Category: Speeches

  • Stuart Andrew – 2026 Speech on Nottingham Maternity and Neonatal Services

    Stuart Andrew – 2026 Speech on Nottingham Maternity and Neonatal Services

    The speech made by Stuart Andrew, the Shadow Health Secretary, in the House of Commons on 24 June 2026.

    I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement and Donna Ockenden and her team for the care and compassion with which they conducted the review. We had a meeting with her yesterday, and I have to say that it was probably one of the most difficult meetings that I have ever had. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh). I can see how deeply personal and painful this is, and I admire her and all her colleagues from the region at what must be a very difficult moment.

    Let me say from the outset that I want to be constructive in opposition when it comes to this issue. We need to work together; we have to see improvements. I begin with the women, babies, fathers, partners and families whose lives sit behind the review’s findings. To them, we owe a profound apology for failing them when a family should feel safest, most supported and most able to trust the care around them. For too many, that trust was broken; women were not listened to, families were not believed and warning signs were missed. Some suffered the deepest lost, others were left physically unsafe and others psychologically scarred. No statement can repair that pain, but it can mark the point at which testimony becomes responsibility, and responsibility becomes action.

    The painful truth is not only that the failings occurred but that the themes are familiar: women not heard, families dismissed, poor communication, missed deterioration, weak governance and people unable to speak up. Maternity and neonatal safety has challenged Governments of both parties, but it would be wrong to let that history soften the urgency. Women and families are tired of telling their story, hearing promises and seeing the same themes return. The question is whether the system will move because of this review, and so I put three tests to the Secretary of State.

    The first is the listening test. Women and families were not consistently listened to. Their concerns were too often dismissed or not acted upon. That is not a soft issue; it is a safety issue. How will the Government embed listening as a clinical discipline? How will trusts measure whether women feel heard? Will complaints and near misses be treated as information for improvement?

    The second is the culture test. The review describes bullying, hierarchy and poor psychological safety affecting staff’s decisions and willingness to escalate. I pay tribute to those who were brave enough to do so. In maternity and neonatal care, minutes matter. If staff cannot challenge, safety is weakened. Staff cannot provide the care they want to if they are exhausted or unsupported, or if hierarchy matters more than candour. So I ask: how will boards be held accountable for that ward culture?

    The third test is the delivery test. Harm rarely followed one error; it usually followed a chain of poor communication, weak risk assessment, delayed escalation, staff pressure, inadequate governance and missed learning. The response cannot be a single announcement. It must be accompanied by a delivery plan, so will the Secretary of State publish a national implementation plan with named accountability, delivery dates and regular updates to this House? That plan must address the workforce so that staff have the support and information they need to fulfil their roles to the ability they wish.

    That plan must design services for today and the future, not rely on assumptions from the past. Women are having children older, pregnancies are more complex and more women are entering pregnancy with pre-existing conditions, previous loss, fertility treatment, mental health needs or circumstances shaping care. That means a need for practical, personalised care, informed choice and each woman being treated as a whole. The review also requires us to confront inequalities. The safety of a patient must not depend on confidence, class, ethnicity, language or an ability to fight through the system. The issue with our mortuaries is also really shocking. The horror stories that we have heard must never happen again. Is the Secretary of State working with colleagues in the Department of Justice to see what more needs to be done to overhaul this area?

    Finally, we must recognise the psychological harm caused through silence, poor communication, lack of bereavement support and the battle for honesty. We know that our mortuaries need to have the highest standards. Compassion after harm is not a courtesy; it is a duty. Trust is rebuilt when women feel the difference in the room, when words change decisions, when staff speak without fear, when risk is escalated in time and when boards are judged by results. Where the Government act to improve safety, accountability, staffing and family voice, they will have our support so that we can see this through together. Where they do not, they will face our scrutiny. This review began with families who had to fight to be heard. The task now is to ensure that no family has to fight so hard again.

