Monica Harding
MP for Esher and Walton · Liberal Democrat · United Kingdom
“Will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating all the young people, particularly in my constituency, who have completed GCSEs, A-levels, BTECs, T-levels and degrees, and all the brilliant teachers who got them there, and will he wish them all the best for the summer holidays and a well-deserved rest?”
“My hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Charlie Maynard) has alluded to Craig and Lindsay Foreman, who are still imprisoned in Tehran. Craig Foreman is on day 61 of his hunger strike, and Lindsay Foreman is on day 50 of her hunger strike. They clearly need to be released immediately and returned to the UK.”
“My mother, who is 94 and fit and healthy, fell and fractured her collarbone. She went in and was medically discharged on the same day, but because there was no care support for her, she was then in hospital for a week, bed blocking.”
“The hon. Member is 100% right, and I will come to that slightly later in my speech. We hear a lot from the Government about migration. Each 1% increase in food insecurity in a population compels 1.9% more people to migrate. They are escaping war, too.”
“Do we not need some honesty with the public on where ODA is actually spent? In 2025, £2.4 billion was spent on in-donor refugee costs, in comparison with £1.3 billion spent on humanitarian assistance.”
“It comes to a pretty pass when a Conservative Member urges Labour Members to rise up and be radical. He said that he had the best job in the world as Development Minister. The British did the best job in the world in development. There was consensus.”
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“My hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Charlie Maynard) has alluded to Craig and Lindsay Foreman, who are still imprisoned in Tehran. Craig Foreman is on day 61 of his hunger strike, and Lindsay Foreman is on day 50 of her hunger strike. They clearly need to be released immediately and returned to the UK. I understand that the Minister said he did not want to be drawn on this matter, but will he tell me why the Government will not publicly and officially declare the imprisonment to be arbitrary? Why will they not provide Craig and Lindsay Foreman with diplomatic protection, work closely with allies to get them released and bring their case before the International Court of Justice?”
“Will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating all the young people, particularly in my constituency, who have completed GCSEs, A-levels, BTECs, T-levels and degrees, and all the brilliant teachers who got them there, and will he wish them all the best for the summer holidays and a well-deserved rest? The brilliant Esher sixth-form college in my constituency has been hit by the underfunding of post-16 education, as compared to lower secondary brackets, and also by the fact that the confirmed base rate of funding for post-16 is well below inflation. This means that high-achieving post-16 institutions may be forced to cut their academic cloth. Will the Leader of the House give time for debate on this sector, which is so important to our country’s prosperity?”
“My mother, who is 94 and fit and healthy, fell and fractured her collarbone. She went in and was medically discharged on the same day, but because there was no care support for her, she was then in hospital for a week, bed blocking. Because of the quality of care she received, when she came out she ended up with a very severe urinary tract infection and sepsis, and then had to stay in hospital for six weeks. Obviously that cost my mother a lot, but it also cost the NHS a huge amount of money. Does the hon. Lady agree that one of the problems is adult social care and that we need to fix it?”
“What about climate change? When harvests fail through drought or flooding, malnutrition sets in, communities fight for pasture and people migrate. In May, the Government broke their pledge on the Green Climate Fund by announcing a cut of 50%, while their new international climate finance target of over £6 billion of public money, which I note is committed over three rather than five years, also seems to be a reduction.”
“We have heard from some of the UK’s most senior former military chiefs that reducing development capacity today stores up greater instability, greater cost and greater risk for tomorrow. That means more defence spend down the line, and look how we are scrabbling about for it now. Development brings benefits to Britain. It is strategic, and mutually beneficial because investing in peacebuilding, prosperity and stability keeps us safe here too. Take guarding against another pandemic. Covid was not so long ago, and we are told with certainty that there will be another one. Given all the pandemic’s death, its destruction of economies and its long tail of social and mental health challenges, I am sure that many hon. Friends will share my dismay at the decision by the Government to discontinue funding the Pandemic Fund.”
