Meg Hillier MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 15 Sept 2025 · Official Secrets Act · Hansard source

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  I hope that the Intelligence and Security Committee will get a good chance to dig into what has happened in this place, because we are hampered in the Chamber by not being able to look at sensitive issues. I also hope that the Minister will lend his weight to the approval of many senior Members of this House, prior to the last election—it got as far as the last Prime Minister—to create a Committee to look at sensitive spending, but also sensitive issues. In the summer, this Government chose to reintroduce extradition arrangements with Hong Kong, despite the application of the Chinese security Act. Given what the Minister has said today, how can we square both of those positions?

• 15 Sept 2025 · Children with SEND: Assessments and Support · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan, and I congratulate the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) and other colleagues on setting out the case so clearly. I want to focus on solutions and some asks for the Minister. I also want to highlight some of the work done in Hackney, where we have a high number of children with special educational needs. In the last financial year the council spent over £50,000 on top-up funding just to support pupils with SEND. That is an unsustainable position, although the funding is absolutely right for those children and families. City Academy in Homerton, which the Minister’s predecessor came to visit, does very good work to integrate neurodiversity considerations into all teaching. It says that every teacher is a SENCO, and ensures that pupils with special educational needs and neurodisabilities in particular have a voice by being active on the school council and helping to shape it. That is co-production really living—nothing done about them without them. It means they have great trust among parents. It spreads the support available across the whole school and makes sure that lesson planning and support are shared. There might not always be one-to-one support next to someone; the one-to-one support might involve helping a teacher to create a curriculum that will work across the piece. One in five children in Hackney have special educational needs and disabilities, so it is a very important issue, but cost shunting is also an issue. We have heard about the cost of tribunals. In London, with schools closing, which is a terribly sad thing, we need to look at opportunities when it comes to the premises available. On average, it costs £12,000 to transport a pupil to an outside placement, £58,000 for a place in an independent special school and up to £300,000 for residential placements. The cost is enormous. There are signs of the green shoots of hope, with the Government focusing on early intervention—something the Secretary of State has really been emphasising—but can we see more early intervention to prevent the escalation to crisis point and, where it is more appropriate, can we integrate to make sure that we have swift support? Crucially, we need accountability so that parents can have trust in a system that is going to have to change, because the costs are spiralling out of control and children are being failed.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the new team and welcome them to the Government Front Bench. A week is a long time, but I had a promise to meet the previous Minister to discuss the immigration system, because one of the challenges that the Home Secretary has inherited is a broken processing system. As one of the Home Office’s largest customers for my constituents, I know where the gaps and the problems are, so I would welcome a meeting with the Minister about that, if the Home Secretary agrees.