  • James Murray – 2026 Statement on Nottingham Maternity and Neonatal Services

    James Murray – 2026 Statement on Nottingham Maternity and Neonatal Services

    The statement made by James Murray, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, in the House of Commons on 24 June 2026.

    With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will make a statement on the independent review of maternity services at Nottingham University hospitals NHS trust.

    Donna Ockenden’s review is the largest into a maternity service in the history of the NHS. The nature and sheer scale of the failings it exposes are horrific. It uncovers dangerously and tragically deficient care at almost every turn. Its findings and conclusions are chilling.

    The report covers 13 years, including accounts from 838 members of staff and, crucially, the experiences of 2,536 affected families. I met a small number of those affected families last week, and I felt numb after hearing the depth of their pain. I felt even more numb when I considered how many families not in the room went through such trauma too, and the forgotten children who survived but live every day with the consequences of maternity care failings.

    I felt devastated that so many women and babies, as well as their fathers and other family members, had suffered injury, death and lasting trauma while under the care of the NHS. Now having met the families, and having seen the report, I feel appalled by the neglect, incompetence, racism, discrimination, contempt and harassment that so many suffered. I feel heartbroken to know that, so many times, when they tried to raise the alarm about their care, they were ignored, sneered at, disbelieved, blamed and lied to. How on earth could this have happened? There is no single answer, but Donna Ockenden shines a light on what was going on.

    First and foremost, women were not listened to. Donna Ockenden says that the staff shortages and lack of training in Nottingham were among the worst she has ever come across. Bullying by doctors and senior midwives was rife, which meant that staff who tried to speak up were intimidated and ridiculed. There was a culture of cover-up at the highest levels of the trust, and there were ineffective and inadequate responses from regulators.

    Perhaps most damning of all, for years the trust ignored evidence of clinical and cultural flaws in both internal and external reviews that it had itself ordered. When I met Donna Ockenden last week, she told me that those inquiries were “diligent” and of “good quality” but that they were effectively swept under the carpet by the board. That refusal to act is unforgivable.

    Donna Ockenden and her team deserve huge credit for their forensic and compassionate approach, as does my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh), herself a harmed mother, as well as Members for neighbouring constituencies who have walked side by side with their constituents through years of anguish and struggle.

    However, the driving force behind the review has been the affected families themselves. They have demonstrated more patience, more courage and more tenacity than one might imagine is possible from those dealing with broken hearts that will never mend. Though each of their experiences is unique, one feature is common: at the very moment when they were at their most vulnerable, they placed themselves and the lives of their unborn babies in the hands of the NHS—and the NHS failed them catastrophically.

    To all those who have suffered so appallingly, I say today, on behalf of the NHS: I am sorry. I am sorry not just for the failures, or the heartless and undignified treatment, but because your cries of concern went unheard for too long—and so the Government will act. We will act by taking immediate steps, including to expand Martha’s rule to all maternity and neonatal settings so that parents can demand a second opinion if they feel their concerns are being ignored.

    I know that some people may want me to accept all the review’s recommendations today, but in the past too many recommendations have been accepted and then have sat on a shelf gathering dust, and we have seen more deaths and more suffering. I do not want to let down the families I met in Nottingham, or bereaved parents anywhere else in the country. I want to use the national maternity and neonatal taskforce, which I chair, to create a comprehensive action plan to be published by the end of this year that will address all the national-level recommendations from this review and others. I am confident that work will be welcomed by all those midwives, obstetricians, paediatricians and other healthcare workers who strive every day to make sure that babies are born safely and that women receive outstanding levels of care.

    It is clear that, in case after case, families felt that regulators, including the General Medical Council, the Nursing and Midwifery Council and the Care Quality Commission, were more concerned with protecting clinicians than with providing accountability. That is damning and that is wrong. As one grieving mother told me:

    “They put the fox in charge of the hen house.”

    Clinicians and trust leaders must know that their behaviour will be properly scrutinised and that their actions will have consequences. We must meet the test of the Nottingham victim who told me last week that “accountability drives action”.

