Charlie Maynard
MP for Witney · Liberal Democrat · United Kingdom
“It has mapped the illegal sewage spills at Thames Water sewage treatment works and found that, between 2021 and 2025, there were 1,231 illegal spills just in the Witney constituency, and 271 illegal spills in just one sewage treatment works, Faringdon.”
“I completely agree, and Thames Water’s full-year accounts are out at 7 am tomorrow morning. We will see just what they tell us. It is going to be ugly, not least because the company’s equity is worthless. The largest equity shareholders wrote down their shareholding to zero value and withdrew their board members more than two years ago.”
“This approach is costing customers an absolute fortune. Thames Water paid £338 million just in interest expenses in the six months to September 2025. That is £133 million more, just in interest expenses, than it paid in the same period the previous year.”
“Ofwat could then work towards a licence transfer to the mutual, rather than running a market sale. In conclusion, I have some questions for the Minister. If she is unable to answer them now, I would appreciate an answer in writing if possible. Have the Government sought legal advice on the SAR process from a specialist law firm?”
“I completely agree with my hon. Friend. That is what is going on up and down the catchment writ small, with treatment works deferred despite being crucially needed. In Aston, we have sewage running down the street year after year, and it is the same in Standlake. It is just disgusting, and there is no end in sight.”
“That does not require a competitive auction, as the legislation provides for a transfer approved by the Secretary of State and Ofwat.Nothing in the legislation states that either route requires a competitive sale, as the overriding objective in a SAR is continuity of public service, not maximising creditor returns.”
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“With social care budgets also stretched to breaking point, we should be doing everything we can to incentivise people who are able to put money aside for a comfortable and supported retirement to do so. As the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales pointed out in its response: “At a time when there is a pensions commission considering the adequacy of pension saving, this demonstrates a lack of joined-up thinking from the government.””
“That leaves millions of middle earners who are already feeling a significant squeeze as a result of myriad other cost of living pressures, who have had their taxes raised by the previous Conservative Government, and who are now facing an even greater hit due to this Government’s jobs tax and the extension of frozen income tax thresholds. If this Bill discourages those people from putting money away for their safety net in later life, the Treasury will pay the price in the long run. Before the Budget, the Association of British Insurers warned that two in five Brits will save less in their pension if a cap on salary sacrifice schemes is introduced.”
“I absolutely agree—well said. The Government may well say that the Bill will not affect low earners, who are likely not to be saving £2,000 in a given year, as the hon. Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) has just said. However, that is too simplistic a way to look at this issue. The impact assessment by His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs found that an estimated 7.7 million employees currently use salary sacrifice to make pension contributions—that is around 25% of all employees. Of these, 3.3 million sacrifice more than £2,000 of salary or bonuses.”
“Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), who, along with other Lib Dem MPs, have challenged the Government on this at every opportunity and stood in solidarity with the farming community each step of the way.”
“Farmers up and down the country should be really proud of the campaign that has forced the Government to rethink the completely short-sighted and ill-thought-out policy that has threatened the future of family farms up and down the country. I congratulate them on the result that they have secured. I think everyone in this House would acknowledge that they have spent an enormous amount of time, energy, anxiety and stress getting to the position that we are now in, and that it would have been a lot better if they had never had to do that in the first place. The Liberal Democrats were the first party to come out against these tax changes, and I pay tribute to my colleagues, my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) and my right hon.”
“Can Ministers please look at ways of alleviating some of that burden for older farmers who have not been able to plan ahead for this change? We will be voting against clause 62 because we as a party have consistently voted against the family farm tax and want it scrapped in its entirety.”
“If the same pro rata reductions applied, less than £100 million will be raised in 2026-27—minuscule against the estimated total tax receipts this year of £1.23 trillion. Professional bodies, such as the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, has expressed concern at how administratively burdensome it will be to value assets and calculate potential liabilities, even if there is no tax to pay. How does the revenue forecast to be raised compare with the cost of administering this new policy? When the Government originally announced the planned changes to APR last year, the Chartered Institute of Taxation also suggested introducing transitional gifting rules to support older farmers who have done the logical thing of hanging on to their land, but who are now faced with penalties for doing so.”
