Katie Lam
MP for Weald of Kent · Conservative · United Kingdom
“The Government confirmed that twice in November 2025, yet the very next month announced that elections in some parts of the country would be pushed back as far as 2028. Two weeks later, again in the run-up to Christmas, the then local government Minister invited another wave of postponements.”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The real-world results of this endless delay are plain to see. People across the country are left without any sense of which council will be providing services in the year and years to come, while councillors and council officials have spent millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money planning and preparing for new authorities that might never…”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In September, following updated and privileged legal advice, the current Secretary of State withdrew decisions for Essex, Hampshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, and paused plans in most of the rest of the country. What a complete joke!”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Minister talks of allowing the process to “run its course” and of giving “full and proper consideration” to each decision, but can he set out what will be taken into consideration? What role have party political objectives played in determining new local government boundaries?”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It gives me no pleasure whatsoever to say that from start to finish, this Government’s approach to local government reorganisation has been nothing short of a farce. The Government first promised to publish their English devolution White Paper in November 2024.”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In March, there was another set of announcements and another set of legal challenges. In June, it was revealed in a pre-action letter issued by the Department that Ministers had ignored official advice over reorganisation plans. In July, just days before the right hon.”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
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“For all the Prime Minister’s talk about local government, this whole approach to devolution has shown nothing but contempt for local democracy. Local voices have been ignored in the drawing of new council boundaries, and have been overridden by party political considerations. Again and again, the Labour Government’s approach to local government has been about imposing more government, pushing up tax, and stacking the deck in a cynical effort to gain political advantage. They should be ashamed.”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The real-world results of this endless delay are plain to see. People across the country are left without any sense of which council will be providing services in the year and years to come, while councillors and council officials have spent millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money planning and preparing for new authorities that might never materialise. Notwithstanding the announcement that the Minister has made on funding, will he provide an estimate today of the total cost of this Government’s shambolic local government reorganisation? How much of that cost is being eaten by legal fees? The money spent on this farcical reorganisation process should have been spent instead on resurfacing roads, collecting bins and maintaining parks—core local government functions that people care about.”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Minister talks of allowing the process to “run its course” and of giving “full and proper consideration” to each decision, but can he set out what will be taken into consideration? What role have party political objectives played in determining new local government boundaries? Have the Government received, at any point during the process, legal advice that indicates that political considerations were given undue weight in deciding new council boundaries? When can councils that have been left in the dark by today’s announcement expect some kind of verdict from the Government? Which areas will hear by Christmas, and what does “early next year” actually mean? Given the Government’s record on meeting their own deadlines, I am sure that the Minister will forgive me for my scepticism.”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In September, following updated and privileged legal advice, the current Secretary of State withdrew decisions for Essex, Hampshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, and paused plans in most of the rest of the country. What a complete joke! Today the Minister talks of giving councils clarity, yet goes on immediately to say that all options and proposals remain under consideration, and that he approaches all decisions with an open mind. He cannot be serious. We are two and a half years into this process, and the Government had years in opposition to plan it. Why have these decisions not yet been made? How can we still be at the stage of keeping an open mind, and what clarity exactly have we gained from the statement? The vast majority of councils are none the wiser after what we have heard today.”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In March, there was another set of announcements and another set of legal challenges. In June, it was revealed in a pre-action letter issued by the Department that Ministers had ignored official advice over reorganisation plans. In July, just days before the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) became Prime Minister, the previous Secretary of State announced a whole new set of reorganisation plans, with many Members given essentially no time to scrutinise the sweeping changes that were set to be imposed on their areas. We still have not seen the advice that informed those decisions, so will the Minister confirm today, in the interests of transparency, that that advice will be published?”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Government confirmed that twice in November 2025, yet the very next month announced that elections in some parts of the country would be pushed back as far as 2028. Two weeks later, again in the run-up to Christmas, the then local government Minister invited another wave of postponements. In January this year, despite having promised not to delay elections in November, the then Secretary of State announced legislation to postpone 29 elections. The next month, days before the Department was due to answer for its behaviour in court, those postponements were withdrawn. Naturally, the taxpayer was left to pick up the tab for all those delays—a bill that runs into the tens of millions of pounds. That U-turn was announced during recess, so that Members of Parliament had to wait to question Ministers.”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It gives me no pleasure whatsoever to say that from start to finish, this Government’s approach to local government reorganisation has been nothing short of a farce. The Government first promised to publish their English devolution White Paper in November 2024. It was delayed until December 2024, with affected councils given three weeks over Christmas to decide whether or not to delay local elections. Last year, after the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) was forced to resign from the Cabinet, her successor—and, as it turns out, her predecessor—assured us that reorganisation was not taking, and would not take, any longer than planned, and that elections scheduled for May 2026 would go ahead.”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The then NFCC chair, Mark Hardingham, put it best when he said that “we cannot enforce our way out of the cladding crisis.””
