The comments made by Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, on 17 June 2026.
Those who seek to evade our sanctions regime and support Putin’s cronies should be in no doubt, we will come after you.
It is vital we support Ukraine and continue to ramp up pressure on Russia, as every pound flowing into Putin’s war chest is being used to fuel conflict in Europe and undermine our security.
The speech made by Richard Foord, the Liberal Democrat MP for Honiton and Sidmouth, in Westminster Hall on 16 June 2026.
It is an honour to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Jeremy. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) for providing us with this opportunity to talk about community hospitals. In particular, I pay tribute to the fantastic NHS staff who work across Devon. They pull off an incredible level of service in spite of the constraints they are working under.
In my constituency, we have five community hospitals across Axminster, Honiton, Ottery St Mary, Seaton and Sidmouth. Years ago, they all provided in-patient beds, minor injuries units and rehabilitation services, acting as halfway houses after discharge from the acute hospital, which for us was the Royal Devon and Exeter hospital, and before home. They also provided support after operations, cared for the elderly and freed up beds in the RD&E and other acute hospitals.
Today, much of that capacity has been stripped away. Of those five community hospitals, only Sidmouth retains in-patient beds—and a mere 25 at that. For a region of 150,000 people dealing with constant discharge pressure from Exeter, that is plainly insufficient. Honiton is the only one of the five that still has a minor injuries unit. I wrote to the new interim cluster chief exec for NHS Cornwall and NHS Devon two months ago to demand assurance that our community assets and services would remain safe from closures; it concerns me that, two months later, I have not had a reply.
I ask Members to imagine being an elderly resident in Axminster faced with a medical emergency. A constituent who came to see me at a surgery in Axminster was dreadfully worried about the discharge of her husband from the acute hospital, the RD&E, because she was so frail and elderly that she felt unable to look after her frail and elderly husband. Apart from anything else, she was absolutely distraught with worry about not being able to look after him. The nearest major hospital from Axminster is an hour away at Exeter, and the journey there through the countryside is not just inconvenient for people at that stage of life; it is unmanageable.
In preparation for this debate, I spoke with the president of the Community Hospitals Association, Dr David Seamark. David is not only president of the CHA but a constituent and a GP based in Honiton. He told me that community hospitals were designed precisely to face down these sorts of challenges. Community hospitals are embedded in rural and coastal areas, which is particularly good for older and more vulnerable populations. Across the UK, there are around 500 community hospitals, and many of them are located in these sorts of places, outside of cities and where access to centralised care is far more difficult.
This is not the stuff of romance. These are not leftover legacies from a bygone era, and they are not historical; they are well placed assets for this era. They are adaptable, thanks to their autonomy, and they are capable of delivering wide-ranging, complex medical services. Our east Devon hospitals perform X-rays, surgeries and diagnostics. Despite losing their in-patient beds 10 years ago, they remain vital hubs of care for the local community.
We have seen proposals to close wings and services, and even to demolish facilities, as was the case in Seaton, where the local community understood what was at stake. It was impressive to hear about the petition that my hon. Friend the Member for South Cotswolds put together, which so many people signed in support of her community hospital. In Seaton, more than 9,000 people signed a petition to retain the community hospital there, and we had a public meeting in Colyford where people queued out the door to show their support.
These are cherished institutions, built on decades of trust and born from community investment. The chief medical officer, Professor Sir Chris Whitty, agreed when he spoke at the Community Hospitals Association’s annual conference last month. He echoed the words from his 2023 annual report, “Health in an Ageing Society”, which is well worth going back to, and said that ageing and the resulting increased frailty were key issues for the future of UK healthcare. He argued that community hospitals are in just the right places to be on the frontline and tackle this issue for generations to come in our rural and coastal communities, and described community hospitals as
“an essential part of provision for both inpatient and outpatient care for many citizens in England and the wider UK.”
That clashes with the Government’s insistence that centralisation and the creation of large neighbourhood health centres will deliver progress and better outcomes. Neighbourhood health hubs are being exposed as a contradiction in terms. They misunderstand both geography and demography: geography, because they do not fit rural and coastal areas and suck resources into the nearby conurbations, and demography because, if the challenge facing our health service is an ageing population, solutions must be about proximity, accessibility and the continuity of care.
