Tim Farron MP: speeches

Speeches

• 27 Jan 2026 · Government-backed Loans: SMEs · Hansard source

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  Has the Minister assessed what proportion of British Business Bank grant funding goes to the smallest of businesses? One in four people in my constituency works for themselves or for very small businesses. To what extent is she working to ensure that smaller businesses—those employing 10 people or fewer, which are the very bedrock of our economy in the lakes and dales in Cumbria—know about the availability of those loans and are talked through the difficult process of applying for and receiving them, so that we can invest in rural communities like mine?

• 27 Jan 2026 · Rural Broadband: Installation · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member is making a really important speech, and I commend him for the survey he conducted. In Cumbria, many communities and homes that are within the scope of Project Gigabit are still going to be excluded from it because they are deemed too difficult to reach. The majority of those places will be upland farms, where the people are on less than minimum wage. Does the hon. Member agree that the people who produce our food and tend our beautiful landscapes have as much right to be connected to the internet as the rest of us?

• 26 Jan 2026 · Youth Hubs · Hansard source

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  May I encourage the brilliant team at Kendal jobcentre, who already do a fantastic job reaching out to young people across the Westmorland area, but also congratulate the Secretary of State on what is a very positive initiative? Will he bear in mind, however, that in communities like mine where the distances to travel are enormous, we—and he—should be looking at having youth hubs outside the main towns such Kendal and Penrith, and look at Kirkby Stephen, Appleby, Grange and Windermere, so they are closer to the people who need those services? Will he also pay attention to, and discuss with his Cabinet colleagues, the fact that awful bus services in rural areas like ours mean that young people cannot get to appointments?

• 21 Jan 2026 · Animal Welfare Strategy for England · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your guidance this morning, Ms Lewell. I pay tribute to all the speakers, including those who have come here with much to say but have not managed to get in in this debate. I feel for them— I have been there. I offer a massive thank you to the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett) who led the debate with real distinction and great passion. She made an important series of points, many of them followed up with her own examples. How we treat animals is an indicator of whether we can even call ourselves a civilised or humane society. Overall in the UK I think we treat animals relatively well. We are a nation of animal lovers. That is what we call ourselves and mostly that is true. Some 84% of us, for example, consider animal welfare when we act as consumers and buy food. Animals are sentient, but they do not have agency, although I can neither confirm nor deny that the size of our majority in Westmorland is down to the fact that we extended the franchise to certain woolly residents. Herdwicks are, after all, rugged individualists and are thus part of the core Liberal vote. But animals do not get to decide how humane we are. That is for us to choose. We can choose to protect the culture and practices of how we care for wildlife, pets and livestock and not, for example, undermine those practices by undercutting our ethical British farmers with products from overseas produced in less than humane conditions. The Government are doing some things right—it is important to acknowledge that. They are choosing to ban cages for laying hens and farrowing crates for pigs by 2032, but the strategy fails to adequately consider domestic food security and competitiveness, which are crucial to maintaining and extending our strong animal welfare culture in the UK. If the Government propose raising domestic animal welfare standards further, which they rightly do, they must also take steps to ensure consumers are protected from imported food products that can be produced to lower standards. British farmers should not be asked to compete with imports produced at those lower standards, which would be illegal if they were produced here in the UK, and yet they are being asked to do so.

