Dame Meg Hillier
MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch · Labour (Co-op) · United Kingdom
“The hon. Gentleman anticipates a further area of my speech. I believe very firmly in devolution, but there are some caveats. That is something that we may consider.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Overall, I think we must see cross-party support for the approach to support households in these challenging international times, when a lot of the things that buffet the Government are very difficult for them to control. We must support small businesses. Quite rightly, we all are lobbied a lot by our small businesses.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As the hon. Gentleman rightly highlights, I have not had time in the moments since the Chancellor sat down to go through every graph in the Red Book or, indeed, the OBR’s forecast. Obviously, the Chancellor laid out the figures very clearly at the Dispatch Box, and we will be raising these issues in the Committee.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I look to the reputation of my predecessor in this role, who took her job very seriously but would still make a point. It would be very difficult for me to stand up and, from the Government Back Benches, not react to those in the Conservative party who crashed the economy in 2022 and left a lot of the mess that we are now dealing with.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Yesterday, I was with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in my constituency of Hackney South and Shoreditch. We met with Scope, which is doing amazing work with disabled people. Some 72% of the recent cohort supported into work were still in work 26 weeks later—people who had been written off by the system.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The right hon. Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch) needs to have a tough look at the reputation of her Government. She talks about welfare and she talks about defence, but it was her Government who crashed the economy.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
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“The key question is: what is proposed to replace the existing procedure? As the Minister has said, there will continue to be a public consultation on reflective amendments —the smaller category of amendments that might be introduced. The Minister will need to write to the relevant Select Committee, and Ministers must make themselves available to appear before the relevant Committee to explain why the proposed changes to the NPS mean that the reflective amendment route is appropriate. The Minister and I have been discussing this for months—I have been speaking on behalf of those on the Committee corridor—and I thank him very much for his time. On Report, the Minister said at the Dispatch Box that Ministers would appear in front of Select Committees “as far as is practicable”. —[ Official Report , 9 June 2025; Vol. 768, c.”
House of Commons13 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I do not need to go into detail on that, but they include energy, transport, waste water and waste. The normal process has been that these statements are laid before the House, and Select Committees are involved. For time reasons, I will not go through the technical detail of how that works, but basically, Select Committees have an important role to play in scrutinising any changes to national policy statements. The Government are concerned that this can take too long, and have decided, as the Minister has explained, to introduce a new reflective amendment procedure. Under that procedure, the Government would not be subject to the existing statutory obligation to respond to a resolution of either House, or to recommendations from a Committee of either House, regarding the proposed changes.”
House of Commons13 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“More widely, I say to Members on the Treasury Benches that although I massively appreciate the work that the Minister has done to ensure that we lean into this issue —which I will touch on in a moment—Governments of whatever party need to be mindful when they are pushing legislation forward. We get elected with an agenda and, quite rightly, we are impatient to push things through, but we need to be mindful of the importance of parliamentary scrutiny. We diminish that at our peril, because we risk a slippery slope. One day, a mad, bad or dangerous Government—do not tempt me on that, given the past 14 years—could misuse the system. We need to stress-test what is being proposed by the Government of the day in the light of that important fact. We have 13 national policy statements covering types of national infrastructure.”
House of Commons13 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I add my thanks to those in the other place for the work that they have done on this Bill, and particularly on Lords amendment 1, which I will explain my thinking on in more detail. I stand to speak on this issue because of the importance of scrutiny of Government policy by the Select Committees of this House. While this House has an important scrutiny task, and Bill Committees have their job to do, there is a valuable role for Select Committees in scrutiny because of the depth of knowledge of the Committee teams, which are made up of Members, experienced expert staff, and Clerks. That depth of knowledge can be very helpful to Ministers and Governments, who can get useful input as policy is developed, and Select Committees have a particular role in relation to national policy statements.”
House of Commons13 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I think I can reassure my right hon. Friend that, as the Minister has made clear at the Dispatch Box, very large changes would go through the old process. There is no watering down of that, which is absolutely right and proper; the Government are leaning in the right direction on that. Our concern was about turning smaller amendments into reflective amendments. The Minister outlined four categories of amendment; when he sums up, I would be grateful if he could clarify who decides which of the four categories an amendment would be in, and whether there is any prospect that the process could be misused by a future Government. I cannot imagine that the Minister would misuse it, but in a bad world, could this process be abused by the Government of the day?”
