John Milne
MP for Horsham · Liberal Democrat · United Kingdom
“Developers with options for the land bid against each other, with a price based on the highest possible outcome, but achieving that price means them having to build zero social rent homes and lots of highly priced, executive homes. That is a bizarre case of competition only ever driving prices up, not down.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. First, I thank the Minister for his assistance in progressing the local plan in my constituency. Horsham faced a unique problem with water neutrality, which the previous Government showed no sign of ever grappling with, and I am grateful for his personal involvement in that.”
“Local authorities have to take the word of statutory consultees as gospel; even where authorities know perfectly well that land will flood, if the Environment Agency says it will not, that is the end of it.”
“That formula is a terrible way to assess local housing need in practice, but its worst aspect is how it destroys local authorities’ negotiating power against developers.”
“It is astonishing that the decision for West Sussex has been postponed yet again. I understand that local council leaders received the information only this morning, in a six-minute phone call during which they were not allowed to ask questions.”
“The issue of enforcement is a serious one. An incinerator in south London has breached its air pollution limits almost 1,000 times in 18 months, but nothing has been done by the EA—no court proceedings, no licence suspension, nothing. A similar plant is planned for my constituency. Does the hon.”
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“Years and years of inflammatory rhetoric under a succession of Conservative Governments have convinced people to regard the DWP as their enemy, not their friend. If anything, the Bill digs that hole a little deeper. What concerns me most about the Bill is its extreme overconfidence. It assumes that Government agencies always get things right and that individual citizens are to be automatically treated as objects of suspicion. In Committee, the Government were resistant to any amendments except their own, so I very much hope that they will reconsider today and accept the Liberal Democrat amendments.”
“After confirming all details were correct, the DWP overpaid them again, and then sought to claw the money back over the following months. The DWP’s mistake, but Anthony pays the penalty. The DWP has its rules, but real life does not run in straight lines. Real life is messy. How can we possibly rely on the DWP to mark its own homework when we know that there are just four fraud advisers per regional office to handle cases flagged by frontline staff? Yes, there are some checks and balances within this legislation, but what is really needed is a profound cultural change within the DWP, and that is much harder to achieve. The common experience of people who have to deal with the DWP on a daily basis is that they feel that it is always looking to catch them out.”
“Instead, it will be the innocent and the accidental claimants who fall into the trap. The implicit assumption is that we should trust in the DWP as a completely error-free organisation across the entirety of its massive operation. But the DWP does make mistakes. It makes mistakes all the time. And even when it knows that it has made a mistake, and it has been told so, it is very capable of making the same mistake all over again. In my constituency of Horsham, Anthony and his husband were accused of providing misinformation to the DWP and were overpaid £10,000 as a result. Anthony protested without success. After a long fight the case went to appeal. The tribunal wasted no time deciding in his favour—it was an open and shut case. But then, earlier this year, Anthony and his husband were migrated over to universal credit.”
“When it comes to public money, everyone accepts the importance of preventing fraud; there is no dispute about that. The mere thought that our benefit system could be exploited loosens the cement holding our welfare system together. However, if we look back in history, there has been a track record of fraud recovery measures not delivering what was hoped. This measure will also probably never save the £1.5 billion that is expected of it, so I ask: will the alleged rewards of this legislation ever match the scale of the imposition on our civil liberties, and are we really going after the right targets? We all want to catch deliberate and professional fraudsters, but they are precisely the people who are astute enough to change tactics, set up separate bank accounts, and avoid suspicion.”
“That means increased investment in modern human-relevant alternatives and a national commitment to shifting away from outdated animal models. When the practice of animal testing is scientifically flawed, it is also undeniably ethically indefensible. Animal suffering for unreliable and inapplicable data cannot be justified when we have the tools and knowledge to do better. Let the UK be a leader, not a follower, in creating a more humane and effective future for our scientific research.”
