Joe Powell
MP for Kensington and Bayswater · Labour · United Kingdom
“T7. I warmly welcome the Government’s swift introduction of the National Security (State Threats) Act 2026, which received Royal Assent last week. The activities of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have caused huge concern across the country and in particular to my Iranian and Jewish communities.”
“My constituent Billy Hood, a son and father, has spent more than five years in a prison in the United Arab Emirates after being convicted of possessing trace amounts of cannabidiol vape oil.”
“T2. This week it was revealed that Thames Water had slowed its reporting of pollution incidents by 70% since 2022, which is yet another example of institutional failure that has hurt residents across the region.”
“I note the recent data showing that support for renewables in this country is now at 81% of the public. Certainly, in every visit that I make to meet young people, including students at Imperial College London, climate change is one of the first issues they raise; they are concerned about the future that they are going to inherit.”
“People want politicians to serve their interests, not those of billionaires or millionaires based overseas, whether they are in the US, Russia, Thailand or, indeed, Montenegro. The revelations of the last few days have shown how important it is to update our rules.”
“I welcome the focus on supporting low and middle-income households. The Minister will know that after the July 2021 floods in central London, denial of flood insurance or punitive excesses for people living in blocks of four or more flats has been a serious problem. That is a big chunk of my constituents.”
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“We have the power and the responsibility to ensure that the UK legal system cannot be hijacked by the corrupt and powerful. We must ensure that those trying to uncover crimes and corruption of the wealthy and powerful—journalists, academics and whistleblowers—are protected and not persecuted. Let us send a clear message today as a united House that the UK will no longer be a safe haven for those seeking to silence their critics.”
“Where there may be ongoing abuse, there must be a very high threshold. Secondly, there must be penalties that are sufficient to deter the use of SLAPPs and provide full compensation to those targeted. Those penalties should take into account both the harm caused to the defendant and the conduct and resources available to the claimant. The level playing field argument needs to be made clearly. Finally, there must be protective measures for SLAPP victims, including cost protections, safeguards and measures to reduce the ability of SLAPP claimants to weaponise the litigation process, including against investigative journalists. SLAPPs are not just a legal tactic; they are weapons against transparency, accountability and justice.”
“It is not least for them that we must ensure that men like al-Fayed can no longer use these lawsuits to conceal their horrific crimes. I ask the Minister: how can we ensure that this Parliament will act decisively to finish the job, following the Prime Minister’s commitment? As I mentioned, the current economic crime legislation is a step forward, but the existing SLAPPs provisions must be implemented swiftly and the scope of provisions must go further to cover other forms of wrongdoing, including sexual misconduct, war crimes and harassment, as we have heard from Members across the House. First, further legislation in this Parliament will be needed to ensure that, for example, we have a filter mechanism that empowers courts to dispose swiftly of SLAPPs without the need for a subjective inquiry into the state of mind of the SLAPP filer.”
“Allegations in the press of sexual abuse were suppressed. In 2008, The Mail on Sunday prepared a report stating that al-Fayed was under investigation for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old. Legal threats forced it to remove his name and refer instead to a “senior Harrods executive”. That is how SLAPPs work—they do not just protect reputations; they shield individuals from accountability and allow abuse to continue unchecked. Al-Fayed died before he could face justice. Imagine how many women’s lives would not have been ruined if anti-SLAPP legislation had been in place and journalists had been able to report freely on the case. My thoughts are with all the victims of Mohammed al-Fayed; I am sure the whole House will join me in that. Their bravery in coming forward now deserves our utmost respect.”
“I turn to perhaps the most harrowing recent example of the danger posed by SLAPPs: that of Mohammed al-Fayed, the former owner of Harrods, which is in my constituency of Kensington and Bayswater. In September, the BBC aired allegations that al-Fayed raped five women and sexually assaulted over a dozen others while they worked for him. Since then, over 200 women have come forward with allegations, but, for decades, efforts to hold al-Fayed accountable were thwarted by legal threats and intimidation. As far back as 1995, Vanity Fair published an article about al-Fayed that detailed how he had sued The Observer over a story about the sources of his wealth. Other journalists were also threatened or sued. At the time, the journalist Maureen Orth wrote: “All critical reporting outside The Observer virtually stopped”.”
