Roz Savage MP: speeches

Speeches

• 24 Jun 2026 · Elections: First Past the Post · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Turner. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) for securing this important and urgent debate. We have a crisis of trust in our democracy. Under first past the post, 70% of votes do not actually count. In a safe seat any extra votes cast for the winning candidate are effectively pointless, as are any votes cast for the other candidates. It is no wonder that so much of the electorate feel that they have no real voice or influence. We may be told that electoral reform is not a doorstep issue, but I wonder how many colleagues here have heard constituents say, “I am so pleased that I finally voted for somebody who won. I feel like I now personally have a representative in Westminster.” At the last general election, the current Government got 30% of the vote, 60% of the seats and they now have 100% of the power. How can that be fair? In effect, that means that 70% of votes have no power. As a Lib Dem who regularly traipses through the opposite voting Lobby to the Government, I know how that feels. Looking forward, I am even more worried about the next general election. The system that we have now was essentially designed for a two-party system and we now have seats being fought by five, six or even more viable parties. If we combine that with declining voter turnout, the results of the next general election could look like a random number generator. I cannot see that that will do anything to enhance trust in our democratic system. First past the post encourages parties to focus their policies on core marginal seats that they want to influence. That means the kind of policies they present and whether they suit a constituency will depend largely on the postcode and political history of that constituency. As other colleagues have mentioned, the winner-takes-all system creates a similar adversarial tone in our politics. We only have to look at today’s Prime Minister’s questions where there seemed to be a special amount of nastiness from the Leader of the Opposition. Mr Speaker, not in connection with that, reminded us generally that the way we conduct ourselves here sets the tone for public discourse across the whole of the country. We lead by example, and at the moment that example is not good. There is a deeper argument to be made about power and agency. We hear from so many parts of the country that communities feel left behind, voiceless and unrepresented. That voicelessness—that powerlessness—is creating fertile ground for people and parties who come along promising to give back control, whether or not they actually mean it. That, frankly, terrifies me, but I want to keep this a clean discussion about voting systems. We are not trying to create a system that favours one party or another; we want a genuinely democratic system. On the systems used in different elections, it was welcome that the Government reintroduced supplementary vote for mayoral and police and crime commissioner elections. It corrected a deliberate act of Conservative vandalism in the Elections Act 2022, but it is still not proportional representation. I wish the Government had gone further and introduced alternative vote for those single-position elections. The proof is in the result. In last year’s mayoral elections, the Mayor of the West of England won with just 25% of the vote. That is clearly not democracy. If first past the post is not fit for purpose in mayoral elections, the Government should be honest and admit that it is not fit for purpose anywhere. I have some specific asks. We should move from first past the post to a form of PR, and I would love that to happen in a rigorous, transparent and democratic way, starting as we mean to go on, with a citizens’ assembly, fully selected by sortition, and the national commission on electoral reform serving as its secretariat. It should be fully livestreamed and available to anybody who wants to watch it. That would help hit the reset button on our democracy and restore faith that the Government truly represent the will of the people.