“I very much agree with my hon. Friend. The Lib Dems welcome the U-turn by the Government in December raising the allowance to £2.5 million and welcome the change announced in the Budget permitting the allowance to be transferable between spouses and civil partners. But as the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland, put it, “These changes make the policy better, but that is not the same as saying that they make it good.” —[ Official Report , 5 January 2026; Vol. 778, c. 30.] We ask the Government to think again in the following areas. The Treasury estimates that the tax will now raise £300 million by 2029-30, down from £520 million.”
“That is a very good question, but £100 million is 0.1% of £1.23 trillion. In materiality, it is important to think of it in that range. I do not think this is the way of going about it. I ask the Government to consider voting in favour of amendment 3, which would remove the transition period in respect of the changes to APR and BPR and delay the implementation date so that changes would take effect for transfers made after 1 March 2027, and of our new clause 7, which would require the Secretary of State to undertake and publish an assessment of annually uprating the relief allowance for APR by the change in the value of agricultural land. While awareness of the APR changes is very high among the farming community, I am concerned that awareness of the changes to BPR may not be as high among business owners in many sectors.”
“In plain English, that means that we have something that works for organ donations and saves lives day in, day out. If any of us die, our organs are taken and our next of kin can opt out if they choose. The great majority of people do not opt out. That has meant that many more organs have been available, which has saved lives. Somebody may want to dispose of their tumour tissue, but the great majority of us do not; we would want it used for public health and science, so having it as an automatic—”
“Barriers to genomic public health research could be reduced by redefining or narrowing the offence of having tissue for DNA analysis, provided that strong data protection is ensured. That is one big chunk. The second big chunk I am asking for—there are only two—is that we reform the Human Tissue Act 2004 to apply a default system similar to the one we now use nationally for organ donation to tumour tissue data. To do so, Parliament would need to amend the HTA to introduce a deemed consent regime for residual tumour tissue and derived data. That would be limited to public interest cancer research, with a statutory and simple opt-out, strict purpose limits and enhanced oversight by the Human Tissue Authority. The model would mirror the Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Act 2019, but apply just to data derived primarily from tumour tissue.”
“First, clinical tissue, such as biopsies and diagnostic archives, could be routinely made available for public health research under clear safeguards, without requiring separate project-by-project consent. Secondly, requirements for de-identified tissue could be simplified, clarifying that truly anonymised, non-identifiable samples can be used without consent or an HTA licence for a wider range of research, rather than just narrowly defined exceptions. Thirdly, licences could be converted to broader authorisations. Instead of a licence for each tissue bank, accredited biobanks could be allowed to supply samples under nationally recognised frameworks. Fourthly, DNA analysis rules could be reworked.”
“First, I ask the Minister to consider making tumour tissue freezing standard for all cancerous tumour tissues, not just brain. However close the issue is to my heart, I think it is inequitable to just focus on brain tumours. We have to try to get all tumour tissues frozen as standard, and the economies of scale mean that makes sense. The other thing is how we have equitable and public health-oriented access to that tissue once it is stored, which we as a country are massively failing on. I ask the Minister to consider reforming the Human Tissue Act 2004, which could be broadened in terms of what is legally permitted in research contexts. That would create explicit legal pathways for retrospective clinical samples.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I thank the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Chris Evans) for securing the debate, and I thank Ellie for all her work, as well as Hugh and the others who are pushing very hard on this issue—many thanks indeed. I want to try to make this debate a bit broader in two directions. My sister, Georgie, also has a glioblastoma. She was diagnosed two and a half years ago and has been incredibly brave and determined, working with the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh) and Ellie to try to get more brain cancer justice, and driving that debate. That also applies to many people in my constituency of Witney who have brain tumours but also tumours of all sorts of cancers. We ought to be considering two things.”
“Our Government are seeking to rapidly expand our national genomics capabilities, and I applaud them for that, but without far better and more sensible access to the base tissue, with appropriate safeguards, there is no genomics-based, population-wide health service.”