“It comes to a pretty pass when a Conservative Member urges Labour Members to rise up and be radical. He said that he had the best job in the world as Development Minister. The British did the best job in the world in development. There was consensus. Building on the work of the previous Labour Government, the coalition Government delivered the commitment to spend 0.7% of gross national income on development, which had been a Liberal Democrat manifesto promise since the 1970s. In coalition, we reached the UN aid target and NATO’s defence spending target at the same time, proving that investment in development and defence are not mutually exclusive; in fact, as we have heard, they are complementary. As I and others have said, defence, diplomacy and development support each other and strengthen any coherent foreign policy.”
“We have also heard how global aid cuts have caused such damage to health systems in the DRC that the response to tackling the Ebola crisis has been made significantly harder. I know the personal commitment of many Members in this room, and of the Minister, but this is where we are: the party of DFID and Make Poverty History has become a Government of aid cuts so extreme that they outstrip the Trump Administration in their brutality. A Labour Government who followed Donald Trump in cutting aid have outdone him—a Labour Government whose legacy in development, just two years into their Administration, is already far worse than the Conservatives’. Yet once there was consensus. I agree with the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir Andrew Mitchell) on almost everything he said but particularly on leadership.”
“I must note at this point that, despite continual prompting from members of the International Development Committee, of which I am one, the Government are still yet to publish their country allocations of aid, which makes it very difficult to scrutinise the damage. However, we do know, and the Government know, that these cuts will cost lives. Combined with those caused by the collapse of USAID—the United States Agency for International Development—the lives lost will likely be in their millions. That includes in countries where we have a legacy, such as Afghanistan, where 45% of the population needs humanitarian assistance and which is no longer prioritised within the UK’s aid budget. In 2022, we contributed $488 million; today, it is $32 million.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) for securing this debate, because we rarely talk about this subject in the Chamber. The Government do not seem to want to talk about aid and development very much, but they must and they should, because our world is on fire, because cuts to development make it worse and because it is within the British national interest to support it. I am sure that, if my party had cut the aid budget that far, I would not want to talk about it either. The deplorable aid cuts, from a proud 0.7% to 0.3% —the biggest cuts to aid this century, amounting to a 50% cut in bilateral aid to Africa alone—are in danger of stripping the UK of much of its proud reputation on the global stage.”
“The Government have a chance now, with a new leader in place, to take the long-term strategic view, repair the damage, return to the world stage and remember their moral responsibility and the strategic benefit to Britain. It is not too late, but it is nearly.”
“And so it is: there is another hole—a £4.7 billion hole—in the defence budget, despite the aid cuts that were supposedly meant to fill it. Is it not right that the new Prime Minister must lay out the urgency of the debate on funding our defence and our development spend, and the benefits that it can bring to Britain? Great damage has been done by our retreat from aid to the reputation of our country and our shrinking influence. While we retreat, others whose values may not match ours are making a play for Africa. With rapid population growth and an emerging labour force, Africa will become one of the world’s biggest markets, and the Government should place themselves in the best position to take advantage of that.”
“Instead, the Minister for Development suggested: “The days of viewing the UK Government as a global charity are over”. Does the Minister before us today really believe that, or does he hope, like us, that with a change in leadership and a new Prime Minister, a focus on the long term will come back, with a realisation that doing the work now will make Britain safer and more powerful down the line? Does he not agree that framing the debate to pitch defence against development is wrong, and that, as the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds) said when she resigned as Development Minister, “it will be impossible to raise the substantial resources needed” to fully fund our defence capability “just through tactical cuts to public spending”?”
“Of course, upheaval like this can create opportunity and wake us up from our stupor to make the case for aid outside of our own echo chamber, and to re-imagine our aid and development spend. But tearing down the system before the plan is in place is never a good idea. The answer for many things that have failed to be funded is that they will be “mainstreamed”, which is a euphemism for “disappeared”. British aid and development worked. Millions of children vaccinated and educated; safe births; clean water and sanitation; lives saved—all achieved by well under 1% of this country’s GNI, and it gave the UK influence and leverage on the world stage, a seat at the table in global fora and friends in trade and diplomacy. Why not celebrate that?”
