Luke Taylor MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 15 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q May I start by heartily endorsing your encouragement of engineering as a career or an education? As an aeronautical engineer before I came to this place, I am available for motivational speeches whenever necessary. From my discussions with industry on the Bill up until now, I am not quite sure that I am convinced about being agnostic to SAF production, source and mechanism. My worry is that it does not give enough ability to shape the environmental benefit of that SAF stream and to incentivise the most beneficial SAF production, such as PTL compared with the earlier gen SAFs, even 2g SAFs. Does the Bill as presented give enough of the right mechanisms to incentivise the right sort of SAFs that will be most beneficial and provide us with the greatest environmental benefit? Professor Maslin : The Bill provides financial security for industries producing SAFs, which I think is essential. I do not think it has real tweaks to favour particular SAFs—whether you want to do that or not is another matter. The problem is that some SAFs have a better environmental signature, and they are better, but we are going to run out of those. Ultimately, the real SAFs that we are going to be looking at globally are massive algal productions and artificial kerosene, whereby you produce huge amounts of energy, and you use water and CO 2 from the atmosphere to actually create kerosene. That is extortionately expensive at this moment in time. However, as I said, if there are 14,000 planes, going up 4% per year, by 2050 you will have a very large number of planes in the air at any one moment in time. There will not be enough waste, cropland or algal stuff to produce the SAFs we need. Generations 4 or 5 will be the ones that ultimately look after the aviation industry. I would still say to be agnostic; I cannot believe I am saying this, but let the economics work its way through at the moment to see who comes out on top in the UK, and then take through the next generation.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q As a good Liberal Democrat, I want to talk about bins again. Incineration and energy recovery facilities are broadly seen as the least worst options. If there is now an alternative, lots of us will be very interested in the opportunities for local authorities and for making conditions better for our residents. If that means cheaper bin collection, we will all be in favour. I have questions about the big picture. It has the potential to disincentivise recycling. Does the increasing value of SAF feedstock undermine the efforts to recycle? Another, more technical question is: could plastics recycling be better diverted into this process to solve a lot of the problems we have with exporting plastics for recycling and the energy used to do that? Many of our energy from waste facilities are now linked to heat networks. Is that bigger picture being considered—not just producing electrons, as you say, but using waste heat for district heating networks? There is a bit of additional complexity. That leads into the bigger question of the holistic view across different Departments and the incentives that the Bill creates, which I am sure are all positive. It promotes better, more sustainable options in different Departments. Is enough work being done elsewhere for this to work within the bigger system? You have 15 minutes. Philip New: My roots are as a fuels and energy guy, so I will not be able to respond with much expertise to the more specific questions about the waste sector. However, I will do my best by starting with the general statement that I think you are quite right that the second that waste becomes more valuable than an alternative use of that waste, you have to start questioning whether it is really waste. Funnily enough, that is more of an issue in some of the first-generation products that we are using, where the waste is becoming more valuable than virgin vegetable oils. That is a different issue, but it is very important. In this case, as long as people either do not get anything for waste or have to pay to get rid of it, the risk of it distorting other parts of the hierarchy is manageable, particularly with a sensible degree of oversight and monitoring. I would not lose too much sleep about that. You will have to help me with the other part of the question.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q It is the broader question of how this sits within the system. The implications of this Bill are really broad in the way the incentives will come into a whole different set of markets, including agriculture, waste and local government. Philip New: First, I challenge the suggestion that this is an incentive. I think of it more as an insurance policy. If you are a recipient of the insurance policy, if it turns out that the market price is higher than you contracted for—your strike price—you will end up paying. The counterparty will be in receipt of money from the participants in the scheme. It is not a one-way incentive. One of the charms of the RCM is that it is nicely balanced. If you are worried that the market will go long and there will be lots and lots of lower-priced product that undermines your economics, the RCM is a great way of giving you insurance that your investors will stay whole and happy. On the other hand, by taking it on, you are sacrificing your exposure to the upside. That is the premium you are paying. I think the balance that has been designed into the RCM is a really attractive way of keeping everyone honest while still enabling investment to flow into the sector. I do not think it should distort the underlying drivers or mechanisms. That having been said, I worry about the range of sectors that a successful SAF industry will touch. It has the potential to touch them in a very positive way, but it is also exposed to some inadvertent—I would not call it negligent—inattention in somewhere that does not feel a very strong ownership of the space, which could really mess things up. A degree of conscious, whole-system understanding of what it takes to enable a brand-new sector to emerge, and providing some co-ordination of that, would be welcome. Whether that looks a little like mission control in the electricity transition or something else, I do not know, but something to provide more comfort would be important. It touches many parts of the economy and many Departments.