    We are making changes to the CQC, one of which is to extend the cut-off period to initiate proceedings from three to five years so there is more time for families to bring cases. I will also call in the chair and chief executive of the GMC to hear directly their account of the failures at NUH. Let me be clear: if their response falls short, things will change at the GMC.

    From speaking to families in Nottingham, I know that there is real and understandable anger that some leaders and clinicians at the centre of this review were able to avoid giving evidence. Today, I make a commitment that, when passed, we will use the Hillsborough law’s duty of candour to ensure that witnesses in upcoming reviews of maternity service failures, including those in Leeds and Sussex, can be forced to provide evidence. That change will make sure no one is able to refuse to co-operate in the search for accountability and justice ever again.

    There is so much in the stories of the families in Nottingham that is shocking and heartbreaking, but the way the bodies of their loved ones were handled by hospital mortuary services revealed a level of disrespect and a lack of humanity that—I will be honest—left me utterly aghast. The details are disturbing, but they need to be heard to understand the gravity of what families were confronted with: deceased babies referred to as a “specimen” or “sample”; a baby placed into a mortuary space already occupied by an unknown and unrelated adult; a baby disposed of as clinical waste against the express wishes of their parents; and a baby kept in a domestic fridge in a bereavement room. The emotional and psychological effect of those dehumanising failures was to layer the most profound disrespect on the most unbearable distress. There is also evidence that the trust actively decided not to report failings in mortuary care to families.

    As hon. Members will know, there is an active police investigation and arrests have been made, which limits what I can say. As a start, however, I have asked NHS England to write to trusts to make sure these appalling experiences are not happening elsewhere in the NHS. I confirm today that the Human Tissue Authority will require all mortuaries to review internal records going back 10 years to ensure all incidents have been logged and reported. I have instructed them to report the findings directly to me by 16 October.

    When I met the Nottingham families last week, they also raised with me the issue around what are known as secondary victims. In maternity settings, fathers, partners and others are actively encouraged to be present to support mothers through labour and delivery. However, the law does not allow them to bring their own claims for the psychiatric illness suffered as a direct result of witnessing their partner or baby suffer injury or die. I have therefore asked David Lock KC to work with my officials to consider that important issue as part of his wider work on clinical negligence.

    Donna Ockenden acknowledges that NUH has not waited for her findings to be published to start making improvements. I will speak to the chief executive next week to interrogate the trust’s response and make sure there is a proper plan in place for implementing the recommendations speedily and effectively. But there is a long road ahead before NUH fully addresses all the issues and before it can possibly regain the full trust and confidence of the communities it serves.

    I close where I began: with the families. Nothing can make up for what they have gone through, but this report is a tribute to their resilience and tenacity. I say to them directly: you had to drive this for so long, but you are no longer driving this alone. We are with you and we will not stop until you have the accountability and the justice you deserve. I commend this statement to the House.

  • Yvette Cooper – 2026 Statement on Government Support for Gaza Departures

    Yvette Cooper – 2026 Statement on Government Support for Gaza Departures

    The statement made by Yvette Cooper, the Foreign Secretary, in the House of Commons on 24 June 2026.

    Today, with the agreement of the Secretary of State for Education, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the Secretary of State for the Home Department and the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, I am making the following statement.

    The humanitarian situation in Gaza remains deeply concerning. The Government are committed to providing practical support to those most affected by the conflict and to contributing to the longer term recovery of Palestinian society.

    Student departures

    The UK Government have confirmed renewed support for high-achieving students from Gaza to take up fully funded scholarships at UK universities for the 2026-27 academic year.

    This will build on support already provided by the Government in the current academic year, through which we have enabled over 100 students from Gaza to travel to the UK to pursue their studies. The Government will continue to prioritise students who hold fully funded and verifiable scholarships, and who meet the requirements of the immigration rules.

    This targeted approach ensures that students supported will have the financial means to study and live in the UK. Eligible dependants will be supported in line with the immigration rules.