“My hon. Friend speaks to the point. Of course, those people have been dead for many centuries, but we believe it is worth being able to access that information, and at the moment it is not accessible in most cases. That is something we really want to change. I look to Denmark’s registry-first legal architecture, with mandatory health registries covering cancer diagnoses, pathology, genomics, and treatment and outcomes. The Danish cancer registry automatically records tumour data, covers the entire population and is used for research, oversight and quality improvement. Participation is automatic, with opt-outs rather than being consent-based.”
“That expansion should be supported by a clear consultation and evidence base to determine the areas that could receive the new relief: perhaps Devon, Cornwall, Cumbria, East Anglia, Yorkshire and Shropshire could benefit, alongside rural Wales, more of rural Scotland and, of course, Northern Ireland.”
“The Government’s Bus Services Act 2025 will make some positive change, and I support the aim of revitalising rural bus services, but with the best will in the world we cannot turn this situation around overnight. New transport infrastructure takes months and years to create—my colleagues and I are trying to bring back a rail link in west Oxfordshire—and rural drivers up and down the country are struggling with this problem now. To address the problem, the Liberal Democrats have called for the number of areas covered by the scheme to be doubled, so an additional 21 areas across the UK would benefit from the relief.”
“Friend the Member for Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire (Mr MacDonald) mentioned earlier today in this debate and in the Chamber. National Records of Scotland’s “Population estimates by urban rural classification”, which covered 2001 to 2021, showed a population decrease by 1% between 2011 and 2020, compared with increases of 3.1% nationwide and 8.4% in accessible rural areas. The population of rural small towns decreased by 3.6% over the same period. The implication is that the lack of connectivity and affordable transport is hollowing out those communities, and the reduction in real-terms value of the relief scheme is playing a part in that.”
“Secondly, if we look at the state of public transport infrastructure in this country after years of under-investment by the last Conservative Government, it is quite clear that there are many more areas, as many of my colleagues have pointed out, where people have no real alternative but to use cars for day-to-day journeys. That is far more widespread than just the 21 areas that currently benefit from the scheme. Research published by the County Councils Network in 2024 found that the frequency of rural bus services in England had reached a historic low, with more than a quarter of rural routes having been lost in the preceding decade. In remote areas of Scotland, some of which benefit from the rural fuel duty relief scheme, low connectivity is having a clear negative impact on the population, as my hon.”
“This relief goes a long way to offsetting that expense, and it has been a huge help to communities, but it is becoming less and less of a help because it has not gone up with inflation or anything else, and that sits on top of all the additional pressures that our communities are under that are really stretching household budgets and causing a lot of trouble. That is the root cause, so we ask the Minister, in responding to this debate, to address whether the Government will consider uprating the scheme in line with inflation.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Ian Roome) for securing this important debate and everybody who has spoken in it. There is a very strong message coming through about how much rural communities need this relief and how much they suffer. As my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) mentioned, rural life is more expensive, and that is because of the friction of distance and the scale of distance.”
“Denmark is a fantastic model: it has a registry-first legal architecture with mandatory health registries covering cancer diagnosis, pathology, genomics, treatment and outcomes. Secondly, we need to double the survival rates for all less survivable cancers in the next decade. If we put that mark in the sand as our goal, and it gets into the national cancer plan, it will draw global attention and will drag resources and talent to our cause and our country. It would be good for our country, good for our patients who are suffering, and good for our economy too. If we can make that a key demand of our national cancer plan, that will be a huge plus.”
“To do so, Parliament would need to amend the Act to introduce a deemed consent regime for residual tumour tissue and derived data, limited to public interest cancer research, with a statutory opt-out, strict purpose limits and enhanced oversight by the Human Tissue Authority. The model would mirror the Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Act 2019, which means that if someone dies their organs are automatically taken, although people or their families can opt out. We are advocating the same for our tumour tissue. Very few of us really want to hang on to our tumour tissue if we are unfortunate enough to be in that situation, but that tumour tissue has huge scientific value and we should use the data as much as we can for the public good.”