The choice is plain for all to see: do we continue down this path of centralisation—closing, cutting and consolidating—or do we build on what we already have and cherish? When Seaton hospital was built in the 1980s, people were told that they should be a brick and buy a brick. We need to build on that legacy. Community hospitals should not be sidelined; they should be strengthened. They should be the backbone of genuine neighbourhood healthcare, not displaced by some remote health hub that, in an Orwellian turn of phrase, is moved further away and deemed to be a “neighbourhood health hub”. If the Government are serious about delivering care closer to home, supporting our ageing population and relieving pressure on our hospitals, they must invest in, not abandon, our community hospitals.
The speech made by Katrina Murray, the Labour MP for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch, in Westminster Hall on 16 June 2026.
I commend the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) for securing this debate and for giving me the opportunity to talk about my experiences of the benefits and challenges of community and cottage hospitals. I do so in the knowledge that healthcare in Scotland is devolved and so is not under the purview of my hon. Friend the Minister.
Prior to my election to this place, I spent nearly 23 years working with volunteers in the health services in Lanarkshire, a job that was highly pressured, but also highly rewarding. An absolute highlight of my day or week was visiting the volunteers in either Kello hospital in Biggar, in the constituency of the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell), or Kilsyth Victoria Memorial cottage hospital, in my constituency. This debate is timely, because it was in the day room at Kilsyth Victoria that I heard the horrific news of the murder of Jo Cox, 10 years ago today. Attempting to stay professional and encourage two new teenaged volunteers to have conversations with patients while trying to digest what I saw on the large screen less than 10 feet away will stay with me forever. I send my love to Jo’s family today.
Like many cottage hospitals, Kilsyth Victoria dates from before the NHS was created. In our case, the hospital was created by the local miners as a miners’ hospital in 1903; the part of the hospital that can be seen from the road dates back to that time. The main patient areas are within a more modern extension—I say “more modern”, but it is still older than me. The hospital now comprises a day room, a dining room where all patient who are able can have meals together, and a range of two-bedded and four-bedded bays, as was standard at a time when patients were not used to the space or the individual and ensuite rooms that are considered the norm and expectation today. The minor injuries unit disappeared in the days before covid, and the physiotherapy and out-patient clinics have been moved to the health centre.
In the brief time that I have, I want to talk about how the benefits of hospital services in the heart of communities, which are often remote from big district general hospitals, are outweighed by the considerable challenges that they face. As times have changed, our expectations of healthcare have changed. When I started working at Kilsyth cottage hospital, the patients were all registered with Kilsyth general practitioners. It was unusual for patients not to be from Kilsyth; if they were not, they were from the neighbouring villages, Croy, Queenzieburn or Banton. The GPs knew the patients, and they provided medical care for the hospital. The staff were all generally local people themselves. Patients were admitted for intermediate, respite and end-of-life care.
My experience is that where hospitals have closed, it is because GP cover has been withdrawn. The GPs in Kilsyth still provide the medical care, but in reality it is nurse-led care, with medical cover on the end of a telephone line or a video call, and which presumes good technological connections in a former mining village.
Do not get me wrong: I am a big fan of nurse-led care. Registered nurses who work in community hospitals are highly skilled in the types of care that these patients need. It is heavy work, as patients need a lot of physical care, but it can also be isolating. On a night shift, there might be only one registered nurse in the hospital, which means no break on a 12-hour shift and, with many of these hospitals are miles away from assistance, they might not be able to get help from a registered nurse on another ward.
Patients are more likely to have a dementia diagnosis than 20 years ago, which means that the type of care provided has changed. It was in these hospitals that I learned how important it is to look at a patient’s feet: if they were wearing slippers, it probably meant that they were not meant to have their hat, coat and handbag and be on their way out of the door. Even having barriers with entrance codes did not manage to stop people, because they were all from the village, so they knew what the codes were—they did not forget those.
It can be difficult to recruit staff, who often have to travel long distances, because there is a lack of understanding of how rewarding it is to work in a cottage hospital in the middle of the community. However, what these hospitals provide is the epitome of care in the community. For those who are unable to look after themselves in their own home and who might be thinking about what it means to go into long-stay care or to move into a care home, community hospitals provide that transitional step. They are much more than buildings; they meet a need at a difficult time in people’s lives, and they are absolutely vital.