• 11 Sept 2025 · Consumer Affairs · Hansard source

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  I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) on securing this important debate. I extend my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire (Blair McDougall) on his elevation to His Majesty’s Government. It is an honour and a privilege to be a Government Minister, but there are obligations and responsibilities too. I have some asks for him, which I will come to at the end. I am sure he will listen to them and take action. I should declare an interest as a leaseholder, as I will touch on some leasehold issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington talked about a Mars bar, which took me back to my youth. I do not know what size a Mars bar was then, because we had it sliced up and shared between us. I could be getting into a bit of a “Monty Python” story, but perhaps if I had kept to that my figure would be less robust than it is today, so maybe there is an argument for that. My hon. Friend also touched on the poverty premium. Some people are able to buy things cheaper because of where they can go to buy them. The point about differential pricing is an interesting one, and I would add that loyalty card pricing is a real concern now. It is effectively exchanging data for a discount: we can pay extra if we do not have a shop’s loyalty card. If we have a smartphone, we can jump outside, get wi-fi or a signal and perhaps download one, but we are giving away our data in order to get a discount, and the difference in price is quite extraordinary. There is a lot going with respect to pricing, and my hon. Friend addressed it particularly well. He quoted Which? a lot, and I pay tribute to it for its relentless work in standing up for consumers. I want to talk about protecting consumers, including in financial services, and how innovation can support the consumer. Importantly, it is not all about regulation, but I will touch on that too. The Treasury Committee, which I have the privilege of chairing and whose core membership is in the room today, has been looking at a number of these issues. Obviously, there is a lot of discussion of them. The Chancellor has been clear in her Mansion House speeches about making sure the financial services sector is able to help facilitate growth. We all absolutely support that, but we need to be careful to get the balance right. The regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, has to regulate against harm while, as its secondary objective, facilitating growth. There can be a tension there. There is an onus on us in Parliament—I am sure the Minister will have something to say about this—to make sure that our constituents are protected, and we must understand that there are different grades of understanding, particularly in the financial services area. We need to help, support and educate people, but we should recognise that there are people who will always be vulnerable and others who can be vulnerable to certain types of schemes. The Committee has looked at finfluencers, the people who pop up on our social media feed and tell us, as they stand by their Porsche or villa with a swimming pool, how they have done very well and are going to share their tips. Of course, a number of them tip over into giving advice rather than guidance on financial services, which is a very dangerous area that the Committee is looking at. It is a challenging area to deal with. The FCA has told us that Meta—I should call it out—has not been ready to take things down very quickly when it has been alerted to them. If a major regulator like the FCA has challenges getting a major internet provider to deal with these things, then that is a really big battle. That is a huge challenge, not just for the Government, but globally, because a lot of these people are not even based in the UK. I would be interested to know the Minister’s thinking on how we deal with that legally, even with the Online Safety Act 2023, which does not really cover a lot of this. I am not suggesting for a minute that he or the Government have a solution, because it is a very challenging problem to solve, but I am interested in what the Government are looking at. We also have artificial intelligence coming into the financial services sector. There are examples of people who have put models into four different AI systems and come up with what is quite good guidance but very close to advice. One that I came across recently actually recommended investing in a particular named company. This is a very interesting and challenging area to regulate and, again, the Treasury Committee is looking at AI in financial services. There is an awful lot of potential, but there is a lot of risk as well. I know that it is a core area for the Department for Business and Trade to consider, along with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. I am interested to hear the Minister’s thinking on how the Government will make sure, as best they can, that they are a step ahead in protecting consumers against the risk involved. Of course, consumers in financial services have a lot to lose. It is always said, “Don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose,” but if we are to encourage people to invest more, as the Chancellor is keen to do, we need to make sure that people really understand that and protect them from losses, which would be very damaging for many of our constituents—certainly the poorest, and even those on modest incomes who would not have the money to lose. The FCA has also proposed allowing contactless payments to be unlimited. During covid, we saw the contactless limit go up, and it is often even higher on mobile phones. Many of us will have lost a card and only found out because something has gone out of the account. I pay tribute to my bank; I will not name it—it would, perhaps, be unfair for me, as Chair of the Treasury Committee, to pick one out just because of my own consumer moment—but it was very