Lewis Cocking MP: speeches

Speeches

• 15 Sept 2026 · Youth Offending · Hansard source

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  My constituents are extremely concerned about young people on e-bikes and e-scooters repeatedly committing crimes and antisocial behaviour. There is a feeling that those individuals get away with that behaviour and put other people in danger. Will the Minister assure me that the justice system is robust enough to punish every individual involved in that reckless behaviour?

• 15 Sept 2026 · Residential Buildings: Safety Remediation · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison, and to take part in this debate on the building safety remediation of residential buildings. I thank the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton) for securing the debate and for eloquently setting out lots of issues in the sector. This is a vital issue. As right hon. and hon. Members have rightly said, no one should be forced to live in an unsafe home. A great deal of progress has been made to improve our housing in recent years, and the share of unsafe homes has declined in the past decade, but we must go further. The need to press ahead is as great now as it was in the immediate aftermath of the Grenfell fire, which caused the horrific deaths of 72 people. The last Conservative Government began the remediation work straight after Grenfell. It included the introduction of financial protections for leaseholders from the costs relating to remediation of unsafe cladding systems put in place by the developer remediation contract. That has ensured that major developers pledge to remediate life-critical fire safety issues in buildings over 11 metres that they have played a role in developing or refurbishing over the past 30 years in England, although some developers should be taken to task for not acting quickly enough and for leaving constituents to fend for themselves. The last Government were also responsible for putting in place £5.1 billion through the building safety fund and the cladding safety scheme to recover cladding costs for repairs of buildings over 11 metres where no responsible developer could be identified. The Opposition welcome the continued progress by the current Government to implement the Grenfell tower fire inquiry’s recommendations, especially regarding remediation. Residents expect to see the inquiry’s recommendation implemented in full and to see remediation work completed swiftly and safely. For far too long, that has not been the case. The Building Safety Regulator, established through the Building Safety Act 2022, was set up with good intentions for stronger regulatory oversight. Although it has done much to oversee remediation, it has worked at an unsustainably slow pace. I know that the Minister will be keen to point out that gateway 2 decisions, namely approvals, are coming in at a faster rate, but this is after years of delay. The regulator made just 118 decisions on remediation applications in the 12-week period to 31 August 2026, with a median of 33 weeks for a determination to be made in some older cases. At the end of July 2025, remediation works had been completed in just 39% of identified buildings, with barely half seeing remediation works to unsafe cladding start or finish. That means that, of the estimated 250,000 dwellings of a height of 11 metres or over with unsafe cladding in the private and social sector, 104,000 have not even started remediation. In my constituency of Broxbourne, I have seen what happens when fire safety issues in flats are not addressed. Earlier this year, at a six-storey block in Waltham Cross, with known cladding issues and no working alarm, residents were told on the day before the Easter weekend that they would have to evacuate their homes that evening, because the management company had stopped funding the waking watch, where someone is paid to patrol the building to look out for fires. Local authorities were forced to intervene and to extend the waking watch, and fortunately residents were able to stay. Weeks later, Homes England and the Department supported the installation of a suitable alarm and detection system. I am relieved that there were no fires in that block and that residents did not have to evacuate in the end. However, leaseholders ended up paying thousands of pounds for the waking watch and were left worrying about the risks of fire to their homes or being removed from their homes at the last minute. That could all have been prevented if the remediation works had been carried out when fire safety concerns were first raised. I hope that the Minister will outline how the Government plan to ensure that all buildings with fire safety issues are made safe before the situation gets so serious. I conclude by reiterating the Opposition’s firm and unwavering commitment to safe and decent housing, especially through the remediation efforts started after the tragedy of the Grenfell fire. We will continue to support the Government and work across the House to increase the pace of remediation work, improve the Building Safety Regulator and remove dangerous cladding and other materials from homes across the country.

• 14 Sept 2026 · SEND Specialists: Schools · Hansard source

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  I speak to many families in Broxbourne who are struggling with the SEND system. Unfortunately, until there are more SEND school places, they will continue to struggle, as children with SEND need to be in the right educational setting. What is the Department doing to create more SEND school places for families today, as they are needed now, not in the future?

