to serve and represent them, that the conspiracies they read in the darker reaches of the internet are nonsense, and that there is no elite paedophile ring that runs the world’s institutions becomes increasingly difficult when we see links in the files that go directly from the Kremlin to the White House and everywhere in between, including the British royal family. We talk about standards in public life and integrity, but that is difficult to maintain if such things are known about and the information in the files is understood by the public but we are then unable to scrutinise it or to bring people to this place to ask questions about what has happened. As discussed, the Humble Address covers quite a narrow set of papers about Andrew’s appointment as the special representative for UK trade and industry. However, we have also discussed the parliamentary gymnastics required to get a discussion in the Chamber about the outrageous misdeeds allegedly conducted by that man. We have to call out those parliamentary gymnastics as an outrageous impediment to our performing our job as MPs and we need to dispel them from this place entirely. We have talked about the implications of Andrew’s position in the line of succession. When the photos of him walking in New York with Jeffrey Epstein were taken in 2011, he was fourth in line to the throne. When that scandal was occurring, he was very close to the throne—it is disgusting. Will the Minister give us an update on legislation that the Government might bring forward to remove Andrew from the line of succession? Andrew is eighth in line now, meaning his position may not be such a worry, but the principle of his being in the line of succession to become our Head of State is obnoxious in the extreme, so I would like to hear an update from the Minister about that.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor · Hansard source

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  I apologise for breaking that convention, but it is a useful demonstration that, however right the Speaker is in acting with such utter wisdom that we will never question, it remains a challenge to raise issues like this one in the Chamber. During the debate, Liberal Democrat Members have been clear that we have to have a full statutory inquiry into the whole Epstein affair and the tentacles that it has inserted into our public life. We must allow the criminal investigations to be completed, but the inquiry must be able to compel witnesses to appear, require them to give evidence under oath, and produce documents and other evidence. The inquiry must be used to punish those who have been complicit and have been involved in the heinous crimes we have heard about in the media. To echo the comments made by other hon. Members, the media and journalists have done incredible work investigating the crimes and poring over the files, and their effort cannot be overstated. To conclude, we have to ensure that the events that have transpired over the last 20 or 30 years as part of the Epstein scandal can never be repeated. The investigation must allow us to fireproof our constitution from similar events ever happening again.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor · Hansard source

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  Does the point about what the protection officers knew not show the outrageous power imbalance between a royal and an employee? We are talking about whistleblowing and reporting what has been seen. Is the prospect of having somebody in that situation—whereby they are being held to account for not calling out the behaviour of someone whose privilege and birthright have put them into such a position—not outrageous? Does my hon. Friend agree that this shows how the structure of our constitution has put us into such an outrageous twist and how difficult it will be to unwind that?

• 10 Feb 2026 · Inner-London Local Authorities: Funding · Hansard source

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  The Minister mentions additional flexibility. Within that does she include allowing what I think are five inner-London boroughs, including Wandsworth, to increase their council tax by up to 10% without a referendum? Is that the additional flexibility that she mentions?

• 10 Feb 2026 · Inner-London Local Authorities: Funding · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Member give way?