quick off the mark in realising that there had been some fraud. The payments were only very small amounts, but they were outside my normal pattern of purchases. The bank rang me and went through the security processes thoroughly to make sure that the card was stopped and I was reimbursed. The banks are doing a lot of work, but the challenge of increasing freedoms is that on the other side there is the risk of fraud, so thinking about how consumers will be protected is important. Not long ago, the Treasury Committee published our report on access to cash. We held a very illuminating set of hearings. We highlighted in our report that, with fewer places accepting cash, certain groups, such as older people, those on lower incomes who use cash for budgeting, those with certain disabilities and those in domestic abuse situations, often have nowhere that they can buy things. Dame Siobhain, I think it was you who coined the phrase “the poverty premium”. Some big businesses, and others, will not accept cash. That means that the poorest, who budget with cash, have to travel further. Sometimes they will not be able to buy in their neighbourhood, have not really got the means to travel and have to pay the higher prices of the shops that will still take cash. I should say that the Association of Convenience Stores is clear that it wants to see cash accepted, and many such stores do. As a point of principle, I sometimes go into the big supermarkets with cash and say, “Where can I queue?” There is often a longer queue for the machine that accepts cash, and it marks out those who only use cash. Mostly, they are not in my situation—I could pay with a card or a phone. They pay with cash because that is how they budget, and they do not want to risk spending more than they have got. We know the challenges with paying in cash for electricity. There has been some progress in making sure that bills are equalised between those paying on a meter and in cash, but that has taken many years. I have been in this place for 20 years and, dare I say it, Dame Siobhain —it is hard to imagine—you have been here longer than me, and we know that that was a very big battle to fight. One of the other things about getting consumer affairs right is that if consumers are supported, confident and protected, that hopefully means they have more confidence to buy. We saw the good news that consumer spending was up this July, but it has been a very challenging time for the economy. This Government inherited a really big set of challenges from the last Government, thanks to the Budget of September 2022. There were world events as well, but that dented consumer spending and raised mortgage rates, meaning that people have less money to spend. I want to touch on the regulation of e-bikes, which is about protecting consumers. According to the London Fire Brigade, e-bikes are one of the major emerging causes of fires. One of my fire stations, in Shoreditch, has been holding what might be called amnesties. Delivery drivers will often buy an extra battery online in order to boost the range of their bike, because of course they make money on the number of deliveries that they make. They have been invited into the fire station to have them checked, and a number have been found to be dangerous. In particular for someone living in shared accommodation in London, if the battery in the bike in the hallway—which might be their livelihood—catches fire, it can be devastating. It can lead to loss of property and loss of life. It is really important that we give some thought to the regulation of e-bikes and batteries. I have many issues with Lime bikes, which I will not go into now, but one of the things that legitimate e-bike providers, whether for sale or hire, would agree with me on—we do not agree on everything—is the need for proper regulation of e-bike batteries. We need to make sure that online sellers do not get away with selling dodgy batteries and that there are better checks in place. The Minister may not be able to give me a detailed answer right now—he has only been in the job three or four days, so I do not expect a full answer—but if he is not able to answer some of my points, it would be helpful if he could write to me. I have many constituents who are very concerned about these issues. Utilities is a big area of concern. I have the privilege—I should state for the record that I am speaking with irony—of being a Thames Water customer, as are my constituents. We have seen the challenges there. I am sure the new Secretary of State will be as robust as the last in trying to tackle that. We have had a poor service, with burst water mains and our bills just going up all the time. That does not feel good for consumers. We need to make sure that the Government are given all power to their elbow in trying to tackle the water companies. One thing that is very specific to the Minister’s Department is the licensing review. Again, that affects a lot of businesses in my area. It is partly about regulation, but it aims to equalise the price of licences at a lower level nationally. This is a very specific point, and I will be writing to the Minister or the Secretary of State on about it, but the London Local Authorities Act enables inner-London boroughs in particular—it affects them most—to charge a certain rate for licence fees for businesses. Hackney has the fastest-growing economy in London, according to the Office for National Statistics and the Greater London Authority, and many of its businesses require licensed premises. Equalising the rate at a lower level will reduce the council’s capacity to enforce licensed premises. As it is now, licensees pay a fee, and they know that the bad licensed premises will also be inspected—there will be regular review points. That works well, because the good providers are very concerned that the bad providers should not get away with it. If the fee is equalised at a lower level, Hackney council stands to lose up to half a million pounds a year in fees, and