• 23 Jun 2026 · Environmental Sustainability: UK-Indonesia Collaboration · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) for her passionate opening speech, and for the many hours we spent in each other’s company on a long-tail boat when we were fortunate enough to visit Indonesia earlier this year. In honour of this debate, I am wearing my Indonesian jacket that I bought in Jakarta. On a day like this, in an increasingly tropical London, it is blissfully lightweight. The UK-Indonesia relationship is at a crucial point. In January, our Government signed a strategic partnership, committing to stronger ties on climate and nature and recognising that, despite our differences, we share a particular vulnerability to climate change as island nations. The Liberal Democrats welcome that partnership warmly and would like to see it deepened. That requires the UK to show up as a serious partner, not just in words, but in the consistency of our commitments. Indonesia’s forests are among the most biodiverse on Earth and are home to between 10% and 15% of all known plants, mammals and birds. The hon. Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner) particularly appreciated that during our visit. The forests also store billions of tonnes of carbon. As I mentioned, I was fortunate enough to go to Kalimantan on the Indonesian side of Borneo in March as part of a cross-party parliamentary delegation funded by ICCF-UK and the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation. It is wonderful to see representatives from both those organisations in the Public Gallery. I would like to report back on what I saw and what I believe it requires of us in this country. We visited Sabangau national park, one of the largest peatland ecosystems outside the northern hemisphere. I saw the Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre, where 228 orangutans that have been orphaned, many because of the palm oil trade, were being prepared for a return to the wild. The hon. Member for Bristol East mentioned the forest school for young orangutans, where we saw orphaned orangutans being taught to climb by their human surrogate mothers, and that memory will stay with me for the rest of my life. We met scientists, such as Nadine, who have spent decades studying the flora and fauna of Indonesia. We met Indonesian officials and conservationists who are doing extraordinary work to protect their vital, natural heritage. They expect the UK to be a reliable partner but right now we are falling short in two concrete ways. Today, the Government announced plans to consult on new rules requiring businesses to check that products—such as palm oil, soy, cocoa and rubber—in their supply chains have not come from illegally deforested land. Liberal Democrats have pressed for that since the Environment Act 2021 was passed, so we welcome today’s development—five years late is better than never. The Government’s own figures show that, in 2023 alone, UK consumption was linked to roughly 29,000 hectares of deforestation worldwide. In keeping with today’s trend, I will point out that that is equivalent to 15 Cirencesters. The rules will be aligned with the EU’s equivalent regulation, which has been weakened and delayed multiple times under industry pressure. They will cover only illegal deforestation in the host country, not all deforestation, meaning that products from forests legally cleared could still reach British supermarket shelves. The Government say that a fully deforestation-free standard is their ambition for the future. Liberal Democrats believe it should be made the standard now. When these regulations arrive, they must be robust and not leave the door open to destruction that happens technically to be lawful. They must also cover indigenous people’s land rights alongside deforestation, which are frequently the first casualty when forests fall. On aid, the Liberal Democrats believe that the UK’s commitment to spending 0.7% of gross national income on overseas development is both a moral obligation and a matter of national interest. We have set out concrete, alternative ways to meet our defence commitments without cutting international aid, including defence bonds and an increase to the digital services tax. The false choice between security and aid is one we reject. That matters, because UK-funded conservation in Indonesia is working. Indonesia has reduced its primary forest loss more than any other country in recent years, and British investment has contributed to that, yet the Darwin grants, which have supported vital terrestrial conservation work, including in rainforests, have been cut. Projects and marine environments retain some funding, but projects in terrestrial spaces, including the rainforest, have been left without support. The ringfenced nature funding in the international climate fund renewal is also at risk. We are heading in the wrong direction. Institutions like Kew Gardens and the Natural History Museum have deep, productive partnerships with their Indonesian counterparts—the kind of long-term scientific relationships that take decades to build but moments to break. We should be strengthening them, not withdrawing. That brings me to the Government’s national security assessment, which concludes that global biodiversity loss poses a direct threat to UK national security. I sit on the Environmental Audit Committee, which scrutinises exactly these questions. We know that a fuller version of the national security assessment exists, and we have asked to see it repeatedly, even under confidentiality arrangements, and that has been refused. Although elements have apparently been shared informally outside Government with the media, the EAC should not be the last to know about a document that the Government say concerns national security. The Minister must release it. I will close with a story told to me by a young friend that really brought home to me what is at stake here. Bella is a passionate young conservationist. A few years ago, she visited Malaysian Borneo and went to see an animal called Iman. Iman was the last Malaysian Sumatran rhino on Earth—a species more than 20 million years old, reduced to one animal. Her keeper, Dr Zainal, had spent almost his entire career protecting Sumatran rhinos in Borneo. He had watched them go one by one. He was there in 2017 when Puntung was euthanised and there in May 2019 when Tam, the last male, died. When Bella met Iman, the rhino was calling out—a distinctive kind of call, a searching call looking for others of her kind, but there were none. Bella described how she stood there, looking into the rhino’s eyes—this ancient creature with leather-thick skin and a face that seems to have come straight out of prehistory—and understood viscerally in a way that no statistic can quite convey what extinction actually means. The name Iman means faith. She died in November 2019. The Malaysian Sumatran rhino is gone forever, but the Bornean orangutan is not yet gone. The peatlands of Sabangau are not yet destroyed; there is still time. I ask the Minister to honour the commitment in schedule 17 to the Environment Act 2021 with robust, enforceable regulations; restore the overseas aid budget; protect the Darwin grants and the nature earmark; and release the national security assessment. The time to act is now.

• 16 Jun 2026 · Community Hospitals · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend makes a good point. Not everybody can time their minor injuries to fall conveniently within the unit’s opening hours, so I absolutely sympathise with the challenge facing her local hospital.

• 16 Jun 2026 · Community Hospitals · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree that a lot of the frustration felt on the frontline is due to lack of clarity of communication. Community hospitals are institutions, and I pay tribute to the people who work at them, who do more with less, year after year. They deserve better than for services to be quietly wound down. I invite Members to imagine for a moment that they are 80 years old—it is less of a feat of imagination for some of us than for others—and living in a village outside Cirencester. Maybe they can no longer drive due to poor eyesight. They wake up one morning with chest pain. There is a hospital in town, but the services have dwindled one by one: no A&E, acute ward or surgery, and the theatre may be currently paused. What is actually needed—prompt assessment, a bed close to home and blood tests that do not require a 25-mile journey to Cheltenham on rural roads—may not be available. That is the reality for many people across my constituency right now, and it is getting worse. Community hospitals have been an honoured part of our healthcare system for over 150 years. Research published in the Journal of Community Nursing in 2024 describes them as bridging “the gap between primary and secondary care.” They are person-centred, nurse-led and multidisciplinary settings that help people to recover, maintain independence and enjoy visits from friends and family. They are not a quaint historical relic; they are precisely what the NHS says it wants more of. The Cirencester community hospital was exactly that kind of place. Since the day surgery unit was suspended last year, I have heard so many moving stories from constituents, their fond memories of being in hospital, and how much that hospital, right at the heart of their community, meant to them when their children, parents or spouses were sick. But over the years the services there have been eroded one by one: first A&E, then acute wards, paediatrics, maternity and blood services. In 2025, the day surgery unit was paused as part of NHS Gloucestershire’s centres of excellence trial. Each change came with reassurances, but each one left residents further from care. My constituents have become deeply and rightly sceptical that a trial closure will ever be reversed.