“Do we not need some honesty with the public on where ODA is actually spent? In 2025, £2.4 billion was spent on in-donor refugee costs, in comparison with £1.3 billion spent on humanitarian assistance. Lifesaving ODA is being spent on propping up a broken asylum system, with less and less spent on the causes that brought those people here in the first place. We can assume that the cuts came first and the strategy second, given that the cuts announced in February 2025 seemed to take everyone, including the then Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), by surprise. Since then, the approach has often seemed confused and incoherent. The IDC has asked for clarity on the Government’s theory of change to reach their shared objective of poverty alleviation.”
“The hon. Member is 100% right, and I will come to that slightly later in my speech. We hear a lot from the Government about migration. Each 1% increase in food insecurity in a population compels 1.9% more people to migrate. They are escaping war, too. The largest single group of unaccompanied minors in small boats has been from Sudan, the world’s greatest humanitarian disaster, in the midst of a brutal civil war. But this is just the tip. The wider Sahel is a tinderbox. Millions are expected to fall into crisis or, worse, into hunger in this lean season, as armed violence escalates across the region. Thousands of schools are closed due to insecurity, health systems are buckling under the weight of need, and still we cut. Do the Government understand the reality of these cuts at this inflection point, when the world is on fire?”
“When will they introduce a package of sanctions including fines for any UK firms that bid for contracts for settlement construction in E1 or anywhere in the Occupied Palestinian Territories? Will they expand that to cover any UK financial institution that finances or facilitates UK companies’ involvement in construction or other services? When will the UK move fast to ban all UK trade in goods and services with illegal Israeli settlements?”
“Well, here we are again. The Liberal Democrats have welcomed the Government’s historic decision to recognise the state of Palestine, which we have long called for. We have welcomed more recent statements of intent, including just 10 days ago in this House, but such statements are utterly hollow without action, especially when we know that the Israeli security cabinet’s stated aim is to make a future Palestinian state unviable. We have asked these questions before, but we will ask them again. When will the Government put forward a clear plan to halt and reverse the illegal expansion into East Jerusalem and the west bank? When will they respond to the 2024 ruling of the International Court of Justice?”
“Will the Government amend the Independent Football Regulator’s remit to give it power to investigate and sanction football club owners suspected of involvement in human rights abuses? We are warned that El Obeid is facing a similar onslaught imminently, so will the Government finally, in their role as penholder at the UN Security Council, move to take consequential action against the UAE and any state arming belligerents in Sudan?”
“The International Development Committee heard from a war crimes investigator that the UK Government failed to act on repeated warnings of the looming genocidal massacre in El Fasher because their foreign policy had been captured by the United Arab Emirates. He claimed that the FCDO prioritised its economic security and diplomatic relationships with the UAE above preventing the intentional starvation, forced displacement and genocidal slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians. The New York Times reported that Sheikh Mansour, Vice President of the UAE and owner of Man City, played a central role in arming the RSF. Given the UAE’s manifold interests in the UK, the public would expect the Government to call that out and act. Will they do so now?”
“Will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating Princess Alice hospice in my constituency on celebrating its 40th anniversary this year? Over the past 40 years, it has cared for tens of thousands of people and has been a staple for local families at their most vulnerable. Only 20% of its funding comes from statutory NHS funding, with the rest mainly coming from selling woolly jumpers; as a result, it is able to meet only one third of the local need. Access to palliative care will come under scrutiny once again in the autumn. Will the Leader of the House make time to address sustainable funding for palliative care to ensure that provision for all is available?”
“We have been waiting for the UK-EU reset for two years, and today we have just more warm words after the UK-EU reset summit was postponed because the Labour party has decided to change its leader. On the anniversary of the Brexit referendum, when we are all poorer and our economy has taken a 6% to 8% hit because of it, what assurance can the Deputy Prime Minister give this House that the next Prime Minister will be bolder than this one and will actually positively reset the relationship with Europe, supporting our calls to join the customs union and the single market?”