“Provisions introduced through the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 were a welcome step. However, those measures apply only to cases involving economic crime and have not yet been fully implemented in the civil procedure rules. We must move swiftly to enact those provisions so that, in cases around corruption and kleptocracy, people cannot exploit the UK legal system to silence those who seek to expose their crimes. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter) and the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) mentioned, we must go further. I warmly welcome the Prime Minister’s pledge just last month in an article in The Guardian that the Government will “tackle the use of Slapps to protect investigative journalism”.”
“It even went so far as suing the Financial Times over an article related to Burgis’s book. The defence for Burgis and his publisher cost nearly £340,000. As the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) mentioned, many organisations without that financial firepower would never be able to fight those lawsuits as the Financial Times did. That claim was dismissed by the judge, but had the case gone to trial and been lost, the estimated costs including ENRC’s legal fees and damages would have risen to £1.5 million. For these journalists, the mere threat of losing their home or public disgrace shows how SLAPPs are not just about winning cases in court; they are about silencing dissent and a chilling effect on free speech. It is welcome that there is support from across the House on this topic.”
“Other Members have mentioned the case of Catherine Belton, the investigative journalist who received multiple legal threats following the publication of her book, “Putin’s People”. Four oligarchs, including Roman Abramovich, who owns frozen assets in my constituency, and a Russian state oil company launched lawsuits against her and her publisher HarperCollins. Abramovich sued over a number of claims, including that he bought Chelsea football club on Putin’s orders. That libel was settled, but had that trial gone ahead, the legal bill would likely have exceeded £10 million. Similarly, the journalist Tom Burgis faced legal action for his book “Kleptopia” from the mining company the Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation. ENRC sued Burgis personally and also targeted his publisher, again HarperCollins.”
“Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) for all his work on media freedom—but our leadership is undermined by the use of these lawsuits to harass, intimidate and silence critics of the corrupt and powerful in this country. As we have already heard, the UK legal system has become fertile ground for SLAPPs, particularly for those who wish to conceal money laundering and economic crime. A survey by the Foreign Policy Centre, to which my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset referred, found that international reporters on financial crime and corruption face as many threats of court action in England as they do from all other European countries and the US combined.”
“I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Lloyd Hatton) for securing this important debate. I declare an interest, as I spent more than a decade working on open government transparency and accountability around the world, supporting journalists and civil society to hold Governments to account, often in countries where people could be locked up for speaking truth to power. Indeed, I worked as an investigative journalist reporting on corruption in Uganda many years ago, standing up to people who wanted to silence our stories. I begin by recognising and paying tribute to the brave reporters, investigative journalists and victims of SLAPPs in the UK and around the world. People look to us to lead by example on democracy and free speech—I thank the right hon.”
“I was pleased to sign the letter from parliamentarians of 24 countries that the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) just mentioned, and I thank the Minister for confirming that a meeting took place with Sebastien and the Foreign Secretary. Can the Minister outline how we will work with other countries in a concerted, co-ordinated effort? As we have heard, many of them have individuals in arbitrary detention in Hong Kong. How can we co-ordinate across those countries to get the release of activists such as Jimmy Lai?”
“I thank my right hon. Friend for his personal and relentless leadership on sanctions against those aiding and abetting Russia’s illegal invasion. He will agree that it is vital that those sanctions are well enforced. In his review, will he include the credible allegations of sanctions evasion via Hong Kong? Closer to home, will he do his utmost to end the continued delay to the release of the £2.5 billion from the sale of Chelsea football club, which remains untapped at a time when the humanitarian need is so high?”
“I welcome the additional money for the Serious Fraud Office. My hon. and learned Friend will know that Transparency International has assessed the UK as having reduced enforcement of foreign bribery measures for the first time, and the last bribery investigation to be publicly confirmed was in 2020. What steps are being taken to ensure that the SFO actively fulfils its role as the primary enforcement body for foreign bribery?”