• 21 Jan 2026 · Animal Welfare Strategy for England · Hansard source

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  Of course. What is the point in having these standards if we give them away to those who put us under extreme pressure? I completely agree with my hon. Friend and urge the Government to take the same position. We are seeing the UK outsourcing its egg and pig production abroad, to lower standards—it has already begun. In 2024, the UK imported 109,644 tonnes of eggs, equivalent to the output of approximately 8.5 million layer hens. The previous Labour Government banned sow stalls in 1999, and this Government are now proposing to phase out farrowing crates, yet in the last year the UK imported just shy of 600,000 tonnes of pork—6.4 million pigs—mostly from countries where these practices remain, and are likely to remain for some time, utterly legal. More than 90% of UK citizens believe that UK animal welfare standards should apply to imports, and so do I. The UK needs to protect those high welfare standards, for ethical reasons of protecting animal welfare but also to ensure that we do not harm our domestic agriculture industry and therefore reduce our food security even further. Farmers in Cumbria and across the whole United Kingdom are vital to food security. It is time we listened to them and made Government a help, not a hindrance. It is not right to put them in a position where they are forced to compete with cheaper, less ethically produced imported food. I am a free trade liberal, but free trade is not free if it is not fair. We need a level playing field, especially on animal welfare practices. It is right that we celebrate Britain’s high animal welfare standards, but we should do more than just celebrate them—we should put our public money where our public mouths are. Public sector procurement policy should ensure that the majority of food we purchase comes from the UK, because buying British is not just patriotic; it is the surest way we can know that the food we eat will be ethically farmed. Across the 1,600 farms in Westmorland and Lonsdale, farmers take great pride in the high animal welfare standards they implement. The Government need to recognise and reward that. The Liberal Democrats will not punish farmers by importing animal products with low welfare standards. Sadly, the Government continue to do that. On 9 January, the Government lifted reinforced import controls on consignments of beef, poultry meat, meat products and meat preparations exported from Brazil to Great Britain. That change means that Brazilian shipments will no longer be subject to the additional checks that were previously imposed, reducing inspection intensity. That is clearly a backwards step. The Liberal Democrats have a clear vision for how we would tackle these issues more broadly. Trade deals must never undercut UK animal welfare. We will sign a veterinary and phytosanitary agreement with the EU, restoring co-operation and alignment on food and welfare standards. We will ban the import of food produced with antibiotic growth promoters and ensure that no product illegal to produce in Britain can be sold here, and we will support farmers directly to help them lead the world in high standards of animal husbandry. Because animal welfare matters to us, we would ensure that the regulatory and economic levers that Government can pull will be used to not just protect Britain’s high welfare standards but advance them further. The animal welfare strategy, welcome though it is, must be far more comprehensive in scope, recognising that our approach to trade, public procurement and our domestic economy can have huge impacts on improving or worsening the collective welfare of animals. I urge the Government to be fully aware of those impacts and learn from the failure of the last Government, whose rush for politically convenient trade deals led them to throw our farmers and our animal welfare standards under the bus.

• 20 Jan 2026 · Water (Special Measures) Act 2025: Enforcement · Hansard source

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  It is as privilege to serve under your guidance, Dr Allin-Khan. I say a big thank you to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Tom Gordon) for securing this debate and leading it so ably. I also make a little apology to my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) for clearing my throat while he was speaking. I was not doing so to make him shut up and sit down—I am not the Speaker. I genuinely had a frog in my throat. I remember the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025 well. I genuinely enjoyed being on the Bill Committee with Members here and others. There are lots of good things in it, but overall the Liberal Democrat view was that it felt like incremental change when more radical reform was needed. All the same, it included some real positives, including provision to ban bonuses for the senior executives of failing water companies. Yet, as we have heard from multiple sources, water companies are now making a mockery of that legislation. We have heard about some of those already, but let me run through some examples. Southern Water’s chief exec’s pay has doubled to £1.4 million via a “two-year long-term incentive plan”. Wessex Water’s chief exec and chief financial officer both got an extra £50,000 undisclosed from its parent company. As we have heard, Thames Water tried it on—21 senior managers were set to be paid a total of £2.46 million in retention payments. In perhaps the most explicit example, as set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough, the chief executive of Yorkshire Water received £1.3 million from the holding company, Kelda Holdings. Those are clear and obvious examples of water companies trying to perhaps abide by the letter of the law, if they can get away with it, while completely and utterly flouting the spirit of it. It is totally predictable. Outrageously, Ofwat have either signed off many of these cases or just shimmied and said, “None of our business. We’ve got no powers to do it”—a reminder that it is high time it was abolished and replaced with a more powerful regulator.

