Katie Lam

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

The complete record

638 held · 625 searchable for Katie Lam. The searchable lines are below in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 3 of 10.

This is not an official version of UK Parliament proceedings. It reproduces the published record and links to it; the official version is the one UK Parliament publishes.

1. “A good education should not be the preserve of only those children who have parents who can afford to pay for one. Enabling more pupils to attend the best schools in the state sector means that that kind of education can be offered to more children, yet, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott) has set out, the powers that this Bill will create on pupil admissions will achieve precisely the opposite. They allow the Government and regulators to limit the growth of good schools, or even force them to shrink, in order to make sure that schools that are performing less well can stay open. The most generous interpretation of the Government’s intentions is that this change is being made in the name of bureaucratic convenience.”

   House of Commons22 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

   Check this claim →

2. “I was very sorry to hear the story that the hon. Member for Reading Central (Matt Rodda) shared. I will speak about a different aspect of the Bill: schools and admissions. Good schools, and the good teachers who run them, are exceptionally precious. At its best, a good school truly can transform the lives of its pupils by fostering their natural talents, by helping equip them to tackle challenges and by expanding their intellectual horizons. When good schools are working well, they should be able to grow, so that more parents can choose to send their children to a school where their talents can be cultivated and their interests encouraged. That is a simple principle—one that Members from across the House, and indeed everyone everywhere, should be able to agree to.”

   House of Commons22 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

   Check this claim →

3. “If he did, why did he not consider it sufficiently concerning to abandon, or at the very least pause to reconsider, the appointment of Peter Mandelson to arguably our most important and security-sensitive ambassadorial role? The Prime Minister has spoken extensively about what he did not know, but we and the British public are incredulous that he did not ask. We know that the Prime Minister knew about the Russian links, so what questions did he ask about those facts? What questions did he ask officials? What questions did he ask Mandelson, or did he simply not want to know?”

   House of Commons21 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

   Check this claim →

4. “The advice included the following quote: “Mandelson served as a non-executive director of the Russian conglomerate Sistema, which is itself the majority shareholder of RTI, a defence technology company…Mandelson remained on the board until June 2017, long after Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.” Either the Prime Minister is still reluctant to share with us all the information that we deserve, or he did not read the advice he was given—despite insisting repeatedly that his decision to appoint Mandelson was based on that advice. In light of this, can the Minister tell us definitively this afternoon whether the Prime Minister considered these facts about Peter Mandelson’s role at Sistema when appointing him—yes or no? If he did not, why did he not read his brief?”

   House of Commons21 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

   Check this claim →

5. “In December 2024, the Prime Minister ignored that guidance and appointed Peter Mandelson anyway. In January 2025, the Prime Minister repeatedly insisted before the press and the public that Peter Mandelson had passed security vetting, despite the fact that that was not the case. When asked yesterday, he twice refused to confirm that he knew about Peter Mandelson’s links to Sistema, despite the fact that the advice that he received in December 2024 explicitly pointed it out.”

   House of Commons21 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

   Check this claim →

6. “It also means that he would have maintained close contacts with figures linked to the Russian Government, including Sistema’s former chairman Vladimir Yevtushenkov, who is currently subject to sanctions as a result of his links to Vladimir Putin. Any sensible Prime Minister would want to consider the facts carefully before appointing somebody to a sensitive diplomatic post and would give proper consideration to whether those relationships would leave that person exposed to Russian influence. This is particularly true in the case of Peter Mandelson, who has a long history of improper financial conduct. In November 2024, the Cabinet Secretary advised the Prime Minister to conduct security vetting on prospective candidates before appointing anybody to the ambassador’s post in Washington.”

   House of Commons21 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

   Check this claim →

7. “Yesterday, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and I both asked the Prime Minister whether he knew about Peter Mandelson’s role as a director at Sistema when he appointed him to be the ambassador to the United States. Given that the Prime Minister did not answer our question then, I will repeat the facts of the case and ask the Minister for clarification. From 2013 until at least 2017, Peter Mandelson served as a director for Sistema, a Russian conglomerate that invests heavily in Russia’s military industrial complex. This means that Mandelson remained a director at Sistema after Russia’s annexation of Crimea.”