“The Bill’s offences are broad enough to inadvertently criminalise routine humanitarian operations, which could pose a significant problem for non-governmental organisations operating in countries where state institutions or public bodies could become designated bodies. Although safeguards for humanitarian operations are in the explanatory notes, they are not in the Bill. Will the Secretary of State think about putting those into the Bill?”
“The world has failed Sudan. We know that the international fact-finding mission has noted evidence of a genocide following the fall of El Fasher. What is the UK doing as penholder at the UN to ensure that the belligerents responsible are being held to account, as well as the state actors aiding and abetting them?”
“My constituents are facing an average water bill of £658 a year, yet Thames Water continues to fail them. Sewage has poured into the River Mole, which runs through my constituency. The rec next to the Esher treatment works, where children play, has had sewage in it. I told the House last week that there was sewage outside the local primary school in Thames Ditton, as well as in the middle of the village. Will the Government get a grip on this regulatory and state failure, put the company into special administration, and create a public interest company that serves my constituents properly?”
“Will the Minister set out how the Government will deliver on these priorities: clear accountability, greater research investment, improved access to clinical trials, routine access to genomic testing and tissue preservation, and better outcomes for brain tumour patients by the end of this Parliament? How will Parliament be able to hold the Government accountable for delivering them? If the system cannot match the pace of brain cancer, it will continue to fail and “terminal” will remain the outcome. We must move from “terminal” to “treatable”, so other families can have the second chance that we have now had with our Pip.”
“We need brain cancer care to be recognised as genuinely time-critical, because while tumours can progress in weeks, the system responds in years. We need a truly national brain cancer clinical trials pipeline, and we need the routine collection and storage of fresh frozen tumour tissue for all brain cancer patients. For families facing diagnosis today, the cost of delay is measured not in statistics, but in lives. The science is advancing. The clinicians are ready. Patients and families are demanding action. The challenge for all of us now is to ensure that the pace of policy finally matches the pace of the disease.”
“My brother-in-law Pip Harding, who is with us in the Public Gallery today, was diagnosed with a glioblastoma in March 2024 and given nine months to live. He is still here today, thank God—looking amazing—because he received treatment that cost a huge amount of money, which was crowdfunded. That highlights a very uncomfortable truth in our society: the treatment is there and available, but only for those who can crowdfund or afford it. I will not go through the challenges, because I know the Minister is well aware of them, but I will talk about the needs. We need clear national accountability for improving brain tumour outcomes. We need sustained and protected investment in brain tumour research so that the funding finally reflects the devastating impact of this disease.”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that what is needed right now is leadership, and that the large number of MPs in this Chamber today are looking towards the Minister and urging her to lead on this issue?”
“Yesterday, at the glorious Princess Alice hospice summer fete in my constituency, I met Glen, a Royal Navy veteran whose last deployment was aboard HMS Broadsword. He said to me, “What are they doing to the Royal Navy? I want you to represent me and tell them that they need to sort it out”, so I am telling them to sort it out. Why are our Government ducking the responsible decisions to fund the defence investment plan properly, and why are they disregarding the Liberal Democrat proposals to fund it through defence bonds—raising up to £20 billion over two years—so that Glen and other vets can be proud rather than despairing of the services that they used to serve so well?”
“I welcome the ban, and I know that thousands of other parents of the frontier generation—the children who were born after the advent of Facebook in 2004—will be welcoming it too. However, as the Secretary of State has said, children get around bans, and there are also children over the age of 16 who will be vulnerable. What will the Government do to introduce legally enforceable safety by design duties on tech companies to ensure that all kids—even those who slip through the net—are safe?”
“I rise in support of new clause 1, on the passengers’ charter, new clause 3, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover), and my own new clause 60, which addresses reliability, accessibility and refurbishment. All seven of my railway stations in Esher and Walton are under the stewardship of South Western Railway, making our constituency one of the first to experience the transition to public ownership, and there are significant reliability challenges. The latest performance figures show that, in March, 3% of all services were cancelled and only 65% of services arrived on time, meaning more than one in three trains fail to arrive when passengers expected them to.”