The speech made by Roz Savage, the Liberal Democrat MP for South Cotswolds, in Westminster Hall on 16 June 2026.
I beg to move,
That this House has considered community hospitals.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy, and I am grateful to have secured this debate. I want to begin by thanking Jo Posnette and Dr Helen Tucker from the Community Hospitals Association, who have been an enormous help in preparing for the debate. I welcome Jo, who is in the Gallery.
Last year, according to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, around 15,860 patients died in NHS A&E departments in England while waiting for care that could have saved them. That is roughly 1,300 people every month—nearly 10 times the figure recorded in 2015. Every week, more than 300 people died a preventable death simply because they waited too long. Those numbers are shocking, but behind every number there is a real-life tragedy. Let us remember that human aspect throughout the debate.
I am sure I do not need to point out to colleagues that in rural areas the situation is often even more challenging. The ambulance takes longer to reach people, the journey to A&E is longer and, when services at a community hospital have been reduced to a limited number, as is currently happening in my constituency, there might be no early safety net to catch the patient before a crisis becomes a catastrophe.
Manuela Perteghella (Stratford-on-Avon) (LD)
I thank my hon. Friend for her passionate speech about community hospitals. In my constituency we have a fantastic community hospital with a minor injuries unit, but the unit is open only on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, with reduced hours. It could treat thousands more patients each year. Does my hon. Friend agree that opening minor injuries units for extended hours would help to relieve pressure on A&E departments in acute hospitals?
Dr Savage
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Not everybody can time their minor injuries to fall conveniently within the unit’s opening hours, so I absolutely sympathise with the challenge facing her local hospital.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Lady for securing this important debate. I apologise to her and to you, Sir Jeremy, for not being able to stay; unfortunately, I have to be somewhere at 10 o’clock that is about 10 miles away. Like the hon. Lady, I wish to shine a light on the quiet heroes of our health service: our community hospitals. Places like Ards community hospital in my constituency are not just buildings but the bedrock of local care. They are the vital bridge between the high-tech intensity of a major acute hospital and the sanctuary of a patient’s own home. I support the hon. Lady in making the case for community hospitals, because my community hospital does all the things she wants community hospitals to do across this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Dr Savage
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his perceptive intervention. Community hospitals often do feel more like a home from home. They are more accessible for a patient’s friends and family to visit, and they deliver better outcomes for patients and clinicians alike.
In the south-west, ambulance handovers at acute hospitals took more than 30 minutes in more than half of cases in January 2025—nearly 30% above the England average. A few months ago, I had the privilege to ride in an ambulance for a day. In what ended up being a 13-hour shift we attended only three call-outs. Maybe it was a quiet day—I am definitely not saying I wish there had been more grief out there—but we spent much of the day on the road and/or waiting outside hospitals, which did not seem the best use of a highly qualified ambulance crew and an expensive resource.
It will not be news to anybody in this room that our NHS is under pressure, yet, against the odds, community hospitals continue to perform. The Care Quality Commission reports that between 75% and 92% of community hospitals are rated good or outstanding, which is remarkable given that the number of district nurses working in them fell by around 55% between 2009 and 2024, with underinvestment and the loss of EU staff after Brexit cited as key causes.
John Milne (Horsham) (LD)
I recently met the chief executive officer of the newly combined Surrey and Sussex integrated care board, and urged her to consider the potential for expanding Horsham community hospital on Hurst Road into a neighbourhood hub, including a women’s health unit, to mitigate the lack of a general hospital in the area. Sadly, her first task has been to reduce her staff by more than half. Does my hon. Friend wonder, like me, what happened to the extra £29 billion that the Government invested into the NHS? It does not seem to have got anywhere near Horsham.
Dr Savage
That is a very good question that I hope the Minister will be able to answer. I pay tribute to the absolute heroism of the people who staff our community hospitals; they are delivering an incredible return on investment.
Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)
I have had loads of emails from staff who were worried that Crewkerne community hospital was shutting down, because the communication from local NHS leaders has not been good enough—a problem we also had with the maternity unit. Does my hon. Friend agree that communication from NHS leaders needs to be a lot better?
Dr Savage
I absolutely agree that a lot of the frustration felt on the frontline is due to lack of clarity of communication. Community hospitals are institutions, and I pay tribute to the people who work at them, who do more with less, year after year. They deserve better than for services to be quietly wound down.