   House of Commons21 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

   Check this claim →

8. “My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition asked this question, but I do not believe that she received a response. Was the Prime Minister aware that Peter Mandelson was a director of Sistema before he was appointed?”

   House of Commons20 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

   Check this claim →

9. “It is a complete farce to suggest that, by limiting the extent to which Ministers can mandate how people’s money is invested, the Government have addressed concerns about this mandation power. These so-called guardrails will be cold comfort to people across the country who are worried about whether they will have enough money to retire comfortably, and who are worried that their efforts will be frustrated by Ministers pursuing ideological aims. I hope that Members across the House will reject this power grab altogether. It cannot be right to punish those who work hard and save what they can.”

   House of Commons15 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

   Check this claim →

10. “You can work hard for a lifetime and save a little at the end of every month, but at the stroke of a pen, Ministers will be able to decide where that money goes, even if that means that you will end up with less. The Government are right to identify that British assets are not always the most attractive investments, but the solution is not to force people to invest in them anyway; it is to make the British economy a better place to operate and grow, to allow people to take risks and to allow businesses to do what they are good at, so that people choose of their own free will to invest here. The money that people earn belongs to them, and it is theirs to do with as they wish. It is not simply a tool that this Government or any Government can use to achieve their ideological aims, and that should be true of every pound that people earn.”

    House of Commons15 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

11. “When people put aside money for their retirement and entrust it to a company to manage, they very reasonably expect their savings to be invested by whatever company they have chosen, and in line with whatever instructions they have given about their preferences and risk tolerance. Shockingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, this Government do not agree. Instead, they think that Government Ministers should have the power to direct pension investments. They want to give themselves the right to direct private pension providers to make decisions that are not in the best interests of their clients. If Ministers think that people’s money should be invested in British assets, even if doing so will leave them with less money in their retirement, this Bill will give them the right to force private companies to invest accordingly.”

    House of Commons15 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

12. “As my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately)—my constituency neighbour—has repeatedly and effectively highlighted, the mandation power in this Bill is a shocking power grab. She is also right to say that, regardless of the apparent guardrails that the Government have now introduced, it is still totally indefensible. Those in the other place are absolutely right to return the Bill to us to reconsider, and it is in support of Lords amendment 15 that I will speak today. The power to direct investments is not just flawed in its implementation; it is wrong in principle.”

    House of Commons15 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

13. “T9. The changes that the Government made in January to prioritise British graduates for NHS training places were very welcome indeed, but the current system of random allocation demoralises and disincentivises our brightest graduates, and it causes profound uncertainty for people at the start of their career. Will the Secretary of State consider changing the process, so that those places are instead allocated on merit?”

    House of Commons14 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

14. “My hon. Friend is giving an excellent speech as usual. Is she aware of analysis from the Taxpayers’ Alliance that says the average household will pay £40,000 in fuel duty over a lifetime under the Chancellor’s plans? That is several thousand pounds more than the median disposable income for a household. Does she feel, as I do, that this is an unsustainable burden on people who are already struggling to get by?”

    House of Commons18 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

15. “It’s the only place in the world I’ve been where the roads are worse than here.” I sent a survey to every household in the Weald of Kent last year. Of the 1,500 responses I received, street works were mentioned more than 500 times. I do not have time today to talk about all the challenges that they pose, but the Transport Committee, of which I and the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover) are both members, published a report on that last year. I would love to hear an update from the Minister on the Government’s response to that report.”