• 16 Jun 2026 · Community Hospitals · Hansard source

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  I thank all Members who have contributed to this debate with wonderful and sometimes moving stories about the role that community hospitals have played in the lives of their constituents and who have shared their concerns. I also thank the Minister—I appreciate that this is not her brief—for stepping up today. I echo the words of the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) that community hospitals are “much more than buildings”. There is the expertise of the staff working there, and they are an important hub for healthcare in a community. While I welcome the announcement of 250 neighbourhood health centres, I would like the message to go back to the relevant Minister that we already have community hospitals that are well known and well loved in our constituencies, so I very much hope they will form an integral part of the NHS’s plans for the future. I thank the Minister for passing on my requests to the relevant Minister; I look forward to hearing more about them in due course. I will end with a reminder to all of us that we are talking about human beings at a very vulnerable moment in their life. I was especially moved to hear about the urgency of the husband of my hon. Friend the Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine) suffering anaphylactic shock. Local medicine delivery is not just sentimental or about harking back to a bygone era. It is so important to recovery that patients do not feel scared and do not feel far from home, their community, or their family, friends and neighbours, but feel that they are not so far from home and are still in the bosom of their community. Anything we can do to minimise their stress and maximise their sense of connection and comfort can only ever help the speed and quality of their recovery. I thank all colleagues for their contributions today, and I thank you, Sir Jeremy. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered community hospitals.

• 16 Jun 2026 · Community Hospitals · Hansard source

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  That is a very good question that I hope the Minister will be able to answer. I pay tribute to the absolute heroism of the people who staff our community hospitals; they are delivering an incredible return on investment.

• 16 Jun 2026 · Community Hospitals · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady’s point. I have been pressing the NHS to find out the criteria by which they will judge the trial closure, but the criteria have not been forthcoming. I am concerned that there is a circular logic: “Well, you’ve managed without that ward for six months or a year, so you can continue to manage without it.” A constituent described a cardiac arrest at Cirencester, handled with what she called “absolute skill and excellence” by a team of senior staff working together to stabilise the patient before transfer to an acute hospital. She told me that the nursing care on the wards is excellent, and that patients nearing the end of their lives are cared for with compassion and great dignity. That is what we are talking about when we talk about community hospitals, and that is what the trial closure of a ward potentially puts at risk. Another constituent—a former GP who started practicing in Cirencester 40 years ago, in 1986—told me about a child who, after the surgical ward closed, waited 20 hours in Cheltenham for an appendix operation. Previously, that operation could have been done in Cirencester much more quickly. That is a family sitting in a corridor in an unfamiliar hospital at 2 in the morning, feeling anxious and far from home, because the local service they relied on had gone. A month or so ago I launched a petition, in collaboration with a local county councillor, to protect community hospitals across the Cotswolds. Within a couple of weeks, well over 3,000 people had signed it, and last week we handed it in at No. 10. The South Cotswolds population is growing rapidly, largely due to the Government’s housing targets. Thousands of new houses are being built around Cirencester, and there are plans for many more housing developments that will swallow up nearby villages. It does not make mathematical sense for communities to grow while the services that support them shrink. The numbers just do not add up. NHS bodies often describe these changes as reconfigurations—a shift in how care is delivered rather than a reduction in what is available. For a rural resident with no car and negligible public transport, a 25-mile journey to Cheltenham is a significant barrier to care. The Government’s own 10-year plan talks about “neighbourhood health” and care “closer to home”, but Gloucestershire is heading in the direct opposite direction. I would like to hear from the Minister how those two things can be reconciled. A few miles to the north-west of my constituency, post-natal beds at Stroud maternity hospital were suspended in 2022. That year, the Care Quality Commission rated Gloucestershire’s maternity services as inadequate—a rating they retained on reinspection the following year. The hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Opher), who is a GP, has made the valid point that post-natal care saves money downstream because it is the time when mothers and babies bond, when breastfeeding is established and when families who need extra support get it on a timely basis. If we lose that support, the costs will appear elsewhere later on. Will the Minister provide a timeline, with dates, for the full restoration of maternity services in Gloucestershire, including the Aveta ward in Cheltenham, which is currently closed for labour and births? Will she provide details of the specific workforce support the Government are providing to make that happen? In other countries, the decline of community hospitals is not seen as inevitable. Other countries are under the same pressures, but they are making different choices. In Sweden, research found that rural GPs value community hospitals because they provide exactly the things that cannot be replicated in a large acute centre, including proximity, continuity and a holistic understanding of elderly patients and others with multiple conditions. Heart failure and pneumonia rehabilitation can be managed closer to home by staff who know the patient and their family. In Italy, the Government have committed to building or renovating 400 community hospitals using European recovery funds, backed by research from the Emilia-Romagna region showing that they deliver better integration among care sectors, between primary and specialist staff, and between healthcare and the communities it serves. Last October, more than 150 people from 23 countries joined an international webinar co-hosted by the Community Hospitals Association, and the conclusion was consistent: community hospitals anchor care in local communities, support home-based care and help people to live better for longer. The Government’s NHS 10-year plan commits to shifting care from hospital to community. That sounds like a very good idea, but a Nuffield Trust report published in September 2025 makes a point that needs to be heard: this ambition is not new. Successive Governments have promised to move care closer to home, and most have fallen short, almost always because the community infrastructure needed to enable the shift is simply not there, and nor is the investment. Ireland, which has pursued reform for nearly a decade, had the wisdom to invest up front in new facilities, digital systems and community workforce capacity. Unfortunately, the Nuffield Trust found that England’s 10-year plan contains no equivalent ringfenced funding. The expectation appears to be that hospitals cut waiting lists and simultaneously release funds to build community capacity. Again, the maths just does not work. The starting point is already challenging. More than 1.1 million people are currently waiting for community care in England, with the steepest rise among children and young people. A hospital where the theatre has been paused cannot absorb more community care. A maternity unit closed for three years cannot deliver neighbourhood health. A community health system with 1.1 million people already waiting cannot become the landing ground for patients displaced from acute settings unless it is properly resourced to do so. As so often, rural areas pay the highest price when the gap between ambition and delivery opens up. There is no slack in the system and no easily accessible option down the road.