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We already have evidence that a legal obligation, such as the one proposed in the Bill, does not by itself guarantee timely remediation. Developers on the developer remediation contract, which the last Conservative Government implemented so that developers, not taxpayers, would cover the cost of remediation, are already bound by equivalent requirements, which is why the Bill exempts them. The Government’s figures show that developers have finished work on only a third of their buildings, and fewer than one in four of all their buildings with life-critical defects. Responding to the Public Accounts Committee, the National Fire Chiefs Council warned that limited workforce capacity was the primary bottleneck to remediation.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“When old cladding is removed, contractors regularly find further defects, so the scope, cost and delays grow. On top of those practical difficulties, many of the buildings concerned are part-owned by their leaseholders. Remediation is also slow because when it comes to the practical implementation of the legal regime, the situation is fragmented. Implementation is managed building by building, and the responsibility is split between owners, managing agents, contractors and three overlapping regulators. Unsurprisingly, that drives up costs and drags out timelines, however willing the owners are. The Bill’s answer is to ask the three regulators to write a statement on how they will co-operate, which is not the same as getting the work done.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We look forward to working with the Government to improve the Bill however we can. Remediation of unsafe cladding is often slow because there are simply not enough qualified people to do the work. This point has been mentioned by the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), but I will spend a moment on it. Every affected building needs a specialist assessment of its external walls, at a time when fire engineers and assessors are in short supply. Training new specialists takes years, yet the Bill does not lay out any particular plans for training those skilled professionals. Contractors face the same shortage of skilled labour and materials. Too often, owners who want to act cannot find anyone to carry out the work. Remediation is slow because the work is complicated and unpredictable.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank the Secretary of State for her remarks. All of us, across the House, agree on the fundamental need to resolve this issue. As she movingly said, the appalling fire at Grenfell Tower and the resultant loss of life were horrifying. I join her in paying tribute to the victims, survivors and their friends and family. We all agree that home is the place where people ought to feel safest. It is deeply concerning that so many people across the country still live in a home that has been rendered unsafe, and we welcome the Government’s desire to put that right. The Opposition have concerns about some of the Bill’s provisions, and about whether the proposed measures will definitely ensure that more people end up living in a safer home. I will set out some of those concerns.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That anybody should feel unsafe in their own home because of structural or material faults is a profoundly depressing state of affairs. However, we are concerned that, in pursuing this noble aim, the Government may not have given due regard to some of the unintended consequences of the solutions they propose. As the Bill progresses, we will probe all those points and more. We look forward to working, with the same noble aim, to improve the Bill however we can.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The presumption against retrospective legislation, the principle of limited liability and the principle of clear legal tests are foundational to the way in which we have designed the law in this country. Of course, we can deviate from them—in our country, Parliament is sovereign and can make whatever law it chooses—but when we do deviate, we ought to ensure that we do so with a full appreciation of the facts and implications. It ought to happen only when we can see no other way to solve the problem at hand, and only when we are sure that new legislation, rather than better enforcement or efforts to ease practical bottlenecks, is the right course of action. I reiterate my appreciation for the intention behind the Bill.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“However, in an effort to tackle this non-compliant minority, the Bill extends retrospective liability well beyond what Parliament agreed in 2022—something that we must always be very cautious about doing. When firms or individuals cannot be sure that complying with the law today will ensure legal safety tomorrow, their behaviour can change. They may be more reluctant to enter the market in the first place, and will certainly be more reluctant to innovate. Insurers will price in that risk, and every new home will cost more to build. As with so many aspects of the Bill, the Government, in attempting to achieve a noble aim, risk undermining important principles.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Government must explain why the 2022 test was not enough. Complying with the regulations in force at the time will no longer be a defence; firms that followed the rules can no longer rely on having done so. Nobody would deny the existence of bad actors—firms that have broken the rules or falsified evidence about their own compliance. Such firms have put people in danger, and some of the consequences have been unimaginably awful. They must be punished. However, there is no reason to believe that those firms would have complied had the legal standard been tougher. The point is that firms that break the rules are going to break the rules, no matter what they are. As is so often the case, the problem is one of enforcement.