    This also includes eligible Chevening scholars, who will be supported to take up their places at UK universities where possible, recognising their leadership potential and the important role they can play in the future of Palestinian society.

    The Government will work closely with devolved Governments, universities, international partners and relevant authorities to facilitate departures and onward travel. However, departures from Gaza remain highly complex and dependent on factors outside the UK Government’s control. As such, travel and timelines cannot be guaranteed.

    All individuals travelling to the UK under this route will be subject to robust security and immigration checks, including the provision of biometric data prior to travel.

    This programme reflects the UK’s enduring commitment to education as a driver of opportunity, stability and future leadership, and forms part of broader efforts to support the development of a future Palestinian state.

    Medical evacuations (MedEvac)

    The Government have also confirmed the resumption of UK-supported medical evacuations of critically ill and injured children and their immediate families from Gaza, following a pause due to the regional conflict.

    In 2025, a cross-Government effort supported the evacuation of 50 children, alongside their immediate family members, to receive specialist treatment in NHS hospitals across the United Kingdom. Building on this, the Government will now facilitate further evacuations for those identified as in need of urgent medical care.

    Patients will be identified through established processes, including collaboration with the World Health Organisation to match children with specialist care teams within the NHS.

    Recognising the severe degradation of healthcare provision in Gaza, this programme enables access to specialist treatment that is not currently available locally. It also reflects the compassion and expertise of the NHS in supporting some of the most vulnerable children affected by the conflict.

    Individuals arriving under this scheme will be granted temporary permission to stay in the UK, including access to appropriate healthcare and support. All arrivals will be subject to stringent security screening, including biometric checks, in line with standard requirements to protect the public.

    Conclusion

    Together, these measures demonstrate the Government’s continued commitment to providing immediate humanitarian assistance, while supporting the longer-term resilience and recovery of Palestinian society through education and healthcare.

    A policy statement setting out more details will shortly be published on gov.uk. The Government will keep these arrangements under close review in light of ongoing developments.

  • Dan Jarvis – 2026 Comments on Commando Force

    Dan Jarvis – 2026 Comments on Commando Force

    The comments made by Dan Jarvis, the Defence Secretary, on 28 June 2026.

    Our elite Commando Force is respected around the world, conducting operations that help to keep the nation and our allies safe.  

    We’re investing in new lethal strike drones, high-speed boats and amphibious transport ships to give our Commandos the equipment they need to stay ahead of adversaries and defend us.  

    The Defence Investment Plan will prioritise getting the latest kit into the hands of our frontline forces, so they can continue their vital work in an increasingly dangerous world.

  • Dan Jarvis – 2026 Comments on Armed Forces Day

    Dan Jarvis – 2026 Comments on Armed Forces Day

    The comments made by Dan Jarvis, the Secretary of State for Defence, on 27 June 2026.

    Armed Forces Day is an extraordinary opportunity for our nation to come together to thank the people who keep this country safe, and all those who support them.

    It’s an honour to join the celebrations in Aldershot alongside thousands of people to pay tribute to the exceptional courage and dedication of all our personnel.

    Southport already hosts the largest Armed Forces event in their region, and as community that knows about resilience and coming together, it is fitting that they will host the 2027 national day. I congratulate all those involved in the successful bid.

  • James Murray – 2026 Comments on Obesity

    James Murray – 2026 Comments on Obesity

    The comments made by James Murray, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, on 27 June 2026.

    Obesity is an epidemic and we need bold action to end it now. These innovative projects will bring together the NHS, local partners and industry to test new ways of delivering obesity care that uses the latest technology and is closer to people’s homes.  

    What we learn from these projects has the potential to help people across the country live healthier lives, underlining this government’s commitment to deliver the 10-Year Health Plan and shift healthcare from treatment to prevention and reduce long-term pressure on vital NHS services.

  • Liz Kendall – 2026 Comments on Obesity

    Liz Kendall – 2026 Comments on Obesity

    The comments made by Liz Kendall, the Science Secretary, on 27 June 2026.