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q My question is relatively straightforward: does the Bill go far enough to allow us to proceed with aviation expansion and be consistent with our climate change goals? Matt Gorman: This Bill is part of a package of measures from the Government, and I think it is absolutely vital. I see the Bill and the SAF mandate as equally important, with the SAF mandate driving a requirement for 10% SAF and with the Bill encouraging investment in domestic production. Those are vital tools, and the Government are taking a range of other steps. I am not here as a spokesperson for the Government, but the jet zero strategy outlines a range of measures to support the ongoing development of more efficient aircraft, which is a key tool in our toolkit, along with modernising airspace with the new UK airspace design service, which is vital for more efficient airspace, and support for new hydrogen technology and greenhouse gas removal. This is a vital part of that package.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Just for clarity—forgive my technical inexperience—what you are suggesting is production of the hydrocarbon at the source, at the base of a wind turbine, which is then collected in tanks rather than transmission over cables? Doug McKiernan: Correct. Within that report, there were also comparisons to hydrogen—that was a sixfold increase over a two-foot oil pipeline—and to ethanol, methanol and ammonia. It looked at how you get energy from A to B in the cheapest operational expenditure and capital expenditure form. That is a fundamental. The cost of getting the renewable energy is what all the engineering will come back to. I believe the renewable energy will be in remote locations, a bit like oil today. Ultimately, we are going to put renewable energy in those places. Hopefully we do not cover all the fertile soil with solar panels and we can generate it elsewhere, and then use the power-to-liquids to get it from A to B.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Mr Downie stole my question, so I will develop it a bit further. The RCM sets the levy on to the fuel producers who will likely pass it on to passengers. You operate internationally and see mechanisms being implemented elsewhere in the world. We mentioned the alternative of using the ETS to fund the RCM. How do you see the advantages of one system or the other, and where have you seen alternatives implemented elsewhere that have worked well? Ruben van Grinsven : That is a good question. First and foremost, the UK is ahead of pretty much everybody else when it comes to developing those mechanisms. I know the EU is basically inspired by the RCM and trying to come up with a similar framework, which it will be announcing in September in the sustainable transport investment plan. I think the initial thoughts are indeed to fund that through ETS. I do not have a strong preference between ETS-funded or levy-funded. The most important thing is that it is clear, transparent, consistent and predictable. Once we know the details and find out how the whole mechanism will work, we can perfectly live with the levy mechanism—as long as it works practically. So we do not have a strong preference between ETS or levy funding.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you all for joining us. The evidence that you have given so far has been very helpful. There was a question earlier about waste hierarchy and the availability of waste feedstocks as one source of raw fuel or raw material for some of the second-generation SAF. Is enough being done across Government, in a holistic way, to ensure that the goals of the SAF mandate, the RCM and this Bill are achieved? Is enough being done to ensure that the things that are needed—waste feedstocks, the reforms to planning and energy production for eSAFs—are in place? What is going to hold back what we are trying to achieve in this Bill, and what needs to be done elsewhere? Jonathon Counsell: That is a really strong point. There is a key question about the waste hierarchy, which Gaynor spoke to. Currently, waste going to SAF is treated the same way as incineration or energy from waste, but the analysis is clear that we can get twice as much energy capture from producing SAF than from producing energy from waste. We feel that you are getting a lot more bang for your buck from using waste to produce SAF than from other things, which we think should be reflected in aviation being prioritised in the waste hierarchy. On renewable energy, last year the Sustainable Aviation road map made it quite clear that 3G SAF—where you basically electrolyse water to get hydrogen and you capture CO 2 from the atmosphere—is going to take a lot of renewable electricity. We are going to need a lot more of that within the UK if we are going to support a domestic power-to-liquid market. Luke Ervine: In addition to that, we need to think about other areas of SAF, when we talk about SAF having a nominal value associated with its ability to reduce greenhouse gases. We are working alongside the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the Department for Business and Trade to understand how carbon can form part of the solution, and decarbonising the SAF that we are producing is also key. We are also working side by side with the Treasury to understand what the revenues from the ETS look like. That has been quite successful in the last few years, especially since the advent of the jet zero taskforce, which was a really key turning point. I think we are going to continue in that vein to work cross-departmentally and across industry to work through some of these finer details. I think it has been very useful to be part of the Jet Zero Council; we are actually a co-chair, alongside Mike Kane, of the jet zero taskforce. Carrying on in that vein is very important and useful. Lahiru Ranasinghe: This also enables us to reduce our dependence on used cooking oil imported from elsewhere in the world as a feedstock for first generation SAF. A strategic move towards 2G and 3G also gives more flexibility and capability for the market to scale up in the long-term, and allows it to use waste products from the UK, as opposed to having to ship it in from China or south-east Asia.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you both. A lot of the criticism and cynicism over the value of SAF and its environmental benefits are around the fuel source or feedstuff—you have alluded to it. The Bill concentrates on second and third generation SAF. Do you see that as enabling a lot of the potential greenwashing of SAF that may have been behind all that cynicism? Does it address some of those challenges? As a follow-up question, similar to one that I asked the previous panel, what do you see as some of the challenges across Government that will hold back your ability to produce more SAF? You referred to the ability to use some of the feedstuff to produce second generation SAF mixing, but I think planning and energy will be among the responses as well. Sophia Haywood: On sustainability and fraud, I have been working on sustainability certification over a number of different fuel types. We have ISCC, which is like an auditing process that we generally have to go through—there are other providers out there—to be able to prove the sustainability of our fuel. This is a very complicated and rigorous process, and I have gone through it many times on different types of fuels. On