• 10 Sept 2026 · Social Housing Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to speak opposite the new Minister, with whom I very much enjoyed working on the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee. Now that she is on the Government Front Bench, I suppose it is left to me to ask the tough questions. The Government have said that the Bill has been designed to encourage social housing providers to invest in the building of new socially rented homes. They want to encourage councils to build by restricting right to buy. That is the wrong approach. Yes, waiting lists for councils homes are far too high, but making it harder for tenants to get on in life and escape the clutches of the public sector is not the right solution. Instead, Ministers should look at what their policies are doing. Despite their promises, Labour is going backwards on house building. As our reasoned amendment states, last year there were “12,810 fewer net additional dwellings delivered in England compared to the previous year”. Why are the Government not pledging to take on the developers, who are sitting on thousands of unbuilt planning applications? The Institute for Public Policy Research—Labour’s favourite think-tank—has found that 1.4 million homes have been left unbuilt since 2007, despite planning permission being granted. The figure of 1.4 million homes sounds rather close to the Government’s challenging target of 1.5 million new homes. People are fed up with the eyesores in their neighbourhood—levelled ground left abandoned, surrounded by hoardings. I can show the Minister many examples in my Broxbourne constituency, and I am sure that hon. Members from right across the House can do the same. Taking on the land-banking developers would have widespread public support, but this Government only seem interested in making it easier to build on the green belt. We are still waiting for them to reveal what action they are taking to speed up building following the consultations held more than 12 months ago, so there is clearly no urgency. The Government should also consider who should be eligible for the help of a social home. People who come to this country and wish to live here should not rely on the generosity of taxpayers. Making Britain your home should be earned by working hard and integrating; it should not come with a free ride on the benefits system. That is why the Conservative party will end social housing tenancies for foreign nationals. Ensuring that only UK nationals can access social housing would free up 230,000 homes for British families. That change would make an immediate and significant difference to those stuck on council house waiting lists, but the Government would prefer that they sit around waiting for the Bill. Sadly, this Government, and especially their Back Benchers, are blinded by their ideological dislike of right to buy. It is clearly— [ Interruption. ] A number of Members have asked where Conservative Members were today. As I said in a Westminster Hall debate, Members of Parliament have a lot to deal with. When we do surgeries in our constituencies and people say, “When I turn on the TV, I see hardly anyone in the Chamber,” we all explain why that is. I suspect there will be times when all hon. Members cannot make it to important debates that their constituents want them to attend. It is clearly the view of Labour Members that if we had no right to buy, social housing waiting lists would disappear, but where do they think the 2 million families that have utilised the scheme would be without it? Well, I can tell them: they would probably be in the same home, but it would be subsidised by the taxpayer rather than privately owned. Abolishing right to buy is not the silver bullet that they think it is. The Government are placing huge burdens on social housing providers to help Ministers meet their own net zero targets. The cost of complying with new energy regulations is causing significant pressure, and getting 713,000 homes up to minimum energy efficiency standards is estimated to cost £4.5 billion. The Chartered Institute of Housing told the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee that housing associations do not want to buy properties with gas boilers because they know that it will cost them more money to strip them out and make properties energy efficient. That is pushing up council house waiting lists. The National Housing Federation is clear about what that means: spending billions to comply with net zero regulations will make it harder to build new homes. Ministers already know this, as they reduced energy efficiency targets for social housing in January on the basis that providers could not build new homes because of the financial burden of upgrading their existing stock. If Ministers want councils to be incentivised to build, entirely getting rid of those expensive regulations would be a good place to start. What is positive in the Bill is the review of the shared ownership scheme, and I hope the Minister, when she gets to her feet, can confirm that the Government intend to keep that review in the Bill. This obligation was added by the Government only due to the diligent work of the Conservative team in the other place. I have lived in a shared ownership property, and I know that—as for other forms of ownership, such as leasehold—reforms are desperately needed to fix the many problems residents face. The Opposition agree that the provisions to protect victims of domestic violence are needed, but a separate legislative measure would have been the right way to bring those forward. I gently say to the many hon. Members who have made impassioned speeches that, when I was a council leader, I had a number of meetings with housing providers and housing associations, and not once in the hundreds of hours of meetings I had with social housing providers did they say to me that they could not build new social homes in Broxbourne, or in fact across the country, because of the right to buy. It was never mentioned as a reason why housing associations are not building social homes.

