Meg Hillier MP: speeches 2026

Speeches

• 15 Sept 2026 · Public Accounts Committee · Hansard source

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  I am pleased to see this report. Back in January 2024, I asked the Comptroller and Auditor General if the NAO would examine compensation schemes. I looked at a number of them during my more than a decade on the Public Accounts Committee, and different Departments would set them up and they would have different foundations. My hon. Friend will obviously be waiting for the Government’s response to this report in the relevant set of Treasury minutes. When the Committee was doing its thorough work looking into the schemes, with witnesses in front of them as a comparison, were there a couple of good lessons that the new body, if the Government agree to set it up—I hope they do—could take forward, whether that is an exemplar or even one of the better compensation schemes?

• 15 Sept 2026 · Student Loans · Hansard source

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  I absolutely think it should be a high priority, because this generation is being so severely squeezed. The Government’s response to the Committee said: “The Government recognises the cost-of-living challenges faced by many graduates, including those with Plan 2 student loans, and understands concerns about the impact of repayment terms on borrowers.” The response says further that the Government “keep all aspects of the student finance system under review.” This is one change that is very simple to make and relatively cheap. I recognise that the Chancellor has had many challenges even since we put out our report, but this is an achievable change that could be done quickly and would make a big difference to this cohort.

• 15 Sept 2026 · Student Loans · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend says it better than I could. There is a trust relationship, and in the case of student loans, students have nowhere else to go for that money. They signed up on certain terms, and those terms have been changed by successive Governments, and the latest threshold freeze is just another one of those breaches of trust between the Government and those who trust them in taking out a loan.

• 15 Sept 2026 · Student Loans · Hansard source

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  One good thing is that the Government have recognised that problem in their response to us. We are dealing with mostly teenagers under the age of 18. Sometimes those going to university for the first time do not have other people around them who can advise them about the impact of a loan, and many have no choice and have to take out a loan. The cohort now paying back under plan 2 is being further penalised by the threshold change, so more and more is being layered on that particular cohort. There needs to be more fairness in the system.

• 15 Sept 2026 · Student Loans · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for the excellent work that she and her Committee do. We know that there is a crisis in the higher education system, but there is also a huge challenge for the graduates paying off these loans. It is a multifaceted picture, so I am pleased that the Government are looking at reviewing it, but people have just started plan 5 repayments, and a review that might see any changes is still a long way off. We need to have the national conversation that I mentioned about a 50:50 balance. Society benefits from most graduates. They are not just taking; they are actually giving back, and it is really important that we recognise that in our national conversation. Frankly, universities are really struggling in part because of the way in which fees are structured, meaning that they are not getting enough money, but they are still very expensive for students, so nobody is winning in this situation.

• 15 Sept 2026 · Student Loans · Hansard source

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  The Committee certainly received some evidence on that issue. There is a logic to not paying back the loan until that point, because students are mostly not working, so there would be a real challenge in paying it back while someone is an undergraduate or graduate student. The hon. Lady rightly highlights that that has caught a lot of people unawares, as they were not aware of how much it ratchets up. There is layer upon layer of complexity, and the fact is that parents do not fully understand the impact. The hon. Lady says that she has children on plan 2 and plan 5 loans. The bigger picture, which I have looked at over many years, is that Governments of different colours keep changing the student loan package, and each package is more complicated than the last. Plan 5 is paid back over 40 years, but plan 2 is paid back over 30 years. Try keeping up with that! It is very confusing. The Government’s commitment to greater transparency is welcome, but it is only a first step.

• 15 Sept 2026 · Student Loans · Hansard source

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  In that simple question, my hon. Friend raises a raft of issues. For most students, the only way that they can go to university is by getting a loan. There has been a big drive to get people to go to university who would not have been able to do so before, partly because they may be from poorer backgrounds. This Government have added in extra support through the maintenance grant and so on, but there are still huge costs on young people. It is really important that in making decisions, especially as they have committed to reviewing the student loans system, the Government really understand the impact on different cohorts.

• 15 Sept 2026 · Student Loans · Hansard source

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  As my hon. Friend said, we looked at a number of ways of changing things. Once somebody has a plan that has been set up, it is very difficult to unpick different parts of it, but the threshold freeze was added on top of the plan 2 system. That is why it seems particularly invidious. There is an opportunity here—a simple lever that the Government can pull—because the freeze has not yet been implemented. If the Chancellor is looking for a quick win in the Budget, that is one of the easiest things to deliver, without causing more challenging ramifications. If he pulls that lever, it is done, and the biggest number of students would benefit from that.