• 16 Jun 2026 · Community Hospitals · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend’s point. We need a more joined-up approach. From conversations that I have had with nurses in my constituency, I know that those on the pointy end can see very clearly where the bottlenecks in the system are. We need to relieve the pressure on those bottlenecks. I will conclude with five asks for the Minister. First, will the Government give a clear commitment to protect and properly resource Cirencester hospital as a local health hub, with the operating theatre restored, not paused indefinitely while the trial closure quietly becomes permanent? Secondly, will the Government give a timeline, with dates, for the full restoration of maternity services in Gloucestershire, including post-natal provision at Stroud? Thirdly, will the Government give an honest account of how the shift from hospital to community will actually be delivered in rural areas? What oversight will there be? What protections are in place? What prevents the same pattern of managed reduction from continuing in the name of the 10-year plan? Fourthly, will the Government commit to work with the Community Hospitals Association towards a national definition and dataset for community hospitals in England, so that our 500 community hospitals can finally be planned for, funded and properly valued? Finally, will the Minister agree to a meeting? I would very much welcome the opportunity to sit down with her, alongside local NHS leaders and the Community Hospitals Association, to discuss the long-term future of Cirencester hospital, its role and resourcing, and its place in the vision of care closer to home, which this Government say they believe in. My constituents are not asking for anything exceptional. They just want to know that, if they get ill, there is somewhere to go that they can get to. The NHS was founded on that promise, and that promise must be kept.

• 16 Jun 2026 · Community Hospitals · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman for his perceptive intervention. Community hospitals often do feel more like a home from home. They are more accessible for a patient’s friends and family to visit, and they deliver better outcomes for patients and clinicians alike. In the south-west, ambulance handovers at acute hospitals took more than 30 minutes in more than half of cases in January 2025—nearly 30% above the England average. A few months ago, I had the privilege to ride in an ambulance for a day. In what ended up being a 13-hour shift we attended only three call-outs. Maybe it was a quiet day—I am definitely not saying I wish there had been more grief out there—but we spent much of the day on the road and/or waiting outside hospitals, which did not seem the best use of a highly qualified ambulance crew and an expensive resource. It will not be news to anybody in this room that our NHS is under pressure, yet, against the odds, community hospitals continue to perform. The Care Quality Commission reports that between 75% and 92% of community hospitals are rated good or outstanding, which is remarkable given that the number of district nurses working in them fell by around 55% between 2009 and 2024, with underinvestment and the loss of EU staff after Brexit cited as key causes.

• 16 Jun 2026 · Community Hospitals · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered community hospitals. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy, and I am grateful to have secured this debate. I want to begin by thanking Jo Posnette and Dr Helen Tucker from the Community Hospitals Association, who have been an enormous help in preparing for the debate. I welcome Jo, who is in the Gallery. Last year, according to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, around 15,860 patients died in NHS A&E departments in England while waiting for care that could have saved them. That is roughly 1,300 people every month—nearly 10 times the figure recorded in 2015. Every week, more than 300 people died a preventable death simply because they waited too long. Those numbers are shocking, but behind every number there is a real-life tragedy. Let us remember that human aspect throughout the debate. I am sure I do not need to point out to colleagues that in rural areas the situation is often even more challenging. The ambulance takes longer to reach people, the journey to A&E is longer and, when services at a community hospital have been reduced to a limited number, as is currently happening in my constituency, there might be no early safety net to catch the patient before a crisis becomes a catastrophe.

• 3 Jun 2026 · Small Towns: Transport Links · Hansard source

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  One of my constituents had a stroke last year. While he jumped through all the hoops required by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency to get his driving licence restored, he was stranded in a rural village with no bus service, struggling to get to shops, medical appointments and so on. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that both DVLA delays and the lack of rural bus services need to be addressed by the Government?

• 3 Jun 2026 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 3 June.

• 3 Jun 2026 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  I echo the sympathies expressed by the Prime Minister for the families recently bereaved, particularly the family of Henry Nowak. Corruption appears to be endemic in donations to British political parties. We have had years of Conservative cronyism. We have had allegations of embezzlement in Scotland. We have had undisclosed donations from crypto billionaires and foreign oligarchs. We have even had freebies dished out to some of the hon. Members sitting on the Labour Benches. The Government have already cracked down on some specific sources of donations that favour their political opponents, such as crypto and foreign money. Will the Prime Minister now commit to restoring the faith of the British public in the integrity of our British democracy by putting a cap on all political donations?