• 10 Feb 2026 · Inner-London Local Authorities: Funding · Hansard source

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  It is, as always, a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I thank the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) for securing this important debate at an opportune time. “The streets of London are paved with gold”—or so the saying from the tale of Dick Whittington goes. But of course the point of that saying was to remind us that he did not, in fact, encounter riches and utopia when he got to London. That has been inner London’s story for centuries: portrayed as pampered by the rest of the nation while its people grapple with some of the biggest challenges imaginable. I am a proud Londoner, I am an MP and a still councillor in London, I am my party’s spokesperson for London, and I know vividly how drastic the challenge is across London. I have knocked on doors across the city and heard directly from residents about their challenges, their fury at the last Conservative Government and now their disappointment with the Labour Government. London is a city where 2.3 million people—that is twice the population of Birmingham, and one in four people in the city—live in poverty. According to data from the Trust for London, that figure rises to 38% for non-white households and 53% for single-parent households. It is a city where SEND deficits and adult social care deficits have thrown council finances into uncertainty for more than a decade. It is a city where, perhaps most shockingly of all, a teacher in every school can walk into their classroom in the morning knowing that, on average, at least one of their pupils at any given time is likely to be living in temporary accommodation. Year after year councils in London have been asked to do more with less. Reform of the system is long overdue, with the current formula not having been properly updated in more than a decade—not to mention the fundamental unfairness of the council tax system to raise money for local services. We were told by the Government that there would not be a return to austerity on their watch. It was a claim that most of us could believe, not just because they are a Labour Government with a social democratic tradition, but because they are a Government full of former councillors and council leaders who have seen at first hand that the reality of austerity is often most severe in local government. It is therefore outrageous that they have presented a funding review that simply doubles down on the disastrous cuts. Over the next three years, per capita funding, when council tax contributions are removed, will reduce by £109 in Camden, by £79 in Lambeth, by £75 in Southwark, by £37 in Lewisham, by £180 in Wandsworth, by £54 in Greenwich, by £220 in Hammersmith and Fulham, by £86 in Islington, and by £247 in Westminster and in Kensington and Chelsea. What is that if not Labour austerity? The current formula makes use of the index of multiple deprivation as the central measure of poverty but, as has been said many times, the IMD as currently designed does not properly reflect housing costs, housing poverty and what it means to be poor in a city where rent alone can swallow well over a half of a working person’s income. If we build a funding formula that ignores housing costs, we build one that blatantly ignores inner London. I am an engineer and know bad maths when I see it, and the proof that the Government’s latest announcements, published just this week, are smoke and mirrors is right there in the forecasted effects. Two thirds of the purported increase in total funding in London comes from the assumed council tax increases. When we account for that fact, we see that over the three-year settlement period, only two of the 12 inner-London boroughs—Hackney and Tower Hamlets—receive a real-terms funding increase per capita from the Government. Government Members like to talk about the austerity during the coalition period, but perhaps they would like to reflect on those figures for per-capita funding when council tax contributions are removed, which are a result of this Labour Government, and the effect on their inner-London residents. I have lots of data, which I am sure the Government know to be true, but a person does not have to be expert to know that the Government’s numbers do not add up—they just have to walk a few miles away from this place. I thought Labour Members were supposed to be in tune with and sensitive to inequality, yet here we are in a palace that is increasingly a boundary to their views while just a few minutes away, in Lambeth, Southwark, north Kensington and Chelsea Riverside, people are suffering because their councils are choked of the funds that they need to protect them. The support that this Government promised to deliver never materialised. Those working people have already been hit by inflation, the cost of living and rising transport fares. They now face not just lesser services but the prospect of huge council tax hikes because of this mess, which Labour might not have made but is doubling down on. Londoners are sick of being utterly let down while being told that they have never had it so good, or that they have a Government and a mayor who are on their side. I do not doubt that Labour Members’ intentions are good, that they got into politics for the right reasons, or that they have had incredible achievements as councillors—I am proud to have done that myself—but I sincerely ask them to please get their house in order and provide what London needs. With the devil in the detail of their unfair funding review, they are proposing the exact opposite. They have just a couple of months to get their act together before the local elections, but I suspect that for most Londoners the die is already cast against Labour because of its lack of care. This is not a sustainable foundation for any public service system. It is not fair funding; it is the accelerated starvation of a vital part of the public realm, masked by cosmetic changes. The Minister has heard it from around the Chamber; it is not just me ploughing a single furrow. If the Government are casting about trying to understand why people are not warming to their efforts—perhaps more so this week than ever before—they should remember that although they can mask an unfair funding formula under snappy headlines and public relations gloss, they cannot make it function as a good policy just by wishing it so. That is government by magical thinking. I am racking my brain trying to imagine why Members on the Government Benches cannot see the wood for the trees on this topic. I can only guess that they simply do not grasp the true value of well-funded, well-functioning and truly independent local government. I know that that is not true for some of the Members in this Chamber, who have come from local councils in inner and outer London. However, they are unwilling to challenge the dangerous idea that local government is a derivative of central Government, and the fact that the mayor’s powers are being used as a convenient shield by a Labour Government who are quietly keeping London in their back pocket for whenever they need someone else to carry the pain—because that is what the fairer funding review amounts to. It is hard to see it as anything other than a plan for managed decline of our cities, with inner-London boroughs first in the firing line. This can only be justified by misunderstanding the aphorism that I began with and not grasping that London’s streets are considered to be paved with gold only when it suits those who wish to ignore its many challenges. I invite the Minister to explain more clearly how a reduction in per-capita funding over the next three years for residents in 10 of the 12 inner-London boroughs that are the subject of this debate will result in better services for those residents.

• 10 Feb 2026 · Inner-London Local Authorities: Funding · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Member give way?

• 10 Feb 2026 · Inner-London Local Authorities: Funding · Hansard source

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  I welcome the tone of the hon. Member’s comment at the end there. I will use the examples of Lambeth and Southwark. When we pull out the contributions from council tax and look only at the money that is coming from central Government, over the next three years, Lambeth residents will have £75 per capita removed from their support from central Government, and Southwark residents will have £75 per resident removed. Does she agree that that is not good enough from a Labour Government?

• 4 Feb 2026 · Lord Mandelson · Hansard source

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  On the information available, does my hon. Friend share my discomfort about the fact that the situation became clear to us only after this mass release of information by the Department of Justice in the United States? While I understand the Government’s reluctance to release information that may well harm international affairs, that does not seem to be a concern for the US Government.