• 15 Sept 2026 · Student Loans · Hansard source

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  I am pleased to rise to make a statement on the Government’s response to the Treasury Committee’s report on the student loans system. It is worth laying out what our inquiry did. We took evidence from a number of people, including students and graduate representatives at the National Union of Students; Rethink Repayment, which was set up by one of my constituents on behalf of affected graduates; and the union Prospect. We also took evidence from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Universities UK and Sir Philip Augar, who led the Augar review of post-16 education, and who knows more about higher education finance than most of us in the Chamber. We hosted an online survey that received 52,000 responses from individuals, mostly those affected by plan 2 student loans. That was the second biggest response to any Select Committee inquiry ever. We made numerous written requests to the Department for Education for all the publicity material that the Department had produced about student loans from the past 15 years. This unearthed over 200 pages of slides and videos of student presentations. We found in our inquiry that for many years, students were sold an idea that the repayment threshold for student loans would rise with inflation or earnings. This commitment—indeed, a promise—has been repeatedly broken, and graduates are now having to pay back far more over their lifetime as a result. That has happened under Governments of different colours. That promise and the promotional materials created by the DFE downplayed the monthly repayments that most students would have to make once they graduated. In the Committee’s view, this amounted to mis-selling, but the Government have exempted themselves from consumer protection law, so students have no avenue for seeking redress. For most graduates, their student loan repayments will now act as a career-long additional income tax of 9% on top of their marginal rate of tax. The knock-on impact of this additional rate of tax is that it is harming the ability of graduates to get on to the housing ladder, and that in turn affects their ability to start a family and save into a pension. In the run-up to our inquiry, we heard interesting comments from several then Cabinet Ministers, who described the student loan system as “broken” and “unfair”. The Secretary of State for Education called the student loan system “endless” and “unfair” as recently as February. The Government’s own submission to the inquiry described the student loan system as “broken and unfair”. The Committee have made a number of recommendations. We heard in evidence from Sir Philip Augar that when he reviewed the system, he recommended that the split between student and taxpayer should be around 50%. Universities UK reminded us of the benefits of graduates to our wider society. For example, if we have an accident, we rely on people who have trained in medicine—paramedics, doctors and so on—to help. The Committee concluded that the split between the individual and the state should be 50%, but in their response, the Government said that their contribution is already in the region of 35% to 40% and that is enough. I can tell the Government that it does not feel like that to many of my constituents, and the constituents of my fellow Committee members. They can read the Government’s own forecasts of repayments, which that show that starting in 2024-25, the average undergraduate will be paying back their loan for 31 years, and the average amount that they will pay back will be well over £30,000. It is even worse for graduates in the top 30% of earnings: the Government forecast that they will pay back more than they borrowed. Members of the Committee understand that a national conversation needs to be had about how much society should contribute towards higher education, but our cross-party Committee, made up of representatives from the three main parties of the House, concluded that in the longer term, a 50:50 split should be the ambition, so that we can invest in the young people of today and our country. One of the most shocking elements of our inquiry was the evidence provided by the Department for Education about the advice given to students when they took out loans. As a result of seeing that, we recommended that much better information be provided to make it clear to students applying for a loan that the terms and conditions of the loan can change, even after it has been taken out. I am pleased about the Government’s response on this point. We said that “more can be done to support borrowers to understand the student finance system and that all information provided to borrowers should be fair, clear, unambiguous and as easy to understand as possible”. The Government have committed to a “transformation programme” that will “review the pre-application process to produce clear, relatable and trusted guidance that supports better decision making and financial planning. This will include making it more prominent that student finance is governed by legislation and that regulations may be amended by Government and Parliament.” These changes are well overdue. It is shameful that multiple Governments have not done that when it is very young people, mostly under the age of 18, who have been taking out loans. The Committee also recommended that student loans promotional materials should be brought in line with the requirements of the Financial Conduct Authority’s consumer duty. The Government have declined that in their response to our report, based on the fact that these are not commercial loans. However, the Government are the monopoly provider of student loans—students cannot go elsewhere for a loan of this sort. It is therefore beholden on the Government to treat student loans fairly, as the competitive forces that might maintain a higher standard of customer service in banking and other areas do not apply to student loans. We would like the Government to explain which elements of the Financial Conduct Authority’s consumer duty they feel that they cannot comply with, given they do not want to commit to doing so at this stage. We are disappointed on another point. In 2018, the predecessor Committee concluded that the use of the retail prices index should end and we should move to the consumer prices index, which is a lower level of inflation. Back in 2018, the Government responded that the flaws in the RPI measure of inflation are well understood, but they did not make a change. Over that time, Governments of different colours have sat passively by, and today the Government say that they will not make that change because it is coming in 2030 anyway. However, that means that students will have been charged at a higher interest rate for a longer period and we are disappointed by that response. One of the key things that we looked at was the change announced in last year’s Budget to freeze the threshold at which payments have to be made by students for two years from April next year. This seems to be changing the rules again when students are already experiencing pain. This is a cohort of students who already face huge pressures on housing costs and paying into pensions. They are the generation who are helping to grow Britain’s economy and working to deliver essential jobs in that economy. They are the generation who will pay for the NHS and the ageing population, and they will have the children who will be our future workers. Let us not forget that the birth rate has fallen every year in the past three years, down to 1.41%, so not investing in this generation is a real issue. It is a breach of trust to change that threshold and make students stick at a frozen level. This has been done by previous Governments, but there is an opportunity here. The Government have not absolutely said that they will not review the threshold, so there is a glimmer of hope. As they talk to Treasury colleagues ahead of the Budget, I urge Ministers to take the opportunity of a change of Prime Minister and a change of Government to show that we want to invest in his generation. It is a matter of intergenerational fairness. This cohort is squeezed. The Government need to consider the fairness of the student finance system for borrowers, taxpayers and the public finances, but it is important to note that the rules have been changed repeatedly for this cohort, particularly those on the punitive plan 2 system. We want to honour the promises that the Government made to student loan holders. One of the easiest ways to do that is to not bring in a threshold freeze next April. That is in the hands of the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the Budget. I hope that he and his colleagues are listening to this debate and to the 52,000 people who responded to our inquiry, including the many young people in their 20s and 30s who are suffering the additional burden of the punitive plan 2 loan system, and that they will reconsider freezing the threshold at the Budget in October.