“I know that the Minister is a strong friend of our overseas territories. Could he explain the importance of putting the US base on a legal footing, and give us a bit more detail about how that will enable us to work with our allies in countering any potential Chinese threat in the region?”
“T8. I have worked for many years with London School of Economics academic and UK resident Dr Gubad Ibadoghlu, who has been arbitrarily detained in Azerbaijan since July 2023 for uncovering corruption in the fossil fuel industry, despite a severe medical condition. During COP29, will Ministers meet their Azerbaijani counterparts to urge them to drop the charges and to release him?”
“I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his new position. On the theme of broken promises and capital investment, and in the spirit of a fresh start, I wonder whether he will extend an apology to my constituents who were promised a new hospital under the new hospital programme, which was never funded in any forward-looking Budget document?”
“The damning National Audit Office this week laid bare the cost of inaction on building safety, so I welcome the Chancellor’s support for speeding up the remedial work. The NAO said that, on current trends, the last building will not be fixed until 2037—20 years after Grenfell. That is unacceptable, and I look forward to the Government’s plan to speed up the remedial work. Trust in politics has collapsed to an all-time low after the covid VIP lanes, the lobbying scandals, and the Liz Truss mini-Budget, for which my constituents have still not received an apology.”
“Instead of taking responsibility, the Conservatives overspent, avoided the tough choices and signed off cheques that they knew would never have to be cashed. I welcome the Budget, and especially the investment to meet our election commitment to reducing waiting list and expanding surgical capacity and diagnostic hubs. I also look forward to the 10-year plan for the NHS, and I hope that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury will set out in the spending review plans to build a new St Mary’s and invest for the long-term to get people healthier, improve productivity and deliver an NHS that we can all be proud of. Of course, our housing crisis is directly linked to challenges in our NHS, so I welcome the investment in the affordable homes plan and the warm homes plan, and the reduction in right-to-buy discounts with councils keeping receipts.”
“In July, I was proud to be elected the new Member of Parliament for Kensington and Bayswater—a fantastic community but one that has, like so much of the country, suffered 14 years of low growth, stagnant wages and crumbling public services. We have some of the highest health inequalities in the country. The major local hospitals have the largest high-risk repair backlog of any NHS trust in England. Much of my casework involves people in substandard temporary accommodation battling damp and mould and slow repairs, and victims of no-fault evictions and overcrowding. What compounds that dreadful inheritance is false hope. The fantasy new hospital programme told people in my community that they would have a brand new St Mary’s hospital, as well as overhauls of Hammersmith and Charing Cross hospitals, but it was never budgeted for.”
“Four months ago, this Government were elected with a mandate for change. The Budget marks the end of the short-term cycles of chaos and mismanagement, and the start of a serious plan to build a fairer and more prosperous Britain.”
“I thank my constituency neighbour for that point. The Imperial College trust has the highest major repair backlog of any NHS estate in the country, so we hope that it will, on merit, be a strong candidate in the Secretary of State’s review of the new hospital programme. As the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) would know from our work together on open government and international transparency, I welcome the Chancellor’s focus on tackling corruption, fraud, tax avoidance and waste; the ending of the non-dom tax regime; the additional guardrails to ensure that public investment is well spent; and the appointment of a covid corruption commissioner to uncover which companies used a national emergency to line their own pockets. Taxpayers want that money back.”
“Given the humanitarian collapse in Gaza and the risk of mass starvation, the Knesset vote is obviously deeply dangerous for the Palestinians, but does it not also send a deeply dangerous signal internationally to civilians in conflict zones, in that other states that have been accused of violating international humanitarian law may take succour from this vote and target UN agencies providing lifesaving aid?”
“I warmly thank the Secretary of State and the full ministerial team for their hard work mobilising the additional money from frozen Russian sovereign assets. I hope that other countries will follow UK leadership on this. In mobilising every tool across the Government, and with winter approaching, may I ask the Secretary of State to continue the push to realise the assets from the sale of Chelsea football club—the £2.5 billion from Roman Abramovich that could go towards humanitarian needs, which are also increasingly urgent in Ukraine?”