• 3 Feb 2026 · Town and City Centre Safety · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Mr Dowd. I also thank the hon. Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) for calling this important debate. No one can live freely live under the fear of crime. Across London and in boroughs such as mine in Sutton, that freedom begins and ends with residents feeling safe to use their town centres and high streets. It is where people come together and shop, and in this day and age, it is one of the last truly public spaces left. When our constituents cannot see police on their high streets, they do not feel protected and are left feeling powerless. Their sense of security slips and changes how they live their daily lives. High street footfall drops, shops close earlier, parents worry, and women are forced to plan their routes home with keys clenched in their fists. Londoners should feel safe in their everyday routines without being threatened by an illegal e-bike tearing across the pavement, the fear of their phone being snatched from their hand, or being forced to put up with antisocial, disrespectful behaviour. Let me be clear: no matter what certain right-wing politicians say—fortunately, they are absent today—London is largely a safe city. Figures for serious crime in the capital are falling, which should be celebrated. The murder rate is at the lowest level in London since 2014 and violent crime in the city is down by 12% compared with 2024, though up by around 30% in 10 years. Improving figures for the most serious crimes contrasts with an increase in more visible crimes such as shoplifting, up 19% in London this year. The same is tragically true for sexual assaults, which are up by more than 10,000 in a decade, from 16,100 in 2016 to 26,800 in 2025. All crime reporting in London is up from 87.1 per thousand in 2016 to 106.4 in 2025, all under Mayor Khan’s watch and Government funding deals decided by Conservative Ministers. Those are sobering reminders that crimes that make life miserable—or, in the case of sexual assault, terrifying—are up despite the positive headlines. The lived experience of my constituents tells a far more uncomfortable story than the picture that the mayor and the Government want to paint. It is particularly heartbreaking for women and girls, who have faced under-reported violence on our streets for decades and had hoped that, as society finally begins to shine a spotlight on gendered violence, visible and proactive policing would finally rise to meet the challenge. Instead, they have to bear witness to the erosions of such policing. Between 2015 and 2025, the number of Metropolitan police officers stayed almost static at around 32,000 full- time equivalents. As our cities become more complex, new crimes and dangers have developed and the population has grown by more than 500,000 people, the Metropolitan police has not. Just last year, under Sadiq Khan’s leadership and a Labour Government, the Metropolitan police lost more than 1,400 officers and staff—a cut of over 4%. I expect the Minister will talk about decisions made by some of my predecessors up to 16 years ago as a reason for Labour’s failure properly to fund the Met this year, but the responsibility sits squarely on the shoulders of a Labour Government and a Labour mayor. For Londoners, those cuts are a kick in the teeth. Police officers should not seem a novelty. They should be spotted on the street and not thought unusual.

• 3 Feb 2026 · Town and City Centre Safety · Hansard source

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  I genuinely thank the hon. Member for his contribution; he must have read my next paragraph. CCTV cameras and facial recognition tech watching and monitoring us going about our business cannot replace a friendly face with a welcoming smile and advice on getting assistance for a lost phone or mislaid keys. I fear that as funding for the Metropolitan police continues to be stretched thinner and thinner, that reassurance will begin to all but disappear. Having walked the streets of Sutton with my local police unit, I have seen at first hand the strain caused by falling officer numbers. My high street team has been cut from 11 to four. They are doing extraordinary work, but they are being asked to cover more ground and respond to more incidents with fewer colleagues by their side. Sometimes I fear that there is a dangerous strain of make-believe in this debate: the belief that police capacity can grow without the financial backing to support it. No one has been clearer about that than the Metropolitan police commander, Sir Mark Rowley. Last year he warned of severe consequences as the Met faced a £260 million funding gap. Even after emergency support reduced a much larger deficit, the pressures have not gone away, and policing capability in the capital continues to be eroded as we speak. Within the Met’s specialist teams, the flying squad, firearms teams and the Royal Parks police are all set to be cut, to say nothing of school liaison officers, who do some of the most important work in restoring and embedding trust in the police in the next generation and stopping the dangerous spread of youth violence at its root. Those units form the backbone of serious crime prevention in our capital. In recent weeks, we have been told that structural reforms will save the day. There have been proposals for mergers to create mega-forces, which apparently will do more for less. Police reform without proper funding is not fixing the problem; at best, it is delaying it and at worst, it is putting greater pressure on the cracks that are already showing. The changes set out in the police reform White Paper must be done right. I want to press the Minister for clarity on what the reforms will mean, particularly for the Metropolitan police. At a time when visible policing is so hard to achieve, we would expect priority to be given to those last vestiges of accessible law enforcement—police front counters. But no: having already lost police officers and stations and with a £260 million shortfall to plug, Londoners are now being asked to stomach the closure of counters across the city, leaving most of London a police access desert. The 12 complete closures and the loss of 24-hour counters in 25 other locations touch every part of London. A 24/7 counter in every borough gone—another broken promise from Mayor Khan. When those counters close, people lose the sense that police officers are present and accessible in their community. We can all see and agree on that, so it beggars belief that just last week, both Labour and Green assembly members voted against Lib Dem proposals for a funded moratorium on these closures. How can they expect Londoners to put their trust in them if they will not back us on this most basic of campaigns? The Liberal Democrats across London are calling not just for this to be stopped, but for more properly funded police front desks in every community based in local hubs such as libraries, shopping centres and town halls. That would allow people to report crimes and share information with the police face-to-face in convenient locations. To conclude, I simply ask the Minister this: when can our police forces expect to see the investment they deserve? What assessment are the Government making on an ongoing basis of the impact of below-inflation funding increases on the viability of community policing? Why, when the Government claim to want to restore community policing, will they not intervene when their own party’s mayor is driving policing in the opposite direction in the capital?