Lewis Cocking MP: speeches

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Speeches

16 Sept 2025 · English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source
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Q You mentioned earlier that you want to see some powers removed from councils and placed at a strategic level. I am completely against taking powers away from local councils, particularly in planning. Which powers do you think need to be removed from local councils and placed at the strategic mayoral level? Catriona Riddell: I was not talking about powers; I was talking about resources. I was talking about creating shared teams at the strategic level to support the local authorities individually. It is about sharing skills and having teams at the strategic level with the specialist skills that individual local planning authorities cannot access easily; it is not about taking powers away from local authorities.
16 Sept 2025 · English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source
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Q I want to continue down the planning route. You mentioned utility companies earlier; I completely agree that we need to get them around the table. What about the NHS and health services? How well are they are getting around the table at the moment, and what do you think the Bill will do to strengthen that? Lots of people are not necessarily anti-development, but they are anti-development when it does not come with any services that the community needs. Catriona Riddell: I am a very strong supporter of the Bill’s “health in all policies” approach. Mayors and strategic authorities will have to demonstrate how they will improve health inequalities and others through everything they do. Many will know that the planning system is embedded in health; that is how it came about. We have been trying very hard to make sure that local plans and the new spatial development strategies address health. That is not just about infrastructure, but about healthy places generally. As you know, it is a real challenge at the local level to plan for health infrastructure up front. Most of that will still be done at the local plan level, not the SDS level, but the SDS level will have to look at strategic infrastructure around health. If any major new health infrastructure is needed, that will have to be embedded into the SDS. As with all the work of strategic authorities, it is not just about a planning responsibility; the strategic authority will be working with the health authorities, and they will need to have a role in how the SDSs deal with health. The Liverpool city region is a great example of working with health authorities and others to embed health into the spatial development strategy that it is preparing at the moment, so it can be done. It is much more difficult to find the answer for local infrastructure such as doctors’ surgeries and GPs. I know there are examples where land has been left aside for doctors’ surgeries, but GPs and others have not moved forward to make it happen. I guess there are more challenges in health infrastructure outside the planning system, but getting them at the table up front, in terms of in spatial development strategies and the flow-through to local plans, is absolutely the right thing.
16 Sept 2025 · English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source
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Q How does that work in places such as Hertfordshire? In Hertfordshire we have about 15 towns, all of similar size, and hardly anyone moves between the towns. It is not like Manchester, where all the services are based in one centre and people cohabit around that. The shires are very different to the areas that you have just described. Miatta Fahnbulleh: Ultimately, the approach that we are taking is to say to places, “What makes sense?”, and there is a journey for places to go on. Some places will choose to be foundational authorities, because that makes sense for them. Actually, we are being overwhelmed. It is not just urban areas that are coming forward to us with an appetite to move to—
16 Sept 2025 · English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source
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Q I want talk about district councils. Lots of councils have gone through unitarisation, and when they come out the other side, lots of them set up area planning committees and delivery teams based on the old district boundaries. What is your view on the savings that might come through that process? I think there are hardly any. On the democratic deficit, we are talking about getting rid of elected authorities. The response from you, Zoë, was, “Well, we can do some more consultation. We can have online meetings and votes at 16,” but how can any of that replicate a free and fair democratic election to a local council? Professor Denham: I made my position clear: I think you might have needed to reorganise in future; I did not think it was the priority. But we are where we are. Personally, I am sceptical about savings materialising at the scale that has been said, because costs are always higher. If you followed what I suggested about having some flexibility in the size of the new unitaries, that undermines what was in the original proposal, but I think it is necessary for democratic reasons. I would say, though, that we have never really taken a strategic approach to what happens below unitary and strategic authorities, even in areas that have only unitaries and strategic authorities. Everything I said about community empowerment plans, I would apply to met boroughs and to Greater Manchester and all the rest of it. It probably sounds particularly relevant because we have this process of local government reorganisation, but it should apply equally strongly to the duties that exist on current unitary authorities and strategic authorities. It is a national policy, rather than purely a local one. Zoë Billingham: I would only add that, as John said, I am not sure there were many external voices calling for the abolition of district councils. It was seen as a quid pro quo, as I understand it, for the mayoral tier. As I stated previously, I am sceptical about the backroom savings that are considered to come with reducing headcount, office space and so on, but I will leave others to speak to that. As John said, unitarisation is not new, so there are examples of places that have tackled it well. We should look to those before thinking it is a foregone conclusion that it is not the right thing to do. On democratic innovations, although the Bill challenges the current model, I think we should use this moment to consider what they are. Looking at voting levels at the last election, we just about got 50% of the country voting for MPs. At some of the local and regional elections, we mostly have less than the majority of the population coming out to vote. We can improve on the current system, and I hope this is a real opportunity to do that. That is why thinking about how people engage with democracy, why they come out to vote, and who comes out to vote is really important at this stage—especially with such a difficult political atmosphere in this country.