I invite Members to imagine for a moment that they are 80 years old—it is less of a feat of imagination for some of us than for others—and living in a village outside Cirencester. Maybe they can no longer drive due to poor eyesight. They wake up one morning with chest pain. There is a hospital in town, but the services have dwindled one by one: no A&E, acute ward or surgery, and the theatre may be currently paused. What is actually needed—prompt assessment, a bed close to home and blood tests that do not require a 25-mile journey to Cheltenham on rural roads—may not be available. That is the reality for many people across my constituency right now, and it is getting worse.
Community hospitals have been an honoured part of our healthcare system for over 150 years. Research published in the Journal of Community Nursing in 2024 describes them as bridging
“the gap between primary and secondary care.”
They are person-centred, nurse-led and multidisciplinary settings that help people to recover, maintain independence and enjoy visits from friends and family. They are not a quaint historical relic; they are precisely what the NHS says it wants more of.
The Cirencester community hospital was exactly that kind of place. Since the day surgery unit was suspended last year, I have heard so many moving stories from constituents, their fond memories of being in hospital, and how much that hospital, right at the heart of their community, meant to them when their children, parents or spouses were sick. But over the years the services there have been eroded one by one: first A&E, then acute wards, paediatrics, maternity and blood services. In 2025, the day surgery unit was paused as part of NHS Gloucestershire’s centres of excellence trial. Each change came with reassurances, but each one left residents further from care. My constituents have become deeply and rightly sceptical that a trial closure will ever be reversed.
Alison Griffiths (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con)
The hon. Lady is making a powerful point about trust and promises being made but not delivered. Twenty years ago, Littlehampton hospital in my constituency closed, with the promise that a replacement health service would follow. In Rustington, there has been a lack of consultation and the hospital has closed; we are hoping it will reopen. Does the hon. Lady agree that consultation, trust and following through on promises are so important?
Dr Savage
I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady’s point. I have been pressing the NHS to find out the criteria by which they will judge the trial closure, but the criteria have not been forthcoming. I am concerned that there is a circular logic: “Well, you’ve managed without that ward for six months or a year, so you can continue to manage without it.”
A constituent described a cardiac arrest at Cirencester, handled with what she called “absolute skill and excellence” by a team of senior staff working together to stabilise the patient before transfer to an acute hospital. She told me that the nursing care on the wards is excellent, and that patients nearing the end of their lives are cared for with compassion and great dignity. That is what we are talking about when we talk about community hospitals, and that is what the trial closure of a ward potentially puts at risk.
Another constituent—a former GP who started practicing in Cirencester 40 years ago, in 1986—told me about a child who, after the surgical ward closed, waited 20 hours in Cheltenham for an appendix operation. Previously, that operation could have been done in Cirencester much more quickly. That is a family sitting in a corridor in an unfamiliar hospital at 2 in the morning, feeling anxious and far from home, because the local service they relied on had gone.
A month or so ago I launched a petition, in collaboration with a local county councillor, to protect community hospitals across the Cotswolds. Within a couple of weeks, well over 3,000 people had signed it, and last week we handed it in at No. 10. The South Cotswolds population is growing rapidly, largely due to the Government’s housing targets. Thousands of new houses are being built around Cirencester, and there are plans for many more housing developments that will swallow up nearby villages. It does not make mathematical sense for communities to grow while the services that support them shrink. The numbers just do not add up.
NHS bodies often describe these changes as reconfigurations—a shift in how care is delivered rather than a reduction in what is available. For a rural resident with no car and negligible public transport, a 25-mile journey to Cheltenham is a significant barrier to care. The Government’s own 10-year plan talks about “neighbourhood health” and care “closer to home”, but Gloucestershire is heading in the direct opposite direction. I would like to hear from the Minister how those two things can be reconciled.
A few miles to the north-west of my constituency, post-natal beds at Stroud maternity hospital were suspended in 2022. That year, the Care Quality Commission rated Gloucestershire’s maternity services as inadequate—a rating they retained on reinspection the following year. The hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Opher), who is a GP, has made the valid point that post-natal care saves money downstream because it is the time when mothers and babies bond, when breastfeeding is established and when families who need extra support get it on a timely basis. If we lose that support, the costs will appear elsewhere later on. Will the Minister provide a timeline, with dates, for the full restoration of maternity services in Gloucestershire, including the Aveta ward in Cheltenham, which is currently closed for labour and births? Will she provide details of the specific workforce support the Government are providing to make that happen?
