Mike Martin MP: speeches

Speeches

• 1 Jul 2026 · Israel: E1 Zone Expansion · Hansard source

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  I think I heard the Minister say a few moments ago that he hoped the outcome of the Israeli election would be a policy more amenable to British Government policy. May I just clarify that he, as a Minister of the Crown, is suggesting that the British Government would like Netanyahu to lose that election?

• 19 May 2026 · Energy Security · Hansard source

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  Is not the biggest problem with first past the post that often people are voting against rather than for someone? That poisons our democracy, because everyone ends up with someone who they do not want.

• 16 Apr 2026 · Armed Forces Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move amendment 7, in clause 31, page 51, line 2, at end insert— “(5) The Secretary of State must, in respect of each financial year, publish a report assessing the impact of the provisions under subsections (3) and (4) on the retention of personnel within His Majesty’s forces. (6) The report under subsection (5) must include data on the number of personnel who have transferred between the regular and reserve forces, broken down by service and rank. (7) The first such report must be laid before each House of Parliament within a period of 12 months after the day on which this Act is passed. (8) Each subsequent report must be laid before each House of Parliament no later than 12 months after the publication of the last report under this section.” This amendment would require the Government to publish an annual report on the impact of provisions related to transfers between regular and reserve forces on retention in the armed forces.

• 16 Apr 2026 · Armed Forces Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford, and I thank you for the invitation to remove our jackets. Amendment 7 was tabled in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon. I will just briefly introduce it to the Committee. The idea of a zig-zag career is incredibly important. Unlike previously, when the qualification needed to join the armed forces was the ability to run around a muddy field with a heavy backpack, we now live in an age in which we recognise that we need a much greater range of skills in the armed forces, and the ability to move from reserve to regular and back to reserve is incredibly important, so we welcome that the Government are introducing that. When I served, a number of people regularly moved between the regulars and the reserves—in fact, I did it myself. However, there is a question mark as to what effect such movement has on retention. In an ideal world, we would expect it to improve, as more flexibility should mean that people are more likely to stay in the regular forces or the reserve forces. But we do not know that; this is an untried experiment, so the amendment would mandate the Ministry of Defence to provide a report to Parliament on the effect of the implementation of this clause—of this zig-zag career pathway—on retention. Specifically, clause 31 as it stands amends the Reserve Forces Act 1996 to make it easier for personnel to move in both directions. It also amends the Armed Forces Act 2006 to enable that to happen. Amendment 7 would simply add an annual reporting and accountability mechanism on top of those transfer provisions. It would not change the function of the clause, but just require the Government to enable Parliament to monitor the situation accurately. As we know, recruitment and retention is a big problem for the armed forces. Without such a reporting requirement, the provisions could be enacted—again, we are in favour of that—but never meaningfully evaluated. As we heard in evidence, there are so many different categories of reserve forces and many different types of engagement. They have grown piecemeal over time, and one reason for that is that there is no effective oversight mechanism, looking at things in the round. Under this amendment, the reporting requirement would establish one element of an oversight mechanism. I conclude by saying that our amendment does not seek to amend the function of the clause, which we are in favour of, but it seeks to mandate the MOD to provide a report to Parliament, so that Parliament can exercise proper oversight and scrutiny.

• 26 Mar 2026 · Armed Forces Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford. The amendment and the new clause are designed to do the same thing in two separate pieces of legislation. Essentially, this is about making sure that defence home standards cover both service family accommodation and single living accommodation. That is important because, as well as approximately 47,500 service family accommodation properties in the UK, there are 100,000 single living accommodation spaces. In terms of numbers of properties, if not people, there are twice as many SLAs as there are service family accommodation properties. I will give the Committee a bit of detail, because the detail is quite important. There may be a lacuna in the drafting of the Bill, so perhaps we can accept the amendment as a tidying-up measure. If there is no gap in the drafting of the Bill, perhaps the Minister could speak to why there is a difference between different provisions. Proposed new section 343E(1)(a) of the Armed Forces Act 2006 specifies that the Defence Housing Service will have the general functions of “improving the supply and quality of defence housing”. Subsection (8) defines “defence housing” as both service family accommodation and single living accommodation. So far, so good. However, subsection (6) refers only to service family accommodation and not to single living accommodation. The requirements in subsection (6) are therefore not the same as in subsection (8). I am pretty sure that the Ministry of Defence and the Government want defence housing standards to apply across all accommodation, rather than just to service family accommodation. Taken together, that means there may be a gap in how the provisions are interpreted. I am sure we all agree that the standards should apply to service family accommodation and single living accommodation. New clause 1 would apply the same concept—broadening the scope of defence housing standards to cover both service family accommodation and single living accommodation—to the Renters’ Rights Act, which contains a number of provisions that pertain to service accommodation. Wherever “service family accommodation” appears in the Act, the new clause would simply add “and single living accommodation”, thereby broadening the scope of the Act. I do not know whether that omission was an oversight or deliberate. If it was deliberate, will the Minister explain why? Why are we setting single living accommodation apart from service family accommodation? It is very important that service families are protected, but there are twice as many SLA properties as SFA properties.