the sustainability piece, the guidance that has been put out already in the SAF mandate is very high, and we have to go through a lot of that auditing process. To your point about the risk of fraud and other challenges around greenwashing that potentially could have happened in the past, I think the UK has done a good thing there with how it has approached this, so I support the approach that we are taking. That is not necessarily in this Bill; I would say that that has more already been laid out in the mandate rules. On what else we would like to see, potentially, through this, as I said before, there is a piece around the SAF allowances—this is a scheme currently in Europe that is funded through ETS revenues. Obviously, you are always taking from somewhere with funding, but you are trying to take at least from a funding source that is coming directly from industry, and using that to then fund the industry back with SAF. I think that has good bones and good structure, and I would love to see that being fleshed out. On a more practical level, for sure, there is planning. We have just had a recent example that some of my engineers have told me about: waiting two months for an answer on a very small question. It is not because of the quality of the planning teams; they are fantastic. It is the fact that they are quite constrained and there are not enough of them. I suppose there is a potential short-to-medium-term fix there, but also a longer-term fix in terms of thinking of the skills that we need moving forward. We automatically think of more engineering and STEM roles, but we also need the rest of the value chain to be adequate in terms of workforce and other things. I alluded earlier to the details of the mandate being really good on the sustainability piece, but there are some very complex rules that we are still consistently trying to navigate six months on. There are different interpretations to different questions—for example, in the nitty gritty of how hydrogen is treated or the rules around electricity and displacement. They are more in the detail, but we end up spending quite a lot of time on them as a company trying to break through into this market. Equally, it is a learning experience for my colleagues doing these projects all across the world. We have other projects going on in India and Australia. As a Brit, I want the UK to be our flagship and our first, and I am working hard to make sure that it is, but as I always say to people, I am competing with my colleagues in Australia and all over because lots of people want SAF. It is about how we can make it as efficient and easy as possible, keeping in mind all the good sustainability criteria, to get steel in the ground here in the UK. Noaman Al Adhami: From our perspective, the route we are using—the Fischer-Tropsch synthetic paraffinic kerosene route—is an American Society for Testing and Materials route that is approved already. On sustainability, the feedstock criteria are well defined in the SAF mandate. All the types of feedstock that are eligible to produce SAF are well defined. We are complying with that. The greenhouse gas and carbon intensity are other factors for measuring sustainability. For our project, without carbon capture, we are at minus 80% or minus 85% from the fossil equivalent. With carbon capture, we will go negative—we will go to even more than minus 200%. That is key for us. On what could be done better, planning is always an area where we need improvement in terms of time. There is also connection to the grid, for example—grid connections take a very long time. We decided to produce our own power on site using a biomass boiler rather than waiting for a grid connection because the answer we got was that we will get it by the end of the 2030s—2039—and we cannot wait until then. Another requirement, which is very specific to us, is to get connected as early as possible to the carbon network once we start producing SAF by the end of 2029, especially when there is a unique benefit for the UK. By the way, that is very unique to the UK. No other country has a SAF mandate that is about carbon scaling and at the same time has the capability to capture CO 2 . That is also unique in Europe because the UK and Norway together have 75% of the carbon capture capacity in Europe. It is really very unique to the UK. Our ask is to get connected to reduce carbon intensity, provide a better price per certificate, and also pay, because we do not need subsidy for carbon capture. We are ready to pay the transport and storage costs to the Government for carbon capture. Those are the three main points.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you for joining us. I think we are in a slightly unusual position, in that we are all competing to try to make slight improvements to legislation that we all agree is necessary and positive. My question is about the source of the funding for the RCM. The Government made it clear that their preference is that it comes from a levy on users. An alternative, which we see in other jurisdictions, is that it comes from ETS sources, which would slightly more directly couple the emissions component to the consumption. The intention to not predicate the source of funding on the money being provided is clear. Do any of the panellists have an opinion on those two options and the path that the Government have taken for the funding source? Gaynor Hartnell: There are really only two options for the levy: airlines or aviation fuel suppliers. A large part of why aviation fuel suppliers were chosen may have been because, administratively, they are the obligated party when it comes to the mandate. They are expected to pass the cost of the mandate through to airlines—their fuel customers. They would be expected to pass the cost of the levy to airlines, or indeed, if the levy actually brings in money—these are very small balances of money in comparison with the balances to do with the mandate—they would be expected to pass those costs back to the customers. The aim is to deal fairly with a fairly small amount of money. It is not the additional cost of the sustainable aviation fuel; it is just the cost of levelising and stabilising it, which is a sliver in comparison. Rob Griggs: For us as airlines, the funding is a critical issue about fairness and accountability. As Gaynor said, the understanding is that the levy will be on the supplier. The issue for us is that we understand that the costs are likely to be passed through to airlines. We just want to make sure that that is transparent. We have seen through the early stages of the mandate that there is some concern that excessive compliance fees are perhaps being put on to the SAF. Voluntary SAF seems to be a lot cheaper than mandated SAF and there is not necessarily a clear reason for that. We want transparency in terms of how the levy is passed through. As Gaynor said, in theory, if the market price for SAF is high—if there is relatively little of it—it