    Almost 1 in 3 adults in this country are living with obesity – that’s millions of people who deserve real support. 

    These pioneering projects will meet people where they are – whether that is through a pharmacy round the corner, an app on their phone, or support in their own language. For a parent trying to give their child the best start, or someone who has struggled to access help for years, that can make all the difference.  

    The evidence these projects generate will help remove the barriers that have stopped too many people getting they help they need, shaping better health services in the future for every one of us.

  • Martin McCluskey – 2026 Speech at the Housing 2026 Conference

    Martin McCluskey – 2026 Speech at the Housing 2026 Conference

    The speech made by Martin McCluskey, the Minister for Energy Consumers, in Manchester on 25 June 2026.

    Good afternoon everyone, and given the week that we’ve just had, I’m sure this is going to be maybe the second most exciting thing to come out of Manchester in the past 7 days.

    Can I just say how good it is to be here, not just because it’s a couple of degrees cooler here than it is in London, but also because I truly believe in the power of this sector to deliver, and the value that you add to people’s lives.

    I grew up in a 4 in a block council flat in the area that I represent in parliament, and that shaped not only my life but also the life of my parents and grandparents who moved this block in the 1940s.

    That’s 3 generations, nearly 70 years under the same roof in Greenock, which is near Glasgow.

    So I know what it means to grow up in a home that gives you the best start in life.

    Before I became an MP I was a local councillor dealing with some of the issues that I know so many of you in this room today are grappling with poverty, deprivation, and many other issues that you see every single day.

    I’ve seen how hard it is for people at the moment especially to haul themselves up when their life is built on weak foundations, when they grow up in fuel poverty and they don’t have a secure, comfortable home to be the anchor in their life.

    So now as minister in this job, dealing not just with the home retrofit, social housing, energy efficiency, but also energy prices, my mission is to get more of what I had to people across the country, to finally address one of the greatest structural challenges we face in this country, the state of our housing stock.

    And you all know the statistics, we have some of the oldest homes in Europe, 40% of them were built before World War 2.

    That’s millions of people, many of whom live in social housing, who are growing up in old, cold, damp, leaking homes, which, because they’re overwhelmingly heated by gas, leave them especially vulnerable to the energy price shock we’ve seen in recent years.

    The cost of energy bills combined with the state of our housing stock traps too many people in a miserable cycle of energy debt and fuel poverty, wasting their money on inefficiently heated homes, unable to invest in the upgrades that will bring them some sense of relief.

    That’s why it’s our duty as a government to address this.

    I know the world’s eyes have been drawn to Westminster in recent days, but that doesn’t change the fact that across the country there are thousands and thousands of people living in fuel poverty, children growing up sick, living in constant fear of rising films, incubating disease caused by constant exposure to damp and mould.

    It shouldn’t have taken the death of Awaab Ishak, who died aged 2 in 2020 due to the effects of terrible mould exposure, to show just how urgent this crisis is.

    And like I promised you, whatever happens in government in the weeks ahead, addressing this will continue to be our work.

    We want to give people the best possible start in life.

    We want to give people pride, comfort and dignity in their homes.

    We want children to stop coming into school telling their teachers about being cold at home, and we want to protect people from the effects of wars that weren’t our choice, that are happening half a world away.

    And this government has acted over the past 2 years, a new Decent Homes Standard to deliver warmer, healthier homes with lower bills.

    Awaab’s Law, which has introduced strict time-bound requirements for social landlords to address emergency hazards and of course the Renters Rights Act, which carries these reforms into the private rented sector.

    And I’m proud that in the department I’m part of in Energy Security and Net Zero, we’ve introduced other measures to help some of the most vulnerable people in our country.

    We’ve expanded the £150 warm home discount to over 6 million families every winter into the next decade.

    We’ve stepped in to help heating oil customers at the start of the war in Iran and we’re preparing for all contingencies this autumn and winter to deal with the increasing cost of energy bills.