• 20 Jan 2026 · Water (Special Measures) Act 2025: Enforcement · Hansard source

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  My right hon. Friend is neither nasty nor cynical; he knows Thames Water only too well. Well intentioned though the Act may be, it is clearly full of holes, and the water company chief executives and others are finding ways through them. We contrast all of that with the fact that in 2024—the last time we had comprehensive figures—the water companies between them dumped sewage in our waterways for a duration of 3.6 million hours. My patch of Westmorland is now the third hardest-hit constituency in England for duration of sewage spills. In 2024 alone, there were over 5,000 sewage discharge incidents, amounting to more than 55,000 hours of raw sewage released into our rivers and lakes, from the Eden to the Eea and from the Kent to the Crake. In just the first 20—no, 19 and a half—days of 2026, there have already been 424 hours of sewage discharge into Westmorland’s precious waterways. At the same time, water companies across the country are shamelessly slithering around the bonus ban. Their bonuses and dividends are being paid, for the most part, by bill payers. Indeed, water companies are wading in colossal debt, often incurred to pay those bonuses and dividends. In just 2024, £1.2 billion was paid out in dividends, mostly out of debt. In my communities in Westmorland, 11p out of every pound we pay on our water bills goes just to finance debt. Thames Water is even worse: customers are paying over 30p in the pound simply to service the company’s debts. My message to industry leaders is this: bonuses are meant to be paid to folks who do a good job. If you are leading a company that actively pollutes our lakes, rivers and seas, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you are not doing a good job.

• 20 Jan 2026 · Water (Special Measures) Act 2025: Enforcement · Hansard source

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  I imagine that that is item 1—indeed, probably items 1 to 6—on the job description. If they cannot fulfil that obligation, then go they should. The Government brought in the Act to stop bonuses like this being paid, but they are clearly not effectively enforcing that ban in practice. Although I am critical of the Government, my main criticism is reserved for the water company bosses themselves, who have the nerve to go looking for ways to get around the bonus ban to enrich themselves, often out of bill payers’ money. I tell water industry bosses this: your customers see you, our constituents see you and your hard-working frontline employees see you. Your authority is diminished because your integrity is diminished. That proves the Liberal Democrats right: we need far more radical change in our water industry. So we come to the White Paper released by the Government this week. Having rejected our 44 amendments to what is now the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025, the Government soon conceded that they needed to do more and launched the independent commission into the water sector, chaired by Sir Jon Cunliffe. The commission reported last July, and this week’s White Paper draws from its report. It is meant to be a step towards a more far-reaching water Bill, perhaps in the coming parliamentary Session, and there are welcome elements in the Government’s trailing of it. For example, it is good that they want to borrow the Liberal Democrats’ plan for a single unified regulator to bring financial and environmental oversight together. I want quickly to add to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) and others that the Drinking Water Inspectorate is doing a good job. We should not level it down to the level of the rest of the regulatory sector, but level the sector up to the inspectorate’s level. It is good that the Government want to make regulation more proactive through the work of a chief engineer. However, the disaster in Kent and Sussex over the water supply, the financial failure of Thames Water, the failure of all water companies to prevent sewage dumping and the decision of water industry leaders to stick two fingers up to bill payers and Parliament by dodging the bonus ban all tell us that we will never solve this crisis while we maintain the current ownership model. The Liberal Democrats demand that our water companies be transitioned to being mutually owned public benefit companies, so that money raised in the water industry is reinvested in our infrastructure, and the main motivation is not the profiteering of people who are often probably not even resident in this country, but the quality of our water supply and sewage removal systems and the benefit to the customer. We are therefore bitterly disappointed that the Government have no plans to change the ownership model at all. As a result, the White Paper looks like yet another missed opportunity. Water UK has welcomed the White Paper, which ought to really worry the Government because it is the water companies’ trade body. Of course it is delighted that the Government continue to protect the water companies from the fullest scrutiny. As my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Liz Jarvis) pointed out, we are measuring the duration, not the volume, of sewage. I said that sewage was dumped for 3.6 million hours in 2024, and that is all I can say, because the duration of spills is all we are allowed to know, but the volume of sewage going into our waterways is surely even more significant. There can be long trickle or a swift deluge, yet the Government refuse to enforce the measurement of volume, despite Liberal Democrat amendments to the Bill that would have allowed them to do that. It feels like the Government, in failing to enforce the 2025 Act and stand up to the water companies in their new water White Paper, are content merely to make tentative steps to be better than the dismal record of their Tory predecessors—which is not a high bar. The British people need this Government to be a lot more than just a bit better than the Conservatives. They need radical reform of this failed ownership model and of inadequate regulations and enforcement. The Liberal Democrats will offer that reform.