House of Commons13 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My hon. and learned Friend is right to commend court staff and to highlight the significant issues in the courts system. In my time on the Public Accounts Committee, we uncovered problems with the buildings, the IT systems and the Probation Service—the whole system was in real difficulty. How long does she think it will take this Government to clear up the mess that the last Government left?”
House of Commons11 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We have seen a lack of maintenance of prisons, a stop-start prison building programme and all the challenges in our courts—is it any surprise that we are looking at non-custodial sentences for lower-level offenders? Does the Secretary of State agree that those on the Opposition Front Bench have some cheek to come to this House and question that when the failures in the system are down to 14 years failure?”
House of Commons11 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“When I chaired and served on the Public Accounts Committee, on which I served for more than 10 years, we looked at and, with the help of the National Audit Office, uncovered failures in the Probation Service—a policy area that yo-yoed between Ministers as they changed—as well as the failure to build and maintain prisons, failures with the courts IT system and failures with identifying information that needed to be shared. Is my right hon. Friend aware of the Magee review, which was commissioned at the tail end of the previous Labour Government, and can he speculate as to why the review was never implemented over the 14 years of the Conservative Government?”
House of Commons11 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The hon. Gentleman made a very good point about overseas sales, although I would contest his statement that people are having to receive housing benefit to live in many of those developments because, as he probably knows, they are advertised overseas by yield. We are seeing homes in London as financial investment vehicles for people who have no connection with this country. Many of those landlords have never even visited the property. What would his party’s policy be to tackle this issue?”
House of Commons5 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“When I looked at this in my previous role on the Public Accounts Committee, the Government’s own figures showed—I am sure the Minister is aware—that bricks and mortar subsidies offered the best value for money for the taxpayer to try to resolve the problem. We need things not just on brownfield but on grey belt. I do think that the green belt has some grey belt —we need to be realistic about this. Bits of old car park that no one is using could be turned into homes. We need to be creative when looking at this.”
House of Commons5 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is cheaper to buy back a leasehold property on a council estate than it is to build new, because it costs £450,000 in Hackney to build a new social rented home. It is no wonder we are having challenges delivering and no wonder that the Government and the Mayor of London are trying to work out a way to get more homes built. If they are all for private rent, we are going to exacerbate the problem, so we need to work that out. Construction costs are now around £5,000 per square metre compared with £1,000 to £1,500 a decade ago. That is being led by a number of issues globally, including Brexit, but this is the reality we are dealing with.”
House of Commons5 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In crude terms, if Hackney council wants to build a home because of the land value, which I will touch on, it has to build one for private sale to pay for the one that is for intermediate or social rent. When I say to people, “We are working hard to get you a house,” they look at the houses I am pointing to on the neighbouring bit of land and say, “Will I get one of those?”, and I cannot, hand on heart, say that they will within any reasonable period of time. The devastation this is having is surely feeding into our special educational needs and health crises. It is just not long-term sustainable. Since 2022, the current council period since the last council elections and between now and next April, 956 council homes for social rent have been in design, planning or acquisition or under construction.”
House of Commons5 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It does damage to the families and the children’s opportunities. It breaks our communities, and all taxpayers have to fund that, so we need to resolve it. We have a total of 8,500 households on the council’s housing register, and the notional wait for a three-bedroom property is over a decade—it is a nonsense wait, because by that time the children have grown up. Around 44% of Hackney residents live in social housing. We have more private renters than homeowners and that level of social housing residents. Even though house prices are going up for some, the housing situation is worsening for many others. Hackney council has been great at delivering properly affordable social housing. Affordable homes, which include both social rented and intermediate, make up 57% of council housing-led delivery.”
House of Commons5 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“House prices in Hackney are 18.5 times average income, so all the young professionals who might want to get on the housing ladder are stuck in shared accommodation, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury said, and families are stuck in social housing, crowded and unable to go anywhere else because they cannot afford private rent, which gives no security anyway. Homeless families are increasingly in hostels for years. Only six years or so ago it would have been about six months before people had a chance of getting some sort of property, and now people are being moved out of the borough, wrecking their lives and opportunities. We have 3,400 homeless households in temporary accommodation, which is a big issue for us all and costs the taxpayer a lot of money.”