“I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones) for securing this fantastic debate. I also thank the Members in the room for all the work they have done, and the Minister for her engagement, particularly with the Brain Cancer Justice team. I really appreciate it. My sister Georgie received a glioblastoma multiforme diagnosis two and a half years ago. She is well, has survived longer than they gave her and is fighting like hell for Brain Cancer Justice, alongside many in this room. I praise her and her colleagues, as well as so many people in my constituency in Witney who have helped her and who suffer with this range of cancers. I will say only two things today. First, we should explore reforming the Human Tissue Act 2004 to apply to tumour tissue a default system similar to the one we now use nationally for organ donation.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Harris. West Oxfordshire is very much ground zero for Thames Water. We have the Thames itself, the Evenlode and the Windrush. West Oxfordshire district council has done great work in going after Thames Water. We have WASP—Windrush Against Sewage Pollution—and we, as a team, have also gone after Thames Water through the High Court and the Court of Appeal, all the way up to the Supreme Court. I thank the legal team that fought pro bono with us last year on behalf of the 16 million Thames Water customers who are being royally stiffed. As my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) mentioned, the bills people are paying are completely outrageous. I have had constituents whose bills have gone up by 50% and 70%. Somebody got a 93% increase through the post.”
“Friends have mentioned, the Government should not entrust it with delivering a huge and costly infrastructure project in Oxfordshire in the form of the south-east strategic reservoir option, about which my hon. Friends the Members for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover) and for Oxford West and Abingdon spoke in detail. Given all our constituents’ low level of faith in Thames Water, the future of which is precarious, to put it extremely mildly, it is no wonder that this is causing such alarm to residents in my constituency and those of my hon. Friends. Please do not be bamboozled by the hedge funds; instead, show some backbone—and do not own the Tories’ mistakes. That is the key thing, because this Government still have a chance to leave it with them. Please do so and put the company into a special administration regime.”
“I asked whether the Minister believes that Thames Water’s ad hoc group of class A creditors now exerts material influence over it, thereby meeting the “ultimate controller” criteria. I would really like an answer on that. Last February, a High Court judge found that they have material influence over the company, and it would be great to have a straight answer from the Secretary of State or the Minister on that point. I would not like the Government to give Thames Water, or any other water company, a free pass on paying environmental fines in full. When there are breaches, we need regulators that enforce the fines that are in place. Similarly, given the extreme precarity of the company’s finances, as my hon.”
“With every day that passes, this becomes more Labour’s problem. We now need to cut the rope and put the company into special administration, on account of its many breaches of its licence obligations, so that its debt can be written down to around three times cash flow and it can come out of the special administration regime mutually owned by 16 million customers, and run on behalf of them and the environment, and with Government-guaranteed funding mechanisms in place to fund the investment required over the next three, five and 15 years. Will the Government please answer my letter to the Minister responsible for sewage and flooding, sent at the start of October?”
“I completely agree—well said. What is so depressing is that the Labour Government have embraced the Conservative’s mistakes over Thames Water, and our water sector more broadly, and then doubled down on them. The Government have been and continue to be hoodwinked by a bunch of hedge-funds whispering about financial Armageddon into ears of the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs and Ofwat. They need to follow through on their regulatory obligations, because we need regulators that have teeth and backbone and will actually deliver. Instead, we have hedge-funds making vast fees with outrageous interest expenses, at the cost of us as consumers. It is not fair. It is a great shame, and it is also unnecessary, because the company’s financial and environmental positions are completely unsustainable.”
“We have interest costs of 9.75% being paid. We have massive advisory fees coming out of the company. All the class A creditors’ legal fees—£15 million a month, give or take—were being paid for by Thames Water. To say that this is not all hitting the customers is not true. Who else is paying for this, if it is not ultimately the customers?”
“I concur with those views from the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice), but can the Minister confirm that those discussions with class A creditors will not involve forgiving the company for its fines?”
