Luke Evans MP: speeches

Speeches

• 12 Nov 2025 · Taxes · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman has missed something from his list: the Government’s own assessment shows that when winter fuel payments are cut, it puts 50,000 people into absolute poverty and 100,000 people into relative poverty. A 2017 report by the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Dan Tomlinson), now the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, said that cuts to the payment would kill 4,000 people. Was that factored into the hon. Gentleman’s assessment when he went through the Lobby to vote on the measure?

• 12 Nov 2025 · Taxes · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech about what happened a year ago. Another problem is that all the kite flying in the Treasury at the moment means that people are now making decisions to withdraw their pensions schemes, not employ people and not invest. Is my hon. Friend seeing that in her constituency, as I am in mine? All that kite flying has real-world consequences, even before we get to the Budget in three weeks’ time.

• 12 Nov 2025 · Taxes · Hansard source

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  We on the Conservative Benches have been struggling to get an answer on the question of the 50% reduction in integrated care boards, for which the expected redundancy bill is about £1 billion. Today, the Government have issued a press release that says that they have dealt with that. Yet in response to my written question on the subject, the Health Department said that it could not provide an answer because it does not know the numbers, so I have received a holding answer. How much will the redundancy payments cost, and will it come from the Health budget or the Treasury budget?

• 12 Nov 2025 · Taxes · Hansard source

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  This toxic concoction creates a cumulative cycle. The pubs that do survive have to reduce staffing and hours. In rural areas, that might increase loneliness and reduce opportunities for young people to get jobs. That cyclical nature means a spiral into decline. I am concerned about that in my area. Does my hon. Friend share that concern for his area?

• 12 Nov 2025 · Taxes · Hansard source

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  Was my right hon. Friend as surprised as I was to hear the Prime Minister say again today at Prime Minister’s questions that his No. 1 goal is growth, when all the evidence is pointing against it?

• 12 Nov 2025 · Taxes · Hansard source

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  The Chancellor set out in a speech only last year an absolute commitment not to raise taxes. She said, “We’ve set the spending envelope for this Parliament, we don’t need to increase taxes”. Yet here we are on the cusp of taxes going up. Is not the crux of this the fact that she cannot even stick to what she promised?

• 12 Nov 2025 · Taxes · Hansard source

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  To put it in simple terms for those listening at home, the Chancellor raised taxes by £40 billion, she spent £30 billion and she borrowed £70 billion. Cumulatively, that will make people think, “How am I going to get the return on that investment if we are not growing the economy? How do I ensure that the interest will be paid?” That is why interest payments go up and we as a country end up paying more debt—because of the decisions the Chancellor has made.

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  We saw this in the health service, with the private finance initiative; £13 billion of investment became £80 billion of public debt to pay back. Does my right hon. Friend worry that Labour seems to be following exactly the same principle by locking in these high future costs for our children and for the country?

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  rose—

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  In the previous debate, we talked about tax, and the funding that the hon. Gentleman mentions was also being used to deal with the tax burden on the high street. Will he explain the Liberal Democrat policy? How would they levy these taxes on social media giants and big banks, and where would that money go? It seems as if they are spending it twice in one afternoon.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Prisoner Releases in Error · Hansard source

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  Last week in Prime Minister’s questions, the right hon. Gentleman said: “Get a grip, man! I know I am the Justice Secretary.” —[ Official Report , 5 November 2025; Vol. 774, c. 902.] I am pleased he knows he is the Justice Secretary, and with that comes leadership, so can he guarantee to the public that he has a grip on the issue of prisoners released by mistake?

• 4 Nov 2025 · Supporting High Streets · Hansard source

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  I previously tried to ask about the Government amendment that is going to be voted on, because it explicitly states that the administrative burdens of regulation for businesses will be cut by 25%. I have two questions: what is that 25% of and how will it be judged, and will it be from before or after the Employment Rights Bill comes into law? I put those questions to the Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Peckham (Miatta Fahnbulleh), but she dodged it and decided to attack the Opposition. I would be grateful if the Minister could tell me, because it is key information for the vote on the amendment.

• 4 Nov 2025 · Supporting High Streets · Hansard source

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  The amendment contains a bit of an oxymoron, because it says that the Government’s plan for small businesses “commits to cut the administrative burden of regulation for businesses by 25%”, but it then goes on to mention the Employment Rights Bill. Will the 25% cut in regulation take place before or after the Employment Rights Bill becomes law, and where will that cut come from? In all the measures that the Minister has talked about, we have not heard about that one.