House of Commons5 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We see people where they live, with the problems they have: triple bunk beds with little space for the third child to get into bed; five people in a room; and toddlers with no space to run around. I could give a different example every week, but a real one. This is what we need to resolve, so I welcome the Government’s plan to build more homes. There are a lot of challenges. The right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) mentioned the “brownfield first” approach as a priority. There are plenty of brownfield sites in my constituency. I say “plenty” but, like the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury, my constituency is very small in relative terms but expensive to build on.”
House of Commons5 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I congratulate the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) on securing this debate on such a vital issue. I echo many of the points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry). Her neighbouring constituency now includes a ward that used to be in my constituency—a ward where house prices are reaching £2.5 million to £3 million in some cases. That is one end of the scale. At the other end of the scale we have a homelessness situation that is intolerable, with thousands of people on the waiting list. Exactly as my right hon. Friend said, every week I visit people in their homes, which is something that MPs do.”
House of Commons5 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That is a fair challenge, and I am sure that the Minister will pick that up. It is important that we all know where the goal posts are. I would like to ask the Minister about the release of public land. This is something that I have looked at over the years. Whether it is the Ministry of Defence, Transport for London or the Department of Health and Social Care, the Treasury has, over many Governments, insisted that that money goes back to the Department. On one level, that is completely logical, but looking at hospitals or schools, if that land could be used for housing, it would help teachers, nurses or doctors to live locally.”
House of Commons5 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is great for developers, because they get that cash in, but we need to prioritise local people, and tax does not seem to be doing it. Does he have any thoughts about restricting Airbnb? I know well the blocks that my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury was talking about, because during covid, people paid rent to go to those places to isolate, but they were not proper homes. That is having a devastating effect on school numbers across London. Could the Minister look at the costs of building? The long-term costs of not doing it will be enormous, and we need to support those families who desperately need social rented housing.”
House of Commons5 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I hear what the hon. Lady says, but I also recognise that there are financial challenges with the Treasury signing a fairly blank cheque to say that all public land could become housing. We need to be creative about this, and that is where we need a mixture of local knowledge and some flexibility from the Treasury. For example, the change of use of school sites was quite gummed up in the Department for Education under the previous Government. We need to make sure that any change of use can be dealt with relatively quickly. It will be better for health and education outcomes if we use that land for other things. We need a national mission on housing, and I applaud the Minister for leading on that. Does he have any plans to limit further overseas purchasers buying these properties?”
House of Commons5 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Treasury Committee looks at HMRC’s customer service. We have recently seen people having their child benefit stopped, ostensibly on the basis of travel data. Could the Minister explain what he is doing to resolve this issue and what data HMRC based its information on?”
House of Commons4 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If they happen to receive the compensation just before they die, their family will pay inheritance tax on it. The victims want to ensure that their families are properly supported, because they are no longer able to do that, so will the Minister renew his efforts to talk to the Treasury about this issue? This is a small, defined group of people, which does not need to set a more general precedent, but for this particular scheme—where the state failed people so much—the issue is an important one to resolve.”
House of Commons30 October 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank the Minister for his statement. On lessons learned, I hope he has looked at the National Audit Office’s work on different compensation schemes so that we can learn from that. I also hope that he supports the national campaign to encourage people who received a blood transfusion to get tested for hepatitis C, as two people a month are contacting the helpline to say that they were infected during the relevant period. To press the Minister further on the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford) and the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), under this scheme people get compensation because they are dying due to infected blood; it is not random, coincidental or due to something else.”
House of Commons30 October 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I congratulate the Committee on this important report, and I thank the Chair for explaining it and answering questions in the Chamber today. There has been a lot of discussion already, even in this short interchange, about gathering evidence. The right hon. Lady has highlighted the position of the Government on this, but there are international bodies that need to gather evidence, and I reflect the point earlier that even journalists are not allowed in. What can she tell us about other evidence that is being gathered by international organisations, and what more does she think the international community, not just individual Governments, should do?”