“The shadow Minister may remember that he failed personally to support the suspension of Owen Paterson after he was found guilty of lobbying and being paid thousands of pounds to raise questions in Parliament. Does the Minister agree that today’s conversion to standards and integrity rings completely hollow?”
“I wish my parliamentary namesake a happy birthday. Dockless e-bikes are an increasingly popular transport mode in Kensington and Chelsea and in Westminster, yet local authorities do not have the powers to regulate inappropriate parking and antisocial behaviour. Would the Leader of the House consider granting time to debate whether local authorities should have more power to regulate the dockless e-bike rental market?”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the unintended consequences of section 21 is that people often do not report damp and mould or the repairs that they need for fear of eviction, because they will be pushed into finding a new tenancy, which they simply cannot afford?”
“The most exciting thing about today is the Government’s commitment to attacking our housing crisis from multiple angles: planning reform to build 1.5 million new homes, including the biggest increase in social housing in a generation; learning from Grenfell, and speeding up the remedial work up and down the country; accelerated implementation of the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023, including Awaab’s law; a new decent homes standard for social and private housing; a crackdown on dirty money in luxury property; and an end to the feudal leasehold system. This is a comprehensive—”
“I note here my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, because I have worked on a number of new government registers in recent years, including the public register of beneficial ownership and the register of overseas entities. It is crucial to design them in a way that is as transparent as possible and does not create loopholes. I ask the Secretary of State and the Minister to look at the detail of what will be in that register, including landlord and agent contact details, details of past enforcement action, eviction notices, safety information, information about accessibility and the rent being charged. If we include all those things, we will have a genuinely useful register that will promote accountability and genuinely drive up standards. This game-changing Bill should also not be seen in isolation.”
“I also think of the constituents who I met, along with the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister, around the table in north Kensington; they could not even bring themselves to report the challenges with the condition of their flats for fear of a section 21 notice that could leave them on the streets, sofa surfing or scrambling for temporary accommodation. This renters’ Bill is also for them. I want to focus on one critical area of implementation, the landlord register, which is a huge opportunity to give renters, landlords and local authorities the information they need to ensure that standards are upheld and new rights can be enforced.”
“Their request for just a few more weeks to find a new home was denied. The council were unable to help them, so Jack and Jean had to leave with their mum for a new part of London as rents in my constituency are so unaffordable. The letting agent told the Francos that the owner wanted to sell the property, but today that property is still being rented out, but at twice the rent that the previous family were paying—a back-door eviction by an anonymous landlord that this Bill would have stopped.”
“Yet despite the fact that those renters pay an increasing proportion of their take-home pay each month in rent, I have been inundated since the general election with cases of constituents facing the major challenges that colleagues have already highlighted—section 21 evictions, damp and mould, slow repairs, unaffordable rent hikes, bidding wars and a feeling of insecurity and lack of power that never leaves a person under the current rules. I think of my former constituents Jean and Jack Franco, who lived with their mum in a rental flat in north Kensington. After eight years of never missing a rent payment, they were served a section 21 notice by an anonymous overseas landlord and given just weeks to leave. All their attempts to challenge the decision and engage the landlord failed.”
“It is a great privilege to follow that excellent speech. The Renters’ Reform Bill is potentially transformative for Kensington and Bayswater, as it is for the whole country. Nearly 45% of my constituents are now private renters—a huge increase in the last decade and now the biggest tenure type by some distance. Those renters pay the highest rents in the country: an average rent of £1,600 per person. A rental property in my constituency now averages £3,400 a month.”
“With multiple platforms listing properties, and very small and limited—even non-existent—resources in local authorities to enforce the rule, we must ensure that fees are paid into the system to help cover the enforcement cost for local authorities, so that the cost is proportionate. We must also ensure that each property—not just each host—is registered, because individual properties have different consequences. This is an important part of tackling our housing crisis. I am delighted with the Renters’ Rights Bill, introduced yesterday, and I believe that if we also brought in a complementary package of reforms, it could make a real difference for constituencies such as mine.”