will have no ability to carry out the enforcement work as proactively as it does. We have a high density of licensed premises in Shoreditch and in Dalston, which I have had the privilege of representing since last year. Providers on those strips are very keen to have good enforcement. One licensee said to me, “Every morning I wake up and check my phone in case anything happened the night before,” because they know the responsibility of being a good licensee; it is really important to protect their customers, and also the sector as a whole, because people flock to my constituency to use these premises. If the council is unable to enforce on bad behaviour by licensees, that will damage the sector—and, I contend, damage the growth that is happening in Hackney. Hackney South and Shoreditch is only half an hour away, so if the Minister or one of his team wanted to visit, or to bring officials in for an explanation from the council, I would very much welcome them. I hope that this issue will be considered. We certainly do not disagree with removing regulation or easing the path for businesses, but if we throw out the baby with the bathwater, we could end up with worse than we started with. Insurance is another big issue for consumers. It seems incomprehensible to many people how much insurance premiums have gone up. Again, the Treasury Committee called in the insurance companies and raised some of the challenges with them. I will not go through that in detail—not least because most hon. Members in the Chamber were in the room when we had them in—but the costs for leaseholders seem to be going up, and there is a real issue about support for leaseholders, particularly in respect of transparency and accountability for service charges. As I mentioned, I am a leaseholder myself. We get several long spreadsheets of information about how money is allocated, but it is very difficult to judge whether we are being charged a fair amount, whether that is for window cleaning, general cleaning or insurance. Obviously, since the tragedy of Grenfell, insurance for a block will be not just for the flat and the floor concerned, but for the whole building, and that has caused premiums to shoot up, but they have gone up by an incredible amount given the actual rate of tragic incidents—the reality has not matched the cost of the potential liability—so that is a big area of work. That is also affecting consumer spending. Many of my constituents are first-time homeowners, who bought their dream homes as leaseholders. Some are shared owners, and they are in the worst of all worlds; they pay a mortgage on one portion and rent on the other, but they have responsibility for the whole thing, including all of the service charges and any remediation works that need to take place—I will leave cladding aside for a moment, but other works may need to take place—and then they are trapped, because the service charge and mortgage have gone up, and sometimes their rent has too, and they are unable to sell. Many are very much trapped in that situation. On consumer affairs, I must of course mention the issue of cladding. Many of my constituents are still waiting for the first bit of work to be done; all they have had is a slight investigation to determine that the cladding needs to be removed. Sometimes it is only a small amount, but because of the risk-based approach, those with the least cladding are sometimes at the back of the queue. In many cases, scaffolding has not even gone up. We are in 2025. The tragedy of Grenfell happened in 2017, and by 2018 it was very clear what the problems were: a failure of regulation over many generations, which has led to a real problem. That is one of the biggest consumer scandals of a generation. I know that it is not in the Minister’s Department, but we now have the Building Safety Regulator. My constituents and I are impatient for work to happen as fast as possible. We need to step up not just the number of skilled people to do the work, but—the trade deals done by the Minister’s Department may help with this—the supply chains, so that the necessary materials are available alongside the skills. There is so much more that I could say on this—I have repeated it endlessly in the House—but people are trapped. They have lost faith in the housing system. They feel, quite rightly and understandably, that they were sold the dream and bought a home in good faith, and now they are living the nightmare and trapped. Often, they want to move to a bigger property but are unable to do so because they cannot sell theirs. There is an awful lot to be done there. More widely, there are options with regulation: we can have regulation that is very heavy-handed and protects people but can be a burden on businesses, but we can also have self-management. We saw that the regulation of building safety went way too far in one direction. Regulations were removed incrementally, so that no one knew who was responsible for certain things and proper checks were not done. We need to get the balance right. Self-regulation can work very well, but there needs to be a robust and, in a way, fearsome regime to make sure that it is audited. There is no point in saying to a sector, “Self-regulate,” if that is not double-checked and triple-checked at some point, so that the sector knows that the heavy hand of the regulator, whoever it may be, can come down heavily on it. If the Government are moving away from regulation—as we are certainly seeing in financial services—or trying to loosen it a bit, we need to make sure that we watch very closely, protect the consumer along the way, and get key assurances in place. This is an important debate, and there is so much more that I could talk about. I started with Mars bars and ended with building safety, which shows the gamut of important issues that matter to consumers. We need to make sure that they are protected from the worst harm while innovation in things like fintech can give people more choice—that is also important.