16 Sept 2025 · English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source
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Q You have forced areas to come forward. Miatta Fahnbulleh: Well, no. We said, “This is the suite—
16 Sept 2025 · English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source
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Q Minister, we have heard a lot of evidence today about how metro mayors work in urban areas—we have heard some successful examples. However, we have hardly heard any evidence at all about metro mayors in the shires or in rural communities. How do you see the positives of metro mayors working in rural communities? Miatta Fahnbulleh: There are two things that I would say. Even in our urban areas, or what are defined as urban areas—for example, North of Tyne—there are big rural constituencies within them. Actually, many of our metro mayors straddle urban areas—in some instances, there are core cities—and rural areas. The benefits are the same for both. If your starting position is, “How do we drive economic growth?”—that is one of the big issues—the evidence of the last decade and a half, as well as that from other countries, is that such a strategic level creates a massive opportunity to unlock growth. That is as true for our urban areas as it is for our rural areas. However, I would also say that, yes, there is a model that we are trying to drive forward, but it has to be specific to particular places. There will be different constellations, if you like, of strategic authorities. That is okay, because what matters is that we create governance structures that can fundamentally drive outcomes that are tailored and specific to those areas.
16 Sept 2025 · English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source
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You have. Miatta Fahnbulleh: We said, “This is the suite of powers that you can get.” Places have seen the opportunity and are looking to other areas that have gone through this journey. Look at Greater Manchester, with some of the highest productivity growth that we have had. I was there at the start, when we began this journey. People are seeing that there is something here that is working and there is an appetite for that. The Government have done their bit by saying, “Look, we understand you need the powers; this is the suite of powers. We’re not going to ask you to do lots of deals and jump through hoops,” and places are lining up. I think that every place needs to figure out what makes sense for it. However, the evidence so far is that places see that there is a strategic opportunity, because they care about growth and outcomes for their communities.
10 Sept 2025 · New Technologies in the Workplace · Hansard source
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I welcome the Secretary of State to her place. Small businesses in my constituency are vital to economic growth. What is her Department doing to ensure that small businesses can benefit from innovation and new technology?
10 Sept 2025 · New Technologies in the Workplace · Hansard source
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3. What steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to help support the adoption of new technologies in the workplace.
9 Sept 2025 · Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill · Hansard source
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No, I will not give way. There have been lots of interventions, and I am fed up with the same interventions coming from the same Labour Members. Quite frankly it does not help the debate—just because they say something several times does not make it true. The Bill is costing us financially, but it also has security risks. China supports the deal and is welcoming Mauritius into its sphere of influence with open arms. Mauritius is strengthening relations with Iran and Russia. As a Policy Exchange report notes, it is impossible to assert with certainty how much influence China will have over Mauritius in the next five or 10 years, let alone for the 99-year duration of this lease. We already have British sovereign territory with a base, so I cannot understand why we have done that negotiation, and why we are hurting the British people with tax rises. As I said, we are being cruel to older people by taking away their winter fuel allowance, going after farmers with the family farm tax, and going after British businesses with the increase to national insurance contributions, yet we can find money out of nowhere—£35 billion—to give to Mauritius. In summary, I gently say to the Government that people out there know that. When we knock on doors, as I am sure we all do across our constituencies, people will say to us, “Hang on a minute. How come we are being punished? How come we have to pay more taxes, but you soon find money when it suits you?” That is why the British public have fallen out of love with this Government already. Hopefully the Government will wake up and start representing the people who they were elected to represent in this Chamber: the British public, not foreign Governments such as that of Mauritius.