In other countries, the decline of community hospitals is not seen as inevitable. Other countries are under the same pressures, but they are making different choices. In Sweden, research found that rural GPs value community hospitals because they provide exactly the things that cannot be replicated in a large acute centre, including proximity, continuity and a holistic understanding of elderly patients and others with multiple conditions. Heart failure and pneumonia rehabilitation can be managed closer to home by staff who know the patient and their family.
In Italy, the Government have committed to building or renovating 400 community hospitals using European recovery funds, backed by research from the Emilia-Romagna region showing that they deliver better integration among care sectors, between primary and specialist staff, and between healthcare and the communities it serves. Last October, more than 150 people from 23 countries joined an international webinar co-hosted by the Community Hospitals Association, and the conclusion was consistent: community hospitals anchor care in local communities, support home-based care and help people to live better for longer.
The Government’s NHS 10-year plan commits to shifting care from hospital to community. That sounds like a very good idea, but a Nuffield Trust report published in September 2025 makes a point that needs to be heard: this ambition is not new. Successive Governments have promised to move care closer to home, and most have fallen short, almost always because the community infrastructure needed to enable the shift is simply not there, and nor is the investment. Ireland, which has pursued reform for nearly a decade, had the wisdom to invest up front in new facilities, digital systems and community workforce capacity.
Unfortunately, the Nuffield Trust found that England’s 10-year plan contains no equivalent ringfenced funding. The expectation appears to be that hospitals cut waiting lists and simultaneously release funds to build community capacity. Again, the maths just does not work.
The starting point is already challenging. More than 1.1 million people are currently waiting for community care in England, with the steepest rise among children and young people. A hospital where the theatre has been paused cannot absorb more community care. A maternity unit closed for three years cannot deliver neighbourhood health. A community health system with 1.1 million people already waiting cannot become the landing ground for patients displaced from acute settings unless it is properly resourced to do so. As so often, rural areas pay the highest price when the gap between ambition and delivery opens up. There is no slack in the system and no easily accessible option down the road.
Manuela Perteghella
My hon. Friend is very generous to give way again. In my Stratford-on-Avon constituency, the Ellen Badger community hospital in Shipston-on-Stour served the community for hundreds of years. The Coventry and Warwickshire integrated care board removed the in-patient beds, which were really important in rehabilitating and looking after patients from acute settings before they went home. Those beds were close to their home. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government must invest in care in community hospitals to relieve the pressure on acute settings?
Dr Savage
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend’s point. We need a more joined-up approach. From conversations that I have had with nurses in my constituency, I know that those on the pointy end can see very clearly where the bottlenecks in the system are. We need to relieve the pressure on those bottlenecks.
I will conclude with five asks for the Minister. First, will the Government give a clear commitment to protect and properly resource Cirencester hospital as a local health hub, with the operating theatre restored, not paused indefinitely while the trial closure quietly becomes permanent?
Secondly, will the Government give a timeline, with dates, for the full restoration of maternity services in Gloucestershire, including post-natal provision at Stroud?
Thirdly, will the Government give an honest account of how the shift from hospital to community will actually be delivered in rural areas? What oversight will there be? What protections are in place? What prevents the same pattern of managed reduction from continuing in the name of the 10-year plan?
Fourthly, will the Government commit to work with the Community Hospitals Association towards a national definition and dataset for community hospitals in England, so that our 500 community hospitals can finally be planned for, funded and properly valued?
Finally, will the Minister agree to a meeting? I would very much welcome the opportunity to sit down with her, alongside local NHS leaders and the Community Hospitals Association, to discuss the long-term future of Cirencester hospital, its role and resourcing, and its place in the vision of care closer to home, which this Government say they believe in.
My constituents are not asking for anything exceptional. They just want to know that, if they get ill, there is somewhere to go that they can get to. The NHS was founded on that promise, and that promise must be kept.
The comments made by Sarah Owen, the Labour MP for Luton North, in the House of Commons on 16 June 2026.