• 13 May 2026 · Debate on the Address · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. We must be telepathic, because my very next paragraph is as follows. Five days ago, Sir David Attenborough celebrated his 100th birthday, and I am sure that colleagues would like to join me in wishing Sir David the warmest congratulations on his long, wonderful and highly influential life. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] He has spent much of his century on this planet showing us what the natural world looks like, but in the course of that long lifetime the UK has become one of the most nature-depleted countries on earth. I am sure the House has heard these facts before, but I remind Members that we have lost 38 million birds in the past 50 years; wildlife abundance has fallen by a third since 1970; we have lost 93% of our wild flower meadows; and only 15% of our rivers are in good ecological health. I am sure that those statistics cause Sir David great distress and anxiety, yet we continue to treat nature as though it were expendable. I would like to pick up on some aspects of nature that are particularly worthy of our attention. Rivers are the lifeblood of our natural world, yet too many of them are in an appalling state. I commend the clean water Bill mentioned in the King’s Speech, which is a good start, but it does not address the underlying problem. Water is a vital public good that should not be owned and operated primarily in the interests of shareholders, many of whom are based overseas, extracting returns from an essential service while communities downstream live with the polluted consequences. It is promising to see reforms coming down the pipeline, so to speak, that would see Ofwat replaced—something the Liberal Democrats have been calling for since 2022. However, my constituents need to see that legislation enforced more rigorously. South Cotswolds is the ninth most polluted constituency in the country, so my constituents want real transparency on what is being discharged and when—not just for how many hours, but in what volumes. They deserve bathing water designation for the sites that they have swum in for generations, and a Government who are willing to ask the deeper question: is the ownership model fit for purpose? The Government have to get upstream of the problem and ask whether profit-making monopolies, focused on short-term gains, can ever serve the long-term greater good of customers and nature. On energy security, instability in the middle east, gas price volatility and the direct hit on household bills demonstrate why home-grown renewables are the right choice for the climate while also paying a security and peace dividend. However, I would like to see the public brought with us on the transition, not pushed away. In my constituency, a huge solar farm has been proposed that would industrialise thousands of acres of farmland. I absolutely support renewable energy—I have spent decades campaigning for climate action—but the transition works best when communities have ownership and agency. I would like the Government to address the barriers facing community groups that want to supply local customers directly. Liberal Democrats believe that communities should be able to generate clean energy, sell it to local households and keep the benefits locally. Food security is national security. To quote again from the Joint Intelligence Committee report: “Without significant increases in the UK food system and supply chain resilience, it is unlikely the UK would be able to maintain food security if ecosystem collapse drives geopolitical competition for food.” Let that sink in for a minute. We are talking about the very real prospect of food and water shortages, not just in other countries but right here, if we carry on with the current trajectory. What is to be done? Farmers are facing a tough time at the moment. Energy costs have risen sharply, fertiliser prices remain volatile, and rural crime is a growing burden. The abrupt cap and closure of the sustainable farming incentive was a decision that pulled the rug out from under farmers who had been planning to enter the scheme, with small-scale family farms being the hardest hit. That matters far beyond the farm gate. Around 70% of the UK’s land is under the stewardship of farmers. If we want cleaner rivers, healthier soils and more pollinators, then farmers need reliable and well-funded support for environmental stewardship into the future. Disrupting that support harms not just farms but the rest of us. I would like to hear about a good food Bill. Food is essential and we need to secure its future. The national security assessment is explicit that ecosystem collapse is potentially irreversible; once those habitats are destroyed, they cannot be recreated with an offset calculation on a spreadsheet. Degraded ancient meadows and woodlands, fragmented hedgerows and lost wetlands and peatlands cannot simply be replaced elsewhere. We will pay the cost of their losses for generations.

• 13 May 2026 · Debate on the Address · Hansard source

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  Absolutely. Nature is very resilient; when we leave her alone, or give her a bit of a helping hand by rewiggling rivers, for example, or through rewilding projects, she does come back. We just need to stop pummelling nature from every direction with chemicals, and in the many other ways that we assault the world of nature. There is a word that the Government’s national security assessment uses repeatedly: cascade. Ecosystem degradation creates cascading risks. Water insecurity leads to food insecurity, which leads to geopolitical instability, which leads to conflict and, yes, even immigration—the risks compound. However, the same logic can be applied in reverse. Investment in nature creates cascading benefits. Healthier rivers mean healthier soils, and healthier soils support pollinators; pollinators, in turn, support food production. Thriving ecosystems buffer communities against flooding and drought. This is not just idealism; it is the conclusion of the Government’s own intelligence analysts. My asks of this Government are simple: restore proper funding for sustainable farming, bring in a good food Bill, and deliver a right to local supply for community energy. On the international stage, I ask them to implement the long-promised measures under the Environment Act 2021 to remove deforestation-linked products, such as unsustainable palm oil, from our UK supply chains. Britain signed international commitments to halt forest loss by 2030, and those promises now need action; 2030 is just around the corner. My constituents are not asking for miracles, but they are asking for urgent and radical action to protect nature. They are asking for rivers that are safe to swim in, farmland that can feed us, landscapes that function and communities that are resilient in the face of a more uncertain world, all of which is eminently doable with political will. The cost of inaction will far outweigh the cost of action; nature is the foundation on which our present and future security, prosperity and wellbeing ultimately rest. It would be a fitting gift, on the occasion of Sir David’s 100th birthday, to hear that the Government had found the political will to do what is necessary for our national security, and for the security of future generations. Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.— (Deirdre Costigan.) Debate to be resumed tomorrow.

