Mike Martin MP: speeches 2026

Speeches

• 24 Mar 2026 · Oil and Gas · Hansard source

  More

  I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on having the largest wind farm in Europe in his constituency.

• 23 Mar 2026 · Ukrainian Refugees: Permanent Settlement · Hansard source

  More

  I know that the Minister will listen carefully to this question because he used to live in Tunbridge Wells. Elena is a Ukrainian woman who works in our local hospital. She has not been able to advance her career because her visa restrictions mean that she cannot study. I know that the Government do not want to give the Ukrainians permanent settlement—they have made that very clear—but will the Minister at least devise a pathway by which to give visa security to Ukrainians so that they can study and get mortgages and jobs? They are restricted in their ability to do those things.

• 23 Mar 2026 · Ukrainian Refugees: Permanent Settlement · Hansard source

  More

  12. If she will take steps to provide Ukrainian refugees with a route to permanent settlement.

• 17 Mar 2026 · Isles of Scilly: Transport · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend is making a powerful case for his constituents. Does he agree that this is a problem not just for the Isles of Scilly, but for the Isle of Wight and the Western Isles? We are an archipelago. Those who live on the outer islands suffer from this inequity; they are as British as us, but they do not enjoy the same connectivity.

• 16 Mar 2026 · Strait of Hormuz · Hansard source

  More

  Contrary to what some less well-informed voices from the Conservative Benches have been saying, short of putting ground troops into Iran, there is no military solution that enables us to open the strait of Hormuz. The Iranians are effectively placing civilian shipping at risk with missiles, drones, subs and fast boats; it is very difficult to come up with a military solution to that problem, and Iran can therefore decide whether it wants to reopen the strait. Will the Minister tell the House whether we are getting together with our European allies to deliver a message to the Americans that they need to step down and step away from this to enable Iran to reopen the strait?

• 16 Mar 2026 · Defence: UK Allies · Hansard source

  More

  TEK Military Seating in Tunbridge Wells designs and exports military seating. It risks losing a £400,000 order to a customer in the United Arab Emirates because it lacks the permissions in the export licence, and my understanding is that the Department for Business and Trade is waiting for an answer from the MOD. Will the Minister please investigate?

• 11 Mar 2026 · UK-based Tech Companies · Hansard source

  More

  I thank my hon. Friend for her comprehensive intervention, which speaks to exactly the issues that I will raise. The key example is DeepMind, which was the world-leading AI company. We, the Brits, failed to create the ecosystem, funding and risk-taking capital to enable it to scale fully. It was then bought by Google, and now the British Government contract with Google rather than with DeepMind. That is exactly my fear: even though we are the world’s third AI power, that could move away from us very quickly if we do not create the right ecosystem to support our tech firms. If this Government are serious about supporting growth, we need to look at small and medium-sized enterprises. It will not surprise hon. Members that I have some examples from my Tunbridge Wells constituency. First, Capital Web develops AI software to help businesses to improve productivity. That is on the application side of AI; we are never going to compete on the frontier model side of AI, but the UK can certainly compete on how we implement those frontier models to work cases. I will also give a bit more detail about Adzuna, a firm based in Tunbridge Wells that helps people to find jobs. The problem in the UK is one of scaling up. We often have support for businesses that are very small. We might have research and development tax credits or innovation grants, or we might help them to spin directly out of universities. However, what just does not happen in the UK is moving them on from the position where they have a concept and patent and are perhaps ready to scale rapidly. Those firms are left to go abroad, be taken over, or perhaps wither and see the market move on and eclipse them. That is the real danger.