“If adopted widely, these tools could create over $24 billion through research and development in the US. The US Food and Drug Administration has recognised that. Through the FDA Modernisation Act 2.0, the agency has removed the legal requirement for animal testing in drug trials. A third Act is already in the works to accelerate the validation and adoption of human-specific methods such as organ chips. In the UK we are lagging behind, not because of legal barriers, but perhaps because of entrenched industry habits, financial interests or even cultural resistance in the research community. We can change that—gradually, responsibly and strategically. I am calling for a phased approach to end the use of dogs in UK research.”
“In other words, what works in dogs might not work in humans. In fact, drugs that pass animal tests fail in human trials 92% of the time—a staggering and costly statistic. In toxicity testing, even when dogs show no toxic response it barely improves our confidence that the drug will be safe in humans. It improves it from 70% to just 72%, which is barely noticeable. Is that really a sound basis for human medicine? Fortunately, science offers us a better path forward. Human-specific technologies such as organ chips are revolutionising drug development. Those miniaturised organs mimic how real human organs react to treatments and can be patient-specific. They have shown 87% accuracy in detecting drug-induced liver toxicity, which is a dramatic improvement over animal models.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Ms Jardine. I am grateful to speak in this very important debate. Every year, thousands of dogs are subjected to scientific experiments in the UK, often in the name of drug development. For many this raises serious ethical questions about the use of animals for human gain. Is an animal’s suffering worth the benefits to scientific discovery? For others, science and not the animals are paramount; the end justifies the means, as it were. However, animal testing does not deliver robust and useful scientific data. In fact, drug research on dogs tells us very little about whether a drug will work for humans, so campaigners argue that it is time to end animal research. Dr Jarrod Bailey, a geneticist, put it plainly: different species react differently to diseases and treatments.”
“In my constituency, there has been a popular campaign for a general hospital for many decades without success. Given that we did not even make it on to Boris’s fantasy list of 40 hospitals, we are certainly not going to succeed now. In the absence of that hospital, what we need is a strategy to move more of the treatments for which distance really matters into smaller local clinics. In Horsham, that might include wound dressing and sexual health services. Does the hon. Member agree that if we are going to continue to be denied the hospital we deserve, the kind of localised treatment strategy he is suggesting could be implemented at very low cost?”
“In my constituency of Horsham, we have many similar examples. Would my hon. Friend agree that although we certainly need legislation, the industry could act right now by introducing a voluntary code of practice? The industry does not have to wait for legislation; it should hear the call from across this Chamber.”
“In my Horsham constituency office, I employ a member of staff who has ME. Fortunately, we can be very flexible with their working hours. However, under current law—where statutory sick pay is based on days worked not hours worked—an ME sufferer could easily miss out altogether on sick pay. Does the hon. Member agree that the Government should legislate to ensure that all employees are granted fair access to sick pay?”
“In my constituency of Horsham, we had a particularly upsetting case of a constituent whose daughter had significant mental health and behavioural issues that were very difficult to deal with and, as a consequence of those not being dealt with, she also developed an eating disorder. The only place they could send her to that could cope with that combination of factors was in Yorkshire—my constituency is in West Sussex. That was an extraordinary burden on the family. We need provision across the country to deal with the cases that present.”
“I am talking to a family in my constituency who adopted a young boy and a girl in 2021. They understood at the time that the children were likely to have special needs because of their upbringing, but they were prepared to take on the challenge. The boy in particular requires therapy to keep him in mainstream school. They have been very distressed over recent months at the possibility of losing the funding. Does the Minister not appreciate that this damages our great need to recruit more people to be adoptive parents, which does the state a great service and the children themselves the best possible service?”
“The housing market does not behave as one market; it is like six parallel markets, and the houses we are building are largely serving the top two. I am desperate to build more affordable homes in Horsham, but clogging up the system with unbuildable permissions is not the way to do it. The best way to build more homes is to build more consent. I said that I would judge this legislation on whether it would work for Horsham, and the answer is that it will not.”
