Lincoln Jopp
MP for Spelthorne · Conservative · United Kingdom
“The Minister said the purpose of sanctions was to deter, disrupt and demonstrate. Would he like to give the Committee the two best examples he has come across of who the parties were and what they were deterred from doing, and who the parties were and what they were disrupted from doing?”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“When President Trump met Xi Jinping last month, the US President raised with the Chairman the case of imprisoned British citizen Jimmy Lai. Has the Minister had a readout from that conversation, and what can he tell us about his own efforts to bring about Jimmy Lai’s release?”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“He said, “Say to the platoon commander what you’ve just said to me.” This guy looked me in the eye and said, “I’ve got a bomb in the back of this vehicle.” Now, fortunately, I knew that he was lying, but the drill at the time was that you grabbed a hold of this witness, took him out of the car and did not let go until the bomb disposal pe…”
House of Commons19 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I asked my boss, who was a brilliant civil servant, “Who won?” He did actually answer that question, but the answer he gave me is probably not something that would help our debate today. Suffice it to say that the Good Friday agreement left that out there as a question—who won? That was necessary; it was a peace agreement.”
House of Commons19 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The word “essential”, which has been substituted for “new and compelling”, does not do it for me, because I heard the Secretary of State on the radio this morning, saying, “‘Essential’ to my mind means completely new evidence or a new forensic procedure,” but that is the Secretary of State’s interpretation of it.”
House of Commons19 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Secretary of State, I think in good faith, has been attempting to bring various parties together and ensure that this legislation has—I think this was the phrase of the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Leeds South (Hilary Benn)—the confidence of all parties. The trouble is that it does not.”
House of Commons19 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
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“In September last year, we had an emergency debate at the request of my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis) on the sacking of Peter Mandelson. I said at the time that the Government should be turning Lord Mandelson inside out, because someone had politically fatal compromising material on him during his whole time as ambassador. The Government simply said, “Well he’s been sacked.” Do the Government regret not carrying out that due diligence in September last year and instead waiting for more compromising information to drop?”
House of Commons12 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Trio Pharmacy in Shepperton told me that there are two problems with Pharmacy First. The first is that pharmacies are simply not getting the referrals that they should from GPs. The second is that remuneration for their services does not take into account the amount of time needed for examination, diagnosis and prescription. The Nebel Pharmacy in Sunbury, near where I live, says that the work needs to be looked at as a vocation, because it simply makes no money. That is not sustainable, is it?”
House of Commons12 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Has the Secretary of State made an analysis of the division of Pride in Place funding between Labour and Reform seats versus Liberal Democrat and Conservative seats?”
House of Commons11 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am incredibly grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. He calls it a milestone; I call it a millstone. He talks about fairness. Stanwell in my Spelthorne constituency hits the markers for the double deprivation criteria that would qualify for the Pride in Place funding, but that is diluted by the more affluent areas in my constituency. How is it fair to the people of Stanwell that they do not qualify for Pride in Place funding just because they are surrounded by more affluent areas? Rather than helping, is the Secretary of State not just going to engineer the continuation of pockets of deprivation?”
House of Commons11 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“137.] Since then, I have been researching any action taken in respect of the Government’s cyber-security strategy and the cyber action plan, and can find no record of them dealing with the issue of pupil data. I wonder whether, this morning, the Minister could specify what he meant last Thursday or commit to coming back to the Committee with that detail.”
House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“On a point of order, Dr Murrison. In Thursday’s session, I asked the Minister why pupil data was not within the remit of this Bill. He said: “On the question of schools, and more broadly the question of public sector authorities, I entirely accept that the handling of pupil data in schools is a critical aspect of our public service operations. The reason why public service authorities have largely been left out of the Bill’s scope is because we do not need to wait for the legislative process to act. We have been working, not least closely with the Government’s cyber-security strategy and the cyber action plan, to ensure that pupil data is kept securely and robustly.” –– [ Official Report, Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Public Bill Committee, 5 February 2026; c.”
House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“On a point of order, Dr Murrison. Yesterday, I spoke in a petition debate in Westminster Hall. The petition was signed by 114,000 members of the public calling for a public inquiry into Russian influence in British democracy. In researching my response on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition, I came upon the Government’s statement about this Bill, which said that it would “require organisations in critical sectors to further protect their IT systems”. The split infinitive notwithstanding, I do not believe that the Bill requires any organisations in critical sectors to further protect their IT systems. If the Minister thinks that the Government are correct in saying that, would he like to direct us to that requirement in the Bill?”