is likely that the suppliers will actually pay into the counterparty. We want to make sure that if money is essentially being paid back to the counterparty from the producers, that money does not just go to the suppliers and sit there. There should be a transparent mechanism, however it works, through which that money then comes back to airlines and airline customers. It has to work both ways, essentially. How do you do that? We have looked at ETS for a long time. You are right that in the European Union, the emissions trading scheme funds are used: for example, to help to close the price gap on SAF. We are not doing that, which has competitiveness implications for UK SAF, separate to the RCM. Of course there are ways to make sure that it is a two-way street. Paul Greenwood: We have to recognise that if the desire is to pass the cost on to the passengers, the airlines and the people who are shipping freight around the world by plane, then we should put the charge on them. That is the most direct way of doing it. There are charges now that are put on airlines and on freight directly. There is no reason why you cannot do this as well. I do not buy the argument that it is a relatively small amount of money, therefore we should just put it on to the fuel suppliers and they should deal with it. I do not think that is right. I certainly do not agree with the idea that this is because “the polluter pays”—that is erroneous and a false statement. We do not know how much this will be, because we do not know how many projects there will be, what the costs will be, or how the CFD mechanism will go. We do not know what the cost of this will be. I support what Rob is saying: if this is something imposed upon us, I do not wish to profit from it but I do want to pass 100% of it on to the consumer of my fuel. The only way I can do that is if I know what it is ahead of time, so that I can bill them the exact amount of money so they pay the exact amount. At the moment, this legislation talks about market share, but market share moves and changes. Therefore it is a very imprecise way of doing that. Ours is a very fine margin business. If you get this wrong, you will make the UK a less attractive market. We have to understand that fundamentally people will do different things around their molecules. One data point worth remembering is that about 70% of the jet fuel consumed in the UK at the moment is imported. Effectively, we rely on people bringing jet to market to sell it profitably. If they are uncertain around the cost of that jet fuel, they will potentially look to sell it into different markets, which can lead to energy security and market dynamic issues. There are unintended consequences here that need to be thought through very carefully.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  I just have a pushback or challenge on the comments about SAF being popular. An earlier pushback, too, was on the £1.50 per passenger on top of tickets. Does that suggest that this might be easier to sell—easier to promote—to passengers than you might have suggested in the first place? I think the suggestion was that certain demographics and certain airline customer groups will be more or less in favour and able to pay it. Lahiru Ranasinghe: To add to that, for us, the average leisure traveller would say—to put it in colloquial terms—“It’s your problem to solve. We want you to do it, but we’re not going to pay for it.” With corporates, they have their own corporate targets, so from a B2B—business to business—perspective, they want to hit those. Jonathon Counsell: I will answer the risk question. Yes, without the policy, we have no 2G SAF, so we would be dependent on the 1G market, which will cap out in the early 2030s. We are not going to achieve our decarbonisation targets without 2G SAF. That is the biggest risk without the Bill. The biggest risk with the Bill is buy-out. If the incentive does not produce enough SAF—we understand the buy-out is there to manage short-term supply shortages, but if we have long-term buy-out, which we have seen in the ground transport fuels market—that is policy failure. Essentially, that huge cost is £6,000 per tonne of SAF, and if that cost comes straight back to the airline, it will go on air fares, but you do not get any decarbonisation—you get huge cost and no decarbonisation. That is our biggest risk. Luke Ervine: Some of the risks of the RCM that we need to be cognisant of include covering too much of the mandate with the RCM. We do not want to lock ourselves into high prices forever and a day. Obviously we want that to stimulate the part of the market that needs that support, so we want to leave enough room for competition. The other thing we need to think about is how suppliers might bear some of the risk that is presented in the RCM—how some of the cost of capitalising the fund, or any cost of compliance failures that they may face, might be passed through to airlines and consumers. That key area of transparency is therefore important. This needs to be well thought through, but we also need to do it quickly because we are reaching a pivotal point in terms of buy-out where we will have to just pay for no decarb. Lahiru Ranasinghe: Ultimately, the RCM is a derisking measure. It is a stepping stone towards what we want, which is a functioning SAF market. It is a complicated challenge. There is a lot of work to be done over the coming stages and throughout the process to make sure that we end up with a competitive UK SAF market so that producers can compete on a global scale, and, crucially, we as airlines can compete on a global and European scale by keeping flying affordable and continuing to grow in the UK. On an environmental level, if there is x amount of growth coming through the UK, which is supporting an environmentally robust SAF mandate, and production in the UK, as opposed to that going elsewhere in the world, that is driving sustainable growth on a global scale. Jonathon Counsell: On the amendment question, I do not think we need to look at any amendments at this stage. On the targeting of the scheme, we should make it an opt-in scheme for the projects that need it. We do not want a blanket scheme to cover all 2G SAF because that is not needed, but we could have projects opt in with some qualifying criteria—for example, projects that are early stage, first of a kind or high risk, and that cannot get funding without the scheme. I would not say SAF is popular—that is probably going a step too far. It is fair to say there is greater acceptance of SAF as a solution, but let us be clear: nobody wants to pay for it. However, we accept that there is a cost to the net zero transition, and our job is to minimise that cost as far as possible.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for the future of aviation, travel and aerospace, I have met a number of the groups that will be presenting today. In fact, I met Rob only yesterday for information on the Bill and its content.