“Unfortunately, this new Labour Bill takes the same flawed Tory standard method and pours rocket fuel over it. Targets control planning permissions, but that is not the same thing as actual houses; Horsham already has 13,500 unbuilt permissions, including the emerging local plan. That total could double under Labour’s new targets. Does that mean that we are actually going to build tens of thousands more homes? No, it does not. We could cover every inch of Horsham district in permissions, but it is not the lack of permissions that is holding back the market. Houses do not get built faster, because developers cannot sell them any faster. Some 80% of what we build today is aimed at the top 20% of the market—all of this was described very well in Sir Oliver Letwin’s analysis back in 2017.”
“The problem lies with how housing targets are worked out—not the national target, which gets all the publicity, but local targets. Why are targets so hard to meet? The reason is that the Conservatives invented a catastrophically bad formula for calculating housing need, which is called the standard method. It measures the ratio of local house prices to local wages, and the bigger the gap, the higher the target goes. The idea is that communities just keep building houses until the price comes down. The only problem is that it does not work. It turns out that in Horsham—as in many places—the average price of a new house is higher than the price of the existing stock, so the more we build, the worse the ratio gets and the higher the target goes. That is the exact opposite of what the theory says should happen.”
“First, I wholly respect the intention behind the Bill; it is a serious attempt to solve a serious problem. I also recognise that what was happening under the Conservatives did not work, and never could have worked even if we had given it 1,000 years. All it achieved was to fuel house price inflation, which has now created a destructive division into a nation of haves and have-nots. But I judge this new Planning and Infrastructure Bill through the lens of my own constituency—will it work for Horsham? Will it deliver affordable homes in the right places and with the right environmental standards? I think the answer is no. The main reason is that the Bill is based on the same mistaken premise as the previous system.”
“Age UK in my constituency has told me that the employer NICs rise will cost it £50,000 a year. Does the Minister agree that it is impossible to improve the public sector by taxing the public sector?”
“There are only four fraud advisers per regional office to handle cases flagged by frontline staff, which has created a bottleneck, so that very often 90% of suspected fraud cases go uninvestigated. In other words, one could suggest there is already plenty of fraud to investigate without trawling for more. This amendment ensures regular scrutiny, transparency and fairness. I urge the Minister to consider it.”
“After each audit, we suggest that a full report must be published, presented to Parliament within 14 days, and made publicly accessible. If serious flaws are found, the Secretary of State must respond within 30 days with a clear action plan to fix these issues. Overall, Liberal Democrats are positive about benefiting from new technology, but we do need to consider whether it offers help, not harm. In the wider context, what work is the use of AI generating? There are already chronic staff shortages at the DWP, with 20% vacancy rates becoming routine. Disability Rights UK has commented that operational failures now permeate every layer of welfare administration. Fraud investigation teams therefore already lack capacity to address the annual £6.4 billion of overpayments.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. The DWP is making extensive and growing use of algorithms for investigation purposes. Without proper oversight, these systems threaten error, unfairness and bias, which could lead to wrongful debt collection. Our amendment therefore calls for an independent audit of these systems at least every six months, to ensure accuracy and fairness. The audit must be conducted by experts in data science, ethics and social policy with no ties to the DWP or system developers. True independence is key. The audit look at issues such as accuracy, so whether the algorithms are correctly identifying overpayments; fairness, so whether they unfairly target certain groups or operate with bias; and, above all, transparency and accountability.”
“Overall, about £4.4 million was wasted on officials carrying out checks that did not save any money. We know that more mistakes will happen, no matter how hard we try to avoid them. I therefore ask the Minister to support the insertion of new clause 14 as a small measure of defence against future institutional failings.”
“That includes Age UK, ATD—All Together in Dignity—Fourth World, Amnesty International, Campaign for Disability Justice, Child Poverty Action Group, Defend Digital Me and Difference North East. I could go on: I have half a page, which I will spare the Committee from, listing organisations that have expressed concern. It is quite a roll call. Governments can and will get things wrong. History tells us that if it tells us anything. In June 2024, a Guardian investigation revealed that a DWP algorithm had wrongly flagged 200,000 people for possible fraud and error; it found that two thirds of housing benefit claims marked as high risk in the previous three years were in fact legitimate, but thousands of UK households every month had their housing benefit claims wrongly investigated.”