House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove raised the case of M&S, which would clearly be out of the scope of the Bill. However, it has a managed service provider, so it is a bit like the JLR case. I am still looking for some certainty as to whether JLR and M&S would come within the scope of the Bill by dint of the fact that they have managed service providers, which are within the scope. I am still not 100% clear on the answer to that question. I would be grateful for greater clarity from the Minister.”
House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am grateful to the Minister for giving way a second time. I understand his answer, but, to be clear, if an incident that meets the severity threshold is reported to a client who is out of scope, would that bring any obligation to report in the normal way?”
House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“On the subject of charging and money, has the Minister had the opportunity to revisit his own impact assessment on the basis that there might be a glitch in the matrix? It says on multiple occasions that the hourly salary for a contract lawyer is £34 an hour. When we discussed it last week, I contended that this was totally unrealistic, probably to a factor of 10.”
House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In terms of scope, could the Minister give us some sense, when it comes to managed service providers, whether the purpose behind this clause is to enable regulators to find out their entire client list? I would be grateful for some clarity on that point.”
House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I might have to remind myself. I asked the Minister whether the purpose of this clause is for a regulator to be able to ask a managed service provider what their entire client list is, in order to make various assessments.”
House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This is really where the regulatory rubber hits the road. Earlier, we described cases involving a client who is not in the Bill’s scope but who employs a managed service provider that is, and that is therefore vulnerable to these charges. What happens when there is an interface between a client employee operating an IT system and what the managed service provider does? For example, someone could bring in a data stick, shove it in the side of a computer and break the rules, eliciting some form of ransomware. How will it work when the regulator goes to the managed service provider and says, “Here’s your £10 million fine,” and the client says, “That is down to you”? It is going to be a lawyer-fest, isn’t it? Even lawyers who get paid more than £34 an hour are going to make quite a lot of money.”
House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Ametek and SSS Gears are two quite rare breeds—they are manufacturing companies in my Spelthorne constituency, inside the M25. One employs 200 people, while the other employs 43, and they seek to export around the world. How does the Minister expect those companies to be competitive in a global market when energy prices in Ashford, Middlesex are four times higher than those in Ashford, Alabama?”
House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“None of us particularly relishes being reminded of that time, but we owe it to the people who will be subject to the Bill to ask the Minister exactly what has been argued in and what has been argued out of scope, to understand how vulnerable the blank cheque we are issuing to the Secretary of State is to their including more and more in it, come the day of the races.”
House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The reason we do is that we went through a global pandemic, and the following groups and organisations were designated as absolutely essential for the running of the state: health and social care, which is included; education and childcare, which is not; anything to do with the justice system; religious staff; public service broadcasters; local and national Government, which again is not in the Bill; food and other goods, which, as we discussed, are also not in the Bill, although they are in the new clauses; public safety and national security; transport; utilities; communications; financial services; and postal services. That is the analogue I am putting to the Minister: we found out which things we really needed, we designated them as essential and we allowed them to continue during the covid pandemic.”
House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. When we left off, we were considering the powers of the Secretary of State to bring new organisations within scope. I am a Conservative, and my view is that the best form of regulation is usually competition, so I am not actually volunteering these sectors for the guards. However, I want to understand the underlying logic as to why certain things have been included and certain things have not. We have a fairly good guide as to what is essential.”
House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“To take this a little bit beyond the theoretical, is the Minister suggesting that, where it is discovered that, for example, a major offshore wind power generation facility was fitted with remotely triggerable kill switches, triggerable by a foreign state or sub-state actor, the Secretary of State could require that energy company to remove whatever piece of hardware or software was producing that threat?”
House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“What happens when the Secretary of State, via his various proxies—the regulator or whomsoever—gives a direction to a company to do something in the interests of national security, and the entity disagrees and says, “That simply won’t work, and it won’t solve the problem that you are seeking to address”?”
House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Minister complains that it is currently the wild west out there, and hopes that we can somehow regulate it. Well, we do actually have a regulator for incidents such as these. Pursuant to the answer that she gave to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Solihull West and Shirley (Dr Shastri-Hurst), she acknowledged that data breaches have to be reported to the ICO within 72 hours. We hear that she was advised that this breach did not hit the threshold, which I find absolutely staggering. Advisers advise, and Ministers decide. Why was the Minister’s judgment not to go away and immediately question the advice that she received from her Department?”