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Even if we confine ourselves to this sector, can the Government be sure that the erosion of limited liability will not create a direct deterrent to investment in large residential properties, including build to rent? Housing in this country is far too expensive for far too many people. People must be able to trust that their homes are safe, but they also need homes to buy or rent in the first place. Another concerning legal precedent emerges from the Bill’s provisions on retrospective liability for product manufacturers. In 2022, the previous Government gave building owners a route to claim against the manufacturers of defective cladding. The Bill goes much further. It loosens the test itself, so that a product need only have contributed “more than trivially” to a building’s being unsafe.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In 2022, Parliament let a court or tribunal look through a company’s structure where it was just and equitable to do so. The Bill will allow a regulator to adopt quasi-judicial powers and enforce large penalties in doing so. Limited liability is an important principle that, in its modern form, has endured in this country for more than a century and a half. It encourages investment and entrepreneurship. The erosion of limited liability that the Bill represents may set a worrying precedent. Until now, Parliament has qualified the principle only through the courts. The Bill qualifies the principle through regulators rather than judges. If that is acceptable in one sector, why not in others?”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“What impact will it have on the willingness of well-run management firms to get involved in residential property? How many will conclude that it is simply no longer worth the legal risk? Have the Government assessed whether the Bill will have an impact on access to directors’ insurance more broadly, and whether it could create a disincentive to involvement in residential property by well-run management firms? Another point of concern derives from the Bill’s approach to group accountability for parent companies and firms that are deemed to exercise control. The Bill builds on powers in the 2022 Act, but extends them from recovering costs to imposing penalties for offences. The Government must do more to explain where this stops.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Doubtless the Government intend for these measures to be used only in the most extreme cases of deliberate obstruction or delay, but we must be incredibly careful when designing new legal duties and criminal penalties. Like it or not, these standards will hang over owners who are attempting to act in good faith, but who are constrained by the practical difficulty of remediation. Likewise, opening up directors to personal prosecution on grounds of neglect risks generating unintended consequences. While directors’ liability for building safety is long established, the Bill goes much further. Have the Government assessed how many capable people will simply refuse to be named as directors on remediation compliance plans? What will it do to the cost of directors’ insurance?”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Perhaps the clearest risk of unintended consequences comes with the proposed new legal duty. Owners could face two years in prison or penalties of up to half a million pounds for deliberately failing to remediate as soon as reasonably practicable. Those standards—“deliberately” and “as soon as reasonably practicable”—are broad and subjective, particularly given the severity of the punishments prescribed by the Bill. Given that many of the decisions about whether owners have complied with the standards will fall to the regulator, can the Government be sure that due regard will be given to the real practical hurdles to remediation? What guidance will regulators get on what counts as “reasonably practicable”?”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Rather than easing those practical bottlenecks, however, the Bill too often assumes that the main blocker to timely remediation is owners deliberately choosing not to act. Our fear is that, as drafted, the Bill may risk making the problem worse. Under the Bill, every building must be assessed within a year, and every assessment that recommends work must be audited by Homes England, drawing on the same small pool of specialists. There are owners who obstruct, and they should face the full force of the law, but they are the exception, not the rule. I say once again that I do not doubt that the intentions behind the Bill are noble, but we must always be careful that legislation, even when drafted with the best of intentions, does not produce unintended consequences.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I think it is fair to say that there are all sorts of ways in which the response to this appalling event and the wider questions that it raised did not happen as quickly and was not as effective as we might have liked—otherwise, we would not still be discussing it today. What is important now is that we make sure that whatever plan we come up with together, as a Parliament, is as effective as it can be to make sure that people are living in the safest possible homes. That is our responsibility now. It should not come as a surprise that legislating to make something true does not make it so. Passing a law that says that buildings must be fixed will not create a single new fire engineer.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Councils are being given new duties, including the remediation backstop, with no clear sense yet of how they will be resourced. Parliament should see the detail before it can approve those powers. The Opposition intend to table amendments in Committee to test each of those points, and we look forward to continuing that discussion with our shared ultimate aim in mind.