“I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time. The new clause would require that the use of algorithms, algorithmic tools and systems, and artificial intelligence, including machine learning, should be included within the algorithmic transparency reporting standard. That standard, established by the Government, is supposed to be mandatory for all Government Departments. However, last November, The Guardian reported that not a single Whitehall Department has registered the use of AI systems since it was made mandatory. Throughout debate on this issue, the Government have consistently downplayed the risk of using AI to trawl for suspect claimants, but if it really is that simple, why have so many organisations come out with concerns and opposition?”
“(2) In section 111A (Dishonest representation for obtaining benefit etc), after subsection (1G) insert— ‘(1H) A person commits an offence if they— (a) encourage or assist another person to commit an offence under this section, or (b) provide guidance on how to commit an offence under this section.’ (3) In section 112 (False representations for obtaining benefit etc), after subsection (1F) insert— ‘(1G) A person commits an offence if they— (a) encourage or assist another person to commit an offence under this section, or (b) provide guidance on how to commit an offence under this section.’”— (Rebecca Smith.) Brought up, and read the First time. Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.”
“I am content to beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion. Clause, by leave, withdrawn. New Clause 15 Offence of encouraging or assisting others to commit fraud “(1) The Social Security Administration Act 1992 is amended as follows.”
“Encouraging and enabling people to get back to work is a laudable aim, but how can the Secretary of State assume £5 billion of success in advance of actually rolling out the programme? Surely the right approach is to let the reforms generate savings naturally by a concrete reduction in need, rather than to set an arbitrary target beforehand.”
“In my constituency, 5,000 women have been affected by this decision; many more of course have been affected nationwide. I call on the Government to respect the vital constitutional role of the ombudsman and think again.”
“It is sheer nonsense to argue that the standard method of communication across all Departments would have been useless in this one circumstance of WASPI women. I accept that there are financial pressures on the Government. They could have said: “We accept the ombudsman’s findings, but we are not currently able to respond,” or “not able to meet the full levels suggested.” What is not reasonable is to undermine the ombudsman, which is a highly unusual and constitutionally worrying move, and to pick through the evidence to support the conclusion that they always wanted to find in the first place. Fundamentally, it was neither safe nor reasonable for the Secretary of State to rely so completely on the 90% figure, to the deliberate exclusion of multiple other statistics, which showed a much lower level of awareness.”
“None that I can see, except that it was cherry-picked to support the conclusion that she always wanted to reach in the first place. What is more, it is clear that the DWP itself attached far greater weight to a later survey. An internal memo from April 2007 described the research findings as “depressing reading”. It continued: “we still have 50% ‘ignorance levels’ with three years to go. [The Ombudsman’s] first question will be what are you proposing to do about it?” That turns out to have been a really prescient question. To further justify their decision, the Government have argued that earlier warning letters would not have worked anyway, but writing letters is exactly how much of the Government communicate to this day.”
“In justifying her decision, the Secretary of State made repeated reference to one particular statistic: the DWP survey from 2006 found that 90% of women understood that the pension age was rising. She repeated the 90% figure like a mantra in her presentation to the House and the media, but the survey was based on a tiny sample of perhaps 170 women who could not possibly be taken as fair representation of the entire female population. Furthermore, the survey was contradicted by multiple other studies conducted both before and after. Research from the following year found that half of women whose pension age had in fact risen to between 60 and 65 still thought it stood at 60. On what grounds did the Secretary of State put so much faith in the 90% figure, rather than the 50%?”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. Last November, as a member of the Work and Pensions Committee, I asked the Secretary of State when we could expect to see a decision on compensation for WASPI women. She replied: “There is lots of information to go through. We need to get it right but I want this resolved as soon as possible.” I asked about a timescale and she said: “If I gave you a date then I would have sorted it, and it needs to be sorted, but I will do it as soon as humanly possible.” No one would have suspected that “sorting” the issue meant an outright refusal. So where did this shock handbrake turn of a decision come from? I suspect it has more to do with the Treasury than with any objective measure of fairness.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. Clause 84 states that costs incurred by the Secretary of State in taking recovery actions can be themselves recovered. Will the Minister clarify what happens in a case where the claimant is found to be not guilty? What happens to the costs then? Are they borne by the bank, the DWP or the claimant? Will he also clarify how the cost of the general trawl through all the accounts is apportioned? Secondly, to go back to the issue of fraud versus error, and how they seem to be treated as pretty much the same throughout the Bill, will the Minister clarify whether, where it is the DWP’s error, a claimant would still end up paying the administrative charge? If that is the case, it seems quite unreasonable, so it would be great if the Minister could clarify those points.”