9 Sept 2025 · Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill · Hansard source
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There are no two ways about it: this is a surrender Bill with no benefits to my Broxbourne constituents. Ministers have shamefully attempted to hide the shocking cost of this deal from the British people and the public at large. When the new Labour Government took office, they kept telling us in this Chamber about the pretend £22 billion black hole in the public finances. If the black hole of £22 billion that we are continually told about by the Government did exist, I could solve it overnight—don’t do this deal. This deal is £35 billion to the Mauritian Government. The Labour Government go after British family farms with the family farm tax. They go after our pensioners and take their winter fuel allowance away, and they increase national insurance contributions for businesses, to make it more expensive for them to employ people, but they could just not do this deal. They talk in fiction, and this is an absolute disgrace. How will Mauritius spend this money? By cutting taxes for its own citizens and paying their debts. Is the Minister proud that the only income tax cuts that this Labour Government will deliver are 6,000 miles away at the expense of the British taxpayer? The last time I checked, this was the British Parliament and we are supposed to stand up for British interests, not the interests of foreign countries or foreign citizens. We should be cutting taxes here and turbocharging the economy, not giving stuff away that we already own. We already have a base, and now we are going to lease it back, as we have heard from a number of colleagues.
2 Sept 2025 · English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill · Hansard source
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We have all been told repeatedly that the Government’s plan for local government will improve local services and save the taxpayer money, but it is increasingly clear that the Bill fails to deliver on those points. This is a forced, top-down change from Westminster that will abolish effective local councils and strip local people of their ability to have a say on local issues. In my constituency I have two district councils, East Herts and Broxbourne, as well as Hertfordshire county council. Under this “devolution” plan, they will be abolished and replaced by new unitary councils. I strongly opposed Hertfordshire county council forming a single new unitary council covering 1.2 million people, and I am pleased to learn that that has been ruled out, but the new unitary councils will still be far larger than the district councils that we currently have. I am sure that many other Members on both sides of the House will share my experience that large local authorities are often less efficient and deliver worse services than smaller, more agile ones. The biggest council in the country is Birmingham, with a population of more than 1 million, and I doubt that anyone here would call it efficient. While no council is perfect, I believe that councils work best when they are close to the people they serve. On top of that, I have serious doubts that these plans will actually save any money. There is no way in which efficiencies will cover the extra cost of spending by these bloated new unitary authorities. The process of reorganisation is expensive and disruptive, and I have yet to see it notably improve the finances of councils that have gone through it. Indeed, many areas will be worse off as a result of it. Responsible Conservative councils such as Broxbourne which have consistently kept within budget and kept council tax low will be forced to merge with debt-ridden neighbouring councils and raise their council tax levels. I know that where unitarisation has happened, councils have gone on to set up delivery of services based on the old district boundaries anyway. The efficiencies expected by the Government have not emerged. I believe that the Government are going down this path of creating big new super-unitary councils, because of their failure to make progress on their target of building 1.5 million new homes. The Government are getting desperate. Rather than building houses where they are needed in London, and rather than building houses where there is appropriate infrastructure or making developers deal with infrastructure first, they are abolishing local councils in order to force through huge arbitrary housing targets in all the wrong places—on precious green belt throughout the United Kingdom.
2 Sept 2025 · Defibrillators · Hansard source
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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I commend the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth) for securing this important debate. I want to focus on a local charity in my constituency, Hearts for Herts. In 2017, my constituent Justin Honey-Jones, an experienced paramedic, began the mission to provide an inclusive education programme of lifesaving skills and to champion the provision of public access lifesaving equipment, all from his garage in Hoddesdon. Since then, he has personally trained more than 1,000 people in lifesaving skills, raising hundreds of thousands of pounds, with every penny used to provide and maintain lifesaving equipment. In the last 18 months alone, the charity has installed 75 public access defibrillators across Hertfordshire, and it will install another 55 before February next year. I have been proud to attend many of the openings of those vital defibrillators across my constituency, including at Barclay Park, where the first solar-powered defibrillator in Hertfordshire is now in place, and at the Methodist church in Hoddesdon. Incredibly, just 36 hours after the defibrillator was installed at the church, it was used in a medical emergency. Hearts for Herts rightly focuses its efforts on making defibrillators as accessible as possible and installing them where they are most useful to nearby residents. That aim is justified by stories such as that of the Methodist church defibrillator, and is driven forward by the charity’s unique aim to make all school defibrillators publicly accessible. At no cost to the school, Justin will organise the entire conversion process, ensuring that the crucial equipment can be accessed all year round, at any time of the day. That has saved lives: a converted defibrillator at Broxbourne school was activated on Christmas day, and over this year’s summer holidays the defibrillator at Wormley primary school has been used three times. Hearts for Herts goes further: alongside the defibrillators, it places bleed control kits in its cabinets. The ability to control heavy bleeding is the difference between life and death following, for example, a road traffic collision. That is why Justin has included 200 bleed control kits alongside his defibrillators and has plans to provide even more. The kits buy injured individuals valuable time until an ambulance can arrive. I hope all hon. Members will join me in commending Justin for his incredible work. I look forward to supporting him and Hearts for Herts for many years to come.