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Thirdly, on group accountability, in 2022 Parliament allowed a court or tribunal to look through a company structure when it was just and equitable to do so. The Bill hands a version of that power to regulators through the power to issue penalty notices. Why was the judicial route not enough? Fourthly, on manufacturer’s liability, the 2022 Act gave building owners a route to claim against those who made defective cladding. The Bill loosens that test, but why was the 2022 test not sufficient? Have the Government made any assessment of what that will do to insurance costs and the cost of building new homes? There is also a great deal that we have not yet seen. Remediation management orders will be set out in guidance that has not yet been published.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“What assessment have the Government made of whether there are enough qualified people to meet that deadline and, if there are not, what happens to owners who miss the deadline through no fault of their own? Secondly, on the new legal duties and associated offences, owners could face up to two years in prison or a penalty of up to £500,000 for deliberately failing to remediate as soon as reasonably practicable. What guidance will the relevant regulators be given on what that means in cases where qualified professionals are simply not available? Can the Minister be sure that an owner who is trying in good faith to commence remediation, but cannot get the work done, will not be prosecuted?”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The evidence suggests that remediation is slow mainly because there are not enough capable professionals to do the work, because the work is hard and unpredictable, and because delivery is fragmented. Elements of that have been acknowledged by Members on both sides of the House. In our view, there is a risk that a Bill that creates new legal duties, deadlines and penalties, but not a single new assessor or contractor, may add more pressure on the system and risk making the problem worse. As the Bill progresses, I hope that the Government will be able to answer some of the questions raised in this debate. First, on capacity, every building in scope of the Bill must be assessed within a year of commencement, and every assessment that recommends work must be audited by Homes England.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We of course heard from the hon. Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell). It must be a great responsibility to be the Member of Parliament for so many victims and survivors of Grenfell tower in his constituency—an area that we both know well. I am sure that he feels that acutely. Some of his descriptions of rogue and dangerous activity were shocking. As outlined in my opening remarks, those of us on the Opposition Benches share the fundamental aims of the Bill. We too believe that every building with unsafe cladding should be fixed—and fixed fast. The questions that the Opposition pose are not about the Bill’s aims, but about whether it will work in practice and whether the full implications of its provisions have been considered by the Government.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I would like to acknowledge some of the Back-Bench contributions to the debate. The sheer volume and range of locations affected by unsafe cladding is remarkable and speaks to the scale of this terrible problem. We have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune), the right hon. Member for Leeds South (Hilary Benn), and the hon. Members for Ipswich (Jack Abbott), for Woking (Mr Forster), for Southampton Itchen (Darren Paffey), for Bristol Central (Carla Denyer), for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey), for Reading Central (Matt Rodda), for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum), for Putney (Fleur Anderson), for Harlow (Chris Vince), for Stevenage (Kevin Bonavia) and for Bournemouth West (Jessica Toale), who have all spoken of the challenges that their constituents have in dealing with that terrible problem.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I spent a day last week with the palliative care team at William Harvey hospital in Ashford, which serves a large chunk of my constituency, and I was amazed by how much time they spent gathering and sharing information. They were clicking through on really old systems, all on pdf, which takes up a huge amount of time that they could instead be spending on clinical care, especially given how technology is evolving. When are we going to get past the situation in which every single time a doctor sees a patient, it is like the whole interaction with the NHS is happening for the very first time?”
House of Commons14 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Tomorrow, the Conservatives were going to ask for Parliament to sit for one more working day, so that the new Prime Minister could come here and set out his agenda for the country, which we could then scrutinise on behalf of all the people we represent. Instead, there will be a general debate which, no matter the topic, can have no actionable outcome. We will have no chance for a month and a half to scrutinise the Prime Minister’s plans. I ask the Leader of the House genuinely: how does he think that looks to the people who send us here?”
House of Commons14 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My question to the Home Secretary is one that those women were asking: why did they endure the years of pain and danger that it took to have their abusers put in prison, only for this Government to let them out again after such a short time?”