House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. I thank the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Ben Goldsborough), who, on behalf of the Petitions Committee, has brought us to Westminster Hall today. I particularly thank the 114,000 petitioners, who would like a public inquiry into Russian involvement in British democracy. I think that the Nathan Gill case and the petition do us a great good because they have flushed out, and given us a chance to shine a light on, something way bigger than Nathan Gill: the extent to which the Russians are attempting to infiltrate. I also thank a number of hon. Members who have spoken today.”
House of Commons9 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This is too secret.” It worries me that the desire for secrecy means that we have all involved ourselves in something of a conspiracy for the past 30 years. Ben Wallace was at the same session. He said that, from the mid-1990s onwards, Governments of all three colours had hollowed out defence, and they had done so because they wanted to spend their money on other things. It is the old choice between guns and butter: they chose guns, we chose butter. We need to amp up the threat perception in the House and, importantly, more widely in the United Kingdom. If not, those real balance-of-investment decisions that we need for our national security will not be made.”
House of Commons9 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Sir Alex Younger, the former head of MI6—and, as an aside, a former member of one of the finest regiments of foot guards there has ever been—gave evidence to the Defence Committee. He said that the United Kingdom’s digital attack surfaces are far broader and greater than those of a number of our European neighbours. Given that, as someone mentioned, geographical proximity is irrelevant in the world of information and cyber, we should be doing much more. We heard interesting evidence at the Defence Committee the other day from James Heappey, the former Armed Forces Minister, who needed to get quite a lot off his chest. He was worried about the number of documents coming across his desk that had said, “You cannot share this with Parliament.”
House of Commons9 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Member mentioned Estonia, but I have the pleasure of serving on the Defence Committee; we visited Estonia and Finland in February last year. I can tell hon. Members that the proximity to the geographical border with Russia focuses the mind considerably. From memory, the Finnish people have a population of 4 million; they can put 3.5 million of them underground at a moment’s notice. They can field an army of 200,000 with two weeks’ notice. They, too, have cyber-resilience and anti-grey zone units that work with the Estonians and other Baltic states to counter the disinformation and grey zone activity. I feel that in this country, because of our geographical distance from Russia, we fail to have that same focus. But we must.”
House of Commons9 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
““The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish” the nature of the war that they are embarking on. So let us see the evidence on whether the threat is real and whether the perception of the threat is sufficiently real. In the strategic defence review of June 2025, the Government said: “The UK is already under daily attack, with aggressive acts—from espionage to cyber-attack and information manipulation—causing harm to society and the economy.” In the same month, in the national security strategy, the Government said: “The openness of our democracy and economy are national strengths. Therefore, it is vital to keep ahead of those who seek to exploit them with robust defences.” Is the threat perception high enough? I cannot remember which hon.”
House of Commons9 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Member for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith)—apologies to her constituents for my pronunciation—said that we do not focus enough on the manipulation of our own people and called for balance. I approach this debate by looking at three questions. Is the threat real? Is the perception of the threat high enough in the country and in this House, or should the Government do more to amplify it? Is the Government’s response sufficient? This is all crucial. The hon. Member for Tewkesbury will be delighted to hear the second bit of von Clausewitz of the day; as the Minister knows only too well, given his distinguished military career, we never tire of quoting von Clausewitz to each other in the Army.”
House of Commons9 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Although quite a lot of party politics has played out today, it is important that we do not turn a Nelsonian eye to that case, which is potentially one of the most obvious and worrying. I also thank the hon. Members for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) and for Tewkesbury (Cameron Thomas) for their contributions. The hon. Member for Tewkesbury quoted von Clausewitz, and shortly I will do the same. The right hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds) talked about the post-shame world. She made the interesting point that the normal constraints on normal activity seem to have been cast off. The hon. Member for Cardiff West (Mr Barros-Curtis) said that we need to treat disinformation as the core security threat that it is. I completely agree. The hon.”
House of Commons9 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is difficult to know where to draw the line in our condemnation of Russian activity, but the hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point. He could also have mentioned the theft and indoctrination of thousands of children. I am sure that the whole House speaks as one in condemning such activities. The hon. Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) never misses an opportunity to raise the Abramovich billions, and he did not do so today. The hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Dr Chowns) cleverly weaved into this debate on Russian influence the issues of second jobs and electoral reform, which she refers to in most of her speeches. The hon. Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) talked about Nathan Gill and attempted to disavow us of the notion that he was just “one bad apple”—a point I will come back to.”
House of Commons9 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) mentioned, we had the Russian spy ship and the threat to subsea cables—I am delighted that someone mentioned them. Importantly, when the Secretary of State took the decision to order the surfacing of the Astute-class submarine next to the Yantar to say, “We know what you’re doing and you need to pack it in,” he also made that information available in the newspapers to ensure that the public had that threat perception.”