• 26 Mar 2026 · Armed Forces Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I rise to speak to amendments 3 and 4, which my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon and I have tabled. Amendment 4 is consequential on amendment 3, so I will speak about them together. What we are talking about here is a sensible proposal. Indeed, the Government and the Lib Dems have already had many discussions on this proposal, and the Government have already accepted it in a related area of law. I therefore hope the Minister will treat it as a tidying-up exercise on which we can all agree. Amendments 3 and 4 seek to enshrine the decent homes standard as the minimum standard for the Defence Housing Service. The decent homes standard has been in law for about two decades, and the Government recently incorporated it into the Renters’ Rights Act 2025. Of course, that takes us to the whole point of the armed forces covenant, which is to make sure that service personnel are not prejudiced in any way by their service. If the decent homes standard is good enough for civilian renters, it follows, if we are to apply the covenant as intended, that service personnel should also be afforded the same standard. What is the decent homes standard? Anyone who has served, as I have, has at some point in time been housed in accommodation that is just beyond belief. I spent some time in accommodation that was actually condemned, which meant that no money was being spent on it because it was going to be demolished at some unspecified point in the future, but I lived in it for the entire time I was there. At that time, I was single, but of course it is not just those who serve who expect to live in decent homes; their families expect to, as well. In a minute, I will refer to the continuous attitude surveys and what service personnel feel about their service accommodation. However, it is often the pressure on their family—their wife or husband, and the children—that make service personnel think, “I can deal with this, but I do not want my family to have to deal with it.” What is the decent homes standard? As originally defined, it refers to a home being in “a reasonable state of repair”. Obviously, if that standard were applied, it would immediately outlaw things like damp. It also says that a property should have modern “facilities and services” and provide a reasonable degree of “thermal comfort”, so we would probably expect double glazing, rather than the single glazing that I had, although it was 20 years ago. A more recent document published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government in January sets out the new decent homes standard. Amendment 3 seeks to enforce the original 2006 standard, because the document published in January is a White Paper and is not yet Government policy. The new decent homes standard seeks to reflect things like modern energy efficiency standards, as we would expect. This does not seem much to ask, and the Lib Dems pushed for it during the passage of the Renters’ Rights Act. The Government originally voted against it on Report, but then they made the amendment to the legislation. I am not presenting that to the Committee in a partisan way; I merely want to say that we have already had this discussion, and the Government have accepted that it is the appropriate standard for civilian renters. Service personnel are also renting—they pay money for their accommodation, so they are renting—so the standard should be reflected in their housing. What do service personnel say about their accommodation? I accept that it has improved, as the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford said, but there are still problems. Let me give the Committee a few statistics. One in five personnel plans to leave the armed forces, and 25% of those cited the standard of accommodation as a reason for leaving. At a time when we have a retention crisis, it seems that we should be focusing on that. I know the Government are focusing on it, and in tabling this amendment we are trying to help them to fix the problem. Of the 78% of service personnel who live in service accommodation, only half—51%—remain satisfied with the state of their housing. So there are problems, although improvements have been made. Under the Renters’ Rights Act, which was amended to include the decent homes standard, the MOD was mandated to report to Parliament on the state of service housing. The idea was that it would gradually move defence housing stock up to the decent homes standard. Of course, the problem with how it was laid out in the Act is that no targets or timelines were set, so although the MOD reports to Parliament, there is no way for Parliament to hold the Government to account on the attainment of that standard for service personnel. Amendments 3 and 4 seek to put that accountability in place and ensure that the MOD has to achieve the standard. When it reports to Parliament, the amendments would ensure there is a mechanism by which Parliament can hold the MOD accountable for attaining the standard for service personnel.