House of Commons13 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Thank you, Mr Speaker. I would like to echo your tribute to a predecessor of mine, Ann Widdecombe. She was an exceptionally effective Member of Parliament, has been a really tough act to follow, and is very fondly remembered in the Weald. On behalf of my constituents, whom she served for decades—a role that she fulfilled with outstanding dedication—I would just like to say thank you. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Last week I met a group of victims and survivors of the most appalling sexual violence, like Angela. It is not her real name, but Angela was first raped by her stepfather at the age of eight. He then sold her to men for sex to pay off his gambling debts. He was sentenced to just 10 years in prison and, having served only six, is now being let out early by the Government.”
House of Commons13 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Twiggy Roberts, who is a veteran himself and runs HX Motors in my constituency, training other veterans to maintain and customise Land Rovers, says that he hears a lot from veterans of his generation about their frustrations as they try to gain access to the mental health services that they need and deserve, especially when dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder. It would be good to hear about what conversations the Secretary of State is having with Cabinet colleagues, particularly those in the Department of Health and Social Care, about how veterans can be given access to those services. They give one another great support, but it is clearly not the same as support from professionals.”
House of Commons6 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if she will make a statement on whether the Government are planning to change the law to deport Rochdale grooming gang leader, Shabir Ahmed.”
House of Commons6 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If they do not, people across this country will rightly ask, as they are already asking, whether this is a Government that can really keep the British people safe.”
House of Commons6 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“How can he possibly be allowed to walk the streets again? When the law produces an outcome that is clearly so wrong, the law must be changed. The Government must now change this law to make sure that we can remove Ahmed. Conservative Members, including the Leader of the Opposition, have made it clear that, if the Home Secretary puts forward changes to the law that would allow us to deport Shabir Ahmed, we will support them. The shadow Home Secretary has already drafted an amendment that the Government could adopt. The argument for deporting Ahmed is clear, and the mechanism has already been created. All that remains in question is whether the Government have the will to act. If so, we will be happy to support them.”
House of Commons6 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Shabir Ahmed has committed some of the most despicable crimes imaginable. As the ringleader of the Rochdale grooming gang, he was responsible for grooming, trafficking and raping children as young as 12 years old. He was jailed in 2012 for 30 counts of child rape. His victims were promised that when he got out of prison, he would be deported back to Pakistan. He has been released from prison, but now we are told that he will not be deported because of a provision in the 1971 Immigration Act. The idea that he might be allowed to stay in this country because of a clause in a decades-old law designed for a completely different time and context is not just absurd, but sickening. As recently as 2023, parole officers concluded that Ahmed posed a “very high risk of serious harm” to children.”
House of Commons6 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In June, 20 grooming gang perpetrators were jailed for offences in West Yorkshire, which included the rape and abuse of three girls of whom the youngest was aged just 12. Abbas Kaji was sentenced to just seven years for rape, and Mohammed Ishtiaq Hussain to just eight. All too soon, these vile men will be back on the streets of the very communities that they terrorised, and the idea that the Government could cut their sentences to be even shorter is terrifying. This is not about the past but about the present and the future, so can the Minister please assure the House that everybody involved in grooming and rape gang offences will, at the very least, serve the entirety of their already too-short sentences?”
House of Commons29 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“More illegal migrants will enter the endless cycle of appeals and legal challenges, allowing them to stay here for years at the taxpayer’s expense. More people will be put at risk because of these plans and because of the Government’s unwillingness truly to solve this problem for good.”
House of Commons29 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As Conversative Members have made clear time and again, the only real solution to the crisis at our border is to remove illegal migrants as soon as they arrive. People must know that if they try to break our laws, they cannot stay. For it to be possible to remove people as soon as they arrive, we must leave the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights that prevents us from doing so, but the Government refuse to recognise that. They are in hock to activist lawyers in this country and unaccountable judges in Strasbourg, and keeping those people happy takes precedence over keeping the British people safe and delivering on their democratic will. The plans before us are another sorry example of that.”