• 11 Mar 2026 · UK-based Tech Companies · Hansard source

  More

  That is an excellent point. It is very much something that the Government can do, because they understand where capital can be found and how to create the legal and regulatory ecosystem that enables these companies to thrive. Let me touch briefly on access to capital—I am thinking of slightly larger amounts than those the hon. Gentleman just mentioned. Pension funds are a huge source of capital. In the UK, trillions are under management in our pension funds. This is something that Canada does very well. Canada’s pension funds operate almost like specialist investors, pumping billions of dollars into AI, infrastructure and software. To pick another example that is dear to my constituency, South East Water, which many hon. Members will have seen me rail against, is 25% owned by NatWest pensions—our favourite cuddly UK bank—which makes its money by selling debt to South East Water at a rate of 10% interest. That is not pension fund investment that is driving growth in the UK. We must do better. We must think about how we can push and guide our pension funds, and all those millions that are under investment, to invest in growth sectors in the UK, rather than going abroad. Let me turn to reforming public procurement. At the worst end of the spectrum is probably the Ministry of Defence, where it takes six years from first contact to signing a contract. That is just to sign the contract, not to deliver the piece of military hardware and test it or have it in service. The stories out of MOD procurement would not be out of place in an episode of “The Thick of It”. That is the worst case, but then there is the Department for Work and Pensions. Andrew in my constituency founded Adzuna, which is effectively a super-duper job search thing that uses AI to match people’s profiles to the skills needed and so on. It took him two and a half years from approaching the DWP to signing a contract. Andrew started out with a laptop at his kitchen table, and businesses that size cannot wait two and a half years. Cash is king—and they will either have gone out of business or decided to go somewhere else by the time that contract is offered. Whether in defence, where people actually need to contract much more quickly because of the pace of technological change, or Government, who actually need an effective job search tool on their websites, these timescales need to be compressed. In that way the Government will open themselves up much more to small firms instead of just the big firms that are able to take two and a half years on a punt for a contract with the DWP. To sum up, there are a number of things that the Government could do around information sharing—I thank the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Dan Aldridge) for making that point—and access to capital, particularly encouraging pension funds to invest. They should also look at procurement and focusing that on small businesses, because small businesses are the ones that deliver growth. That is where we get growth in our economy—much more so than from big businesses. The Government have a huge set of levers to pull, so I implore the Minister, “Could we perhaps start pulling them?”. I look forward to his remarks.

• 11 Mar 2026 · UK-based Tech Companies · Hansard source

  More

  It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Betts. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune) on securing this important debate. We have heard from both sides of the Chamber that the British tech sector spreads into all our constituencies, so it concerns us all. When the Government came to power, they said that their central mission was to provide growth. I posit that a key way to do that is by supporting our small and medium-sized businesses, because that is where growth comes from.

• 4 Mar 2026 · Ministry of Defence · Hansard source

  More

  If we want to do that now, it would cost 3.5% of GDP—it is basically a 50% increase on our current defence budget. When we talk about £2 billion here or £5 billion there, that is peanuts. If we want to lead in the defence of the Euro-Atlantic area, we need an extra £30 billion for our defence budget now. The Government recognise the scale because they talk about 3.5%, but by 2035. If we are honest with ourselves, we think that is nonsense, because we need to be able to do it right now. I was in Munich recently and I spoke to a lot of our allies. They all tell us that they want the UK to lead in the defence of the Euro-Atlantic area. Absent the US, we are the only country that can do that. We have the nuclear deterrent, the strategic culture, the willingness to use force, and the willingness to take casualties. The one thing we do not have is enough military capability to take that leadership position, and this estimate falls far short of what we need to spend—