• 14 Jan 2026 · Northern Powerhouse Rail · Hansard source

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  I have read the statement—I am very grateful for early sight of it—and have listened to the Secretary of State carefully. The Liberal Democrats are massive supporters of Northern Powerhouse Rail, but all that is really concrete in this statement is just over £1 billion so that we can spend the next four years planning to perhaps come up with another plan. The failure of the previous Conservative Government to deliver infrastructure projects such as this and HS2 was utterly depressing and embarrassing. However, I hope the Secretary of State will understand the scepticism of many of us in the north—not just Liberal Democrat Members—who fear that this Government are also being worryingly pedestrian, lacking the determination to deliver vital projects such as these, and that high-speed rail for the north will be delivered at a snail’s pace if we are lucky. Would I be right to surmise from the Secretary of State’s announcement that while we will see upgrades in the 2030s—still a long time away—we will not see trains running on the new track much before 2045? What confidence can she give us that we will not see even more slippage in that timetable? What guarantees can she give us that we will not see a repeat of the Conservatives’ approach of stop-start, stop-start, stop-start, and then cancel? Finally, I remind the Minister that the north of England does not stop at the M62. While we are proud of our cities of Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool, the biggest visitor destination in the north of England is Cumbria, yet there is not a single mention of either Cumbria or Lancashire in the statement. It contains nothing about the vital upgrades needed to the west coast main line north of Warrington, especially in light of the recent derailment at Shap, and we continue to wait for the Government to invest in the all-important lakes line to Windermere, where a simple passing loop at Burneside would double the line’s capacity at a fraction of the cost of Northern Powerhouse Rail, directly connecting Manchester airport to the heart of the English Lake district. Will the Minister agree to meet me to discuss these vital projects, to help prove that this Government’s concern for the north includes the actual north?

• 13 Jan 2026 · Storm Goretti · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) for his characteristic passion and energy in defending his communities in St Ives. I also wish to send my and the Liberal Democrats’ collective deep sympathy to the family of the man who lost his life in the storm, and to add my thanks to our amazing emergency services and frontline utilities staff. The Minister rightly says that it is not up to him or the Government how the media cover things. Nevertheless, it is worth bearing in mind that when Storm Eunice hit London and the south-east four years ago, hitting 200,000 homes, Cobra was convened. However, 200,000 homes have been hit in the west country, and Cobra has not been convened. He will understand why people from Cornwall, Caithness and Cumbria sometimes feel that they are a bit of an afterthought. Does the Minister agree that this storm exposes the frailty of our energy, water and communications infrastructure and the vulnerability of those who rely on them, especially in this entirely—and, dare I say it, foolishly—post-analogue age? Given that so much land, especially in our rural communities, lies saturated, causing water supply and waste water crises at the moment, will he ensure that this issue is reflected in the qualifying criteria for farming recovery funding? Does he agree that the damaging impact that flooding has on food security means that the environmental land management schemes budget should be increased by a minimum of £1 billion a year to underpin that vital resilience?

• 13 Jan 2026 · ADHD Services · Hansard source

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  Roughly 50% of the young people on the books of child and adolescent mental health services in south Cumbria have ADHD or autism. The integrated care board provides no funding whatever to acknowledge that. That is a huge burden on those young people and their families. It stops them getting back into school and so on, but it is also a burden on all the other young people waiting for treatment for things like eating disorders. Will the Minister pay personal attention to this—obviously, it is her ICB as well—to make sure that children with autism and ADHD are properly supported through our CAMHS services?