• 4 Nov 2025 · Supporting High Streets · Hansard source

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  Hospitality was hit particularly hard by that toxic concoction. A UKHospitality survey found that 76% of businesses put up their prices, one third restricted their hours and 63% had to cut their staffing as a result. Is that not the reason why we need this policy to try to improve our high streets?

• 4 Nov 2025 · Supporting High Streets · Hansard source

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  It’s your amendment, Chris! That is what you are voting for.

• 4 Nov 2025 · Welfare Spending · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

• 4 Nov 2025 · Welfare Spending · Hansard source

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  One of the concerns I have when we discuss mental health in this place is the confusion between mental health and mental wellbeing. Everyone has mental wellbeing challenges—we saw that in the pandemic—but not everyone has a mental health issue. It is absolutely normal, for example, to get very anxious going to a driving test; it is not normal to have that response going to the supermarket. Those two things need different responses and different treatment; some might need support and help into the workforce, while medical support is needed for those with serious mental health issues. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is so important that we acknowledge this discrepancy when we debate the issue, to ensure that we get the policies right for both the patient and the taxpayer?

• 4 Nov 2025 · Welfare Spending · Hansard source

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  The Minister mentioned WorkWell, which is a fantastic scheme introduced in 2023 that dealt with 59,000 people through £64 million of Conservative Government investment. I am glad that the Government are taking that forward and looking to expand it. My concern as a GP is about trying to get more people on the premises. Where will the work coaches go when premises do not have the space? That delivery is really important. Will he explain what has happened from the pilots to where we are now and how this will be taken forward?

• 4 Nov 2025 · Welfare Spending · Hansard source

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  It was the Conservative Government who brought in the mental health investment standard to ensure parity for mental health. It is this Government who made the capital cut the hon. Gentleman mentions, and who are not meeting the standard. I am intrigued; why does he think that there is so much difficulty understanding that, and why are the Labour Government making cuts to mental health payments?

• 4 Nov 2025 · Welfare Spending · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

• 30 Oct 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Might we have a debate in Government time on mid-contract mobile phone bill increases, which is a concern I have been raising for a long time? I was pleased to welcome Ofcom’s changes at the start of the year, but it seems that companies such as O2 are finding new ways around them and increasing bills by 40%. That is shocking when done mid-contract, as customers are not aware of the increases. People can cancel their contracts but are not aware of the problem. A debate would allow us to make the public aware that this is going on and look for solutions.

• 30 Oct 2025 · Ageing and End-of-life Care · Hansard source

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  Given the recent National Audit Office report and the fact that the tax increase to national insurance contributions has had the biggest impact on the voluntary sector, has an impact assessment been carried out into how much the cost has gone up for hospices in England to provide their services? If not, will the Minister consider it?

• 30 Oct 2025 · Ageing and End-of-life Care · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