    House of Commons17 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

16. “It is always a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Shropshire (Stuart Anderson) for securing the debate. The condition of rural roads is an ever-present issue for those of us who represent rural constituencies. In the Weald of Kent, where we have mile after mile of country lane used by massive lorries that have crossed the channel and are hoping to avoid traffic on the main routes, the situation is especially dire. I visited the Falkland Islands on a parliamentary trip last year, where many of the roads have not even been fully laid. When I explained to the officer driving the car where I lived, he said, “Ah! I know your constituency.”

    House of Commons17 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

17. “In February, the Government ordered Courtsdesk to delete the largest archive of court records in the country—an essential tool for transparency in the justice system. The Government changed their minds about that, which was incredibly welcome, but we do not yet have a clear sense of what they intend to do with that archive or how they intend to move forward. Could the Minister assure us today that Courtsdesk will not be compelled to delete its archive in the future and confirm whether it will be allowed to continue operating its services?”

    House of Commons17 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

18. “Again, I thank the Minister for his statement and for his work on tackling criminality towards elected officials. Can he assure us that his colleagues in Government are as committed to dealing with this problem at its root as he seems to be?”

    House of Commons12 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

19. “The strategy will make it harder to have open, public discussions about subjects like female genital mutilation, grooming and rape gangs, and extremism, including any threats that it may pose to our democracy. We have already seen that creating conditions in which people fear being branded as racist for keeping the public safe can create horrific outcomes. We must never again allow guidance like this to create a culture of fear, which breeds inaction, cover-up and denial. The cohesion strategy is a recipe for further suppression of discussion of the threats that face us today and their root causes. We will not make the truth disappear by discouraging people from talking about it. That has never worked, and it will not work now.”

    House of Commons12 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

20. “The strategy openly acknowledged the existence of “communities in the UK living segregated or parallel lives”, but rather than dealing with that problem directly, the Government have proposed a package that may only make this problem worse: more diversity, equity and inclusion in the public sector and an attempt to smuggle in so-called social engineering under the guise of social cohesion; advisory boards designed to manage tensions, when it was exactly that focus on managing community tensions that allowed rape and grooming gangs to operate unchecked for so long in towns and cities across our country; and a new, rebranded Islamophobia definition to be issued as guidance to public servants, which will have a chilling effect on their behaviour.”

    House of Commons12 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

21. “We must be honest about the fact that, while violence against elected politicians can come from a wide variety of groups, the single biggest extremist threat to our country remains the threat of extremist Islamist violence. That threat is intimately tied up with a growing tendency towards sectarian politics in some parts of our country. As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said recently, separatism is on the rise in our country, because “for too long, Britain has been complacent about our culture and too tolerant of those weaponising identity politics for their own gain”. Yet, in their cohesion strategy published earlier this week, the Government seemed unwilling to deal with the threat head-on.”

    House of Commons12 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

22. “Targeted and serious intimidation of democratically elected politicians, particularly where that intimidation escalates into credible physical threats, is a serious impediment to the functioning of our democracy. It is of course right that criminal behaviour is prosecuted and punished. At the same time, we have a duty to ensure that the policing of genuinely criminal behaviour does not stray into the policing of free speech or free expression. In individual cases, that can be a challenging balance to strike, and I trust that the Minister will approach those cases with the appropriate caution and sensitivity. While many aspects of the Minister’s statement are encouraging, I am concerned that other members of this Government have failed to approach this issue with the necessary caution or candour.”

    House of Commons12 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

23. “There is much to welcome in the Security Minister’s statement. I thank him for advance sight of it and, more broadly, for his update on the work of the defending democracy taskforce, and I join him in remembering our colleagues who lost their lives in service of the public. As the Minister rightly notes, all of us in this place have a sacred duty to protect and uphold the democracy that has made this country so great for so long. Mr Speaker, I know that few understand that as well as those in the Speaker’s Office, yourself and all three Madam Deputy Speakers, so let me take this opportunity to thank them on behalf of all Members here for everything that they do in public and in private to keep us all safe.”