House of Commons30 October 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Many Members have raised the issue of the adoption of roads. Obviously, physical roads are easier to define, but there are parts of private estates that are only for that estate. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a challenge, given the current financial situation, because it usually costs councils money to adopt a road, and under the current law, it could be a big hit for those leaseholders to pay the fee up front for the council to adopt the road?”
House of Commons30 October 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I do not know the case the hon. Gentleman is talking about, but I agree that good communication is important. However, it was his Government, under Margaret Thatcher, who introduced the right to buy. That means we have leaseholders mixed with council tenants, so where a council has to improve a property, it needs to go to the leaseholders for their share of the costs. There was always going to be a tension there, and he must acknowledge that that will be a reality where we have pepper-potted estates—notwithstanding that he obviously needs to fight for proper information for his constituents.”
House of Commons30 October 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I know from my role as Chair of the Treasury Committee that there are very strict rules on ringfencing operations, so insurance companies and managing agents should not have a cosy relationship. In law, they are not entitled to do so.”
House of Commons30 October 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“One is about insurance. We know that costs went up post Grenfell because insurance moved from insuring just the floor that a flat is on to the entire block, but other increases have arisen that are difficult to explain, and there is a danger that we will struggle to get insurance. One block in my patch was able to get one insurer quote for 12 months only, and it was quoted an extortionately high excess rate at the beginning—somewhere in the region of £15,000. That was the excess that the housing association freeholder would have to pay before anything happened. It managed to get that down, but it could only get one 12-month period of insurance. I think we need to be careful in our discussions about the relationship between insurance companies and managing agents.”
House of Commons30 October 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I declare an interest as a leaseholder myself. Like my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Sam Carling), I will not name any managing agent or developments, because many of my residents are concerned that if their block is named, it will cause them very big issues. I was delighted to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Noah Law) that there are some good management companies, because the picture is certainly mixed in my patch. The company that has been named often in this debate manages some estates in my area, and some are better run than others. A lot seems to depend on the individual property manager and how they run their development, and the size and age of a development definitely has an impact. In the short time that I have, I will raise a couple of important issues.”
House of Commons30 October 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As we know, this is on top of increased mortgage charges, and let us not forget what the 2022 Budget did to mortgage charges. Shared owners are paying mortgages, rents and service charges, and this is all adding to the cost of living and causing huge upset, on top of the spending on building safety requirements that are hitting so many of my constituents. That is causing real problems, but we need to be clear, so rather than go through the list myself, I will endorse all the asks that my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher) listed about transparency, openness and getting clearer rights for residents to challenge service charges and to make sure they absolutely understand why they are being charged such fees. That is the basic minimum, but we should be making sure it happens.”
House of Commons30 October 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Such tenants are making their property greener, cleaner and more efficient—costing them less in a lot of ways—but they are ending up with their costs being put up somewhere else, which seems to be a complete imbalance that we have not discussed. On the right to manage and commonhold—I am a Labour and Co-op MP, and I am very proud to be pushing for commonhold—there can be issues where there is a right to manage. I am working with a development where there is a right-to-manage company, but the directors have hidden themselves away and are not acting responsibly in answering and providing information to their neighbours in the development. I think governance needs an overhaul in this area. It is not going to solve everything if residents take over the management but then do not do a good job, so there needs to be transparency all round.”
House of Commons30 October 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That is a repeated theme across my constituency, as some very modern blocks have not been maintained properly, which means leaseholders end up paying more in the end than they should have done. There is also an issue with greening blocks. I have constituents working very effectively to try to get electric vehicle charging points and better insulation in a block that is an old warehouse; the famous loft apartments were very popular in my constituency at one point. However, improving such things creates betterment, which increases the ground rent, because the owner of the building can say it is an improvement and can charge more.”
House of Commons30 October 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I completely agree with my hon. Friend that we need clarity on this issue. We are talking a lot about service charges, but the insurance industry has a responsibility because it accounts for a large chunk of them. Regulators have a clear role to play, and it is important that that is considered in all the changes we are discussing. I am pleased that the Government have been consulting on these issues. The consultation on service charges ended in February, so I hope the Minister can give us an update about it. It is important to touch on a couple of other issues. We know that poor maintenance leads to high costs, so standards and expectations should be set on maintenance, which costs leaseholders, but costs them less in the long run if things are maintained.”