House of Commons9 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is important to look at elections to the left of the ballot box, because it is not just about going down with a polling card and ID and putting a tick in a box. The hon. Member for Llanelli said it best: we need to be much more alive to the fact that we are being manipulated and manoeuvred by information and disinformation. We can use pencils and paper, sure, but there is a way more sophisticated game going on here, and it is pretty terrifying. I come back to my theme of amping up the threat perception. We need to re-arm very quickly, not only with hard power but in the minds of our own people, so that we build national resilience to face threats more effectively across the spectrum. For example, as the hon.”
House of Commons9 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In preparation for this debate, I looked at the statement that the Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill, introduced at the back end of last year, would “require organisations in critical sectors to further protect their IT systems”. I must tell the Minister that I am on the Committee for that Bill, and it does no such thing. All it does is to say that various providers from various sectors have to report after the event; it says nothing about making them more secure. I will leave the Minister with a couple of questions. Is enough being done cross-Government to raise threat perception in the nation? What is the Government’s policy on political donations being made in cryptocurrency? How have the Government changed electoral law to keep pace with a quickly evolving threat?”
House of Commons9 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That relationship may be just as bad as the one he had with Epstein. As European trade commissioner, Mandelson made decisions favouring Deripaska’s company by $200 million a year. Mandelson avoided proper investigation by lying about the timing of his relationship with Deripaska. How can we find out what investigations were carried out before Gordon Brown and his Government appointed Mandelson as a Minister? Do you agree that this House needs to see that information”? —[ Official Report , 4 February 2026; Vol. 780, c. 269.] We all know how Wednesday played out after that. Lastly, I will speak about the other actions that the Government are taking.”
House of Commons9 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“1380.] The Foreign Office Minister in that debate did not respond to the suggestion that they turn Peter Mandelson inside out once they had realised that fact. I suspect that after the events of the past week, one or two Government Ministers wish that they had heeded that advice at the time; they might have saved themselves some problems. Last week, Members who were in the Chamber also heard the point of order made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington, who said: “On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Today’s Opposition day debate will focus on Mandelson and his relationship with the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. However, it will not cover his relationship with another alleged paedophile, murderer, gangster, specialist in bribery and corruption, and Putin favourite: Oleg Deripaska.”
House of Commons9 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis) secured an emergency debate, in which I made this point: “Since December last year, our ambassador in Washington has been potentially subject to leverage and blackmail, because someone—we do not know who—had politically fatal kompromat on Lord Mandelson throughout his whole time in office. I am amazed that the Foreign Office has not gone into full lockdown and damage limitation mode, having found out that potentially Lord Mandelson could have been blackmailed this entire time. If it had turned out that he had been an agent of a foreign state, the Foreign Office would have done that. All it knows now is that someone—we do not know who—had politically fatal kompromat on him that whole time.” —[ Official Report , 16 September 2025; Vol. 772, c.”
House of Commons9 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The clever ones are the ones that the hon. Member cannot see. But yes, I agree that we urgently need to look at defence investment in hard power. It is a source of huge frustration in our defence industry domestically and overseas that the Government have failed to agree the defence investment plan. When I was in the Ministry of Defence, we had an old adage: “Plans without resources are hallucinations.” At the moment, our defence industry is dining on fresh air, because the defence investment plan has not yet been agreed. We have time, so I will ask your indulgence, Ms Butler, to mention that Nelsonian eye. Hon. Members will remember that in September last year the British ambassador to the United States of America was sacked. My right hon.”
House of Commons9 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Is the Minister aware that, as a result of actions by the Scottish and Welsh Governments, a loophole has been created whereby people living in Wales and Scotland can now make unlimited political donations to any political party or politician? Is that something that is going to be addressed by the Government?”
House of Commons9 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I recently visited a major retailer in my Spelthorne constituency, and it reported that corporate systems for getting information to the police are so clunky that to transfer evidence of shoplifting, the police have to resort to sending round an officer to film the retailer’s footage on their body cam. As well as sorting out the technology within the police, will the Home Secretary encourage and reach out to big corporate retailer chains, so we have a seamless flow of information to drive down shoplifting?”
House of Commons9 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Members on both sides of the Committee have referred frequently to the fact that the incident that took Jaguar Land Rover down would not have been covered by the Bill. JLR employs a digital service provider, in the form of Tata Consultancy Services. Would that provider not be covered, meaning that JLR is in scope?”