• 10 Sept 2026 · Social Housing Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member has intervened on me quite a lot, and we have had quite a ding-dong in this Chamber. I say gently to him that when I speak to housing providers, they tell me that one of the reasons why they cannot build new social homes is the Government’s increase to employer national insurance contributions, which means that they spend more money on taxes, rather than on building new social homes. In summary, this Bill is the wrong approach, and it is fundamentally built on the wrong beliefs. It will not build a single new social home, but it will deny many families the opportunity of ever owning a home of their own. The Conservative party will always be on the side of aspiration and opportunity, and that is why we will vote for our reasoned amendment.

• 7 Sept 2026 · New Housing: Infrastructure · Hansard source

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  Well, the Government have had two years—that will not wash with my constituents, who have seen thousands of new homes built with no new infrastructure. Healthcare services are of particular concern: when there is new housing, that makes it much harder for everyone to see their GP. This Government are taking on more political control of the NHS, so can the Minister tell me what discussions he has had with the Department of Health and Social Care about ensuring that new healthcare facilities are in place when there is new housing?

• 7 Sept 2026 · New Housing: Infrastructure · Hansard source

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  My constituents and people across this country are fed up with more and more housing being built without the proper infrastructure in place first. There is nothing in the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 about forcing developers to put schools and GP surgeries in place at the same time as new developments. Will the Minister look again and commit to listening to existing residents about bringing changes in legislation, to ensure that there is infrastructure first?

• 2 Sept 2026 · Rural Upper-tier Local Authorities · Hansard source

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  Lots of difficult decisions had to be made. I politely say to the hon. Gentleman that his party is in government now. We will see the mettle that they are made of in the coming months, when they have to make difficult decisions to produce their Budget, and we will also see how that goes down with the British people outside this place. Many rural councils face real challenges across the board, and now they are expected to cope with even fewer resources. In my area of Hertfordshire, a semi-rural local authority, the county council is facing a reduction in funding of around £50 million a year. That is thanks to this Labour Government, despite the council already being under extreme pressure from an unfavourable SEND funding formula. Under that formula, Hertfordshire receives one of the lowest funding allocations per head. It would receive millions more if it were funded at the same rate as other areas. When it comes to SEND, rural authorities lose out. Inner London boroughs receive thousands of pounds more in high needs block funding per pupil. For example, a child in Camden is allocated four times as much as a child in Yorkshire. It should not matter where someone is born in the country; children with special educational needs deserve the same resources. I am sure that all hon. Members from right across this House can agree with that. Similarly, rural authorities have been ignored throughout this Government’s top-down local government reorganisation. As we have seen in Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and other areas, rural towns and villages are now being absorbed into new unitary authorities dominated by cities. That will only result in rural areas being more marginalised and left even further behind.

• 2 Sept 2026 · Rural Upper-tier Local Authorities · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Barker, and I welcome the Minister back to his place. I commend the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) for securing this important debate and giving us the opportunity to speak about the rural areas that this Labour Government are neglecting. My constituency is home to a handful of farms and the beautiful Lee Valley regional park. Although it might not be the most rural, I am well aware of the pressures faced by rural communities, which have been made clear by hon. Members across the Chamber today. Having started off with the infamous family farm tax, the Government are now moving on to implement the unfair funding review. This change in the funding formula for local government seems to have been designed with the express purpose of stripping away funding from rural areas just to hand it to urban ones.

• 2 Sept 2026 · Rural Upper-tier Local Authorities · Hansard source

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  I thought someone might make that point in this debate. I have been in debates where no Labour or Liberal Democrat MPs have turned up. When I go out and speak to my constituents about how, when they turn on the TV, the Chamber is not full, I explain to them that there are many calls upon Members’ time. I gently say to the hon. Member that some constituents will watch debates that he does not attend and be unhappy with that, so we could maybe think about that before we make interventions on that topic. As I was saying, this Government’s top-down local government reorganisation has seen rural communities left behind. Rural communities and authorities have also been hugely hit with a high increase in housing targets, forcing them to build over the green belt and ruin the character of their areas. They have increased by up to 487%, while many Labour-run urban areas have seen their targets decrease. The new Prime Minister likes to talk about devolving power to every postcode, but the only changes that people in rural areas have seen are money and power being taken away from them. They are the people that this Labour Government should champion: the hard-working people who have too often been left behind. Instead, they are being sidelined and ignored. The Government need to take time to actually listen to the rural community and protect their way of life. I may not represent a very rural part of this country, unlike other hon. Members in this room, who have so passionately spoken about their rural areas, but it does not take much to work out that forced local government reorganisation, increases in taxes and reduced funding formulas are the exact opposite of how the Government should support rural local authorities.