• 9 Sept 2025 · Planning Reform: Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  I welcome my right hon. Friend’s commitment to the hope of decent homes. In my constituency, children and families are leaving in droves and schools are closing because of a lack of properly affordable housing. She knows, as I do, that whatever we do in planning, without the skills that we need to build those homes, there will be a block there. Is she working with the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who now has the skills brief, to ensure that we are investing in those skills and super-turbocharging the people who can help to build those homes?

• 1 Sept 2025 · Middle East · Hansard source

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  The Foreign Secretary said that diplomacy fails until it succeeds. We have talked often in this House about the tragedy unfolding. As we approach the second anniversary, and as he goes to the UN to discuss and agree the recognition of a Palestinian state, can he explain to the House what threshold would need to be reached for a UN peacekeeping force to ensure safe passage of food and welfare to those who are starving and dying, even as we stand here today?

• 1 Sept 2025 · Borders and Asylum · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement. There is a lot to unpick, and we need more detail on this new appeals system. One of my key concerns when I was in the Home Office many years ago was the poor legal advice that people were getting early on. Lawyers were making them jump through many hopeless hoops to extend their stay unnecessarily. They were putting them in a miserable situation, costing the taxpayer, and creating chaos and duplication in the system. Is the Home Secretary looking at what legal advice people will get at an early stage, so that appeals and processes can be expedited?

• 22 Jul 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I commend my right hon. Friend for his work on reducing waiting lists, but at the Homerton in Hackney, because of a system-wide funding failure, deficit reduction money was removed three months into a 12-month agreement, which reduced the opportunity to drive down waiting lists still further. Will he or one of his colleagues meet me to discuss this issue and see what we can do to drive down those waiting lists?

• 16 Jul 2025 · Financial Services Reform · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for the statement and look forward to the Treasury Committee talking to—or interrogating—her, and indeed the Chancellor, about the detail as it emerges. Since the election, one of the things the Government have been talking about, leading on from the previous Government, is the secondary remit letters to the regulators about encouraging growth as a secondary objective. Can she tell us when the Government will be clear about their own appetite for risk in the sector so that both firms and the regulators know how far the Government will be prepared to go? She and I know from our experience in this place that if too many consumers suffer under any changes, this place is where that will be raised, and then there is a tendency for the Government to turn around and say, “Well, you went too far.” For the sake of the sector, the regulator and our constituents, will she tell us—or will she tell us when she can—where the Government’s line on risk will fall?

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Secretary of State’s support for parliamentary transparency and for the work of the Committee corridor in this House. I have no doubt that my excellent colleagues who chair the various Committees that are responsible will do a thorough job of examining this matter, and I hope that the Secretary of State will facilitate the sharing of any information that may need to be handled in a sensitive manner. When Labour was last in government, there were a number of breaches of this nature; a predecessor of his asked to be notified of every one, and most were due to human error. It is great that we are updating the IT systems and dealing with the security, but could the Secretary of State touch on the measures that will be put in place to guard against the human error that will inevitably creep in?

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

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  I was pleased to meet officials from my right hon. Friend’s Department at a centre in Hackney. I also met officials from the Department for Work and Pensions, and it was really apparent that the work being done to help parents get into work is critical. Could she expand on how that will fit into the Best Start centres?

• 7 Jul 2025 · Government Performance against Fiscal Rules · Hansard source

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  We all know why the Government want to keep their fiscal rules tight, because we know what happens when the markets go wrong, but a lot of things have rocked the country since the Labour Government were elected a year ago. Will the Chief Secretary explain to our constituents what the benefits of the fiscal rules are for them in their day-to-day lives? This can seem a very remote and distant discussion for people who are living in overcrowded conditions or who need healthcare, for example.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Pension Schemes Bill · Hansard source

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  I draw the House’s attention to the fact that I am a trustee of the parliamentary contributory pension fund. Consolidation is absolutely the right direction of travel so that pension funds have better experts who are better able to advise. I still have a slight concern, though, about mandation. There will have to be schemes to invest in, and they will need to ensure that they are getting returns. How will the Minister ensure that the Bill actively delivers on both sides of the equation?

• 7 Jul 2025 · Pension Schemes Bill · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend has referred to good opportunities. I think it was Islington council’s pension scheme that invested in social housing in its area. That gives a good return because, by and large, people pay their rent—it is a steady return over a long period of time. Given the desperate need for housing in this country, does my hon. Friend agree that that would be a real opportunity for these funds as they get bigger?