• 4 Mar 2026 · Ministry of Defence · Hansard source

  More

  Other Members have articulated the threat we face, so I will not repeat those points. Suffice it to say, we are in jeopardy. Global threats are on the rise, but at the same time, UK capability is decreasing. The only way that we can close that gap is to re-arm. Rearming is the only credible way to deter war—that is the point of it. It is not just strategically sound; it is economically sensible. I would much rather we spend 3.5% of GDP on defence than 35%. That is not a hypothesis: 35% is what Ukraine currently spends on defence. Our military limitations are laid bare every day. Just last week, senior defence figures told The Times that the UK would be unable to send 5,000 troops to Ukraine without taking forces from Estonia or Cyprus. We currently have 900 troops in Estonia as part of Operation Cabrit, protecting NATO’s eastern front and deterring Russian aggression. Weakening or removing that deterrent would send exactly the wrong message to Putin. Where he sees strength, he retreats; where he sees weakness, he advances. The UK’s footprint in Estonia has already been stripped back to bare bones. We have fewer than 10 tanks operating there, and troop numbers are down by 650 since 2022. As far as I am concerned, we are breaking a promise to our Estonian allies. In Afghanistan, I fought alongside Estonian soldiers. We ate the same food, we went on the same patrols, and we got in the same firefights. They have been exceptional allies to us, not just in Afghanistan but elsewhere. We are not doing the same for them now. Our shortcomings go well beyond Estonia. Rob Johnson, who used to run the red teaming think-tank inside the MOD, recently told the Defence Committee that we could deploy just 2,000 troops, five ships and 30 aircraft if a crisis broke out. The Royal United Services Institute estimates that we would run out of ammunition within a week. That is not a credible defence posture for the United Kingdom. When I joined the Army 19 years ago, I was one of more than 100,000 regular soldiers. We now have just about 70,000 on the establishment, and we can deploy only 50,000 of those at any one time due to medical deployments and all the rest of it. Over the same period, our fleet has halved in size. I will say it again: that is not a credible defence posture for the United Kingdom. Change is desperately needed. We need a military that is able to lead in the defence of the Euro-Atlantic area, and we must be able to do that without the US—that is clear from what is happening at the moment. Because of our history, the UK also needs to be able to retake the Falkland Islands as a sovereign endeavour, so without allies, but that is a big ask. If we want to do such things, I have a vision for what our military should look like, which is an Army of 100,000 soldiers, a fleet of 50 ships, and 250 combat aircraft.

• 2 Mar 2026 · Middle East · Hansard source

  More

  The Iranian regime is clearly abhorrent and no one would mourn its passing, but, as someone who fought in Afghanistan, I am grateful to the Prime Minister for saying that we need a viable, thought-through plan. Plainly the United States does not have that plan. President Trump said over the weekend that the US was planning to hand Iran over to some people, but then killed them by mistake. One of my concerns is the 440 kg of 60% enriched uranium in Iran. If the regime is wiped out, the country will fall into chaos. What is the plan for that uranium?

• 2 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill · Hansard source

  More

  This is the key point: in an election, if someone has to vote against what they do not want, it poisons our whole democratic well, because voters feel that they end up with something they have not chosen. They have made a negative choice, rather than a positive choice.

• 2 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill · Hansard source

  More

  It is great to speak in a debate that has been so well-tempered, and mostly very thoughtful. I start by welcoming the extension of the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds. The Lib Dems have campaigned on that for many decades, so we are delighted that the Government have reached into our policy locker. I also welcome a lot of the work that will be done under this Bill around donor transparency—the idea of knowing our donor. If we are all being honest, many of us, looking at the rules around the donations that we all seek and accept, think that someone could, if they chose, drive a coach and horses through them. When we buy a house or a car, or some other expensive goods, we often have to prove where the money has come from, so it is about time that we had the same rules when it comes to political donations. In the limited time available to me, I would like to highlight a couple of areas where we need to go further. I am a member of the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, the Chair of which, the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western), spoke earlier. The Committee has recently covered a couple of points that I implore the Minister to look into in greater depth. Our long-running inquiry on defending democracy looks at exactly the issues addressed in the Bill, and I would like to talk about two of them. First, representatives from the National Crime Agency came before the Committee and told us that the law as set out—both the current law and that mooted by the Government in their strategy—does not give the agency sufficient legal grounds to investigate suspicious donations. The Minister can look at the evidence given to the Committee, but there are lots of behaviours that appear to be undemocratic, but after discussions with the Crown Prosecution Service and the National Crime Agency, they are judged not to meet the threshold for breaking the law, either currently or if the Bill as drafted is enacted, so no further investigations are undertaken. There have been many instances when the National Crime Agency has been looking at something that is illegal and, in the scope of its activities, it has uncovered other activities that look “dodgy”, but it is unable to investigate further. That evidence was set out to the Committee, so the Minister can look at that. Secondly, there are the issues around cryptocurrency, as other hon. Members have already raised. This is a frontier that is moving incredibly fast. On one hand, cryptocurrency has blockchain, so it is possible to look at the ledger to see where donations have come from. On the other hand, with multiple different cryptocurrencies, the ability to move funds in and out of cryptocurrencies in different jurisdictions on crypto exchanges that are held in jurisdictions with which we do not have good relationships, and the ability to use AI to split large donations into tiny donations, spread them out across hundreds of different crypto exchanges and cryptocurrencies, and then reform them into microdonations, this frontier is moving incredibly fast and we do not understand it. For that reason, the Chair of the Committee wrote to the Secretary of State last week asking for a moratorium on cryptocurrencies, and I urge the Government to look into the issue—