House of Commons30 October 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Karim Ennarah is an internationally recognised human rights activist who has been subjected to a travel ban by Egypt and has been stuck there since 2020. What is the Foreign Office doing—or what can it do—to ensure that he is able to come to the UK to join his wife in my constituency?”
House of Commons28 October 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Access to Work is vital. At the high end of the scale, it can sometimes be more expensive. I have in my constituency a very senior person in the world of theatre who runs Graeae theatre. She requires Access to Work support but, even with the right support, there is not enough for her needs, because she needs a British Sign Language interpreter with her at all times. Graeae theatre is at the pinnacle of assessing what people need, and I would love to invite the Minister to visit it, because staff there are great at supporting disabled people into work, with and without Access to Work support.”
House of Commons27 October 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Secretary of State need look no further than Homerton university hospital in Hackney for good performance: it has managed to increase productivity by over 11%. What is he doing to support great leaders who deliver great progress and to make sure that they have the funding they need to continue with that?”
House of Commons21 October 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is great that we are transforming leasehold properties, but many leaseholders are now stuck in a gap with their freeholders when it comes to betterment. If they want to green their homes through new roofs, new insulation and electric vehicle charging, they have to pay a huge extra cost. Will the Minister and, if necessary, Ministers from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero meet me and my constituents to discuss this issue? There is a real gap when it comes to achieving green improvements.”
House of Commons13 October 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Following on from the point made by the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, it is vital that Parliament is able to examine what has happened here. The Government have made a commitment to transparency. We have a wrinkle, in that the National Security Adviser has been appointed as a special adviser rather than as an official, which means that he has to appear in front of a Committee of the House in camera. That is far from adequate. Will the Minister commit to engaging fully with the Committee corridor to ensure that the relevant Committees get access to information, as is normal, in a reading room, in camera or in a Cobra situation, in order to ensure that Parliament can satisfy itself of the comments that he has made so clearly at the Dispatch Box today?”
House of Commons13 October 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Well, here we go again, 15 years after the Conservatives abolished it. I say to the naysayers that our passport data and our driving licence data is on a database, so we need to be careful about throwing out the baby with the bathwater. We have had GOV.UK Verify and Tell Us Once, so there have been attempts to do this, and we all log into our HMRC accounts, so we are using digital identification in many ways, but will the Secretary of State be really careful about the challenges that some will face? Also, why on earth is it mandatory? The previous proposal was for voluntary use, and interestingly it was popular with migrants, who really wanted to have that ID to prove their right to access, but they did not have to do so. That would allow public services the time to work with those who are digitally excluded.”
House of Commons13 October 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Crucially, we need accountability so that parents can have trust in a system that is going to have to change, because the costs are spiralling out of control and children are being failed.”
House of Commons15 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In London, with schools closing, which is a terribly sad thing, we need to look at opportunities when it comes to the premises available. On average, it costs £12,000 to transport a pupil to an outside placement, £58,000 for a place in an independent special school and up to £300,000 for residential placements. The cost is enormous. There are signs of the green shoots of hope, with the Government focusing on early intervention—something the Secretary of State has really been emphasising—but can we see more early intervention to prevent the escalation to crisis point and, where it is more appropriate, can we integrate to make sure that we have swift support?”
House of Commons15 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It says that every teacher is a SENCO, and ensures that pupils with special educational needs and neurodisabilities in particular have a voice by being active on the school council and helping to shape it. That is co-production really living—nothing done about them without them. It means they have great trust among parents. It spreads the support available across the whole school and makes sure that lesson planning and support are shared. There might not always be one-to-one support next to someone; the one-to-one support might involve helping a teacher to create a curriculum that will work across the piece. One in five children in Hackney have special educational needs and disabilities, so it is a very important issue, but cost shunting is also an issue. We have heard about the cost of tribunals.”
House of Commons15 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan, and I congratulate the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) and other colleagues on setting out the case so clearly. I want to focus on solutions and some asks for the Minister. I also want to highlight some of the work done in Hackney, where we have a high number of children with special educational needs. In the last financial year the council spent over £50,000 on top-up funding just to support pupils with SEND. That is an unsustainable position, although the funding is absolutely right for those children and families. City Academy in Homerton, which the Minister’s predecessor came to visit, does very good work to integrate neurodiversity considerations into all teaching.”