• 13 May 2026 · Debate on the Address · Hansard source

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  It is a great honour to speak in this debate. I add my voice to the many voices of appreciation from across the House for the two magnificent speeches from the hon. Members for Bradford West (Naz Shah) and for Harlow (Chris Vince), which were inspiring, moving and entertaining. There is much to reflect on in the King’s Speech. There are 37 Bills, many of which have been amply covered by colleagues across the House. Of course, the King’s Speech is not truly the King’s Speech; it is the Government’s speech that His Majesty the King has the great joy, I am sure, of reading out in the other place. I would like to pick up on a matter that was not actually in the speech. Far be it from me to presume to guess what His Majesty might have wished to add to it, but having had the privilege of visiting his beautiful gardens at Highgrove House in my constituency on numerous occasions—sadly, not as a guest of their Majesties, but as a paying punter on a guided tour—I would like to think that His Majesty might have chosen to mention nature, which was not mentioned at all in the speech. Nature is a subject dear to my heart, as it is to those of my constituents, including the many farmers who farm in South Cotswolds. We have talked about many different aspects of security today, but I would like to connect nature to security. The fourth sentence of the King’s Speech was: “My Ministers will take decisions that protect the energy, defence and economic security of the United Kingdom for the long-term.” In my view, those decisions absolutely have to factor-in nature. Natural security is an essential part of our national security. At the beginning of this year, the Government published a national security assessment on biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse. It was not written by campaigners or charities, and certainly not by the Green party; it was written by the intelligence community using the same analytical frameworks that it applies to terrorism and state threats. Its conclusion was absolutely unambiguous: global ecosystem degradation threatens UK national security and future prosperity. Crop failures, intensified natural disasters, infectious disease outbreaks, geopolitical competition for food and water—these are the inevitable consequences that the assessment identifies will happen if we continue on our current trajectory.

• 27 Apr 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T7. We have already heard about the NEET crisis; nearly 1 million young people are being denied the opportunity to develop their potential through education, employment or training. The problem is even more acute in rural areas like the South Cotswolds, where we have the additional challenges of poor public transport, limited careers advice and fewer apprenticeships, making it harder for young people to get into work or training. What is the Secretary of State doing now to support those young people, and to tackle the extra barriers that they face in rural areas?