    House of Commons12 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

24. “A farm is not simply another asset like a share portfolio where we can sell a little today and buy a little tomorrow. The assets of a farm—primarily its land, its crops or livestock, and its equipment—are huge long-term investments, completely inseparable from the ability to produce whatever it makes. There is often little relationship between the value of the land held by a farmer and the profitability of that farm. That is particularly true at a time when, to sell their produce at all, farmers must abide by a seemingly endless list of regulations, all of which drive up costs and reduce profit margins. Farmers tolerate a rock-bottom level of return on investment that most businesses would never consider.”

    House of Commons11 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

25. “Since the Government announced their tax raid on family farms, they have made numerous false claims about the policy and what it will mean for farmers. Raising the threshold, as the Government propose today, does not fix the fundamental wrongs at the heart of this awful policy. I will speak in favour of amendment 6, tabled in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild), which would remove those problems altogether by doing away with this pernicious tax. What are the claims? The Government have claimed that farmers are rich and so can afford to bear the cost of tax increases. To the surprise of nobody who actually works on a farm, that myth is born of a fundamental misunderstanding of how agriculture works.”

    House of Commons11 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

26. “The result of this Government’s plans will be to further alienate the public, and to drag the justice system further away from the views of the British people. If that is what they want, they should at least be straightforward about it.”

    House of Commons10 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

27. “They are designed to ensure that the judiciary can never stray too far from the public’s conception of justice and fairness. At a time when public trust in the judiciary is low, can it really be sensible to take away this crucial backstop? I will take just a single example of the divergence between public morality and judicial opinion. According to research conducted by the Free Speech Union, there is a huge gap between the successes of defences based on the right to free speech in judge-led cases and in cases heard by a jury. In judge-only cases at magistrates courts, just 16% of free-speech defences succeeded; in Crown court cases, where juries very often sit, 28% of free-speech defences succeeded. There is a clear divergence between the public’s appreciation of justice and the views of the judicial establishment.”

    House of Commons10 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

28. “The Government want to curb jury trials because they do not trust the public. They think that judges know best, and would rather the justice system was run entirely by them. We know this to be the case because whenever the Government have a choice to make between the British people and their friends in the legal profession, they are on the side of the lawyers, every single time. We saw this “judges know best” approach in the Prime Minister’s disastrous Chagos giveaway; we see it on asylum, immigration and the European convention on human rights; we see it in the Government’s plans to allow prosecutions of veterans who fought in Northern Ireland; and now, we see it in their plans to curb jury trials. However, jury trials exist for a reason.”

    House of Commons10 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

29. “We have heard a great deal from Government Members about the necessity of these court reforms. They say that in order to tackle the backlog in our courts, we need to curb jury trials, but previous statements from Ministers betray the Government’s true intentions. On 7 January, standing at the Dispatch Box, the Minister for Courts and Legal Services said, “People ask me, ‘Sarah, would you be doing this if there was not a crisis in our courts?’ I say yes” —[ Official Report , 7 January 2026; Vol. 778, c. 284.] It would be bad enough to attack the time-honoured right to a jury trial in the name of administrative efficiency; to do so for ideological reasons, without candidly making that ideological case to the public, is a disgrace. The British people can see what is really going on.”

    House of Commons10 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

30. “Enabling local health services such as pharmacies to provide care is particularly important in the countryside, where it will never be possible to sustain a large hospital in a rural area. I very much welcome the Government’s rhetorical direction on Pharmacy First and on reforming the NHS workforce, but will the Minister tell us what this Government intend to do to face down groups such as the BMA, which stand in the way of the reforms that we need to provide high-quality care to the British public?”

    House of Commons4 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

31. “For example, on Pharmacy First, a scheme that allows people to be treated for simple conditions at their local pharmacy, the BMA said that patients are “being seen by less-skilled people to further enable the steady downgrade of patient expectations”. It has since retracted those comments, but that the sentiment exists within the BMA at all is deeply troubling. On physician associates—a group of healthcare professionals who can carry out certain assessments and tests to reduce the workload of doctors—the BMA has launched legal action over whether they can even be called “medical professionals”. Fortunately, it lost the case, but again, its overwhelming hostility towards the reforms that our healthcare system needs in rural areas is concerning.”