• 15 Sept 2026 · Student Loans · Hansard source

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  When I looked at this issue in previous roles, before I was on the Treasury Committee, I found that one of the challenges is that the loan system is set up with lots of box-ticking and spreadsheets happening in Government Departments in Whitehall—a very long way from a 17-year-old who takes out a loan and starts paying it back after they graduate. We need to have them at the heart of the design. There will always be a discussion in government about where money is best spent and how much things cost in the short, medium and long term, but we need to ensure that the graduates paying back their loans are at the heart of that discussion, alongside the impact on further education institutions.

• 15 Sept 2026 · Student Loans · Hansard source

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  It is not only my hon. Friend, I and the Committee who agree on that—it is the Government too. The Secretary of State for Education herself has said there are problems and previous Ministers have called it a broken system. There is a long way to move from a broken system to one that is fair, and the focus of our recommendations is on those who are currently paying back a loan. It is difficult to right all the wrongs for those people, but we think pulling back on the threshold freeze would be an important step for them. I absolutely agree that there needs to be proper long-term thinking about how we fund education and how the loans book is structured, and we need to provide information to people. As it is now, the system is not working.

• 15 Sept 2026 · Points of Order · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker, last week I met some of my constituents who were part of the Trans+ Solidarity Alliance lobby of Parliament. Unfortunately, when they were present, they overheard a passholder making negative comments about trans people. I am sure that you would agree that this House, the mother of Parliaments, should be welcoming to all people, particularly when they are on a mission to lobby their Members about issues that directly impact them. Is there any comment that you would wish to make about how we can ensure that passholders—we cannot control everybody—are reminded of the importance of courtesy and that this place is a place of debate and discussion, not for negative comments about groups of people?