• 26 Mar 2026 · Armed Forces Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I know of what the Minister speaks. A four-bedroom house may have four servicepeople living in it as single living accommodation—the defence equivalent of a house in multiple occupation—but does that not speak to the point that SLA and SFA should be treated under the same standards?

• 26 Mar 2026 · Armed Forces Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  That is not what new clause 1 seeks to do. It is about amending the Renters’ Rights Act so that defence housing standards cover both service family accommodation and single living accommodation, rather than applying the decent homes standard, as in the previous amendments we discussed.

• 26 Mar 2026 · Armed Forces Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  If I understand the Minister correctly, he is saying that we are going to take different routes but get to the same place. If he could give me assurances that we are going to see the same standards reflected in SFA as SLA, but they are going to be managed through separate processes, I would be happy to withdraw the amendment.

• 26 Mar 2026 · Armed Forces Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  In the light of the Minister’s words— I know him well from before we came into politics—I am happy to take him up on his offer, and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Amendment proposed : 3, in clause 3, page 8, line 16, at end insert— “(6A) The standards in subsection (6) must at a minimum meet the 2006 decent homes standard.”— (Mike Martin.) This amendment requires that the framework agreement governing the new Defence Housing Service must at a minimum meet the 2006 decent homes standard.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Foreign Financial Influence and Interference: UK Politics · Hansard source

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  I thank Philip Rycroft for his review and the Secretary of State for the announcement today. I am particularly happy that we have this idea about it being retrospective and applying the measures from today because we do not know when the Bill will come through. May I encourage the Secretary of State to consider, both for crypto and for foreign donations, extending the period of retrospectivity back to the previous general election?

• 24 Mar 2026 · Armed Forces Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  The shadow Minister is exactly right. We have used a few metaphors today, including that of mental health as a journey. Another metaphor is that mental health is a garden that has to be tended. Each of us has a responsibility to introspect and check in with ourselves to see how we are doing, but the garden also needs to be tended by gardeners. The oversight position in new clause 2 is the chief gardener, if you like. We have all heard stories in our constituency casework about how mental health services are being pared to the bone. By offering reports to Parliament, the veterans’ mental health oversight officer would be able to illustrate some of the particular problems that veterans who suffer with mental health problems have. They would report to Parliament and illustrate the problems in a way that would enable Parliament to adequately oversee the issue and make sure that our veterans are cared for.

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

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  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

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  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

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  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.

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

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  Will the Minister give way?

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

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  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

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  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?

• 27 Jan 2026 · Commonhold and Leasehold Reform · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for announcing this Bill to Parliament, and I broadly welcome the provisions within it, particularly the proposal on conversion from leasehold to commonhold—I think that is excellent. By my count, there are about 4.8 million leaseholders in England. Do the Government envisage driving this process so that people are empowered and encouraged to make that conversion, and when does the Minister think that we will get rid of the last leasehold in England?

• 12 Jan 2026 · Water Supplies: East Grinstead · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for all the help she has given me and my constituents over the past month. Tunbridge Wells is yet again without water. We seem to roll from outage to outage. As we stand here today, 6,500 houses are without supply. Schools are closed, and even more are closing as more areas go out of supply. The Minister knows from personal experience that the leadership of South East Water suffers from an optimism bias, with appalling risk management. The leaders have no idea what is actually going on. During the call the Minister and I were on just an hour and a half ago, they said two things that were immediately proven to be false. That is not necessarily because they are lying, but because they do not know what they are doing. Plainly, the leadership of South East Water suffers from groupthink. Last week, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee showed the leadership to be negligent. The Committee Chair, the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), accused the CEO of misleading Parliament and said his position was “untenable”. The Secretary of State in the Minister’s own Department has said that she is “shocked” by Hinton’s “lack of accountability”. Does the Minister have confidence in Dave Hinton, the CEO of South East Water?