House of Commons15 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I congratulate the new team and welcome them to the Government Front Bench. A week is a long time, but I had a promise to meet the previous Minister to discuss the immigration system, because one of the challenges that the Home Secretary has inherited is a broken processing system. As one of the Home Office’s largest customers for my constituents, I know where the gaps and the problems are, so I would welcome a meeting with the Minister about that, if the Home Secretary agrees.”
House of Commons15 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I hope that the Intelligence and Security Committee will get a good chance to dig into what has happened in this place, because we are hampered in the Chamber by not being able to look at sensitive issues. I also hope that the Minister will lend his weight to the approval of many senior Members of this House, prior to the last election—it got as far as the last Prime Minister—to create a Committee to look at sensitive spending, but also sensitive issues. In the summer, this Government chose to reintroduce extradition arrangements with Hong Kong, despite the application of the Chinese security Act. Given what the Minister has said today, how can we square both of those positions?”
House of Commons15 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If the Government are moving away from regulation—as we are certainly seeing in financial services—or trying to loosen it a bit, we need to make sure that we watch very closely, protect the consumer along the way, and get key assurances in place. This is an important debate, and there is so much more that I could talk about. I started with Mars bars and ended with building safety, which shows the gamut of important issues that matter to consumers. We need to make sure that they are protected from the worst harm while innovation in things like fintech can give people more choice—that is also important.”
House of Commons11 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“More widely, there are options with regulation: we can have regulation that is very heavy-handed and protects people but can be a burden on businesses, but we can also have self-management. We saw that the regulation of building safety went way too far in one direction. Regulations were removed incrementally, so that no one knew who was responsible for certain things and proper checks were not done. We need to get the balance right. Self-regulation can work very well, but there needs to be a robust and, in a way, fearsome regime to make sure that it is audited. There is no point in saying to a sector, “Self-regulate,” if that is not double-checked and triple-checked at some point, so that the sector knows that the heavy hand of the regulator, whoever it may be, can come down heavily on it.”
House of Commons11 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We need to step up not just the number of skilled people to do the work, but—the trade deals done by the Minister’s Department may help with this—the supply chains, so that the necessary materials are available alongside the skills. There is so much more that I could say on this—I have repeated it endlessly in the House—but people are trapped. They have lost faith in the housing system. They feel, quite rightly and understandably, that they were sold the dream and bought a home in good faith, and now they are living the nightmare and trapped. Often, they want to move to a bigger property but are unable to do so because they cannot sell theirs. There is an awful lot to be done there.”
House of Commons11 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Sometimes it is only a small amount, but because of the risk-based approach, those with the least cladding are sometimes at the back of the queue. In many cases, scaffolding has not even gone up. We are in 2025. The tragedy of Grenfell happened in 2017, and by 2018 it was very clear what the problems were: a failure of regulation over many generations, which has led to a real problem. That is one of the biggest consumer scandals of a generation. I know that it is not in the Minister’s Department, but we now have the Building Safety Regulator. My constituents and I are impatient for work to happen as fast as possible.”
House of Commons11 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Some are shared owners, and they are in the worst of all worlds; they pay a mortgage on one portion and rent on the other, but they have responsibility for the whole thing, including all of the service charges and any remediation works that need to take place—I will leave cladding aside for a moment, but other works may need to take place—and then they are trapped, because the service charge and mortgage have gone up, and sometimes their rent has too, and they are unable to sell. Many are very much trapped in that situation. On consumer affairs, I must of course mention the issue of cladding. Many of my constituents are still waiting for the first bit of work to be done; all they have had is a slight investigation to determine that the cladding needs to be removed.”
House of Commons11 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We get several long spreadsheets of information about how money is allocated, but it is very difficult to judge whether we are being charged a fair amount, whether that is for window cleaning, general cleaning or insurance. Obviously, since the tragedy of Grenfell, insurance for a block will be not just for the flat and the floor concerned, but for the whole building, and that has caused premiums to shoot up, but they have gone up by an incredible amount given the actual rate of tragic incidents—the reality has not matched the cost of the potential liability—so that is a big area of work. That is also affecting consumer spending. Many of my constituents are first-time homeowners, who bought their dream homes as leaseholders.”
House of Commons11 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