“All my constituents are asking for are trains that run on time, stations they can actually get into and infrastructure that is safe to use. Performance, accessibility and condition are not separate issues. They are three sides of the same failure and the Bill must address all three. I urge the Minister to accept the amendments and show that Great British Railways will finally deliver a railway worthy of the people who depend on it every day.”
“More than half a century later, they are still there. Groups of schoolchildren step off the train and put their feet through the platform. Constituents have repeatedly raised safety concerns. The stairs visibly move beneath their feet. These passengers are not asking for luxury; they are asking for a station that is safe. There is nothing in the Bill that will give my residents in Hersham a station that they can be proud of. I therefore urge the Minister to look seriously at new clause 3, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Didcot and Wantage, which would establish a tomorrow’s railway fund, enabling local authorities to bid for funding for new stations, infrastructure and feasibility studies. This is exactly the kind of mechanism that stations and wealth creators in Hersham need.”
“That brings me to Hersham station, because accessibility failures there sit alongside something much more fundamental, which new clause 3 would address. Hersham supports around 700,000 passengers every year in one of the busiest rail corridors in the country, in a constituency that contributes more to the Exchequer than any other constituency outside London. Thousands of people pass through the station every week to run businesses, create jobs and drive economic growth. The state of that station is an affront to every single one of them. It is an eyesore: ramshackle and neglected, mould climbs the fence lines, the paintwork is peeling and the station sits under exposed corrugated iron roofing. More seriously, both platforms were built in the 1960s using materials that were only ever intended to be temporary.”
“They 100% do care and that is why we should support new clause 1. It would also help if constituents could access the railway in the first place. Investment in making our stations accessible for all need to be at the very heart of the programme of rail reform. Hersham and Hinchley Wood stations are completely without step-free access, while Walton, Claygate, Esher and Thames Ditton only have partial step-free access. That is why I tabled new clause 60, requiring Great British Railways to undertake and publish an assessment of the accessibility barriers at Hersham and Hinchley Wood stations. I am also pleased to support new clause 2, which does the same, requiring the Secretary of State to publish an accessibility strategy for the railway network.”
“At the G7 Digital Ministers meeting, it was reported that the US and the UK watered down stronger protections for children presented by France. My constituents, as evidenced by more than 2,000 emails I have received on online harms, want stronger protections. Will the Minister assure us that on online safety he and the Prime Minister have the interests of children in my constituency at heart, rather than the interests of the US and big tech? If so, why did the UK resist mandatory protection frameworks?”
“For more than a decade my constituent Holly, of Ferry Road in Thames Ditton, has watched Thames Water clean up raw sewage from her street, only to be told that the system is not fit for purpose, with nothing ever being fixed. In last week’s heavy rain, human waste flooded two homes and spread to the local primary school. Thames Water’s proposed solution is to wash it straight back into the river, which is unacceptable. This comes on the back of higher bills. Is it not time that the Government put Thames Water on a sustainable footing under special administration, so that it can at last invest in infrastructure, and Holly’s nightmare can end?”
“Will the Minister provide an assessment of what will happen next, including of the possibility of military incursions? As Spain and Canada organise emergency aid shipments, will the Government review our aid contribution?”
“Trump’s reckless blockade is exacerbating the humanitarian crisis facing Cubans. It is the latest iteration of his “might is right” approach to global diplomacy, with devastating impacts. Four months in, Cubans are facing a backlog of 96,000 pending surgeries. There are 1 million people without reliable drinking water, empty petrol stations and a deadly summer heatwave. UN experts are formally condemning the blockade as “energy starvation”— a coercive tool that is being used against civilians. With fresh sanctions imposed on Thursday, the situation will only get worse. Given that Raúl Castro is now indicted, the parallels with Venezuela, where Trump used an indictment as a precursor to forcible regime change, are impossible to ignore. What conversations have the Government had with the US Administration about the blockade?”
“(Urgent Question) : To ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs to make a statement on the Israel Defence Forces’ operations in Lebanon.”