1 Sept 2025 · Borders and Asylum · Hansard source
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It is clear that the Government have lost control. The Government are going against their own election manifesto by taking the issue through the courts. I have asked this question before but not had an answer, so I ask it again: can the Home Secretary give me a date when the hotel in my constituency of Broxbourne will close to illegal asylum seekers?
21 Jul 2025 · Asylum Hotels: Migrant Criminal Activity · Hansard source
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Last month, the Immigration Minister could not tell me in a written answer how many illegal asylum seekers have a criminal record. We have an asylum hotel in Cheshunt in my constituency, and my constituents are understandably concerned about criminal activity and antisocial behaviour. They do not think that the Government are listening to them. When will the Minister come to this House, meet her manifesto commitment and close the asylum hotel in my constituency?
14 Jul 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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T10. Will the Minister outline what new planning powers could be provided to local councils to ensure that my local communities in Broxbourne can say no to houses in multiple occupation—HMOs—where they are not wanted?
14 Jul 2025 · Draft Warm Home Discount (Amendment) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source
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rose—
14 Jul 2025 · Draft Warm Home Discount (Amendment) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source
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rose—
9 Jul 2025 · Draft Buckinghamshire Council, Surrey County Council and Warwickshire County Council (Housing and Regeneration Functions) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source
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Can the Minister outline for the Committee, where these powers will sit, once councils have gone through devolution talks and appointed metro mayors? Will they still sit with the unitary councils, or will they go to the metro mayor? Can the Minister explain where the powers will sit when they get a new devolution agreement?
25 Jun 2025 · Access to Banking Hubs: Hertfordshire · Hansard source
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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra) for securing this very important debate. In recent years, banking services have been withdrawing from my constituency. Every single high street has seen bank branches close, and we now have fewer of them, but Cheshunt has borne the brunt. Cheshunt is a busy town of 40,000 people, right in the heart of my constituency, but not a single bank branch remains. That simply cannot be right. The lack of in-person banking facilities is depriving individuals and businesses of access to vital services and, for so many older and vulnerable people, causing huge difficulty and frustration as they are forced to use digital services and smartphone apps. My own nan is one of them, and she is not happy about it. Across Broxbourne, more than 3,000 people are living with sight loss, and that group is particularly reliant on in-person banking services. Many cannot use online banking at all, and they feel the pressure that not being digitally connected puts on them. That is why they like going into a bank branch, to get help from a real person to access their cash. They might specifically pick a bank with a branch on the high street, but if it closes, some banks now require customers to use an app to get a code in order to speak to the bank over the phone. That does not solve the issue. It is the sensible view of me and my constituents that Broxbourne needs a banking hub and, in particular, that the town of Cheshunt would be the perfect place for one, as it is right in the middle of my constituency. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for South West Hertfordshire mentioned, the process for securing a banking hub is far from sensible. Link has told me that Cheshunt does not meet the criteria for a hub because “there are already cash access services and facilities within a 1-mile radius which are suitable for the needs of the local area” and “the deficiency does not” affect my constituents enough. Well, not having a bank really does affect my constituents. This is typical civil service protocol on where policies should be implemented and where they should not be. The rules simply need to change. Link points out that my constituents can take a 15-minute bus journey to Waltham Cross, where a handful of banks remain for now, but do not get me started on the state of the bus services in Broxbourne. It is true that there are bus stops in the precise centre of Cheshunt and a few of my constituents will be able to get a bus—if it turns up and it is on time. In most cases, buses simply do not turn up on time or do not turn up at all. However, the vast majority of the people of Cheshunt do not live on top of a bus stop. Link has told me that journey times of less than 15 minutes are deemed acceptable, but many of my constituents living in residential areas off the high street, in neighbourhoods of Cheshunt such as Flamstead End, Rosedale or Bury