“Finally, I failed to update my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests when my role as a councillor at West Oxfordshire district council ended. Those failures were a result of my own errors. I am grateful to the Committee for recognising that I neither gained nor sought to gain any advantage, and that I acted honestly in repeatedly drawing the commissioner’s attention to failings as I identified them. I fully accept that those are breaches of rule 5 of the code of conduct. I apologise to the House and commit to take a more diligent approach to the registration of my interests in future.”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. In response to a recommendation by the Committee on Standards, I would like to apologise to the House for failing to register several interests within the 28-day period set by the House. They included my receipt of pro bono legal advice to support my intervention, at the High Court and subsequently at the Court of Appeal, in the sanctions hearing of Thames Water Utilities Ltd’s restructuring plan. Nor did I appreciate that I should have registered an informal arrangement with a family member to use her London flat without charge while I was staying in Westminster. I also owned and subsequently sold shares in a Vietnamese company that exceeded the threshold for registration.”
“As many as 11% of pupils are missing out on the free school meals to which they are entitled. In many cases, they are not registered for reasons such as a fear of stigma or language barriers. In my Witney constituency, that means that around 230 children from the most disadvantaged homes may be missing out on a hot, healthy meal to get them through the school day. Council pilots of auto-enrolment have been shown to be effective. If implemented nationwide, auto-enrolment would make a huge difference to struggling families and it has overwhelming support from parents, so my question to the Minister is: what is the hold-up?”
“East West Rail is a huge project and will bring a lot of benefits, but my hon. Friend’s constituency of Ely and East Cambridgeshire is at the far end in Cambridgeshire and my constituency of Witney is at the far end in the west. Does she agree that such projects need to be spread county-wide? We desperately need transport infrastructure, such as rebuilding the railway line that links Oxford, Eynsham, Witney and Carterton, to support the 18,000 houses that are coming our way.”
“On behalf of my party, I thank Richard Hughes for his service. We respect his resignation. I also thank Laura Gardiner, Professor Ciaran Martin and Huw Stephens for the very quick turnaround of the investigatory report on the leak. In that report, the point is made that, unlike all other IT systems and services, the OBR’s website is locally managed and outside the gov.uk network. That decision was made, apparently, to ensure the OBR’s full independence from the Treasury. Will the Minister soon report back to the House with a timeline for decisions—between now and the OBR’s next report in spring 2026—on how these matters will be managed in future? Will he provide an outline of how the OBR website will be operated so that it is secure and maintains appropriate separation from the Treasury?”
“Sponsoring and partnering with professional sports organisations provides gambling operators with marketing opportunities with huge new audiences.””
“The National Institute of Economic and Social Research found that a person experiencing problem gambling leads to an additional £3,700 spend per year in higher welfare payments, healthcare and criminal justice costs, and the cost of homelessness. A research report from the University of Oxford by Dr Naomi Muggleton showed that as many as one in four gamblers are harmed. The industry continues to develop rapidly, and regulation must keep pace and remain fit for purpose. The Lancet public health commission on gambling found in 2024: “Digitalisation has transformed the production and operation of commercial gambling… The commercial gambling industry has also developed strong partnerships in media and social media.”
“Gambling is linked to addiction, debt and other serious harms, and can negatively impact mental and physical health, relationships, finances, employment and education, but it is comparatively less regulated than other harmful industries and not taxed to directly reflect the harms it causes. In my home patch of Witney, Oxfordshire county council identified gambling addiction as a key risk factor in its recently updated suicide prevention strategy. Research by Gambling with Lives, a charity established in 2018 by families bereaved by gambling suicides, shows that, shockingly, there are hundreds of gambling-related suicides each year, an average of around one a day. The impact on the public purse is also significant.”
“Evidence suggests that while many people gamble a bit, the vast majority of profits derived by gambling firms come from a small number of gamblers. The House of Lords Gambling Industry Committee found that 60% of the industry’s profits come from just 5% of customers, who are either problem gamblers or at risk. Recent Gambling Commission figures also show that the harms caused by gambling are increasingly being experienced by children, with the proportion of young people being exposed to significant harms more than doubling between 2023 and 2024. Moreover, the harms caused by gambling are not isolated to the individuals who take part; when it reaches a harmful level, it can have devastating impacts for families and right across communities, in every constituency.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered reform of gambling regulation. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. We are here to talk about gambling regulation and to discuss the scale of the problem. There is clear evidence that current regulation of the gambling industry is not adequate to protect people from harm, including children and young people. Figures published by the Gambling Commission this October showed that 1.4 million people in Britain have a gambling problem. That number is not spread equally: young men aged 25 to 34 are most affected, with 5.5% experiencing at least moderate-risk gambling, and rates are much higher in more deprived communities, with men in the most deprived areas twice as likely as those in more well-off areas to be moderate-risk gamblers.”