• 6 Jan 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Some 25% of the houses in my constituency were built before 1900. They are expensive to heat and very difficult to insulate. When will there be a bespoke plan for insulating those properties, using the right materials, and, crucially, for the insulation to be installed by specialists?

• 6 Jan 2026 · Future of Thames Water · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your guidance this afternoon, Mrs Harris. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) for securing the debate, for leading it so brilliantly and for standing up for her community so well for so many years. I also pay tribute to those who have contributed to the debate from all sides, but I am bound to observe the concentration of Liberal Democrat Members present, which shows how well we as a group stand up for our communities—particularly those labouring under the yoke of Thames Water, which is, as has been demonstrated, a failing company, both financially and in its primary mission to serve its customers. But in truth, this debate is about more than one failing company; it is about whether a vital public service is to be run in the interests of customers, communities and the environment, or whether the public will once again be left to pick up the bill for corporate failure while the Government fail to grasp the opportunity to make lasting changes. Thames Water provides an essential service that none of its 16 million customers—those it is meant to serve—can opt out of. It is staggering that a company so central to public health, environmental protection and the decent stewardship of such a vital resource now stands on the brink of collapse. Thames Water is currently operating with more than £17 billion in debt, which it admits that it cannot repay. Around one third of every customer’s bill on average goes not towards fixing leaks or upgrading infrastructure, but towards servicing that debt. Much of Thames Water’s borrowing has paid for undeserved bonuses and dividends, while its infrastructure literally crumbles. That happened under the nose of the previous Conservative Government and the pitifully weak regulatory system that they created. At the same time, customers have faced bill increases of up to 40%—indeed more, it would appear, in some circumstances. And what have customers received in return? Polluted rivers, record sewage spills and chronic under-investment. The Government’s own data confirms that sewage was pumped into the waterways of this country for more than 3.6 million hours in 2024 alone, while shareholders received £1.2 billion in dividends as a reward for that failure. Thames Water alone was responsible for 300,000 hours of raw sewage pouring into rivers and streams. In May, the company was fined £122.7 million for breaching rules on sewage spills and on shareholder payouts. But for customers and communities who have already paid the price, that fine came far too late. The company now survives only because of emergency funding from its creditors—funding that will soon run out. The US private equity giant KKR has walked away from plans to buy Thames Water, meaning that the company is surely at the end of the road. The question is no longer whether the current model has failed—it plainly has—but who should bear the cost of that failure, and what should happen next. For Liberal Democrats, the answer is obvious: the Government must bite the bullet and make those who are culpable pay the price. A well-planned special administration would allow much of Thames Water’s unsustainable debt to be written off and put the company on a stable financial footing while protecting essential services. Administration must be a means to an end, not the end itself. We want Thames Water to emerge as a fundamentally different organisation, mutually owned by its 16 million customers. That should be the beginning of a wider transformation of our water industry, which could then begin to migrate to a new, public benefit model of ownership where water quality, supply and competent administration come first, instead of the amoral profiteering we have seen across the sector for the last 35 years. This crisis also exposes a wider failure of regulation. The Independent Water Commission, which reported last summer, laid bare a system that allows companies to pollute and profit with effective impunity. Liberal Democrats have been clear for years that Ofwat should be scrapped and replaced with a tough new clean water authority that brings together financial and environmental regulation. Our current regulators are too weak, understaffed and fragmented; these huge water companies run rings around them and play them off against one another. Bring the regulators together and give them more power; let us have a regulator that the water companies actually fear. We want strict limits on dividends and bonuses, binding targets to end sewage discharges, consistent national social tariffs, and serious investment in smart metering and infrastructure. We have led the fight, both in Parliament and in our communities, against the sewage scandal. My hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Charlie Maynard) and I tabled 44 amendments to the Water (Special Measures) Bill earlier in this Parliament, and we look forward to doing the same with a new Bill, so when can we expect that new Bill? When will we get the water White Paper that we were promised before Christmas and are still waiting for? Will the Bill be in the King’s Speech? I am not from the Thames Water region, but our communities in Westmorland stand in solidarity, sympathy and empathy with the customers of Thames Water. Water is deeply personal to us. We are the wettest place in England, which is fine because we have to keep all our lakes topped up—the lakes and rivers that define our landscape, provide water for our region and underpin our ecology.