Green, or in the village of Goffs Oak have much longer journeys even to board a bus, let alone to travel to a bank. That is not acknowledged at all in the assessment process, which uses only an “approximation of the centre of the high street”. That is not acceptable; it does not reflect the wider catchment area of towns such as Cheshunt and the role that Cheshunt serves for my constituents. The criteria need to change to ensure that any town that wants a banking hub can have one. Surely that is within the Minister’s gift. I thank her for meeting me recently to discuss my campaign to get a banking hub in Cheshunt, but every time that I have asked for one, I have been told that we do not meet the access to cash criteria and that there is nothing the Government can do about it—they simply wash their hands of it. I was told in a written answer that it is all down to Link, or the financial services sector, or the Financial Conduct Authority. Well, I have met Link and it tells that it cannot help; I have met the Financial Conduct Authority and it says that it is up to the Government to change the law. Will it really take the closure of every bank in my constituency before we are even considered for a banking hub? It looks inevitable that that day will come.
25 Jun 2025 · Access to Banking Hubs: Hertfordshire · Hansard source
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My hon. Friend makes an excellent point and I completely agree. Now is the time to change the rules and it is up to the Government to step up, be accountable to the electorate they serve and change the rules, rather than hiding behind unaccountable bodies such as Link, which do not determine the rules but just sit in their ivory towers and say, “This looks good on paper,” when it does not work in reality. I hope that the Minister will commit to go away and change the rules so that we can get more banking hubs open, not just in Hertfordshire but across the United Kingdom as a whole.
24 Jun 2025 · Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government · Hansard source
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I commend the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), for securing this important debate. I congratulate her on her fair and robust approach to leading the Committee, and every now and again she allows me to ask some difficult questions of Government Ministers, for which I am very grateful. All of us on the Committee have taken very seriously our duty of scrutinising the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government over the past year, recognising its widespread responsibilities and the deep impact its decisions have on our constituents right across the country. I wish to mention a couple of those responsibilities. One of the biggest drivers of the financial difficulties facing councils has been the catastrophic rise in the amount of money spent on children with special educational needs. This is very close to my heart, as I have seen it from both sides. I grew up with a brother and sister who both benefited from SEND provision, and I have also been a local councillor in Hertfordshire. In just 10 years, the number of children in the county with education, health and care plans has grown by a staggering 223%, which is even higher than the 140% national rise. The funding has not kept up. Incredibly, Hertfordshire receives the third lowest funding per head out of every authority in the country. If it was funded at the national average, an extra £47 million would be available for children with the most complex needs across Hertfordshire. I hope the Minister agrees that it should not matter where in this country someone is born, because the system should have the resources to meet their educational needs. Removing this historical funding formula would be the first step in creating such a system. The Minister will of course point out that the total reorganisation of local government in this country is the answer to these problems, and that the efficiencies promised by huge unitary councils will solve the funding crisis. However, residents of my constituency of Broxbourne already feel that they are getting a bad deal from the county council, so exactly how will forcing them into a much larger council, which will have a much longer list of responsibilities for an even bigger area, help this situation? As with everything the Government touch, one of the inevitable consequences of this reorganisation will be higher taxes for my constituents. It will be constituents living under Conservative-controlled Broxbourne council who will feel this the most, as they will go from paying the lowest non-parish council tax in the country to, inevitably, a higher charge under a merged authority. There is no way that efficiencies will cover the extra spending of these bloated authorities. Reorganisation itself is not cost-free, and I am yet to see councils that have gone through a reorganisation come out saying they are awash with cash. I hope the Minister is genuinely listening to the concerns raised in this debate, and will come back with the Department of Education in the near future with genuine solutions to the SEND funding crisis, and ensure that all our constituents have a fair say when local government reorganisation is forced upon them in our areas.