“Kensington and Chelsea agreed a deal with Airbnb that would share data around some council blocks, so that leaseholders and council tenants in those blocks who might be in breach of their tenancy could be investigated. However, that also struck me as unfair when we have 40% of our residents in the private rental sector, where there is very little regulation. As for solutions, I join others in calling for the Government to consider a licensing scheme, while thinking carefully about some of the lessons already learned. For example, the 90-day rule is totally unenforceable.”
“Members a sense of the scale of the problem, I share councils—Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster—and it is estimated that more than 5% of properties in both those council areas have been listed as short-term lets. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster said, the latest estimate in Westminster is 13,000. It is therefore important that any proposed changes related to change of use do not lock in those numbers, and that we sequence the reforms correctly. There are some things that work and I praise the councils that, with limited tools, have been able to take some steps on enforcement, especially in Westminster.”
“That was due to the current effective free-for-all with weak rules that are barely enforced, leading to issues that had very real and personal consequences for them and their families. It was not just the antisocial behaviour, noise and associated crime, but the violations of building insurance, mansion block rules and tenancy agreements, which had very real impacts on service charges and their day-to-day living in flats. I therefore agree with many of the speakers in the debate that there must be a middle ground where we can find sensible regulation that allows a destination like Kensington and Bayswater to continue to welcome millions of tourists from around the world, but with a system that can also help tackle our housing crisis. To give hon.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake) on securing this debate and giving the subject the attention it deserves. We obviously share a border, but we also share an office in this place that, with its high ceilings and windows, comfortable sofas and views of Whitehall, I am sure would fetch a very high price if it were a short-term let. I hope we can agree that we will not be doing that in our period of sharing an office. When I was knocking on doors during the general election campaign, the issue of short-term let regulation united constituents in South Kensington, North Kensington, Bayswater and Lancaster Gate.”
“I also put on the record my thanks to the golfer Shane Lowry, who yesterday—belatedly, but he got there in the end—removed the sponsorship of one of the companies mentioned. I will not mention it by name, just out of caution. More broadly, these developers clearly need to need to pay for the remedial work. The campaigners have done an incredible job, as the Minister said in her opening remarks. Their ask has always been for truth, which we now have from the inquiry; for justice, which we hope will come from the criminal prosecution system; and for change, which it is on all of us in this House to deliver.”
“We are all still digesting the full phase 2 report, and there will be time to go into it in more detail, but one recommendation that I urge the Government to think about straightaway is the streamlining of accountability in terms of ministerial responsibility and the regulator, so that we do not have a dispersed system between multiple Departments that makes it easy for things to fall through the cracks, as Sir Martin Moore-Bick made clear in his report. I hope we will have time to discuss that in detail. Finally, on the question of who should pay, I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement that he will be writing to the companies and looking at exclusions in the public procurement process to ensure that companies referenced in the Grenfell report will not be able to access public tenders.”
“Speeding up this work is obviously part of the answer, but the recommendations from phase 1 and phase 2 of the Grenfell inquiry are also relevant. They go beyond cladding, as the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman) mentioned. I really welcome the Government’s announcement last week that residential personalised emergency evacuation plans for disabled people will be taken forward. It is a big frustration for many of my constituents that that did not happen under the previous Government. We look forward to more detail on what those PEEPs will look like. I urge the Government in the comprehensive spending review to look at funding, for multiple years, for social landlords to implement that and at a scheme to ensure that developers and freeholders cover the costs for private buildings.”
“In addition, that building is another example of the merry-go-round of buck passing that we talked about last week between local government, national Government, developers, freeholders and housing associations. We need clear timelines to speed this up, and I really welcome the Prime Minister’s commitment on that. We need incentives in the system—carrots and sticks—to ensure that we do not have these never-ending situations where leaseholders and tenants are unclear about when the work will be done. As the Minister said, the money is there, so this is about knocking heads together and making sure that, at an individual building level, we get the speeding up that we need. I will write to her about the specific building that I have mentioned.”