• 2 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill · Hansard source

  More

  We have heard this argument a couple of times, and the right hon. Gentleman is making it well. He is making a grave accusation. Surely the easiest way to put this argument to bed would be for the Secretary of State to simply intervene on the right hon. Gentleman and state that auto-enrolment will be rolled out in all areas of the country before the next UK general election.

• 25 Feb 2026 · Ukraine · Hansard source

  More

  The hon. Member is making an excellent speech. While we want the war in Ukraine to end and, of course, for Britain to play a leading role in that, including, if appropriate, the provision of troops, does he not share my fear, when we zoom out and look at the geopolitical context, that putting the troops in Estonia in Ukraine stops us from guarding other areas on the eastern flank, and—to use military terminology—fixes most of our forces there when they might be needed elsewhere?

• 24 Feb 2026 · Online Harm: Child Protection · Hansard source

  More

  That is exactly what is happening in Tunbridge Wells. The secondary schools there have moved together to be smartphone-free, and now the primary schools are having that conversation with the parents.

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

  More

  On this point about which Departments had which papers, I note that the Humble Address uses the words “including but not confined to”. Surely papers in the royal household that relate to this matter should also come under the scope of the Humble Address. Does my hon. Friend agree?

• 23 Feb 2026 · Local Government Reorganisation · Hansard source

  More

  This has been a shamefully incompetent episode, and perhaps the most shameful part of it is that the Government have been forced to use taxpayers’ money to pay the claimant’s costs. Could the Secretary of State tell us exactly how much taxpayers’ money has been given to the claimant? Perhaps if he cannot do so, the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) could let us know.

• 23 Feb 2026 · Schools White Paper: Every Child Achieving and Thriving · Hansard source

  More

  I congratulate the Secretary of State on the White Paper. She clearly cares about this, which bodes well for the outcome. For too long, the cost of SEND support has fallen on local authorities, and that has had a knock-on effect on the other services they provide, such as libraries and roads. It now seems—if I am reading this right—that much SEND cost will come back to the DFE. What does that mean for local authority budgets? Will they be raided, and will that money be brought across to the DFE, or will those budgets be kept the same?

• 10 Feb 2026 · Point of Order · Hansard source

  More

  On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. During Health and Social Care questions on 22 July 2025—over six months ago—the Minister for Secondary Care agreed to meet me to discuss accelerating patient discharges from hospital. I wrote to her on 28 July to arrange that meeting and received no reply. I followed it up with a written parliamentary question on 9 September. I remain still with no reply. Could you please advise me on what further avenues are open to me to secure a reply, given the Minister’s commitment made in the House?

• 9 Feb 2026 · UK-India Free Trade Agreement · Hansard source

  More

  Do prawns feel pain?

• 9 Feb 2026 · Russian Influence on UK Politics and Democracy · Hansard source

  More

  Will the Minister give way?

• 9 Feb 2026 · Russian Influence on UK Politics and Democracy · Hansard source

  More

  The Minister is very generous. I have just come from the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, where we were looking at these issues in our inquiry on defending democracy. He has been in front of that inquiry. When will the new elections Bill be coming forward or—perhaps an easier way to ask the question—which will be the first election to take place under the new Bill, protected by the wider measures that he just set out?

• 5 Feb 2026 · Economic Security · Hansard source

  More

  I thank the right hon. Gentleman and his Committee for an excellent report that speaks to some very real issues. We have an opportunity later this year when the defence readiness Bill comes before Parliament for consideration. Does he have any recommendations on what he would like to see in that Bill, and are he and his Committee talking with the Ministry of Defence to ensure that some of that gets into the Bill?