House of Commons5 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Given the scenario we just discussed, it is possible that a digital service provider would have an obligation to report under the Bill, but the parent company employing its services would not. Given the requirements for confidentiality that a client company may put upon a digital managed service provider, how can that conflict be managed?”
House of Commons5 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms McVey. Small and medium-sized enterprises are defined by the headcount of full-time employees, yet in the world of IT, particularly for managed service providers, data centres and digital service providers, that is not a helpful metric to understand size and scale. Did the Department consider reevaluating the size of digital and managed service providers based on the through-flow of transactions or data rather than headcount? When I worked in the world of tech, there was a ratio for headcount that was totally different from other sorts of businesses.”
House of Commons5 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Having read the Bill, does my hon. Friend understand that if a managed service provider provides services to, say, a hospital—so it would be covered by the regulations—and a reportable event happens to the managed service provider, there is any obligation for the hospital trust to report it as well, or is it just the managed service provider that has the responsibility? If he is not clear on that, would he ask the Minister?”
House of Commons5 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank the shadow Minister for his reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton. Is he as surprised as I am to read in the impact assessment that the hourly rate for a contract lawyer is to be £34 an hour rather than £300 to £500 an hour, which in my experience is the market rate?”
House of Commons5 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Will the Minister please clarify whether he thinks that, as page 102 of the impact assessment states, the hourly rate for a lawyer changing a contract is £34?”
House of Commons5 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am sorry, but that is nonsense. The footnote on the page that cites £34 an hour for a contract lawyer directs us back to the Office for National Statistics. I hope that the Minister lives in the real world—he has clearly worked in the business world—so he knows that that is nonsense. Does he agree that that pretty well undermines that section of the impact assessment?”
House of Commons5 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We also talked about the legal costs in an earlier sitting. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reassuring words about how very clear the clause is and how it is not just a blank cheque, even though we do not know how many people it will affect or how much it will cost them.”
House of Commons5 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“While I am sure that the Minister will say that this provision on critical suppliers is great, and all very clear, it cannot really be that clear. Page 110 of the impact assessment states: “DSIT is not able to estimate at this stage the number of SMEs or SME DSPs that will be designated as critical suppliers”; so we cannot tell how many there are. The same page also states: “Specific duties will be set through secondary legislation so the exact cost of security measures is not possible to estimate.” We do not know how many there are or how much the measure is going to cost, but Government Members will be whipped to say, “That’s okay—that can be done by someone else at another time.” We do not really have a strong sense of the impact on real-world businesses of what we are doing here.”
House of Commons5 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“To understand the impact of what we are discussing, we obviously look at the impact assessment. We in this place are often accused of simply making rules and passing laws with no real sense of the impact downstream, particularly on small businesses. Having worked in the tech sector for 10 years, with data centres and managed service providers, and worked to try to grow many small and medium-sized enterprises, I am acutely conscious of the need not to overburden them. It is clearly hugely important that the Government take account of the impact of the measures they are taking and the burdens they are imposing on small and medium-sized enterprises. To understand the impact of this measure, it is important to know two things: first, how many companies will be impacted and, secondly, how much it is going to cost.”
House of Commons5 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I do not want to add spurious hypotheticals, so I will talk about the real world. I visited the Maypole special school in my constituency the other day. It has 20 members of staff and 18 pupils. It has people coming from as far away as Wandsworth. It books the transport, and the transport is paid for by the local education authority in which the pupil lives. It is clearly critical that children get to the school—just as it would be for a hospital. Would it be up to members of staff at the Maypole school to find out whether Addison Lee used a managed service provider or a data centre? That seems quite a tricky thing to know about and then to fulfil.”
House of Commons5 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Minister came back with an answer on proportionality, saying that it is not for Government to decide what is essential. He missed out the next bit, which is, “We’re just going to regulate critical suppliers and pass laws about them, but we don’t know how many there are, and we don’t know how much the policy is going to cost.” Would he accept that characterisation as the logical conclusion of what he said? The Minister also said that schools were not covered by the Bill. As far as I am aware, patient data and children’s data are two of the most precious things that we have, so I would like to know why schools are not covered by the Bill.”
House of Commons5 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is lovely to see the Secretary of State; the last time I saw her was in the Strangers Bar, when she was pulling a pint of Rebellion Overthrow—I can’t imagine why that stuck in my mind! The River Thames scheme has been in abeyance, essentially—in mid-project review—since May last year. Will the Secretary of State please knock some heads together at both the Environment Agency and Surrey county council, and get them to say something about what is happening at the River Thames scheme?”
House of Commons5 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