• 1 Sept 2026 · Direction of Government · Hansard source

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  The Prime Minister has spent all summer trying to be all things to all people. My constituents in Broxbourne want the Government to cut wasteful spending, lower taxes and get a grip on our immigration system, which all require tough decisions to be made by the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister choose his left-wing Back Benchers or will he choose the British people?

• 16 Jul 2026 · Local Government Reorganisation · Hansard source

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  What would the Secretary of State say to my constituents in Broxbourne, who never asked for this reorganisation and are concerned that it is just a waste of time and money that will leave them with higher council tax bills and less say over local planning decisions?

• 14 Jul 2026 · Coastal Communities: Isolation and Hidden Deprivation · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec. It is a huge privilege to wind up the debate on behalf of the official Opposition. I thank the hon. Member for Isle of Wight West (Richard Quigley) for securing this very important debate. I welcome the Minister to her place; this will be the first time we have had an exchange in this place. As hon. Members will know, I do not represent a coastal community. The River Lea and the white water rafting centre that proudly hosted events for the 2012 Olympics are the closest my constituency comes to having a coastline. However, many of my constituents grew up visiting our coasts, and have warm memories and strong cultural attachments to the beaches, clifftops and seaside towns of our great island nation. I fondly remember trips to places such as Clacton, Bournemouth, Great Yarmouth and Southend. From my visits to many of our seaside towns, and from hearing hon. Members’ testimonies, it is apparent that those places face unique challenges. Unfortunately, many of them have experienced decline in recent decades. The challenges that they face are not always adequately acknowledged or addressed by central Government. Understandably, many feel as if they are overlooked time and again. Many Members have made eloquent cases about that, providing us with valuable insights from the people they speak to and from their own experiences, but I will touch on some of those challenges again. They include poor or sometimes non-existent transport links, unemployment and changes to a once-reliable and profitable seasonal trade, a lack of housing supply, and large disparities in income, which mean that many people cannot afford to live in the places where they grew up. That is made even worse by the conversion of former hotels, B&Bs and residential properties into houses in multiple occupation, with councils and Government Departments using them to house people from elsewhere, leading to transient and unstable communities. Another challenge is an education system that receives far less money per pupil than some inner-city areas of London, for example. Unfortunately, decisions made by this Labour Government have worsened and compounded many of those issues. Businesses such as hotels, ice cream parlours and fisheries have been hit hard by the increase the employer national insurance and by burdensome regulations. Business rates have increased—in some cases massively and seemingly arbitrarily. Many people I meet in the hospitality industry, which is vital to coastal communities, tell me that they are really struggling; they simply have no more to give, and they ask why they should even bother. The Minister’s Department is now pushing through local government reorganisation, which in some areas will lump coastal communities together with inland towns and villages that have completely different priorities and challenges, and risks marginalising coastal communities even further. I urge the Government to pay particular attention to that when making decisions on local government reorganisation. Ultimately, our coastal communities and the whole United Kingdom deserve better. We need a Government who cut rather than increase taxes, reward rather than punish aspiration and success, prioritise quality housing for local people rather than HMOs for illegal asylum seekers, and put the interests of ordinary British people first, not least those in our coastal communities.

• 13 Jul 2026 · Local Government Reorganisation · Hansard source

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  The Minister and I have had many exchanges on this topic, and she knows that I am focused on securing the best outcome for my constituents. We know that reorganisation in Hertfordshire is coming, but the uncertainty is not helping my residents or local councillors, so can the Minister confirm whether an option for Hertfordshire will be included in her announcement on Thursday? Can she also confirm whether MPs will be informed before any public announcement is made?