• 21 Apr 2026 · Alternative Measures to GDP · Hansard source

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  I completely agree with my hon. Friend’s perspective that, in rural areas in particular, the aspects of our quality of life that are not measured in financial terms are very much overlooked by GDP. He makes an excellent point that, in fact, using GDP as the pre-eminent metric disproportionately impacts on rural ways of life. As I was saying, if my assumptions about what Governments are for are correct, how well does GDP measure whether Governments are succeeding? My answer to that would be: poorly, partially and, in some important respects—as already mentioned by others—not at all. I want to take each function in turn, looking at how GDP either misses or distorts it, or actively points in the wrong direction. First, on safety, GDP cannot measure whether people feel safe, whether crime is falling or whether justice is accessible. However, it counts the cost of building more prisons and policing more disorder, so a rise in violent crime, followed by the state’s response to it, actually adds to GDP. Secondly, on fairness, GDP is just an average; it tells us nothing about distribution. A country could have record growth, but the majority could be growing poorer while a handful are growing extraordinarily rich. It counts the billionaire’s yacht and the foodbank donation as contributions to national output alike. Thirdly, public goods are where the distortion is most severe. GDP has no entry for clean rivers, unpolluted air, well-functioning flood defences or thriving natural ecosystems. Instead, it records the cost of remediation when things go wrong, never the value of prevention. In my South Cotswolds constituency, the Thames headwaters and the Cotswolds water meadows absolutely underpin food security, flood resilience and community health, but GDP is blind to all those things. Logging a forest, draining a wetland and concreting a floodplain all register as economic activity and contribute to GDP, while the loss of the natural ecosystems that made those landscapes valuable disappears without a trace. Fourthly, on stability and risk, GDP counts healthcare spending, but it cannot tell us whether people are getting and feeling healthier. It counts anti-depressants and ambulance call-outs as contributions to output. By the logic of GDP, a pandemic is an economic opportunity. Fifthly, collective choices about the future are possibly where GDP fails most completely. It has no mechanism for accounting for the harm to future generations. By design, it rewards short-term thinking, and it is constitutionally incapable of answering the question, “What kind of a country do we want to be 50 years from now?” The conclusion is inescapable: GDP was designed to measure the volume of economic activity, no matter what form that activity takes. Using it to assess whether a Government are fulfilling their five core functions is like using a thermometer to tell us whether a patient has recovered. The patient’s temperature may be perfectly normal, but their leg may have fallen off. I have a couple of quotes worth remembering. Robert F. Kennedy put it with devastating precision in 1968. He said that GDP “does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play…It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.” Meanwhile, Simon Kuznets—the economist who actually invented GDP in response to the great depression of the 1930s—had already warned that it should not be used as a measure of national wellbeing, yet we have been ignoring his advice ever since. Unfortunately, GDP is not just partial; it can be actively misleading, because it creates perverse incentives at the heart of Government. As the Wellbeing Economy Alliance observes, our current system has four interlinked flaws: it is unsustainable, unfair, unstable and creates unhappiness. Critically, neither the brake nor the accelerator works any more. Faster GDP growth will only worsen biodiversity loss and accelerate climate change. In a system where a fabulously wealthy former Prime Minister pays an effective tax rate of just 23%, it will almost certainly also worsen inequality. That is the trap that GDP has built for us. It is a metric that makes it structurally challenging to do the right thing, because doing the right thing does not always show up as growth. Moves have already been made in Britain in this direction, and we already have the data, but we do not use it. I will give credit where credit is due. When he was Prime Minister, the former Member for Witney, Lord Cameron, launched the Office for National Statistics national wellbeing programme, and also quoted Robert Kennedy. Since 2011, the ONS has published a framework tracking national wellbeing across 60 measures and 10 topic areas, across personal wellbeing, health, relationships, environment, governance and more. In February of this year, the ONS launched a new set of seven headline measures to be updated quarterly, explicitly aligned with the UN high-level expert group’s recommendations. We have the data and what it tells us is striking. Since the pandemic, self-reported health has been in sustained decline. Trust in Government rose briefly after the last general election before falling back to lower than pre-election levels. Those trends are invisible to GDP yet are essential to any honest assessment of how our country is doing. Sadly, those measures, no doubt laboriously collected, sit on the ONS website largely unread and almost entirely ignored by Government. I suggest that it is time to use them. Elsewhere in the world, countries are moving ahead. They are building better measures, embedding them in law and using them to govern. Last week, I was at the Wellbeing Economy Forum, two days of serious exchange with policymakers, economists and practitioners from across the world. It was tremendously inspiring. Three things were unmistakeable: we have the intellectual case and the technical frameworks but the only thing missing in too many countries, including this one, is the political will. I will cite three examples of countries showing what is possible. Iceland rebuilt after the economic collapse, not by chasing GDP recovery but asking its people what they wanted. It is now one of the wellbeing economy Governments, alongside Scotland, New Zealand, Wales, Finland and Canada, all of which have introduced wellbeing metrics to guide public policy and budgetary processes. In Wales—not so far away—the Well-being of Future Generations Act 2015 legally requires every public body to act in the long-term interests of the next seven generations. That was initiated by Jane Davidson, a woman I am proud to call my friend. While I was at the conference last week, I had a long conversation with Sophie Howe who was Wales’s first future generations commissioner, and is now an internationally respected voice. If it can be done in Cardiff, I see no reason why it cannot be done in Westminster. Thirdly, in Sabah, Malaysia, my good friend Cynthia Ong began the Forever Sabah movement, with a single simple question: where will Sabah be in 50 years if it continues down its current development trajectory? That question should be the founding question of every Government; not how fast are we going, but where are we going and what will we leave behind? I have requests of the Government that would make a significant difference to my constituents, to every person here in Westminster, to the country and to the generations not yet born. The first is to use the data we already have. I am delighted we have a Minister from the Treasury here. Maybe he could relay the request to ask the Treasury formally to integrate the ONS wellbeing dashboard into spending decisions, alongside GDP, not instead of it. Secondly, to require natural capital accounting in all major infrastructure and land-use decisions, so that the destruction of a flood plain, a peatland or a water catchment carries a recorded cost on the national balance sheet, not just a planning objection. If we value it, we must measure it. Thirdly, to introduce a parliamentary committee for the future, as called for by a coalition of organisations, including the School of International Futures and the Policy Institute at King’s College London. The committee would consider the long-term wellbeing of those who will inherit the consequences of today’s decisions. It should be not just a gesture but a committee with real teeth. Wales has shown that that is entirely achievable.

• 21 Apr 2026 · Alternative Measures to GDP · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for his very insightful intervention. In the doughnut economics model, we are in many ways in “overshoot”, while the basic needs of many in our society are not even being met. That is one of the major failings of GDP: it does not show how the benefits of growth and the wealth of the country are being distributed. I have been very impressed by the work of Kate Pickett, who spoke at the recent Lib Dem spring conference on this very subject. She spoke about her “spirit level” concept and argued that greater equality in a society works better for everybody, including the people at the top. If we are honest with ourselves, we can now see the cost of ignoring the warnings of Simon Kuznets and Robert Kennedy. We can see that warning embodied in polluted rivers that once ran clean, in communities that feel left behind and in a politics that too often measures success in pound signs rather than human outcomes. We have the evidence, and we have the frameworks; we just need the willingness to change the definition of what we value, because what we measure shapes what we prioritise, what we prioritise shapes our decisions and our decisions shape the country that we will be in five years, 10 years and 50 years from now. Let us take an active choice to measure what matters: the wellbeing of our people, the health of our planet and the future we hand on to future generations. Let this Parliament be the one that finally aligns how we measure success with what success actually means.