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. In February, the Women and Equalities Committee concluded an inquiry into the health impacts of breast implants and harmful cosmetic procedures. We sent our report to the Department of Health and Social Care on 18 February, expecting a response by 18 April. Four months on from sending that report, the official response is now two months overdue. We are still waiting on the Government.
Madam Deputy Speaker, I seek your guidance on what we can do to address this grave delay, which is a significant disrespect not only to my Committee members and the House of Commons staff who worked on the report but to the victims of harmful cosmetic procedures—people like Sasha who nearly died and who gave brave, vulnerable testimony publicly only to be ignored by the Department of Health and Social Care and Ministers.
The statement made by Al Carns, the former Defence Minister, in the House of Commons on 16 June 2026.
With your permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a speech on my resignation.
I start by echoing the remarks of so many in the House on the 10th anniversary of the death of Jo Cox. While I did not know Jo, I know what she stood for. Her unwavering commitment to equality has left a lasting legacy, and her words—we have more in common than that which divides us—still ring true and are still worth fighting for. I also pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough (John Healey). This is the second time I have followed him in the last week, and it is a privilege to do so.
Last week, I resigned as Minister for the Armed Forces. It was an exceptionally difficult decision. I have never quit anything in my life, as my mother will confirm; she tried to get me to quit the Marines for 24 years, but failed many times. I spent those 24 years in uniform, serving in operations around the world. I commanded men and women in combat and carried responsibility for their lives; I buried friends and stood beside families receiving the worst news imaginable. When I accepted ministerial office, I did so with a simple purpose: to serve those who serve us. I remain grateful to the Prime Minister for the opportunity to do so. I thank my ministerial colleagues, my hon. Friends on the Labour Benches, civil servants and, above all, the servicemen and women I have had the privilege to represent. But there comes a point when honesty requires action, and for me, that point came last week.
As hon. Members know, I came into politics for one reason: to enact change. In order to work out where we are going, we must realise where we have come from. The Labour party that I joined was chiselled out of the mines of the north-east, hammered out of the shipyards of Govan, Liverpool and Belfast, and forged in the factories of the industrial revolution by people with calloused hands and sore backs—people who did a hard day’s graft and asked for one thing in return: a Government who have their back. That is the tradition in which I serve in this House, and it is the tradition that shaped the decision I took last week.
I resigned for several reasons—first, because I no longer believe that the defence investment plan is preparing us for the wars we are most likely to fight. The character of warfare is changing at exceptional speed. In Ukraine, a navy without a ship has destroyed a navy. A drone costing thousands can destroy a tank costing millions. A drone can now strike 2,000 km into Russia at a fraction of the cost of a fighter jet. It is not either/or; it is an equitable mix of high-end sophistication coupled with low-end mass. That is the balance we must seek. In my view, the defence investment plan does not strike that balance for various reasons.
I want to give just a small example to bring home that point, because it can often get lost. In a town in Ukraine the size of Hereford, there were 12,000 drones in the air in one day. Just comprehend that: 12,000 drones in the air. Some 90% of all casualties are from drones—not the rifle, the grenade, the tank or the artillery, but the drone. I ask the House: what will it take to realise that these figures are not fiction? They are not an embellishment of the truth, but a hard fact born out of the blood and steel of a hot war. That is the maths of modern war: millions of drones against high-end, sophisticated systems that deliver late, with huge levels of inflation, and, importantly, cannot be reproduced at the pace required to sustain a conflict against a major adversary. What will it take to learn that lesson? Do we need to rerun the Snatch Land Rover? Do we need to rerun the lack of body armour? Do we need to rerun the lack of protected vehicles in Afghanistan, which I saw impact men and women on the frontline? We do not, and we should not.
Moreover, as the clouds of war darken Europe’s borders once more, do we need to learn the lessons our forefathers learned in world war two, or indeed the cold war? This is not about individual items of equipment or bespoke defence funding lines, but about preparedness, unity of purpose, prioritisation and national resilience. We are no longer packaging up our military to deploy to a foreign field; we must be ready to fight from here—from the home base—for democracy, for the right to self-determination and for European security. The reality is that we are spending too much time preparing for last year’s war, not tomorrow’s. I urge the House to push hard for transformation and to push for delivery this side of 2030.