• 30 Oct 2025 · Ageing and End-of-life Care · Hansard source

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  I yet again thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). He should be proud of Mona Shannon, and she will be proud of him not just for raising this topic today, but for all the work he does across this House talking about health, because he is assiduous and dedicated to timely health interventions, and that should be applauded across the House and this nation. I am indebted to him for securing this debate. In the hon. Member’s speech, he mentioned who he had spoken to. I, too, have met the organisations Sue Ryder and Marie Curie, including at party conference, and I have met many other organisations, including LOROS and Rainbows, that cover my area. When I saw the title “Ageing Community” for this debate, I must admit that I thought the hon. Member should have applied for a five-day debate, considering what we could cover. I also notice the expertise in this debate. We have a secondary care surgeon, someone with public health experience at the back and me as a GP. It is turning into a multidisciplinary team, and there is a lot to unpack, whether it is prevention, mitigation, healthy lifestyles or looking at the best examples across the world. I recently travelled to Japan and Korea and saw how they look after their elderly and their approach to the lifestyle of the elderly. There is a lot to be learned out there, as across the world we all grapple with an ageing population. There are other topics that we could talk about, and some were touched on. On social care, it is a shame that there has been a change from cross-party talks to an independent commission. I note that Baroness Casey is being taken back to the Home Office, which means she is spread thinly. There is a wider debate to be had on social care, which is: what do the British public actually want? Often we look at the Scandinavian model, but say that we do not want to pay the taxes for it. We want the household or family approach, like the Bangladeshi or Pakistani model, but we certainly do not actually want grandma or grandpa coming to stay with us and we want to stay working. Therein lies the problem in British culture. We are not 100% sure what we want when we cross over from the NHS into social care, and we are not sure how to provide it. Some hard evidence of policies on an ageing community has been talked about, and unfortunately I have to raise the issue of winter fuel. In the Government’s analysis when they took away winter fuel payments—despite all the warnings—they knew that it would put 50,000 people into absolute poverty and 100,000 people into relative poverty. We can contrast that with the Opposition and our recent announcement on stamp duty. Jackson-Stops estimates that in the first year alone, up to 500,000 people above the age of 55 would consider downsizing because of that policy. I do not call that downsizing, as we heard in the debate on stamp duty—it is right-sizing, because it gives a real chance not only for more families to go upwards, but for people to move into more appropriate accommodation as they age. There is a lot to be said in the debate about an ageing population, as the hon. Member for Shipley (Anna Dixon) pointed out, but I will focus my comments on the three questions that I think I caught from the hon. Member for Strangford: the assessment of the need for a national strategy for palliative care; what the Government are doing to ensure that palliative care is included in neighbourhood health centres; and the progress being made on 24-hour support. I will start with the national strategy and funding, and let us give credit to the Government where it is due. When it comes to children’s hospice funding, they have continued the payment and extended it, which is welcome, although it does not offer enough mitigation for national insurance contributions. The Government will say that when it comes to adult funding, they have given £100 million. That is capital funding, though, and as one hospice worker put it to me, there is no point in having new curtains and a lick of paint if there are no staff. As the Liberal Democrats pointed out, the National Audit Office report on the hospice sector that came out only yesterday states: “DHSC and NHS England do not know what proportion of the total amount of palliative and end-of-life care provided in England is delivered by the independent adult hospice sector, and therefore how reliant they are on the sector”, or what the real impact of Government funding is. It continues: “In 2024-25, 11 independent adult hospices in England reported service reductions or staff redundancies, and other hospices announced plans to reduce services, in response to reduced income or increased costs. Cuts appear to be across all types of services offered by hospices. Most hospices reported the increase in the costs of service delivery within the palliative and end-of-life care sector as being the primary reason for service reductions…Six hospices have been designated by ICBs as ‘commissioner requested services’, a mechanism to forewarn ICBs of potential difficulties with services that, should they discontinue, would have significant impact on the local population”. Hospice UK responded to that, saying: “unfortunately the whole hospice sector is…struggling, just as demand for their services is rising. Surging costs mean 2 in 5 English hospices are planning cuts this year, and 20% ended last year with a deficit of over £1m.” What does that actually look like in real life? In my area, LOROS is facing a deficit of £2 million. It has already had to reduce its in-patient capacity from 31 to 20 beds, and it is reducing its day therapy and cutting its physiotherapy, occupational therapy, social work, chaplaincy and complementary therapies, and closing the volunteer home-visiting service. It is not just my region that is affected: a cursory look at Hansard will show that the Kirkwood hospice in Kirklees has made 19 redundancies; the Ashgate hospice in Derbyshire has 52 jobs at risk, with beds cut from 21 to 15; St Catherine’s hospice in West Sussex is looking at 40 job cuts, with half of its new rooms being mothballed; Weston Hospicecare—highlighted both here today by the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Dan Aldridge), and by others, including my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox) at other times—faces an increased national insurance bill of £139,000; the Arthur Rank hospice in Cambridgeshire is losing £829,000, which is forcing the closure of nine beds, 40% of its capacity; and Marie Curie has pointed out that its national insurance contribution costs have risen by £2.9 million. Through all this, we have still never heard whether the Health team knew that this was going to happen and chose to push it through, or whether it was simply an oversight when it came to challenging the Treasury. Ever since the Budget, we have never heard an answer to that. At the time of the Budget, the CEO of Marie Curie, Matthew Reed, said: “The Health Secretary himself has acknowledged that palliative and end of life care is not good enough, so we are shocked by the lack of measures in the budget to fix it. Palliative care needs are projected to rise by 25% over the next 25 years, around 147,000 more people each year, yet this government lacks a strategy to tackle the magnitude of this challenge.” Have the Government made an assessment of how much the NICs increase has impacted the hospice sector? As has been mentioned, Together for Short Lives estimates that the average hospice is facing a bill of about £133,000. I raised a lot of these questions in a debate in January, and the Minister for Care kindly wrote to me in response. It is not just about the financial side; we are looking at the structural aspect too. He wrote: “As you are aware, integrated care boards…are responsible for the commissioning of palliative and end-of-life care services to meet the needs of their local populations. To support ICBs in this duty, NHS England has published statutory guidance and service specifications. In addition, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence…has published quality standards and guidelines to support commissioners to carry out this duty. While the NICE guidelines are not legally binding, they act as a regulatory benchmark for best practice in palliative and end-of-life care…Whilst the majority of palliative and end-of-life care is provided by NHS staff and services, we recognise the vital part that voluntary sector organisations, including hospices, also play in providing support to people at the end of life and their loved ones.” So there is a grey area about where hospices are covered, and that fits in with the NAO report.