• 21 Apr 2026 · Alternative Measures to GDP · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered the potential merits of use of alternative measures to GDP within Government. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Alec, and an honour to introduce this debate on what I believe is a very important subject: alternative measures to GDP. Gross domestic product is still the predominant metric that we use to measure whether Governments are succeeding. I want to suggest today that it is not just an imperfect measure but the wrong one. Before we can agree on a better measure, it might first be helpful to ask what we are measuring for. That means asking a more fundamental question: “What is Government actually for?” My thoughts on that are that Governments exist to do five things in particular that individuals, families and markets are not able to realistically do on their own. First, to keep people safe, from crime, from conflict and from harm. Secondly, to provide common rules and fairness, the laws, rights and frameworks that stop power being abused. Thirdly, to provide public goods: clean air, clean water, flood protection and infrastructure, the things that markets cannot easily deliver because they are not profitable. Fourthly, to support stability and reduce risk through things such as healthcare and social security, the safety net that helps people to cope with illness, unemployment and old age. Fifthly, and finally, to represent our collective choices about the future, things such as how we balance growth with nature, freedom with fairness, and short-term need with long-term resilience. To sum up, Governments exist to do together what we cannot do alone. In a democracy, they must do so accountably, so we need an appropriate way of measuring their success.

• 21 Apr 2026 · Alternative Measures to GDP · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I absolutely agree with, and will elaborate on, his points about what GDP fails to measure and how it must be complemented by other metrics. So the crucial question is: if those five things are indeed what Governments are for, how well—or not—does GDP measure whether Governments are succeeding?

• 15 Apr 2026 · Cost of Heating Oil · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Allin-Khan. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone) for initiating this very important debate. South Cotswolds is one of the most rural, off-grid constituencies in England. About 20% of households rely on heating oil; that is about four times the national average. A young mother with two small children faced a sudden increase in the price to get her tank filled up from £305 to £800. Rural households already pay a premium on everyday goods that the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has put at up to 20%, and face a fuel poverty gap of nearly £1,000 compared with urban households. There are some key principles that I think are helpful to consider here. One is how we create genuine long-term resilience to potential future shocks. The second is community. I would like to hear from the Minister about pooled purchasing support for villages, combining orders, spreading costs and securing better rates. The long-term answer is not just to regulate a volatile fossil fuel market more cleverly; it is to get communities off fossil fuels altogether, particularly through the use of community-led renewable energy projects. That is not a top-down mandate. It is genuine community ownership of clean energy, and we need the Government’s local power plan genuinely to deliver for rural communities, getting rid of the barriers of grid connection, access to capital and planning complexity that stop many community schemes before they start. We need reform of the grid rules so that community energy schemes get priority in the connection queue and rights to local supply. This is genuine energy sovereignty for our rural communities.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Ground-mounted Solar Panels: Alternatives · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. and gallant Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) for securing this important debate. I have heard the statistic that for all the land allocations that have been set aside for housing, for growing food and for renewable energy projects, and for all the other demands on the scarce land mass that we have at our disposal on this small and increasingly crowded island, we would need another two Waleses. Clearly, they are not making land any more, so how can we get better use out of the square mileage that we have at our disposal? Ground-mounted solar gives a single purpose to land. Yes, it possibly gives some biodiversity gain; yes, it is maybe possible to graze sheep around solar panels, although I have yet to see it in reality; but generally it is a single purpose for that piece of land. How can we make better use of our land? As the hon. and gallant Member for Spelthorne suggested, we can put solar panels on reservoirs and on rooftops. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello) will point out that that is a much more expensive way of installing solar panels—we have had that conversation before—but I would like to ask where the profits go. A 2,000-acre solar farm, Lime Down, is planned for my constituency. It is 100% owned by Macquarie. Hon. Members might be aware that Macquarie was the owner of Thames Water during the time that that company was loaded up with debt. It is a financial institution, not a utility-owning institution, so the profits from the solar farm will not go to local people; they will go to Australia. What does good look like, if we are to meet our large and increasing energy needs while also bringing the public along on our journey towards net zero? It is important to the project that there be public support, not public alienation. Smaller-scale schemes can and do work. In my constituency there are successful schemes in Long Newnton and Corston. The principles are clear: projects that are community-led are more likely to have community buy-in, as are those that are modest in scale, that are sensitively sited and that deliver direct local benefits. I welcome the Government’s support for community solar, including the funding that has reached groups such as Zero North Wiltshire, but we need to go further. Many communities are willing and able to participate. The local power plan and investment through Great British Energy are welcome steps, but they fall short. The Government are proposing about £1 billion for local and community energy; the Liberal Democrats have set out a plan for £3.3 billion. That difference matters. Our approach would scale up community energy into a core part of the energy system, not just a niche add-on. More than 100 MPs have backed reform through early-day motion 2151, so there is clear cross-party support for the right to local supply. I would like to see the missing piece put in place: community supply licences, peer-to-peer trading and reformed licence exemptions. Of course, ground-mounted solar has a role in the transition to net zero, but it needs to be done right. The tests are simple: is there genuine consultation, real local benefit and protection of our landscape? If we get this right, solar can power our future. If we get it wrong, it will divide the very communities we need to bring with us.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing forward this important debate and for his very moving speech. I recently had the honour of meeting Eleanor Wroath, who is here in the Gallery today with her son Sam. Eleanor lost her daughter Miranda, aged 18 months, in 2008. Since then, she has been a tireless campaigner for raising awareness of sudden unexplained death in childhood. She and Sam will be running the Great North Run in support of the charity. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, as highlighted by campaigners such as Eleanor and Sam, there is an urgent need for more specialist research to understand the causes of and the risk factors underlying SUDC?

• 24 Mar 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.