• 5 Jan 2026 · Rural Crime · Hansard source

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  Happy new year, Mr Speaker. Only one in 200 police officers in England and Wales is allocated to rural crime teams. In Cumbria, the situation is even worse: only five officers in 2024 were allocated to our rural crime team. Given what Members have said already today, is it not clear that people who live in very rural communities are subject not only to crime, but to an even more concentrated sense of the fear of crime, because they know that they could be 20 or 30 miles away from the nearest officer? Is it not time for the Government to think again about rural crime and make sure that every community, particularly rural counties like Cumbria, has a dedicated rural crime team that is bigger than five officers?

• 5 Jan 2026 · Venezuela · Hansard source

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  Britain is historically America’s best friend, and best friends tell each other when they are acting appallingly; they do not go into toadying mode. As my right hon. Friends the Members for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) and for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) have mentioned, in 2003 in this House, a Labour Government voted, with Conservative support, to illegally invade Iraq. The consequences were the undermining of international law, the emboldening of despots around the world, and the massive degradation of Britain’s security, safety and significance. Have we learned nothing from that lesson of nearly 25 years ago? Have we not learned the one lesson above all of history—that those who appease bullies soon become their victims?

• 5 Jan 2026 · Agricultural Property Relief and Business Property Relief · Hansard source

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  Our farming and rural communities in Cumbria and right across Britain should be utterly proud of themselves, because this U-turn is their victory, and I pay tribute to them. However, the appalling emotional and economic damage done to farmers over the last 14 months has been cruel and will have a lasting impact. Will the Minister apologise to the farming community for the last 14 months, and recognise that many hill farms in Cumbria will still be hit by this tax, because they are worth more than £2.5 million, although their average income is less than the minimum wage? Does this tax not remain an attack on British farming and on food security?

• 18 Dec 2025 · Farming Profitability · Hansard source

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  If farm profitability is so important to the Government, I find it utterly peculiar that the review was released only today as a written statement at the last minute. It is an insult to this House and indeed the excellent Baroness Batters herself. England is now the only country in the United Kingdom, and indeed in Europe, that does not provide financial support to its farmers. England’s farmers, therefore, have been uniquely abandoned by this Government, by their Conservative predecessor and by those whose madcap ideology took us out of Europe without any kind of a plan. Will the Secretary of State tell us whether food security will be counted as a public good, as the Liberal Democrats propose, and funded through environmental land management schemes? When will the SFI be reopened, and how much money will be in it? Will she ensure that this time the money does not mostly go to the wealthiest, as the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth) just referred to, and when will she stop making English farmers the worst supported in the whole of Europe?

• 17 Dec 2025 · Local Government Finance · Hansard source

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  Westmorland and Furness is an extremely well-run council and an extremely unusual one as well. It is England’s most rural council. It is the council that accepts the highest number of visitors—non-resident population—as we support everybody else’s constituents, who make up the 15 million who come to our district every year. The council has some of the poorest wards in the country. It is the host of Barrow, which is the centre of the UK’s defence industry, and it has the highest percentage of people in social care. This formula will leave us unusually crippled. We think it will mean a 13% cut to our budgets over the next three years. Given that we are so unusual, will the Minister unusually agree to meet me, her hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Michelle Scrogham) and local council leaders, so we can work out an unusual solution to this wonderful but unusual council’s problems?

• 16 Dec 2025 · Finance (No. 2) Bill · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend’s communities are not dissimilar to mine; they are very rural and very mountainous, and upland farming is critical to his communities, as it is to mine. Does he think the Labour Government have failed to understand that wealth is not concentrated in the hands of famers in the way that they think? It is entirely possible to be an upland farmer in my hon. Friend’s patch or in mine and to be earning the minimum wage or, indeed, less—the University of Cumbria shows that the average upland farmer earns less on average than the minimum wage—and yet to be in a position, after inheritance tax is due, to be paying £20,000 a year or more while earning only £16,000. That is not right, is it?