“I used the word guilt, but can we forget that? I am referring to a case in which a claimant was investigated, so costs were incurred, but they were found not to be at fault, rather than guilty.”
“This is not the children’s fault; this is our fault. Horsham schools are asking for health services to take on more of the strain, because they are at breaking point. Although mental health provision in schools has clear benefits, we must ensure that this provision does not fall on school budgets. Mental health support teams cover about 44% of schools in the UK, and come from NHS budgets, not school budgets. That should become 100% coverage. The pressure on schools to cope with more and more SEN children, with little or no extra funding, is set to undo every gain we have made in educational standards over the past decades. I appreciate that the Government are taking at least some action to assist the situation now, but I urge them to use every lever at their disposal to avert this crisis before it spins entirely out of control.”
“I have been contacted by no fewer than five schools in the past fortnight alone regarding this issue. Typical of their message is this from Holbrook primary school governing board: “Schools, trusts and local authorities are overwhelmed by the rising number of pupils who are seeking additional support and the ever-increasing costs of providing assistance. Urgent action is required now to help solve the crisis in SEND, so the future of our children is not blighted by a system that is not fit for purpose.” Having visited many schools recently, I noted that teachers are verging on desperation. I noted too their love for the children they are looking after. They desperately want to help them, but they are in an impossible situation. There is, I am afraid to say, an element of physical danger in some cases.”
“Since September 2020, Sussex CAMHS has experienced a substantial rise in referrals, attributed to the pandemic and the easing of lockdown restrictions. This surge has adversely affected waiting times for initial assessments and treatment. The crisis is even sharper at the local education authority funding level. My local authority, West Sussex, has a dedicated schools grant deficit scheduled to go past £130 million by April. It is allowed to keep this off the balance sheet for another year, but there is only so long that we can maintain the fantasy that this service can be afforded without major central Government intervention. Most of all, the pain is being felt at the school level, and by the children and families who experience the many failings and gaps in service.”
“I thank the hon. Member for Redditch (Chris Bloore) for securing this important debate. It is time to acknowledge that special educational needs and mental health provision in schools is one of the great crises that we face today, although I do appreciate that there is a lot of competition for that particular accolade. Financial pressures have significantly impacted CAMHS funding in my constituency of Horsham. Despite a modest 0.6% fee uplift for Sussex, the sector has faced a mandated 15% funding reduction—approximately £1.6 million—and that is coupled with rising staff costs due to higher national insurance contributions and an increase in the national living wage. Meanwhile, demand just keeps on going up.”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. In my speech, I referred to West Sussex county council but neglected to mention that, as declared in my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, I am still a member of that council. I want to put that on the record—my apologies.”
“Will the Minister explain to farmers in Horsham why he did not feel any need to consult any farming stakeholders in advance of this announcement?”
“We do not want that from a governance perspective—if you want to oversee things in an effective way, a board would be a much better idea.” –– [ Official Report, Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Public Bill Committee, 25 February 2025; c. 13, Q15.] A board would ensure that the appointment is truly independent and subject to parliamentary scrutiny. We therefore propose that the Minister must consult the relevant House of Commons Committee before making such an appointment. That simple steps would ensure genuine independence and parliamentary scrutiny, and would strengthen transparency and public confidence.”