• 7 Jul 2025 · Pension Schemes Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is not wrong on this point. In fact, the Public Accounts Committee looked a number of years ago at enrolment in pension schemes and found that a lot of young people were not enrolling because of the cost of living, which his Government have to take responsibility for. There is no easy answer to this, but I would be interested to know if the Conservative party now have policies to resolve this problem.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Pension Schemes Bill · Hansard source

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  I share some of my hon. Friend’s concerns about mandation. I am happy that the Minister seems to be listening, and I hope that we will get some answers. I am interested in my hon. Friend’s thoughts about pulling forward the sunset clause. If these changes take place, they will have to happen over a long period of time, as trustees cannot just flip in and out of investments. She has set out the views of her witnesses, but does she have any views on pulling that date forward from 2035? I can see there are arguments both ways, but I am concerned that that might push trustees to make bad decisions.

• 1 Jul 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  The Economic Secretary is reviewing the work of the Financial Ombudsman Service. We on the Treasury Committee recognise that there have been challenges with the service, but how will she make sure that the consumer voice is central to her review?

• 1 Jul 2025 · Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill · Hansard source

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  I am absolutely clear that government is about choices. When a party is in government, it has to make choices to run the country. Some 14 of my 20 years in this place have been served when other parties have been in government, and I have seen Conservative Prime Ministers pass through a revolving door, but I would always rather see a Labour Government. Divided parties do not hold power or government. If we want to see our values played out in this country, we need to vote for the Bill today. There is still a lot to do, a lot of discussion to be had and the Timms review to take place, but major changes were made last week that have significantly altered the Bill in a short space of time. We should bank that and continue to fight, with the passion that hon. Members have demonstrated today, for the rights of disabled people and all of those who want a job, whether they are disabled or not, and need support to get into work.

• 1 Jul 2025 · Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend raises an important point. Cost shunting can work both ways, so it is vital that the Timms review examines that. If this Government are serious about mission-led government and working across Departments, it is crucial that the Department of Health and Social Care and others are closely involved. We all know that government is about hard choices—no one said that to govern is easy. However, I say to the Government that it is about not just what they do but how they do it. I trust that over the past week the Government have really learned that. I am blown away by the talent of Members of the House, particularly new colleagues I have met since 2024. There are people sitting on the Benches on both sides of the House who have huge talent and experience. We are not just message replicators or voting fodder—there is talent, knowledge and expertise in this House that the Government would do well to harness. It is easy to get into a bunker mentality and feel like government is hard—I have been a Government Minister; there is lots to do and there is never a minute to oneself—but listening and engaging is vital and makes for better policy. The privilege of this place is that every centimetre of the United Kingdom is represented by a Member of Parliament, so we have reach, which is a valuable tool for anybody who takes policymaking seriously. Parliament has a vital role and the Government need to engage better with Members of this House, particularly those who work on the Committee corridor. I pay tribute to my fellow Committee Chairs. We have a constitutional role to play to challenge and cajole Government, but we also have a role to inform and shape policy. We live in a world where we see leadership in some prominent countries by people with whom we do not have the same values. The world is being taken in a direction that I do not want to see, and that is a risk in this country. Under the last Government, we saw how division rent the party now in opposition asunder. I have spent more than half of my 31 years in elected office under Governments led by the Conservatives—that is miserable, frankly, because it means that we did not have the power to shape things in the way that we do when we are in power.

• 1 Jul 2025 · Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill · Hansard source

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  This is, as has oft been reported this week, the first anniversary of a Labour Government— and have I not been waiting for that for a very long time? It is also the 10th anniversary of the start of my time chairing two Select Committees, first looking in detail at public spending and, for the last year, looking at the Treasury—and what a privilege that has been. I therefore cannot stand here and claim that I did not know that the Labour Government would be inheriting a very difficult financial situation. Although this matter is not just about money, and should not just be about money, it is a tragedy that too many young people in particular are being pushed into disability benefits. It is a sign of what the Public Accounts Committee would call “cost shunting”— failures in parts of the public sector, where money has been taken away, have seen people pushed into other areas where they could claim the money. Too often, these people are being written off, and I have too many of them in my constituency. I can see the face of one mother who came to my surgery. She was distraught that her two young sons, one of whom is in his early 20s, were in a terrible state and had never been able to work. A week is a long time in politics, as has famously been said. One week ago, this Bill meant that more than 300,000 people currently receiving personal independence payments were fearful that they would lose them through reassessment. But things have changed since then—I pay tribute to many hon. Friends for that, particularly to many of those who chair Select Committees and to the Government, who have embraced the discussions that we had in good faith. As a result, the Government have agreed to protect existing PIP claimants to make sure that those people are not fearful that they will lose their money and that they can relax and know that they can be secure in their future. The Government have also ensured that those receiving universal credit and the health top-up are protected in real terms. I pay particular tribute to the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), for that proposal.