• 11 Jul 2025 · Rare Cancers Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur) for his work on the Bill, and all those who have supported its progress. I rise briefly for two reasons. First, to speak for a constituent, Kate, who is only 40 years old and has an inoperable brain cancer. Kate contacted me this week to tell me about her case and to encourage me to support the Bill. She is under the care of 10 consultants and specialists as her condition worsens. Research on brain cancers and glioblastomas has hardly progressed in 50 years, yet it is the biggest cancer killer in children and adults under the age of 40. The Bill should improve the rate of cancer patients who are offered trials; currently, 82% are not and that is not good enough. The Bill should improve those chances. I also rise to join the tributes to Dr Susan Michaelis, who passed away on Wednesday, for her campaigning for the better treatment of lobular breast cancer. I met Dr Michaelis in October last year, and was moved by her advocacy for improvements in treatment, and subsequently, by her support for the Bill. For Kate, Susan and many others, it is important that the Bill passes today. Please do support it.

• 11 Jul 2025 · Unauthorised Entry to Football Matches Bill · Hansard source

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  We will soon find out.

• 11 Jul 2025 · Unauthorised Entry to Football Matches Bill · Hansard source

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  I have no interest in intervening.

• 11 Jul 2025 · Courts (Remote Hearings) Bill · Hansard source

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  Not Members—just one.