• 15 Sept 2026 · Residential Buildings: Safety Remediation · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I warmly welcome the Minister to her post. I had meetings with most of her predecessors. I do not need to keep having meetings; I just hope that she takes up the points we have raised. I congratulate the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton) on laying out the issues so clearly—as a result, I have cut my speech in half. Sadly, it is a bit like “Groundhog Day”: we have all raised these issues before. The peroration of the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) summarised the complexity that the Minister and the Government have to grapple with. It is not just the Government who are part of this challenge, but they have to be part of the solution. I will not name any of the developments that I am talking about, because my residents are very concerned about being blighted. There have been some improvements. The Building Safety Regulator is getting better and the delays have reduced, but as well as dealing with historical issues, it has to work with new developments. Hackney council has a good track record of building council housing, but some of it has been delayed by the Building Safety Regulator. I understand that the delays have now reduced substantially, but I hope the Minister will look closely at that issue in her new role to make sure the Building Safety Regulator is working as efficiently as possible. Skills remain a big issue, and there has been a woeful lack of activity. Some of us were here in 2018 talking about training fire safety engineers. It takes three years to train them, and if anyone had done that then, we would be in a much better place now. I also wish to mention mortgageability. As recently as 3 September, I had a letter from Baroness Blake of Leeds, repeating what I have had from Ministers of different parties over time: that there are 10 mortgage companies that will lend on property with dangerous cladding. I point that out to constituents and keep referring them to the 10 companies, but there is always a reason why it cannot happen. Those companies obviously have criteria that are often not met. If the Government are routinely sending out that sort of information, it needs to be absolutely accurate. Insurance is a huge and ongoing problem. For two developments in my constituency, only one insurer took part in the insurance tender process—insurers are just pulling out. The Treasury Committee is keen to look at that issue, but there is a real role for the Government to play. I spoke to the Minister’s predecessors in the previous Government, but this nut has not yet been cracked. I think I speak for every Member in this Chamber when I say that we would be happy to put our weight and effort behind it to help the Minister tackle the issues with insurance companies. We cannot have properties that are effectively uninsurable and bankrupting our residents. As the right hon. Member for Islington North said, people are going into debt to pay their insurance premiums, and that is before they have a claim to make. The lack of skilled contractors was first raised back in 2020 in a Public Accounts Committee report, when I was Chair of that Committee. We asked for work to be done, but nothing has happened. The hon. Member for Surrey Heath spoke about tolerability. I have a very expert constituent who came to my advice surgery this summer. I am very happy to introduce the Minister to him. He has written to me and the Department a number of times, and we have had a number of exchanges about the changes in British standards since Grenfell, and specifically about building materials. Instead of having set standards, fire safety is now done on measures of tolerability. He says that there is now a scale of standards, depending on the individual who does the fire safety assessment. That is why, after the Adam Kiziak affair, in which a number of EWS1—external wall system fire review—forms were forged, other people qualified to do the EWS1 certificates came to different conclusions. Two buildings in Hackney that were tolerable were then said to have issues that require remediation. My constituent said that insurance has become so expensive because the insurers are not certain about the standards, which will no doubt have an impact on mortgage lenders, too. The issue needs to be resolved. I say with respect to the Minister that the solution must be much more fundamental than the Government getting people in, banging heads together and saying, “Sort it out.” This is fundamental to why Grenfell happened in the first place. It was the biggest public safety failure in several generations. The Department’s permanent secretary at the time spoke to several of her predecessors to find out who could have seen it coming. Changes happened here, there and everywhere, and no one saw what the cumulative impact would be on Grenfell—obviously, there were also other shocking aspects of the Grenfell situation. This is an opportunity for the Minister, who is a very capable woman—we are all delighted to see her in her post—to tackle this issue once and for all. It may not help our residents immediately, but it has to work for the future. I have several simple asks. Will the Minister get working on the mortgage lender issue and make sure that we are sending out accurate information? Will she work with mortgage lenders not just to get them to sign up to a list saying that they support lending but to be really clear about the criteria that will allow them to lend? Will she look again at insurance and skills, and will she please tackle the issue of tolerability?

• 15 Sept 2026 · Residential Buildings: Safety Remediation · Hansard source

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  We all want to see stronger and better building control, but local authorities have been hollowed out. We have lost a lot of experienced planners and there is not always a pipeline coming through with the necessary experience. Can we lobby the Treasury for support for local government in that respect?

• 15 Sept 2026 · Residential Buildings: Safety Remediation · Hansard source

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  I welcome that step, but what the Minister says suggests it is some way off. Can she give some indication of the timescale for getting mandatory licensing in place?

• 14 Sept 2026 · Israel and Palestine · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for the tone of his comments, and for reminding us of the seriousness of this, and of what took place in Manchester last year. He seems to be suggesting that dialogue between the peoples of our countries is important. Does he not think that twinning with Israeli cities is an important thing to do? It means that the people of Israel, the people of London and the people of Palestine can talk to each other. We should not just be led by what Governments do.

• 14 Sept 2026 · Israel and Palestine · Hansard source

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  I commend my hon. Friend, and the Foreign Secretary last week, for the tone in which they have set out this recent decision on the settlements. I, too, have Jewish constituents who are very scared, but it is right, as the Minister said, to call a friend out when their behaviour goes too far. We know that there are big issues about the legal definition of genocide in Palestine. I wonder whether the Minister, or the Department, has had any conversations with the Israeli Government or the ambassador to the UK about the Foreign Secretary’s statement last week, and whether the Minister could update the House.