24 Jun 2025 · VAT Registration Threshold: SMEs · Hansard source
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We have all mentioned a number of businesses that think this Labour Government are taking the wrong direction. Can the Minister list the businesses in his constituency that believe that this Labour Government are taking the right direction for business growth in this country? If he lists the businesses in his constituency, we will go and ask them.
24 Jun 2025 · VAT Registration Threshold: SMEs · Hansard source
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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford) on securing this important debate. He is a passionate defender of small and medium-sized businesses in his constituency and across the country. I meet small business owners in my constituency of Broxbourne almost every week, and every single one, from Carmela’s hairdressers in Cheshunt to the Smokeshed restaurant in Hoddesdon, has made it clear to me just how damaging Labour Government policies are towards small businesses. This Labour Government have put up the cost of growing a small business significantly, with the hike in employer’s national insurance making it more expensive for businesses to bring on and employ new people. Increasing the burden of regulation is also deterring employers from taking risks with who they employ. Both of those disastrous policies are leading to fewer people in work, taxes at the highest level on record and growth down. As I have said in this Chamber before, the drastic reduction in business rates relief is crippling for our retail, hospitality and leisure businesses, which are the anchor of so many of our town centres up and down our beautiful United Kingdom. As we have heard this morning, what is also holding SMEs back is the current rules around VAT registration. When I go out and speak to businesses across my constituency of Broxbourne, whether I speak to them in business forums, through Love Hoddesdon, Love Cheshunt, Love Waltham Cross or the Stanstead Abbotts small business network group, they are all united in one thing and one single policy that they reckon is really holding them back: the VAT threshold. They all moan to me about it. They all say they need an easier solution. I have so many examples of businesses that I speak to that have said, “Lewis, it is not worth upscaling our business. It is not worth trying to do better, not worth taking on more business, not worth employing more people. It is not worth doing those things because, when we go just over the threshold, it takes our competitive edge away when we are trying to compete with people that are just below that threshold.” They have all come forward with a simple solution, which is that there should be a taper mechanism to build up to the 20%, rather than the cliff edge that we have now. The situation is absolute nonsense. I have successful business owners in my constituency that go in day in, day out. As I have said in this Chamber before, I was told at the Dispatch box by a Government Minister that it is the Government that create economic growth. Well, it is not. They do not understand how business works in this country. Their whole philosophy around who creates economic growth is wrong. It is the millions of small business owners up and down the United Kingdom and all of the entrepreneurs that invest in their ideas that create economic growth. As I said, it cannot be right that I have examples in my constituency of people turning down work, not taking on more employees, and not creating the economic growth that we all want to see for this country because of measures like the VAT threshold. We heard before the general election that this Government were going to be the most pro-business we had ever seen, but they have not come up with a single policy that has helped my business owners in Broxbourne. They all think that all this Government’s policies around businesses, including changing the threshold for business rates and not looking into the issue of VAT registration, are affecting how they do business across the country. That simply cannot be right—it is nonsense. We all want more jobs created and we all want our high streets to thrive. Lots of business owners have lots of issues with what is going on in the economy right now, but this one single thing unites them. When I speak to them, they all raise this issue with me. They all want the Government to take it seriously and think up a solution. The Minister could go and speak to his officials at the Treasury and there could be a simple solution to this problem. That would create economic growth overnight. Businesses up and down the country would probably take on more employees and more business if this problem was solved. It is affecting lots of the people that I speak to in my constituency of Broxbourne. Why on earth would someone come out of the education system, invest in their idea, take risks and set up a business in the United Kingdom right now? It is so heavily burdened with regulation. We need to unlock the aspiration of the next generation, and we can do that by solving simple things that business owners come to speak to us about. We need to make sure that the VAT threshold is no longer a cliff edge and bring in a taper mechanism. I look forward to hearing what the Minister says in reply to this debate. I am hopeful that he will think long and hard about what he can do about this issue, because he has the tools at his disposal to solve it. I suspect that there will be lots of consensus among those of us speaking in this debate on the issue and on what we think the solution will be. I hope that the Minister is listening and will take note of all our comments when he winds up.
9 Jun 2025 · Support for High Streets · Hansard source
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Houses in multiple occupation throughout Broxbourne—on our high streets in particular—are causing my constituents lots of issues. What will the Minister do to review the powers that my local councils of East Herts and Broxbourne have to stop HMOs where we do not want them?

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