“Our amendment states: “Prior to appointing an independent person, the Minister must consult the relevant committee of the House of Commons”, which means “a committee determined by the Speaker of the House of Commons.” Without proper scrutiny, the role’s independence is undermined, potentially damaging trust in the process. The Committee previously heard evidence from Dr Kassem of Aston University, who stated: “I would recommend a board rather than an individual, because how sustainable could that be, and who is going to audit the individual? You want an unbiased point of view. That happens when you have independent experts discussing the matter and sharing their points of view. You do not want that to be dictated by an individual, who might also take longer to look at the process. The operation is going to be slower.”
“It is vital that we get the best value from public money, but the amount expected to be recovered is just 2% of the estimated annual loss to fraud and error of £10 billion, and just a quarter of what is lost to official error at the Department for Work and Pensions. As drafted, the clause empowers the Minister to appoint an independent person to carry out reviews of the Secretary of State’s function under schedule 3B to the Social Security Administration Act 1992. There is no external oversight, and that undermines the credibility of the role.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. As my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay said, the amendment is about checks and balances. We appreciate that the Bill has been introduced in the context of the Government’s desire to cut the benefits bill, but the Treasury deeming something to be financially necessary does not necessarily make it right. The percentage lost to fraud and error is relatively modest, but of course the sums are huge because the overall number is huge. We need to remember that these measures will not get anywhere near recovering all that money, so the question is: is the action proportionate, considering the sacrifice we are making in terms of civil liberties?”
“My colleague has just partially asked my question. While we broadly welcome the clause, we are concerned by the absence of the code of practice. Could the Minister give any indication of the kind of guidance that it might contain? Also, at what stage of the parliamentary process will there be scrutiny of it, given that it will not be during this Committee?”
“I’m also at the mercy of someone else submitting my hours, so if they aren’t submitted on time they roll over to the next pay period causing me to exceed the allowance limit.” At no time did she ever come anywhere near the allowance limit in real earnings; nevertheless, she was caught up in the rules. Does the Minister feel that we have sufficient safeguards to avoid that kind of inadvertent administrative error? Mistakes have happened in the past and will continue to happen, but this is a very strong power that could cause real distress.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Sir Jeremy. I am again raising concerns about a serious power to make direct deductions from people’s bank accounts. Life does not always come in neat paragraphs; it is messy. I have had a number of letters from constituents in Horsham setting out the kind of errors that can happen. A lady called Marianne, who is a universal credit recipient, received a small inheritance, which she tried to report by phone and email, but that still resulted in her wrongly losing her UC for a period. Another constituent, Hannah, said: “I have zero hours contract and work between 9-11 hours a week at just over minimum wage. At times I have had a back dated pay rise which pushed me over the allowance limit (I wasn’t informed in advance this was happening).”
“The hon. Member raises the issue of the burden on banks; there is also the potential burden on the claimant. Banks sometimes have very large administrative charges, well in excess of the actual costs of whatever it is they do. Can the Minister give any assurance that there is some upper safety limit on excessive charging by banks? For instance, will a bank be able to charge for its corporate cost centre—a contribution towards its head office or functions—as can be the case with other charges? Basically, I seek clarity on the balance of how the charges will be administered.”
“I am simply concerned that there should be some control of, or protection against, excessive charging. In the past, institutions have inflicted disproportionate charges that bear no relation to the actual cost of servicing whatever action had to be remedied. I am therefore seeking confirmation from the Minister that there is some protection in that direction as well with regard to the costs on the banks, as we said earlier.”
“I am uncomfortable with this proposal, because it seems unfair that one group of people should be liable to a punishment and not another. If someone cannot drive or they do not have a car, this punishment means nothing to them, whereas another group who do drive are affected—and some of them very deeply, depending on their lifestyle, such as living in the country or other necessary means. I am fundamentally uncomfortable with what seems to be a punishment that falls on only one group of people, when it should be levied equally.”