• 13 Jul 2026 · Immigration and Asylum Bill · Hansard source

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  We must reduce immigration to this country and get a grip of our asylum system. Unlike the MPs behind her, I do think the Home Secretary is starting to move in the right direction. But, as she will know, small boat crossings are on the rise since Labour came to power, with an average of 105 illegal migrants crossing the channel every single day for the last two years. Almost 100,000 people are being housed in asylum accommodation, with the numbers in houses in multiple occupation up 11% under this Labour Government. The case for urgent action is now overwhelming, but the measures in the Bill before us fail to meet the gravity of the situation. I will therefore be supporting the reasoned amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition. Just look at the tinkering to the application of article 8 of the European convention on human rights. We all know that the protection to family life has been abused and twisted far from its original purpose. The public rightly expect foreign nationals who have broken our laws to be deported. The rights of the British people should always outweigh the interests of foreign criminals—no ifs, no buts. In 2023, a Nigerian man used article 8 to stay in this country despite a two-year prison sentence, but the tribunal ruled that deportation would breach his article 8 rights. Horrifically, he then went on to violently rape a teenage girl—whose rights were being protected then? Will these sorts of cases be a thing of the past as a result of the modest changes within this Bill? I am not convinced. The Government are allowing vague and ambiguous exceptional circumstances to be used by criminals to avoid deportation. The phrasing in the Bill leaves far too much room for legal argument, appeals and delays. No ifs, no buts—every illegal immigrant should be deported. By making changes to article 8, the Government have conceded that membership of the European convention on human rights places significant limits on the UK’s ability to maintain and control our borders. There is only one logical conclusion: the only way that we will truly end illegal immigration into the United Kingdom, deport all foreign criminals, and create a system that is genuinely fair and robust, is to leave the European convention on human rights in its entirety, and repeal the Human Rights Act.

• 8 Jul 2026 · The Greater Cambridge Development Corporation (Establishment) Order 2026 · Hansard source

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  The Minister is always very generous with his time. He has just explained the boundaries of the development corporation. Cambridge is going through local government reorganisation. How will that affect the order and the boundaries that he has just described?

• 2 Jul 2026 · Commonhold and Leasehold Reform: Managing Agents · Hansard source

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  I commend the hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi) for securing this important debate, and for her continued strong and effective leadership of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee. I have spoken several times in this House about the problems with the current leasehold and property management system, more recently from the Opposition Front Bench. Like so many of my constituents and people across the country, I am a leaseholder and I know at first hand the horrific situation they face. However, in today’s debate I would like to focus on property management companies, which are bringing misery to the lives of both leaseholders and those living on freehold estates in so-called fleecehold properties. Apart from the law as it currently stands, it is the poor performance and, quite frankly, the total incompetence of companies such as the Residential Management Group and FirstPort that are at the root of so many of the issues facing leaseholders across the country. Since my election, I have not come across one property management company that residents are happy with. Whether it is High Leigh in Hoddesdon, Academia Avenue, Robinia Road and Watery Lane in Turnford, Aldermere Avenue and Magnolia Way in Flamstead End, or Eleanor House in Waltham Cross, it is hard to think of one part of Broxbourne that is not affected. The Minister, with whom I get on well, has promised to strengthen the regulation of managing agents, but how much longer will my constituents have to wait? His Department has already held a consultation on measures to help leaseholders challenge unfair fees and charges, and introduce qualifications for managing agents. In fact, the consultation opened nearly one year ago and closed in September 2025, and the Government are still analysing the feedback. That is what the people out there get fed up with. The Leasehold and Freehold Act 2024 is on the statute book and the present Government clearly want stronger regulation of managing agents, as that is what they have told this House, so why the delay? We need to get this sorted. I welcome the fact that the Government have brought forward a Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill and allowed my Committee to scrutinise it in its draft form. That is a positive sign that the Government want to get the right legislation in place for our constituents, but I feel they should commit to giving more powers to the Department, so that Ministers can hold managing agents to account, specifically with enforcement powers. Managing agents that break the rules should be fined, and ultimately stripped of their licence to operate. This means that management companies would have to start to care about the interests of the residents they are supposed to look out for. In my constituency of Broxbourne, we have had to put up with poor service charges and increasing bills for years. Residents have nowhere to turn when something goes wrong. They feel that managing agents have all the power. I know the Minister wants to change that, and I hope he will reflect carefully on what has been said across the House. I urge the Government to get a move on, and solve this issue for millions of people across the United Kingdom.