“Finally, I welcome the Chancellor’s decision to increase gaming duty in last week’s Budget—that was an important step. I now encourage the Government to consider directing some of the revenue raised from that towards taking steps better to regulate the industry and reduce the personal and social harms it contributes to in the long term.”
“Thirdly, another area where our regulation has a disconnect is licensing frameworks. Pubs are licensed by local authorities. Licensing for vape shops, requiring retailers to obtain a personal licence to sell the products and a premises licence for their storage and sale, is currently under consideration in the Tobacco and Vapes Bill. Given that, why do local authorities not have the powers they need to prevent new gambling premises from opening? We should review and implement the relevant commitments in the 2023 gambling White Paper, which seeks to strengthen local authority discretion and better reflect community harm. I would welcome an update from the Minister on plans to review and progress the recommendations in the White Paper.”
“Secondly, underpinning all this, we need a statutory independent gambling ombudsman with real power, exactly as the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) stated. That was recommended in the 2023 gambling White Paper and was intended to be established and operational within 12 months, and yet no progress has been made. I also understand that the Government have asked the gambling industry, of all people, to come up with ideas on how the ombudsman should be run—a case of poacher turned gamekeeper if ever there was one. If that is the case, are the Government really serious about setting up an ombudsman with effective powers that it actually uses? Will the Minister please clarify what steps are being taken to achieve that?”
“Germany did the same in 2021, as did the Netherlands and Belgium in 2023. Finland and Sweden are set to implement restrictions in 2027. By contrast, here in the UK, the 2023 White Paper on reforming gambling for the digital age acknowledged the harm caused by marketing but opted to continue with a mostly self-regulatory approach. I think such an approach means a huge amount of harm will continue, so I urge the Minister to look again at that, given the damage the sector does and the action already taken by others to mitigate it in their countries. There is strong public support for greater restrictions, too, with polling showing that 51% of people think all gambling advertising, promotion and sponsorship should be banned, and 78% think that nobody under the age of 18 should be exposed to it.”
“Research undertaken by the Gambling Commission found that 34% of British bettors admitted to being influenced by advertising, and 16% stated that ads caused them to increase their gambling. Research published this year found that 96% of people aged 11 to 24 had seen gambling marketing messages in the month before the study, and were more likely to bet as a result. On Twitter—or X—alone, there are more than a million gambling ads in the UK each year. Football matches are saturated by gambling ads; there were thousands of gambling messages during the opening weekend of the English premier league alone, across various channels. Many of our neighbours have taken action. In 2018, Italy banned all online advertising of gambling products. Spain added strong restrictions in 2020.”
“I fully agree and will cover that shortly. The Lancet commission concluded that “gambling poses a threat to public health, the control of which requires a substantial expansion and tightening of gambling industry regulation”. So what should we do? First, we should limit the impact of gambling advertising, marketing and sponsorship, especially the extent to which children and young people are exposed to it. The industry spends £2 billion a year on gambling advertising and would not be putting that money in without a high degree of certainty that it will be more than paid back in profits. Some 80% of that is spent online, which is why children so often come across gambling and gambling companies.”
“I look forward to staying in touch on that. Similarly, the issue of the ombudsman was not covered in detail. I would welcome an intervention from the Minister to provide some clarity on that.”
“Friend the Member for Tewkesbury mentioned. After the debate, I will be asking about where he is now. I also thank the hon. Member for Worthing West (Dr Cooper) and my hon. Friend the Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine) for bringing a great range of thought with regard to the public health aspects of this issue. They made very valuable contributions on that. The shadow Minister did a great job of making the case for the other side of the argument. I thank the Minister for all his input. It was very helpful that he explained where the Government are on the gambling levy, local authorities and the cumulative impact assessments. I will admit to being less clear about the Government’s position on online advertising and what they are planning to do with that £2 billion—when, where and how.”