    House of Commons4 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

32. “Clearly we need to move the healthcare service towards a model that reduces the workload on doctors, trains more of our workforce here and rewards our best-performing practitioners. That would be better for doctors and patients alike, and would be particularly welcomed in rural areas, where it is often much more practical to have a pharmacy in a village than a full GP surgery. In principle, the Health Secretary’s public statements on this issue represent a step in the right direction, but since coming to power, this Government have conceded to medical unions such as the British Medical Association, which takes an altogether different line.”

    House of Commons4 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

33. “The current make-up of the workforce and workload cannot meet those challenges, so I was heartened by this Government’s plans, introduced earlier this year, to prioritise British medical graduates over foreign-trained doctors, though there is still much work to be done on ensuring that our medical training system rewards our most talented graduates. I have also been heartened by some of the Health Secretary’s rhetoric on Pharmacy First, and the need to reduce the workload on doctors, so that the public can access basic services without contributing to the NHS waiting list. It is a superb initiative, and was launched by my right hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) under the previous Conservative Government.”

    House of Commons4 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

34. “It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Huq. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Blake Stephenson) for securing this debate on such an important topic. Any Member who represents a rural constituency can attest to the practical challenges that our healthcare system faces in the countryside. It can often be difficult to sustain genuinely local GP services, and that forces people to travel long distances to access care. Where services do exist, they are often unable to provide the full suite of care owing to resource shortages or manpower deficiencies. Hospitals, of course, are even further away.”

    House of Commons4 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

35. “Q11. The Government’s proposed terms of reference for the inquiry into rape and grooming gangs are fatally flawed, as victims and survivors have pointed out. They will not address the role that race and religion played in motivating these crimes or lead to prosecutions for those involved in the cover-up. They will not even investigate all cases—only a select few. The consultation on these terms ends this Friday. Will the Prime Minister assure us that if enough people call for change, including through groominggangjustice.uk, the final terms of reference will reflect those concerns?”

    House of Commons4 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

36. “On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I believe the Prime Minister has inadvertently misled the House. I seek your guidance on how to get him to correct the record for claiming that I said something that I did not.”

    House of Commons4 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

37. “The Chancellor stands there and says that living standards are up and the economy is growing, but people can see the reality in their everyday lives: unemployment up month on month and energy bills higher than when Labour came to power. The latest figures in fact show that per person, our economy is shrinking, yet she stands there and says she has “the right economic plan for our country”. Does she have any idea how that sounds to people out there who are working harder than ever, with less and less left over at the end of every month?”

    House of Commons3 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

38. “We have been saying for months that to give away the Chagos islands and pay for the privilege is complete and utter madness. Having rammed this through, we are now told that the Government are taking a “pause for thought”. Can the Minister explain why the Government signed off this disastrous and disastrously expensive handover agreement without having thought about it first?”

    House of Commons25 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

39. “We must see the documents that pertain to the appointment of Peter Mandelson. Given that any member of the public could have told the Government that Mandelson was dodgy, it seems amazing that the Prime Minister requested that this vetting happen in the first place. This is not a question of process; it is a matter of judgment. Does the Chief Secretary believe that these documents will reveal why the Prime Minister’s judgment is consistently so poor?”

    House of Commons23 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

40. “That is a disgraceful way to treat millions of people across the country who are doing everything they are supposed to do and are being punished for it.”

    House of Commons23 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

41. “Many of those families see their money taken by the Government and wasted, or spent on those who choose not to work. A recent study suggested that once the cap is lifted, a family with three children in which both parents work would need to earn £71,000 to match the income of a three-child family in which neither parent works. How can it be right that one couple can wake up early every day, go to work and perhaps even take extra hours at their job, and end up with the same amount of money as their neighbours who do not work at all? It is their money that will pay for those who do not work. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor know that, but they are choosing to lift the two-child cap anyway.”