• 10 Jul 2025 · London’s National Economic Contribution · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Western. I thank the hon. Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) for securing this debate. London is not where I was born, but for so many of us who come to our great city, it is where our life begins. As a wide-eyed, bushy-tailed teenager arriving to study at Imperial College—as has been mentioned already—in the early 2000s, I felt the visceral sensation of my life changing. London is, and always has been, a melting pot, smorgasbord, tapestry and every other cliché you can find to describe the world’s greatest city—as I am sure all of us present in Westminster Hall agree. That is why it is the honour of my life to be the Liberal Democrats’ Front-Bench spokesperson for this city, which I love so dearly. As I sat in St Paul’s cathedral earlier this week for the commemoration of the 7/7 attacks, I reflected on what makes London so special: everyday heroes and ordinary working people, who face unbelievable challenges in a city that stands astride hemispheres and cultures, but who get up every day and carry on. It is often tempting to separate economic progress from cultural pride, but I think they are one and the same. It is the hard work and energy of Londoners that make this city contribute so much to the nation’s economy and society. Yet they face immense challenges: some of the highest rates of child poverty in the nation; crumbling hospitals; crimes such as knife crime and tool theft that destroy lives and livelihoods; profound infrastructure problems that hold back growth and cut off opportunities, not least for the disabled or disadvantaged; and lingering environmental problems, with pollution thick above some of our major roads and dense in our great river. I cannot pass up this opportunity to ask the Government not to leave London behind or simply continue to tack to the record of the last Conservative Government in failing to take steps to keep London as a world city, and a liveable one too. Yet I fear they are veering dangerously close to that path. Let me start with the hike in employers’ national insurance contributions. If we were looking for a way to actively stymie London’s innovation and business environment, which is already dealing with global shocks and Trump’s tariffs, that misguided tax policy would be right up there. If Britain is an island of shopkeepers, London is its longest high street. Our economic activity makes up more than a quarter of the nation’s annual GDP. Were it simply the case that such growth was generated just by the hands of a few financial institutions in a glass tower above the City, that would be less impressive. However, it is in the enterprising small businesses—the family-run restaurants that punch above their weight—and the world-leading research institutions, big and small, that London’s real economic powerhouse sits. London’s care workers, bus drivers and street cleaners, who keep our city liveable for ordinary people, despite the rising cost of housing, are the fuel that keep the engine going. To hammer them with what turns out in practice to be a jobs tax is totally misguided. The Office for Budget Responsibility has shown that the £25 billion a year the hike is supposed to raise is far too optimistic, and the figure seems to be much closer to £10 billion. Indeed, that figure could be more readily and justly raised by reversing Conservative tax cuts for big banks, increasing the digital services tax on the largest multinationals or the remote gaming duty for online gambling firms, reforming capital gains tax to make sure that the super-rich pay their fair share rather than hard-working Londoners being hit by the tax because of the ballooning housing market, or funding His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to collect the tax that is owed and currently dodged by companies and individuals wealthy enough to afford the best advice. Governing is about choices, and the Government have made the wrong choice for Londoners and the whole country with the NICs hike. Will the Minister outline whether a review of the policy, or at least exemptions, will be considered at the autumn Budget? The Government have also chosen not to seriously grip the mantle of the reform that would turbocharge growth most of all: fixing the Conservatives’ botched Brexit deal that has left London languishing outside the European market in so many meaningful ways. It is good that they have begun some of the work of normalising our relationship with our biggest neighbour and trading partner, but they will not budge on the most critical issue of all, which is a new customs union with the EU that would boost growth and, by extension, tax receipts. Nobody wants to return to the Brexit wars of the last decade, but the Government would do well to remember that nobody voted to make themselves poorer on that day in June 2016. Whether Londoners or the British people, remainers or leavers, nobody wanted to