• 30 Oct 2025 · Ageing and End-of-life Care · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady is spot on; that is exactly the point that I was getting at. While there is a legal duty in terms of palliation, what that palliation looks like is important. Her question was also raised by the hon. Member for Strangford, who asked whether it is now time to have a strategy dedicated to palliative care, given the rise in demand. The letter goes on to say: “Charitable hospices are autonomous organisations that provide a range of services that go beyond that which statutory services are legally required to provide. Consequently, the funding arrangements reflect this.” We are in a grey area, and a palliative care strategy could well be a way to unlock this problem. I will be interested to hear what the Government have to say on this issue. However, it is not just about finances and commissioning; it is also about the workforce. That is partly addressed in the letter: “As set out above, we have committed to develop a ten-year plan to deliver an NHS fit for the future. This summer, we will publish a refreshed NHS long-term workforce plan to deliver the transformed health service we will build over the next decade so that patients can be treated on time again.” By my calculations, we are coming up to Halloween and even bonfire night, and we still have not seen a workforce plan. My question to the Government is: when are we likely to see that? That leads me on to my next point: how do the Government intend to ensure that palliative care specialists are included in neighbourhood health centres? The 10-year plan is laudable, and I think there is agreement across the political spectrum on its contents, but the one thing it is missing is a delivery chapter. How are we going to do it? The shift is correct, but we do not know how we are going to get there, so I would be grateful if the Minister could address that. The 10-year plan explicitly talks about public-private partnerships, and there is concern on both sides of the House that we could see PFI mark 2. If Members need to have their memory jogged, private finance initiatives brought in £13 billion to build hospitals and services, but at a cost of £80 billion to taxpayers. Why does this all matter? In my last few moments, I will turn to the final question that was posed by the hon. Member for Strangford, which was about access to 24-hour support. I will quickly read out a couple of comments from one of my constituents, whose husband Mat sadly passed away from a brain tumour. She highlights this issue: “During the day, the support was outstanding because I could call the community nurses and the palliative nurses, and they would always call me straight back. They would visit Mat daily to administer the medications needed in his syringe drivers. They were kind, caring and so supportive to us and our family. The night times were different and frightening. Often during the night when I was trying to get support, he could see how scared and stressed I was, which made him more scared, often telling me he was okay just to try and not make me worry. Every night I used to be thinking what might happen tonight—will Mat have another seizure? Will he be in so much pain again? Will they call me back if I need support? How long will it take to get help to arrive?” Marie Curie points out that only seven of the 42 ICBs in England have a single point of access. I raised this issue with the Minister in a letter in August, and he kindly responded in September. He pointed out that integrated care boards must commission on this basis. There is NICE guidance on “End of life care for adults”, under quality standard 13, and on “End of life care for adults: service delivery”, under NICE guideline 142, which talks about the fact that there should be some form of 24-hour care, but at no point did the letter address the issue of the phoneline. When I asked the Department about data, I was told in a letter: “Regarding data about palliative care helplines, such as average waiting/response times, the Department does not collect or hold this information.” Will the Minister look at that and consider whether the Department should hold such information? The letter went on to say: “We recognise that more could be done to support the palliative and end-of-life care sector. I have tasked officials within the Department and at NHS England to look at how improving the access, quality and sustainability of all-age palliative and end-of-life care to ensure that their proposals are in line with the ten-year plan.” I would be grateful if the Minister could ask the Minister responsible whether there is indeed an update and what that looks like. At the end of the day, we are concerned not necessarily about inputs, but much more about outputs. We know that death is certain for us all; only our willingness to face it seems optional. This is very much a British mentality, and I believe we need to change that when it comes to talking about death and our mortality. We need to speak more openly and candidly about what an ageing population looks like, for that is what we are. That is why the hon. Member for Strangford brought forward this debate, and he reminds us that we chase the days ahead while never quite noticing how swiftly they turn into years behind us. That leads me to reflect on the fact that, as politicians and as a society, we build a world to live longer, yet we all too easily forget to ask: how do we want to grow old?