    But tackling these issues isn’t just about providing immediate cash support, though that is incredibly important, it’s also about the structural change that we need to see in our energy system and our housing system.

    And after decades of inertia in this country that requires massive investment, it requires big government, it requires interventionist government to do what needs to be done.

    And that’s where the Warm Homes Plan that we launched earlier in the year comes in.

    It’s the biggest upgrade to our nation’s housing stock in history.

    It’s £15 billion for insulation, solar panels, batteries, heat pumps, a whole range of technologies that can save families hundreds of pounds off their bills and give them more control over their energy.

    A central part of our mission is to ensure that we decide the price of our energy here at home, that our energy system is based on clean home-grown power that we control, and it will bring clean power into people’s homes so that they are the first to see the benefits.

    I just want to take some time today to make 3 points about the Warm Homes Plan.

    Firstly, this is unapologetically a social justice project.

    It’s a project to tackle poverty at its root cause, with £5 billion of that support going directly to those on low incomes in fuel poverty.

    People who won’t have to pay a penny for the home upgrades that will change their lives and break the vicious cycle that they’re trapped in.

    Second, if we are to meet the target of upgrading 5 million homes by 2030, we have to ensure that absolutely everyone can benefit from upgrades and are motivated to do so.

    To help households tackle the upfront costs of upgrades, the new Warm Homes Fund will see £1.7 billion allocated to low-and zero-interest loans.

    We’ve also doubled funding for the Boiler Upgrade Scheme and in response to the crisis in the Middle East, increased the grant to £9,000 for those currently using heating oil.

    But success will hinge on the confidence and trust of consumers, which is why the new Warm Homes Agency that we’re proposing will simplify the scheme administration and help households access trusted high-quality advice and routes to funding.

    We’re also overhauling the consumer protection landscape to rebuild the trust in the sector following the failures of ECO4 and GBIS.

    Third thing, we need to make sure that higher standards and high standards are maintained, that future generations will not have to go through and do this again.

    So we’re bringing in higher minimum energy efficiency standards with EPC C for rented homes by 2030 and EPC B for non-domestic buildings by 2031.

    And as well as upgrading existing homes, ensuring that every new home we build sets the example for where we want to be with our future home standards so that solar panels, clean heating and proper insulation are the new normal in homes that we build over the coming years.

    I know from working in devolved governments and from my role before being an MP as local councillor that this can’t be a Whitehall knows best agenda, this cannot be a top-down programme, and that’s why everything that we’re doing as part of the warm homes plan will be delivered alongside local government.

    Nearly £1.3 billion of grant funding has been allocated already to the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund Wave 3 and up to 295 billion pounds of additional funding will be available through the fund in 2026/2027 for existing Wave 3 grant recipients and some of the mayoral strategic authorities.

    Now from 2028 we plan to consolidate and integrate these schemes into a single scheme for low-income households still focused on an area-based delivery.

    And we know we can only achieve our mission if we take homeowners, landlords and businesses with us and that they trust that upgrading their buildings is an attractive and viable option and the local problems need local solutions.

    It’s been my pleasure in this job to meet people who have benefited from so many of these solutions, and at the start of doing this job I met someone called Jason in Bristol who had upgraded his home, who took me into his kitchen and insisted on showing me the spreadsheet of how much he was benefiting from having a heat pump and solar panels in his home all funded through local grant provided through WECA.

    And my mind often goes back to Jason when I am thinking about the work that we are doing, because his feeling of pride in his home is what I want to replicate up and down the country and the work that we are doing.

    The action we are taking will lift up to a million households out of fuel poverty by 2030 and I think that’s the future that all of us in this room want to see.

    A future where housing is no longer a luxury to live in and to have some disposable income after paying your energy bills each month to give people pride and dignity in their homes again, and in their communities and to stop tragedies like some of the tragedies we’ve seen over recent years from happening again.

    And I don’t think this is too much to ask if we work together on what we are trying to achieve, and in the wake of what we’ve seen in the Middle East during the Iran crisis I think you can see the demand that exists for these kind of changes.