be worse off—and we were all promised by both sides that we would not be. There is a significant opportunity to right that wrong as we normalise our relationship, and the Government are just not taking it. In much the same way, the Government are failing to invest in the infrastructure that London needs to deliver its share of the growth that Britain needs. Even though we welcome the 10-year infrastructure plan, many of us noted that there was no commitment in the spending review to the capital funding needed for the Bakerloo line extension. As my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) so vividly explained, Hammersmith bridge—such a vital artery not just in her constituency but across west London—remains shut, with no commitment to a proper funding agreement to get it permanently reopened. Parts of outer London, like in Sutton in my constituency, remain in effect cut off from the TfL network, because of either poorly performing bus and national rail services or the complete absence of tram or tube infrastructure in the borough. To be absolutely correct about that, we have half a tram stop in Sutton, but we tend not to count that. London is not just Soho and Chelsea: it is places like Sutton, Hillingdon, Hornchurch and Enfield—proud boroughs with combined populations of millions that must play their part in growing the pie, and that need commuter transport investment to do that. Where infrastructure projects happen, they seem either to be delivered at great delay and overspend, like the new Piccadilly line trains, or to be unimaginative white elephants, like Mayor Khan’s Silvertown tunnel. The new four-year deal for TfL outlined in the spending plan presents a chance to change that. I invite the Minister to outline whether the Government will now look at finally delivering progress on reopening Hammersmith bridge, on the Bakerloo line extension and on the DLR extension to Thamesmead. It is just not good enough. Many Londoners are left asking why London’s contribution to the nation does not mean that its voice is heard. Compared with its peers around the world, London does not have anything like the appropriate devolved powers. In the patchwork of devolution that has been woven in this country this century, London’s settlement is looking increasingly threadbare and outdated. The Greater London Authority has nowhere near enough power to shape the mayor’s agenda and hold them to account, and the mayor’s powers are themselves too limited. Not enough money raised in the city can be spent in the city. Local councils, the bedrock of London’s governance, are ignored, prevented from working strategically across the city, and powerless to stop year after year of funding cuts. How else can we explain the actions of a Government who are pushing ahead with a new funding settlement that could leave some councils losing 70% of their spending power? That is particularly foolish at a time when councils are doing great work to boost London’s growth, with superb research and development schemes such as the London cancer hub in my borough of Sutton, which could create thousands of new jobs locally. Perhaps the most pertinent question is: who really speaks for London? It certainly isn’t Sadiq Khan, who promised us that with “the winds of a Labour Government at our backs” he would be able to deliver for Londoners, but on the day of the spending review made himself completely unavailable for media comment. Where was the voice that London needed on that day? He is evidently not as affective, and this Government not as receptive, as we were led to believe. As a result, I fear Londoners are being sidelined in respect of the industrial strategy and fiscal policy. Why, for instance, is London excluded from the new £150 million creative place growth fund, and from the British Business Bank’s new nations and regions investment fund? Why have the Government not listened to calls, from not just the Liberal Democrats but the private sector, to replace the apprenticeship levy with a skills and training levy that is properly integrated with devolved powers over skills, to give businesses the flexibility they need? Why have the Government not even listened to our calls for lifelong skills grants? I hope the Minister can explain. We must level up all parts of Britain. There are regional imbalances in this country that are totally unjust—I know that more than most, having come here from rural Lincolnshire—but there is no path to growing Britain without a strong, dynamic, self-governing London. As I stand here having recounted so many of the challenges that London faces in continuing to contribute to the nation’s economy, I wonder again in frustration why, in my role of Liberal Democrat shadow London spokesperson, I am not able to shadow a Minister for London—although I mean no slight on the Minister who is here. There has been one, on and off, for 30 years, and the Government’s decision not to appoint one is a gross oversight for all the reasons brought up in this debate.