• 14 Sept 2026 · Select Committee Chairs: Period of Leave · Hansard source

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  I rise to speak to the motion on substituting Select Committee members if a Chair takes leave and the motion on virtual participation. I want to put on the record my thanks to the Modernisation Committee and the Procedure Committee, chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Cat Smith), for their work. I also thank the Clerks who did amazing work to help us navigate these issues. On virtual participation, there was a clear view among Chairs that there is real benefit to being in the room when Select Committees make decisions and carry out our work, because we need to have conversations both privately and in public. However, we are very aware that, in ordinary workplaces, reasonable adjustments should be made for serious health issues or disability, so we need to be in a more modern space. There was some serious discussion—although, there was no issue with what has been decided—that a person who is very unwell or on maternity leave should have the right to take that leave and not be present, and they should not be criticised for that. This change would allow people not to attend, even if they have a proxy vote, and no approbation should be laid upon them for that. We fought hard for sick leave and maternity leave, and Members should also enjoy those rights. There should be no pressure because people can participate virtually. The other point about virtual participation is that, under the previous Standing Orders, if we were to experience an issue such as the ash cloud or covid again, there would be no activity in this place. I can tell those who were not here during covid that, in the four or five weeks after Easter, when we were locked down, the House rapidly ensured that virtual participation could take place across the House and in Committees, but it required a change in the Standing Orders. This motion puts the matter on a proper footing. It is right to modernise, and that does not diminish the importance of sharing opinions in person. There are also some important safeguards in the measures to ensure that anyone participating virtually is doing so in an appropriate place—for example, not from a car or a train, and not with someone else in the room. It is right that we explicitly say that, because the work of Select Committees is important and they are privileged proceedings of the House. The motion allowing Chairs to be replaced more officially when they are on sick leave or on maternity or parental leave is really important. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Erdington (Paulette Hamilton), who pioneered the approach. A few others have done so over the years, but she really stepped up and took on the role of acting Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee and did some amazing work in that job without all the normal, formal procedures that the motion will put in place. The motion sets the tone by picking up some of the best practices of proxy voting, such as having a review period so that it cannot go on forever. Because Chairs are ultimately elected on a party political basis, there needs to be some thought about that, but it does allow flexibility. If, for example, a member of the Committee regularly steps into the Chair and the rest of the Committee decides that that person might be the more appropriate person to do that, it allows for wriggle room to allow that relevant and proper person to be the Chair even if they are a member of another party. That is important, and perhaps that has been thrown up more in this Parliament than in some others because of the large majority on the Government side, meaning that most Select Committees have only two Members from the other two main parties. The Modernisation Committee has done a sterling job of navigating both these issues to ensure that we modernise to allow us all to participate as we properly should while retaining the integrity of the House and the integrity of Select Committees.

• 11 Sept 2026 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend talks about who makes our laws, and she has talked in articles that she has written about the primacy of this place. If the Bill goes forward, is she willing to accept amendments? She has brought forward a Bill that is exactly the same as the previous Bill, despite its sponsor in the House of Lords himself saying that there needed to be 77 amendments to make it safer.

• 11 Sept 2026 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker, I have huge respect for the Minister, but she has said that she will not take any interventions. She is a very good Minister, and I trust that she will answer in detail the points that have been raised in the House today; having discussions with her and the Government after the debate is too late for today’s vote. I know she is a thorough and assiduous Minister and I am sure she will do her best to do that, but it is important to make that point to the House.

• 11 Sept 2026 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  Is the hon. Lady not, like me, puzzled that the promoter brought back the same Bill, despite there being many amendments that the sponsor in the Lords agreed needed to be made and the promoter today acknowledged needed to be included?

• 10 Sept 2026 · Infected Blood Compensation Scheme · Hansard source

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  I welcome my right hon. Friend to her place and thank her for that response, which demonstrates the complications of these schemes. I asked the National Audit Office to look into this, and yesterday the Public Accounts Committee published its report on compensation schemes, suggesting that a central body be established. I know that she and her Department will respond formally to that in due course, but could she give the House a hint about whether she thinks there is room for improvement? The Government set up different compensation schemes on different systems that can be very complicated, and we do not seem to be learning from better practice.

• 10 Sept 2026 · Infected Blood Compensation Scheme · Hansard source

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  11. How many people potentially eligible for compensation have applied to the infected blood compensation scheme.

• 9 Sept 2026 · Smart Glasses · Hansard source

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  I am pleased by my right hon. Friend’s answer, but she is in a unique position across Government to ensure that we are protecting not only women, but those who are blind or have visual impairments, who really value this technology. If regulation is being talked about across Government, will she ensure that it is about the person misusing it rather than the adaptive technology itself, which can be of so much use to so many people?

• 9 Sept 2026 · Smart Glasses · Hansard source

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  1. What discussions she has had with Cabinet colleagues on the potential impact of camera-enabled smart glasses on women’s privacy.