• 15 Dec 2025 · NHS: Winter Preparedness · Hansard source

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  Across Cumbria and Morecambe Bay, the teams working in A&E, on hospital wards and in our ambulance crews are doing a stunning job dealing with the winter pressures in a community where, in my constituency, the average age is 10 years above the national average. Their jobs are made more difficult by the fact that 25% or more of the beds in our local hospitals are occupied by people who do not meet the criteria to reside. On top of that, the local trust in Morecambe Bay is planning to make bed cuts for financial reasons alone. We hear about additional investment in the NHS, but it does not feel like we are having that in Morecambe Bay and Cumbria. Will the Secretary of State personally investigate that, so that we are not cutting beds at a time when we need them more than ever?

• 15 Dec 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  The maintenance of our nuclear deterrent, and the development of our wider defence capabilities in the United Kingdom, rests heavily on the town of Barrow, next to my own constituency, in my district of Westmorland and Furness. Does the Secretary of State recognise that investment into the town from the council is crucial to maintaining our peace and security, and will he have a word with his colleagues in the Cabinet? The local council is set to have a 13% cut to its budget, which will put at risk much of the investment in the town of Barrow that is meant to underpin the defence of our realm.

• 9 Dec 2025 · Creative Education · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way and sorry to intervene so early in the debate. I want to make a point about outdoor education, which is also about enrichment and helping young people to be resilient and to have better outcomes. Is he aware that among state schools in wealthier postcodes, 52% of young people get an outdoor education residential opportunity while at school, while in the poorer areas, only 18% have this opportunity? Does he think that the Government need to be aware of this and fund access to outdoor education experiences for children, wherever they are from?

• 9 Dec 2025 · Financial Inclusion Strategy · Hansard source

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  Access to banking is surely a key part of financial inclusion. The high street banks save £2 billion a year from having abandoned our high streets and town centres. Our post offices pick up the tab and we are glad that they do, but they are not funded by the banks anywhere near enough to be able to maintain their presence. In Westmorland, we have lost Hawkshead, Staveley and Grasmere post offices, and we are set to lose Shap and Tebay largely because the banks do not fund the post offices for doing their jobs properly. What is the Chancellor going to do to make them do that?

• 9 Dec 2025 · Network Rail Timetable Changes: Rural Communities · Hansard source

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  I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. The horror was even closer to happening than that: nobody was hurt and the train remained upright between the tracks, but it was about eight minutes off being hit by the northbound train going in the opposite direction, which would undoubtedly have led to catastrophic loss of life. I do not want to pre-empt the ongoing investigation by the rail accident investigation branch, but we cannot help wondering whether the failure of this Government and the previous Government to fund the upgrades necessary to ensure the resilience both of the line and of the embankment between Warrington and Lockerbie could have played a part in that terrifying near miss. There is much to welcome—the Liberal Democrats welcome the expansion of contactless fares into more rural and suburban areas of the London commuter belt, as well as the improvements on some rural midland lines—but we are urging the Government to establish a nationwide tap-in, tap-out ticketing system, which would be simple, modern and fair. It is time to end the regional lottery that passengers face across our network. We also continue to campaign to reverse the cuts to the restoring your railway scheme, which was scrapped by the Chancellor in last year’s Budget. That scheme would have delivered genuine social, economic and environmental benefits to rural areas that are too frequently cut off from public transport. We want to see smaller rural stations reopened and a UK-wide Network Rail railcard introduced, making rail travel more affordable, tackling regional inequalities and simplifying the system for passengers.

• 9 Dec 2025 · Network Rail Timetable Changes: Rural Communities · Hansard source

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  And to ensure safe and reliable onward travel, Mr Stuart. The reality is that when someone’s train comes in, if they cannot get to their next destination they are utterly snookered. That is particularly the case in rural areas where stations are unstaffed. At night, that often creates not only inconvenience, but a lack of safety, particularly at this time of year, particularly with late-night services curtailed and particularly for those who are travelling on their own. I will finish by simply saying that railways should work for all, urban and rural alike.