“It is a building with approximately 50% social tenants and 50% shared ownership leaseholders, who have scraped together the money to get on the housing ladder and have now been hit with a £400 a month increase in their service charge, primarily driven by the dramatic increase in insurance after the fire inspection took place. I agree with the shadow Minister’s call to look at the insurance market, because in that case there was not a competitive bid for insuring the building. I know there has been a discussion with the Association of British Insurers to see how we can bring down the costs, but I urge the Government to look at this, because in the short term, while we wait for the remedial work to take place, the situation is simply unaffordable for those leaseholders. I certainly think we need to look at the insurance industry.”
“Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) said, that is partly due to the culture of how tenants—social housing tenants, in particular—are treated and about their agency and power and respect. There are tens of thousands of people up and down the country who are still going to bed in buildings that are unsafe. In my constituency—quite incredibly, given the history of Grenfell—we have one of those buildings that is not yet on the Department’s list. It underwent a fire inspection just a few months ago and flammable rendering was found. This is a good example of what many Members have mentioned.”
“The first was about criminal prosecutions, which is not a matter for discussion today. However, as the Justice Secretary mentioned in questions yesterday, it is important that we ensure that the court system is prepared for any potential decisions that come through the Metropolitan police and CPS process, and that court backlogs and the complexity of any potential trials do not result in even further delays to justice. Secondly, the accountability of the companies is not just about criminal investigations; it is about their role in public procurement and paying for remedial work. We need to continue to push on that. Finally, we are discussing policy changes today to ensure that this never happens again, but the pace of change has been far too slow. As my hon.”
“I would like to put on the record the thanks of my constituents in Kensington and Bayswater, which includes the wider Grenfell community, for the cross-party support last week when the phase 2 report of the Grenfell inquiry was published. We thank the Minister and the Government for making time today and for committing to future time, and we thank the Prime Minister for his statement and heartfelt apology on behalf of the British state for what happened. He spoke for us all, including the Leader of the Opposition. The Grenfell legacy obviously has lots of dimensions, but one of them is building safety. I urge Members to remember the 72 victims of the fire, whose legacy has to be fixing this crisis. After the report was released, there were three immediate actions that the community wanted me to advocate in this place.”
“T3. Over the weekend, Lord MacDonald, the former director of public prosecutions, warned that court backlogs and the complexity of any trials that may arise from a CPS decision in 2026 about the victims of the Grenfell fire may further delay justice. Could the Minister give us and the victims reassurance that the criminal justice system will not further delay justice for those victims?”
“T6. Businesses—especially creative industries—in Kensington and Bayswater tell me that they are fed up with the adversarial relationship we have had with the EU and the pointless red tape and trade barriers that have come with it. Will the Minister outline what steps the Government are taking to address that challenge?”
“Can he assure me that the Government will now do everything in their power to ensure that criminal prosecutions take place as soon as possible? Can he commit to ensuring that companies identified in the report are excluded from public contracts, are held to account to the full extent of the law, and pay their full weight of the cost of the building safety remedial work that is necessary? Can he also ensure that the phase 2 recommendations for central Government will be a blueprint for real change, and that their implementation will be swift and as comprehensive as possible, so that we can truly say that a tragedy like Grenfell will not happen again?”
“As we have heard, it is now more than seven years since 72 people lost their lives in Grenfell Tower in north Kensington. As we have heard again today, the disaster was entirely foreseen and entirely preventable. It was the result of organisations and individuals being systemically dishonest and putting profit before people’s lives. I pay tribute to the next of kin, the bereaved and the survivors, including those who are here today, for their resilience and strength; this is a very painful day for the community. The shameless merry-go-round of buck-passing that has happened for the past seven years must now come to an end, so I thank the Prime Minister for his personal commitment to driving lasting change and holding people accountable.”
“A forthcoming Transparency International report has identified 28 contracts worth £4.1 billion that were awarded to parties with direct political connections to the Conservative party, so can the Chancellor update us on the progress in appointing the covid corruption commissioner and whether they will take evidence from corruption campaigners such as Transparency International?”