• 10 Jul 2025 · London’s National Economic Contribution · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady gives a stirring defence of the Mayor of London. We are trying to make the point that there is no cross-Government holistic view of London’s priorities. Londoners need a voice inside the Government: our interests ought to be not divided out across Departments and responsibilities, but co-ordinated and addressed holistically. That is the point about a Minister for London who would be able to co-ordinate Departments and responses. There needs to be conflict with the Mayor of London—somebody fighting for London and against the Government, whether that is a Labour Government, a Conservative Government or, heaven forbid, a Liberal Democrat Government. We need that conflict, challenge and alternative view, because their goals often do not align perfectly. There has to be that champion, and I do not believe that the voice of the Mayor today is loud or clear enough in that regard. I take the hon. Lady’s points in the positive way that I am sure they were intended. We deserve the attention, investment and confidence of greater devolution—even more powers for the Mayor to do as he sees fit, as the London regions and councils should direct. We need to keep on doing our bit to drive the economic value and contribute to our great country.

• 2 Jul 2025 · Heathrow Substation Outage: NESO Review · Hansard source

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  This report is an utterly damning assessment of our national resilience, this time through decay but also through a lack of readiness as the climate crisis changes the dynamics, with old equipment operating at higher temperatures just as the loads for climate control and air conditioning are at their peak. The British people will rightly be alarmed that the problem that caused this substation failure was known as long ago as 2018, but there is a much wider point here. Beyond the technicalities of this failure, the resilience of critical national infrastructure has been neglected for far too long. As an engineer, I came to this place for precisely this reason: we are too short-termist and too narrow in our vision. We cannot possibly expect to remain a world leader in infrastructure if we cannot future-proof and seriously invest in the resilience of our assets. Building and maintaining infrastructure might not get pulses racing. There is no ribbon to cut when something just continues to operate efficiently, but that long-termism is an ideology that we should all get behind if we are serious about Britain’s future. The report outlined the many missed opportunities to fix the issues at the substation, and we will all have to look seriously into Ofgem’s consequential investigation into National Grid once it is published. This is not just about grid resilience, though. This time it was a fire caused by a fault, but next time it might be a deliberate cyber-attack or an act of terrorism, which could have a more disastrous impact. We must look beyond the short term, with a strategic and long-term plan to join up national infrastructure and make it safe and reliable for all. The Government must bring about a strategy and act quickly to review the resilience of all similar assets, including every UK airport—they are all critical to our national economy and our society. With that in mind, can the Minister confirm whether an assessment has been made of the likelihood of a repeat of this incident, at Heathrow and at all other pieces of critical national infrastructure? Also, are the Government taking this opportunity to finally pick up the National Infrastructure Commission reports from 2020 and 2023, which were ignored by the previous Government, and the report from 2024, which was not implemented quickly enough, and to implement standards and frameworks for resilience in key sectors such as aviation, telecoms, water and energy, which will future-proof our ageing infrastructure to make it reliable and safe?

• 26 Jun 2025 · Train Frequency: Sutton and Cheam · Hansard source

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  Earlier this week I was contacted by a long-suffering commuter using Worcester Park station. She wrote: “As a teacher my days are already demanding, often filled with pressure, high energy, and very little downtime. Sadly, commuting to and from work now feels just as stressful. Trains during peak hours are frequently so overcrowded that they feel unsafe and extremely uncomfortable. What should be a straightforward journey has become an exhausting and frustrating part of my day.” Now that South Western Railway is under Government control, will the Minister tell my constituents when we can expect to see the service and timetable finally improve for Worcester Park station?

• 26 Jun 2025 · Train Frequency: Sutton and Cheam · Hansard source

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  10. How much funding she plans to provide to increase the frequency of trains from stations in Sutton and Cheam constituency.

• 24 Jun 2025 · China Audit · Hansard source

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  It is four years today since the Apple Daily ceased publication, and Jimmy Lai still languishes in Hong Kong’s Stanley Prison. It is worth noting his name and encouraging the Foreign Secretary to raise his case as often as he can. It is welcome to see in the statement that we are “strengthening our response to transnational repression”. Can the Minister confirm that that includes restoring access to the Mandatory Provident Fund, which is another way the Hong Kong Government are spreading their chilling impacts on BNO visa holders here in the UK?

• 20 Jun 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  I will make some progress. Today, due to the extraordinary courage of the hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater), who has given us a once-in-a-generation opportunity for this place to catch up with public opinion, I truly believe that we can take one more step forward towards regaining public trust and confidence in the system. When public polling shows overwhelmingly time and again that the public back the change—between 70% and 75% in the latest polls released—I implore those on the fence to at least listen to public opinion, if not my words.

• 20 Jun 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  I will continue. Nothing I say, however, is intended to simplify the issue, and I acknowledge the fears of many that the palliative care sector is not funded sufficiently for there to be a rational and viable choice between managed care at the end of life and the choice to end one’ own life. I therefore welcome the inclusion of amendment 21, which matches my priority of the improvement of palliative care.

• 20 Jun 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  In conclusion, in the heart-wrenching words of Decca Aitkenhead, who wrote in The Times last week, and which I found particularly moving: “critics of the bill have begun to frame the debate as if leaving the law as it stands does not hurt anyone. It does.” She said that opponents “worry about speculative, hypothetical victims—but the status quo creates indisputable, real life victims”.

• 20 Jun 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  It is an honour to speak in this important debate on an issue that exemplifies why I chose to get into politics and come to this place: to be part of big decisions, taken in tune with public opinion, listening to evidence, and with the goal of making our residents better off. I have no doubt that all right hon. and hon. Members here today intend to make their residents better off, but in this case, tragically, better off means suffering less and giving them agency in the most painful moment of their lives. This Bill addresses a situation where the status quo is utterly unacceptable. I hope that we can all agree in this place that we have heard heartbreaking stories from the families of those who have watched a loved one die in pain or of the fear of someone with a terminal diagnosis facing the prospect of an agonising death. The choice we have with this legislation is whether we choose to do something about that status quo or not. Rejecting this Bill, imperfect as it may be, will continue the pain of those who are let down by the current laws. They are guaranteed victims of a system that is letting them down.