“Have the Government made any progress with partners to advance multilateral plans for the disarming of Hezbollah? There is no military solution to the Lebanon crisis. The only path forward is a Lebanese political settlement that ensures Hezbollah’s disbandment and full state sovereignty over all its territory.”
“Meanwhile, Hezbollah continues to target Israel with missiles and drones. Its violence has led to the displacement of Israeli citizens from across northern Israel and is completely unacceptable. There can be no place for that terror organisation in the region. No part of this resembles a ceasefire. We need to see concerted action from the international community, including the UK Government, to bring this cycle of violence to an end. Do the Government support the need for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon? Are the Government pressing the Israeli Security Cabinet to stop its illegal offensive and occupation in Lebanon? Will the Government stop all arms sales to Israel and sanction Netanyahu, alongside the extremist members of his cabinet?”
“It has become routine for Donald Trump to declare a ceasefire when none exists, and in Lebanon the President’s claim that fighting has ceased is a dangerous fantasy. Under direction from the Israeli Security Cabinet, the IDF is expanding its illegal military operations in southern Lebanon. Israeli forces occupy more territory in Lebanon now than at any point since the start of the century. Hundreds of shattered communities have been left in their wake, with more than 3,000 Lebanese killed and 1 million displaced. This looks far too much like the IDF’s operation in Gaza. Last week, Prime Minister Netanyahu said that Israel would expand its control to 70% of that territory, breaching the ceasefire there. There can be no doubt that these actions have breached international law, and they are likely to constitute war crimes.”
“Boots closed its pharmacy in Thames Ditton in 2024. An application was put in for another one, but it was decided following a pharmaceutical needs assessment that the need was met by the chemist. However, elderly residents have a 20-minute-plus walk to get to the chemist, and the high street around it has pretty much collapsed. Does the hon. Member agree that, beyond macro PNA figures, local circumstances are relevant?”
“Accessibility is paramount. The costs that are pushed on to pharmacists mean that they cannot remain sustainable and that they resist opening pharmacies in smaller places, because it will take away business from them. Therefore, those pressures take away accessibility, which is needed.”
“The Liberal Democrats therefore call on the UK Government to outline an explicit strategy supporting the promotion of political inclusion and the protection of minorities in Syria and how that will be linked to any future lifting of sanctions.”
“May I associate myself with the Minister’s comments on the anniversary of Jo Cox’s murder and her friendship to the people of Syria? Once again, her spirit is very much alive, in that we have more in common than that which divides us. The Liberal Democrats recognise the power that lifting sanctions can have to enable the rebuilding of Syria following a decade of civil war and the collapse of the brutal Assad regime. However, it is vital that the new transitional Syrian Government under President al-Sharaa affirms their commitment to political inclusion and religious and sectarian tolerance. They must take concrete steps to promote and protect the rights of minority groups and to ensure that they are represented in the new Administration.”
“Would the Leader of the House join me in congratulating Walton and Hersham football club in my constituency? They have secured promotion to the national league south for the first time in their history—an extraordinary fourth promotion in just six seasons. At a time of concern about young people’s mental health and online harms, which I know the House will debate in future, can he provide time for a debate about supporting grassroots football clubs and sports clubs? They are a diversion away from online harms and for better mental health, as Walton and Hersham show so well.”
“Will the Minister ban all UK trade with illegal settlements, reverse cuts to the FCDO’s monitoring unit and press the Israeli Government to allow journalists access to Gaza so that they can collect what evidence may remain of war crimes committed there?”
“The entry of aid continues to be impeded by restrictive measures, while the humanitarian catastrophe only worsens and journalists are still blocked from entering. In southern Lebanon, the Israeli Defence Force demolishes Lebanese houses and entire villages—an abhorrent and illegal operation. Across those issues, the Government’s muted response and dysfunction can be summarised in a single example: the decision to cut the FCDO’s unit for the monitoring of international law breaches across Israel and Palestine. Can the Minister set out what steps the Government will take if the E1 project continues?”