Secondly, I resigned because even if the plan had been right, it was not adequately funded. I do not lay all the blame at the door of No. 10 or No. 11; we failed—I failed—to make that argument. But national security and economic security are not competing priorities; they are the same priority. A country that cannot defend itself will not stay prosperous for long. Put simply, a country that cannot defend itself will struggle to protect its prosperity.
Thirdly, I left because I could no longer ignore the continued failure to address the treatment of our veterans in Northern Ireland. It is a difficult issue, and I cannot describe how difficult this fight has been. Whatever people’s view of the troubles, a country owes a duty to those it sent into harm’s way under lawful orders, and that duty does not end when the uniform comes off. The labour movement was built on a simple idea—that the people who do the hard work that this country asks of them deserve the backing of the state in return. Too many veterans have carried uncertainty for too long, while others have benefited from political accommodations that were never available to those who served. I could not reconcile that with my own understanding of duty.
To go into slightly more detail, the IRA failed to achieve its political ends through the use of terrorist tactics, and we must be exceptionally careful that we do not help them achieve those ends through other means. Constant, never-ending legal wranglings that undermine the contract between the nation and those who serve is neither a good use of taxpayer money nor an effective execution of strategy. Having inquests, inquiries and an independent commission creates a hierarchy of truth. It will cost us hundreds of millions for 15 years, painting the state as an aggressor, supporting our adversaries, leading to political objections and causing untold anguish for those who only ever deployed to protect us. We have neither the political capital nor the resources to spare for this unjust journey.
In broader terms, in 2026 security means more than military strength alone. It means secure borders, secure energy, secure jobs and secure communities. It means people knowing that if they work hard and contribute, one unexpected bill will not push their family into crisis; it means knowing that their children will have opportunities that they did not. These things are absolutely connected. The cost of living is shaped by conflict thousands of miles from here. Hostile states target our infrastructure, supply chains and democracy. Energy security shapes economic security. Economic security shapes social cohesion. Importantly, above all else, social cohesion shapes national resilience.
The old line between domestic policy and national security is breaking down in front of us, but our history points the way. In 1945, Britain was exhausted and in debt. Our cities had been bombed, and rationing went on for years. Yet Attlee’s Government did not conclude that Britain could afford only one priority. They built the NHS, expanded the welfare state and invested in housing. They took the decision that Britain would become a nuclear power. Those decisions came from the same understanding of what this Government and Labour are for. A country worth defending should look after its people. A country that wants to look after its people must be secure enough to do so. That is the Labour tradition.
It is also, I would argue, the British tradition at its very best, but somewhere along the way we stopped thinking like that. We began treating defence, growth, energy, public services and social mobility as separate conversations. They are not. They are different parts of the same challenge: whether Britain can still provide security, opportunity and resilience for its people in a more dangerous world. That is why I ultimately concluded that I could no longer remain in Government. The issue was never simply a defence budget. It was whether the Government were moving with the urgency that the moment demands.
Nearly a million young people are outside education, employment and training. Poor mental health costs this country hundreds of billions. We know that our armed forces need modernising. We know that our adversaries are becoming more aggressive. We know that our energy system remains exposed. We inherited a mess, but the population is fed up of us pointing the finger. They are looking to us for courage, clarity and conviction to make changes at the scale and, importantly, the speed that the nation requires.
I have seen what our country can do. I have seen it in uniform. I have seen it in the communities across the nation. I have seen it on these Benches, where we are at our very best. The talent, the ideas, the passion, the courage—it is all here. Indeed, we have it all. I resigned because I believe that Britain and this Labour Government can deliver. I believe that we can think longer term and act earlier. I believe that we can once again build a country that provides security in the broadest sense of the word—security for our nation, communities, working families and the next generation. That is the debate that I am confident my resignation has started.
The personal statement made by John Healey, the former Defence Secretary, in the House of Commons on 16 June 2026.
With your permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a personal statement on my resignation as the UK Defence Secretary. Many in the media have pressed me to say more since Thursday, but I am a proud parliamentarian, and I wanted first to speak in this House, as I take my seat on the Back Benches for the first time in more than 10 years.