• 30 Jun 2026 · Draft Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026 · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I have great respect for the Minister. I hope that he remains in post or gets a promotion in the upcoming reshuffle. I did not plan to speak today but, although I have heard some good points made in this Committee, I have also heard some nonsense. This is a terrible idea: I do not think a national scheme of delegation will work across the country. It puts too much power in the hands of planning officers, who do not always get it right. We often fail to talk about how we have to create communities, but when someone makes a bad planning decision, that building is there for generations. There are issues that should be thought about within the planning process, and they will be difficult to solve if an officer has recommended the approval or refusal of a specific application and they have got it wrong. Officers are less likely to live within the council area, so they are less likely to know the place as well as councillors. Councillors should be around that table and should be able to call in planning applications. Lots of councils do have a scheme of delegation, but it is important that they retain flexibility, because there will be certain applications where local circumstances apply. For example, an application for a house may have to be called in because there are specific issues down a road, or because lots of people have replied to the consultation. Councils need to have that flexibility. The national scheme of delegation will not help the Government in meeting their target of building 1.5 million homes. This is not the problem within the planning system. As I have said before, the reason that hardly any homes are getting built in this country is developers themselves. Most applications that go through the planning process get approved. It takes such a long time for developers to get their planning application not because the approval process is slow, but because they actively go against what the council is seeking to achieve within its local plan or what local people want. If, when they originally bought the piece of land and wanted to create their development, they came around the table and worked hand in hand with the council, they would get through that process a lot quicker. As leader of Broxbourne council, I had loads of experience of dealing with developers who would take ages to get through the planning system because they would not do what the council asked them to. The idea that this legislation will speed up the planning process and solve all the issues, and then 1.5 million homes will be built over the course of this Parliament, is just utter nonsense. This is not the right part of the process for the Government to be attacking. This is an incredibly bad idea. It is not well thought-out. It will create issues down the line, when officers approve lots of planning applications and people do not understand why they have been approved, and it will cause fundamental issues for parking, healthcare facilities and education that will have no democratic oversight. I hope that the Minister will reflect on this and try to improve the planning system, because I do not think this piece of legislation does that. It is an attack on democracy, and it is all about concreting over the green belt.

• 30 Jun 2026 · Draft Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026 · Hansard source

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  The Minister is being very generous with his time. How can the public deal with planning officers who get it wrong? At the moment, if a planning committee gets it wrong, the public can go out to the ballot box and vote for someone else. They cannot do that with planning officers who make the wrong decisions.

• 30 Jun 2026 · Draft Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026 · Hansard source

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  The Minister mentions local plans and schemes of delegation. If a developer comes forward with a planning application that is not allocated within the local plan, how will that be dealt with? Will it be deal with through schemes of delegation, or would it automatically go to committee?

• 24 Jun 2026 · Climate Change · Hansard source

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  When I was leader of my council, I went to a number of meetings in my constituency and spoke to a number of constituents. Experts on transport come to meetings and say that everyone should walk everywhere, which is completely impractical. Some of the solutions that the Government have put forward are completely unworkable. They should come up with some common-sense solutions, because this is a serious problem that we need to deal with. Saying that most people should walk everywhere is not a serious solution to the problem that we face. If the Government want us to reduce our carbon emissions even more, they should come up with serious, practical, common-sense solutions that allow us to take the British people with us and protect jobs in this country. As my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State has said, there is no point putting taxes on business here and cutting carbon here if factories then open in China, where they use coal to produce their electricity rather than what we do in the United Kingdom. That is completely unserious. The Government need to come up with practical solutions to this problem, and I urge the Minister to do so.