House of Commons29 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Since the last election, 75,000 people have crossed the channel. In the past few weeks alone, 3,000 have made the crossing. For all the Government’s talk of removals, nearly all of them—some 93%—are being allowed to stay. The Minister boasts about a reduction in outstanding decisions, but they have achieved that reduction by granting asylum to thousands upon thousands of illegal migrants. The Minister said in his statement that to stop the use of asylum hotels for good “we must go further, and that means scaling up our use of larger, more basic facilities.” He is right that the Government must go further to stop the use of asylum hotels for good, but he is utterly wrong that the problem is solved by instead spending huge resources to create other places to live for those who arrive here illegally.”
House of Commons29 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“For all the talk of smashing the gangs, they reveal that this Government do not have any faith in their own ability to fix the problem. If they are so sure that they are ending illegal channel crossings, why are the Government making plans to host illegal migrants in this country until 2030? What does that tell us about their confidence in their own approach? The truth is that this Government have no intention of fixing the problem: they care only about managing people’s perceptions of it. While they talk up the reduction in illegal migrants living in hotels, they conveniently leave out the fact that thousands more migrants are being housed in so-called dispersal accommodation: homes in the middle of our towns and cities where illegal migrants pose an even greater risk to the public.”
House of Commons29 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That is exactly the same playbook that the Government have tried to use in places like Inverness where, thanks to the work of the Conservative group on the Highland council, the Home Office’s plans to house illegal migrants at Cameron barracks were blocked. We have seen in far too many cases the risk that illegal migrants, most of them young men, pose to the public, particularly to women and children. If the Government are planning to force communities to live alongside people who have shown complete contempt for our laws and norms by the very act of coming here illegally, the least that they can do is to allow those plans to be subject to proper scrutiny. Now that we finally have an opportunity to scrutinise the plans, we can perhaps see why the Government were so keen to hide them.”
House of Commons29 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement, which confirms what we have suspected since last week: this Government are planning to put more illegal migrants into sites across the country. Some of those sites are due to host illegal migrants until 2030, yet the Government did not think that it was worth alerting the hon. Members who represent those communities and live nearby ahead of the announcement in the press. Rather than subjecting the plans to proper scrutiny here in Parliament, the Government tried to sneak the news out quietly before the weekend, without discussion here in this place by those people’s democratically elected representatives.”
House of Commons29 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I understand that the Home Office is due tonight to announce 12 new asylum seeker centres across the country, with no statement to the House or notification to Members here. This is a very, very important issue for our constituents. I seek your guidance on how we might encourage the Government to release this sort of information here first, so that we can scrutinise it on behalf of the people we represent.”
House of Commons25 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I only hope that the chaos in Government will provide the new Defence Ministers— whenever they arrive—with an excuse to drop the Bill for good, and that they will instead support the private Member’s Bill brought forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp), which I am honoured to support. Our Northern Ireland veterans made unimaginable sacrifices to keep us safe. It is not a lot to ask that we protect them from this nightmare in return.”
House of Commons23 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Earlier this week, we heard that we would be rid of this Prime Minister, who has repeatedly let down those currently serving in our armed forces by refusing to provide them with the material support they need, as well as those who have served previously, through the disastrous Northern Ireland Troubles Bill. I hope that his exit foreshadows the exit of the Attorney General and the Northern Ireland Secretary, both of whom have been responsible for advancing and defending the Bill. They have been warned repeatedly about what an awful signal it sends to those who are currently serving. Why would anybody risk their lives if their own Government might throw them under the bus decades later?”
House of Commons23 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This Government’s troubles Bill will mean more cases like that one, with more veterans dragged through the courts, hounded in the press, and forced to testify at countless inquests and inquiries. It will scrap the protections put in place by the previous Government and open the doors to a whole new wave of politically motivated prosecutions. The Government say that this is necessary because of our obligations under the European Court of Human Rights, but if protecting our veterans from vexatious prosecution is not compatible with ECHR membership, what better case can there be for leaving the ECHR altogether?”
House of Commons23 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The three IRA men who were killed that day set out to murder a part-time soldier, and the actions of the SAS were designed to prevent that murder from happening. Fortunately, they succeeded. That operation took place before I was even born, yet until earlier this year, the soldiers who took part in it were still being subjected to legal harassment for their actions that day. More than three decades later, lawyers with no specialist knowledge of military operations were asked to rule on whether those soldiers had behaved in accordance with human rights law, which was not designed for combat. Fortunately, the Court of Appeal determined that the SAS had acted lawfully, but other veterans have not been so lucky.”
House of Commons23 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