    Record levels of inquiries about heat pumps, solar panels and EVs has shown the appetite that there is out there for clean technology, but we need to be able to meet it, and we need to be able to do that work together.

    So we absolutely need all of you in this room and so it’s my pleasure once again to be here today and to be able to take your questions.

    This is a partnership that can really deliver generational change in housing across the country so as I always say at these events, we can only do that with people in this room, challenging us, ensuring that we are going as far as we possibly can.

    And keep telling us what we need in the sector, what we need to be able to do more and what we need from our officials in the department to be able to do more, and I’m sure that together we can ensure as many people as possible get the pride and dignity from our home that’s fit for the future.

    Thank you.

  • Yvette Cooper – 2026 Comments on Ukraine Recovery Fund

    Yvette Cooper – 2026 Comments on Ukraine Recovery Fund

    The comments made by Yvette Cooper, the Foreign Secretary, on 25 June 2026.

    The UK stands firmly with Ukraine, not only in its fight for freedom today, but in ensuring it has the strength to rebuild for the future – that is essential for the long-term deterrence of Russian aggression. 

    A just and lasting peace is urgent and non-negotiable. But Ukraine needs long-term support both to get through the conflict and to rebuild in future. That is why at this year’s Ukraine Recovery Conference, we are announcing a multi-million pound package to power Ukraine’s homes and critical infrastructure, back its businesses and drive improvements in education and justice. 

    This crucial investment will ensure the UK is also in close partnership with Ukraine as they look towards future growth, involving British and Ukrainian businesses and delivering long-term benefits for both our economies.

  • Keir Starmer – 2026 Comments at the E5 Summit

    Keir Starmer – 2026 Comments at the E5 Summit

    The statement made by Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, on 24 June 2026.

    Thank you, Friedrich.

    It’s a real pleasure to be here with all of you and thank you so much for your kind words, it has been my privilege to work with you on these really important issues and I am proud of the work we have done over the last two years to rebuild our relationship with our allies in Europe and around the world.

    I’m proud that Britain is standing up once again for decency, respect, and the rule of law.

    Last week at the G7, and thank you again Emmanuel for hosting a successful G7, we pledged our unwavering support to Ukraine and we’ve been able to echo that here today – our determination to capitalise on Ukraine’s newfound momentum.

    They are increasingly able to push Russia back on the battlefield. That’s very much been the story of this year. There are clear signs that as Russia loses ground and their economy struggles, the mood in Moscow is turning against Putin’s war.

    So this is a really important moment to ramp up the pressure on their economy with more sanctions and providing Ukraine with more military support.

    We are committed to driving this forward and that this should be the first item on the agenda at the NATO summit in a couple of weeks time.

    The second key issue at the summit must be building a more European NATO.

    We’ve been making this argument for some time but now is the time at this summit to really push this argument forward.

    Our aim together should be to lead a decisive strengthening of European leadership and sovereign capabilities, working of course in full coordination with the United States.

    Because we know that is what it will take to keep our countries safe, deter those who would do us harm and preserve the most successful military alliance in history.

    That is the big strategic challenge of the moment in the face of a clear and growing threats that we face and we are all playing our full part.

    The UK is ready to implement the largest increase in defence funding since the cold war. We’ve already taken steps last year to that end and we’ll take further steps and we’re going further, working to deliver our defence investment plan ahead of the NATO summit, not just to increase how much we spend on defence but to completely overhaul how we spend it to learn the lessons of Ukraine and to ensure that we’re ready to meet the threats of today and of tomorrow.

    And look, one final point, it is clear that this renewal of European defence must be fuelled by a generational shift in European industrial cooperation.

    The reality of modern warfare is that as well as outmanoeuvring the enemy, we must be able to out-innovate and out-produce them as well.

    More than ever, economic and technological power is the basis for military power and so we must harness this moment to boost our cooperation and at the same time boost jobs, growth and opportunity for all of our people for many years to come.

    Thank you.