• 24 Jun 2026 · Climate Change · Hansard source

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  Before entering this place, I worked in the energy efficiency industry. I know the potential that we have when we back our home-grown manufacturers across the United Kingdom, and I know how vital energy is to their success; but the Government’s policies on net zero are holding them back. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch) said during Prime Minister’s questions, the current Energy Secretary is “putting up bills and killing jobs.” I am proud that under her leadership, the Conservative Party is starting to be honest about net zero. As the Conservative leader of Broxbourne Council, I never joined in the hysteria of council after council declaring a climate emergency, then sitting back and feeling good about themselves. In Broxbourne we focused on action, not words—planting thousands of trees, installing electric car charging points, and getting developers to put solar panels on new houses. Putting net zero into law by 2050 was exactly the same: there was no serious plan to achieve it then, but now Labour have come up with a plan, and we are starting to see what the true costs to our economy and to ordinary people’s lives will be. Carbon budget 7 sets a target for reducing our emissions by 87%. According to the Climate Change Committee, to achieve that we must cut meat consumption by a quarter by 2040, and sheep and cattle numbers will have to fall by 38% by 2050. Some of these suggestions are completely unworkable. The Climate Change Committee has also said that people should be pushed away from driving to “alternative modes of travel”. That is simply not feasible in large parts of the United Kingdom, especially rural areas like parts of my constituency. It is very frustrating to turn up at a local meeting about sustainable transport—about trying to increase the number of buses and trains—and then find that the person who is lecturing everyone about how we should all walk everywhere has driven there in their car. We need to come up with practical solutions that enable us to take the public with us. What do I say to my constituents who tell me, “I have to take two kids to school, and they are at different schools, then I have to go to work and do the shopping, then pick them up and go home”? Such targets are unworkable. It is not feasible to say, “Well, that’s fine—everyone can just walk everywhere.” The targets have to be sensible, and we have to take the British public with us, or we will not go anywhere towards achieving some of the stuff that the Government want us to achieve. We are talking about an average overall cost of £11,157 per household. That is not a price that we should be willing to pay. We have made fantastic progress already, and we should always be committed to leaving a better environment for the next generation, but we also need to leave them a stronger economy and a stronger country, and that means, above all else, cheaper energy. Britain currently has some of the highest energy costs in the developed world. There is no way in which we can achieve the economic growth that people are crying out for throughout the United Kingdom if that remains the case, which is why we need to get Britain drilling and unlock the 2.9 billion barrels of North sea oil. According to this Government, it is okay to get oil from Russia if it is done through a third country, but we cannot use our own resources in the North sea. Obviously, oil coming from the North sea will produce less carbon dioxide than oil that has had to travel halfway across the world. The Government need to set out a plan for delivery, and they really need to come up with common-sense approaches to deal with the impacts of climate change. As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho) said, the fact that we are scrutinising Government policy does not make us climate deniers.

• 24 Jun 2026 · Draft Local Government (Structural and Boundary Changes) (Control of Disposals etc.) (Amendment) Order 2026 · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. The Government are bringing forward logical proposals to deal with new councils, but my concern is that I am not sure that this measure goes far enough. It talks about protecting new councils from existing councils’ decisions about their finances, but what we do not talk about in this—and what I think the Government need to consider—are existing councils that are going to be forced to merge. That is important because, if we look at my constituency, I have a council with money in the bank and a council without money in the bank. This legislation talks about protecting the new authority from financial decisions that the existing authorities have made—I completely support that, and I think the Government are taking a logical approach—but we need to explore whether it is fair for all the money to go into the same pot. Is it fair for people who have had good councils, with money in the bank, to see their taxpayers’ money spent elsewhere in the authority, where they will not see a benefit? We should explore what financial information, constraints or regulations we can give to new councils when they are created, rather than just putting all the money into the pot. The councils to be merged will not have the same financial footing. They will not have the same services or the same money in the bank. If we think that it is important to protect the new council from decisions that the existing authority has made, it is right that we look at protecting specific areas within new councils that have had good financial management over the short to medium term. As I said, there is an example in my constituency: Broxbourne council has about £50 million in the bank but East Herts council has none. What I do not want to see if we have to go through local government reorganisation is all that money going into the pot and then being spent on paying someone else’s debt. It is right for constituents that I represent in the borough of Broxbourne to say that there should be some guidance outlining that that money should at least be spent within the existing boundaries of that authority, even if it is under the new council.

• 24 Jun 2026 · Draft Local Government (Structural and Boundary Changes) (Control of Disposals etc.) (Amendment) Order 2026 · Hansard source

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  Thank you for your guidance, Mr Vickers. This is an important piece of legislation that the Government are bringing forward. I wonder whether the Minister could explore some of the points that I have raised in this debate.

• 15 Jun 2026 · Leasehold Reform · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Like millions of people across the country, I am a leaseholder. We have been waiting nearly two years since the Government promised to improve the system. While the Government dither, leaseholders are being ripped off with higher service charges from companies such as FirstPort. We need action, not words, to take on these bad companies. Every MP in this House is aware of the situation, so can the Minister tell me why the leasehold Bill does nothing to hold management companies to account?