• 1 Jul 2025 · Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill · Hansard source

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  I completely agree with my hon. Friend. That was one of the biggest concerns that I had with the Bill. It was also why so many hon. Members stood up and said that they did not want this to go ahead on those terms, and the Government listened. The Government are also introducing important employment support. That presents a huge opportunity for our local councils and for others that provide that support. I am talking about not just the DWP, but charities that specialise in working with people. I have an example of such work. DWP staff in Hackney have worked with a woman, a victim of domestic violence, who at the age of 49 found herself homeless. They helped her into a flat. She was a parent of three and had not worked since she was 16. They found her work, and after a few weeks she came back to them and said, “I like this 10 hours of work a week. I want more.” Intensively done, these efforts can work. It takes time, which is one reason that we needed to protect current PIP claimants. The co-production of the Timms review is a groundbreaking change. If the DWP adopts that, does it well and makes it the blueprint for the future, it will put disabled people in the driving seat in shaping benefits, not just now but in the future. That is long overdue and it is one of the biggest changes that came out of the discussions in recent weeks. We all know that work is a noble endeavour. I will not repeat what others have said about that, but it is good for people and people want to work. Many disabled people in my constituency, and up and down the country, are not supported into work. Whether they are receiving PIP or they become well enough to work and do not need PIP, the dignity of work should be open to all. Too many disabled people are excluded from the workplace, so work support is critical to them. I welcome the work of the Mayfield review. At a roundtable last week, I met employers and people who are putting people into work, who praised the early findings of the Mayfield review—one of the people there had been involved in it. It is demonstrably good value for employers to support people to stay in work because they keep that experience and knowledge. I also welcome the right to try and all the other payments and support set out in the Bill. We need to reform the welfare system because it is letting too many people down: too many people moulder on benefits and never have the chance to get off them.

• 30 Jun 2025 · Welfare Reform · Hansard source

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  I thank the Secretary of State for the movement made in the last week. It would have been good to have had those conversations earlier, but we are where we are. In response to the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, my right hon. Friend spoke about the November deadline and the four points kicking in. Will she explain to the House the rationale for settling on those four points in one category prior to the Timms review?

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

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  I visited the Isle of Man and met the sponsor of the Bill there. The House of Keys, which has only 24 Members, took three years to get to this point, and the sponsor of the Bill thinks it will take at least five years to implement the Bill in that much smaller jurisdiction.

• 11 Jun 2025 · Spending Review 2025 · Hansard source

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  I congratulate my right hon. Friend on delivering this spending review—the first zero-based review in a very long time. It is vital that as taxpayers—the citizens—are looking carefully at their spending in this cost of living crisis, that Government do that too. We look forward to having the Chief Secretary to the Treasury before the Committee in two weeks’ time to consider the review in more detail. I note from the figures that the Chancellor has made a good fist of ensuring that Departments have more than they did under the Conservatives in many cases, and I welcome her work to deliver on tackling child poverty, a scourge on our society. I note from my brief glimpse, however, that there is a smaller increase for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government than there would have been—there is the £39 billion over a decade for affordable social housing. Children living in poverty also face poverty of situation in many cases. Will she expand on how she and the Deputy Prime Minister will deliver that money to provide the social housing that so many children in poverty desperately need?

• 10 Jun 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  Late on Friday night—after hours and to an unmonitored inbox—emails suggesting that approach were sent to the Chairs of the two relevant Select Committees: the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee and the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. That was the first that had been heard of it. An all-colleague email went round on Saturday morning. This seems to be rather hurried, breathless and not very courteous to the House. The Minister has written two very respected books about Parliament, and I am sure that he did not intend disrespect, but we need to be clear that scrutiny is done through Select Committees and that policymaking is a separate thing. Combining the two is not really appropriate.