    House of Commons23 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

42. “I will speak in support of amendments 1 and 2, tabled by my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately). One of the most basic principles of any successful society is that those who work hard are able to reap the rewards, yet under this Government, millions of families are being squeezed by high tax rates, rising prices and increasing energy bills. They are not working any less hard, but many of them are ending up with less money at the end of the month, every month. That is less money to spend on day-to-day essentials, and less money to save for a house, a holiday, a birthday present or a school trip for their children. Those are the real-life consequences of this Government’s decisions.”

    House of Commons23 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

43. “Whatever the defence industrial strategy aims to do, its aims will not be met if we cannot find and recruit people willing to use the equipment and technology that are created. People will be far less likely to risk their lives to keep our country safe and free if they cannot rely on the Government to stand by them both during and after their service. What assessment has the Minister made of the impact on the military and the defence industry of the Government’s decision to allow our veterans who served in Northern Ireland to be dragged vindictively through the courts?”

    House of Commons11 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

44. “For decades, victims, survivors, campaigners, whistleblowers and journalists have fought to force the British state to reveal the whole truth about the rape and grooming scandal. The data held by Courtsdesk could be invaluable in uncovering the truth. The Minister tells us that we can rely on the Government’s own data instead, but just 4.2% of magistrates court cases are listed accurately by the courts themselves, so for every 25 cases listed, 24 are wrong. How can the Minister ask victims, survivors and any of us who care about the truth to rely on that, especially in the context of the most disgusting cover-up in our nation’s history?”

    House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

45. “When the violence against women and girls strategy was announced, I asked the Safeguarding Minister whether she had considered the impact that mass migration is having on the safety of women and girls and why it was not mentioned. I was not sure from her response then what the answer is. Can she please explain whether the Government will address that issue specifically as the strategy is implemented? If not, why not?”

    House of Commons9 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

46. “Last week, The Times reported that companies and company directors who have previously abused the work visa system have been allowed to continue sponsoring visas, despite the Government’s promise of a clampdown. One social care business has been able to sponsor 116 visas, despite being caught hiring illegally. As the Home Secretary just said herself, being able to work here illegally is one of the greatest pull factors, so what message does she think this sends to companies that break the rules?”

    House of Commons9 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

47. “The Minister’s statement is insulting. The first, but not the last, time that Peter Mandelson resigned in disgrace from a Labour Government—on that occasion, it was Tony Blair’s Cabinet —I was seven years old. Is the Minister seriously telling us that our Prime Minister needs tweaks to process to know not to hire somebody who has been a nationally notorious crook for over 25 years?”

    House of Commons9 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

48. “Imagine a British IT firm is set to hire a computer programmer for £60,000 a year. On top of that, an employer must pay £8,250 in national insurance. That totals £68,250. To hire someone on the same salary, their Indian competitor would only need to pay about £1,470 to the Indian employee provident fund, to which mandatory contributions are capped at 15,000 rupees a month—about £120. That totals £61,470. Under the Government’s deal, it would, therefore, be at least 10% cheaper to hire an Indian worker than a British one. That is absurd.”

    House of Commons9 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

49. “The Indian Government are highly unusual in their approach to trade agreements. Unlike most other countries, India has a long-standing policy of using trade deals to try to secure favourable treatment in the immigration system. This deal, unfortunately, is no different. Under the terms of the agreement, Indian companies will be able to transfer their workers to this country far more easily and, once they are here, those workers will be able to avoid national insurance for up to three years, needing only to pay into the Indian social security system—payments that are, unsurprisingly, much lower than here in the UK. This national insurance holiday will make it much cheaper to hire Indian workers, especially in fields such as IT and engineering, than domestic talent.”

    House of Commons9 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →

50. “Most other countries are perfectly happy to strike trade deals without forcing us to undercut our own workforce. This Government should have expected India to do the same.”

    House of Commons9 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

    Check this claim →