I took the decision to resign with the greatest regret and reluctance. I continue to be certain about the decision. In time, I believe it will be seen as necessary in securing the future of our armed forces and alliances. It has been the privilege of my life to work alongside the exceptional people who serve this country in Defence—military and civilian alike. They work 24/7, so often unseen, and are the very best of Britain. They, and the new Defence Secretary, have my fullest support.
I have been a Labour MP for nearly 30 years, a Labour member for 45 years and a trade unionist for longer still. It is my family—literally. Jackie, my wife, worked for Labour HQ. We met at a union conference. Two weeks later, we were engaged. All of us in politics ask so much of our partners. We only ever wanted a successful Labour Government leading a stronger Britain. My decision last week was about country, not career.
I loved the job, though I will not miss going to bed with three phones or the 3 am phone calls. I am proud of what we have done in less than two years as a Labour Government. We stepped up international leadership for Ukraine, raised defence investment three years earlier than anyone expected, won record defence export deals, gave the armed forces their biggest pay rise for 20 years, brought 36,000 forces family homes back into public ownership, and signed major defence agreements with Germany, Norway, France and the European Union. Delivering for defence; delivering for Britain.
The Prime Minister has led that drive, rightly earning respect at home and abroad. He and I jointly commissioned the first-of-its-kind strategic defence review, which has set the vision to transform our armed forces to make our military more warfighting ready and better able to deter. We have been doing exactly that in the 12 months since the SDR was published. We are delivering in a different way: investment with deep reforms to get a grip on budgets, procurement and delivery; investment so that every taxpayer’s pound works twice, once for national security and once to back British industry and create British jobs; investment in new defence tech—drones and AI—that draws lessons from Ukraine for our UK forces.
I will always seek cross-party common ground on defence, but I will not let the Conservatives forget their record in government or the hollowed-out legacy they left in our armed forces.
Since the SDR, we have seen the world changing still faster, with threats increasing and demands on defence rising: conflict in the middle east, new NATO missions in the High North, the US moving forces away from Europe, intensifying attacks in Ukraine and increasing Russian aggression towards the UK. NATO has now said that we must prepare for war with Russia within the next five years. This is the age of hard power and rising threat. This is not the moment for calibration or incremental change. This means bigger politics, bolder priorities and harder choices. Britain’s challenge now is the transformation and rearmament of our armed forces.
The Prime Minister knows what the country needs for defence. He spelled out the threat this month when he said:
“it is our intelligence assessment, and the assessment of other countries in NATO, that there could be an attack by Russia on NATO as soon as 2030.”
Britain must set the headmark of spending 3% on defence in 2030 and a clear path to 3.5% in 2035—the commitment all NATO nations have made to each other and to their people. I believe that this would command wide cross-party support.
Our predecessors in this House experienced what happens when deterrence fails. They entrusted us with institutions such as NATO that they created to keep us safe. We do not choose the circumstances in which we serve or the responsibilities that fall upon us, either in this House or in government. It is the duty of our political generation to ready Britain for the uncertainties of the years to come. The decisions that we make in the months ahead will be judged by those who follow us.
At this dangerous time, I see the current defence investment plans falling well short of what is required: a rise of 0.08% from next year to 2030, no date for reaching 3%, and no path to 3.5%. By 2030, well over half of NATO members will be spending 3% or more. When allies are looking for British leadership, we must not fall behind. When NATO needs European nations to step up, we must not fall short.
Our adversaries do not follow timetables set by the Treasury. I appreciate how hard this is for Cabinet colleagues, and I am very grateful to those who support what is required, but not all needs to be done by cutbacks elsewhere. There are credible ways of meeting the mid-term funding challenges, working multinationally and as other nations in Europe are doing, that could allow us to protect the ability to deliver our Labour missions across Government.
Beyond that, we need a bigger view of national security. It is not just a job for Defence or the agencies; every Department has a part to play in national security and national resilience. From Energy to Transport to Health, security must run through the Government like letters through a stick of rock. Security must be felt in communities right across Britain, reversing long-term decline and bringing new jobs and new hope.
For now, Jackie is just grateful that I no longer carry three phones in my bag, although I do still have my bottle of HP sauce.
![PRESS RELEASE : G7 Leaders’ Statement on mutually beneficial international partnerships [June 2026]](https://www.ukpol.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/downingstreet-150x150.png)
The press release issued by 10 Downing Street on 16 June 2026.
G7 Leaders’ Statement on mutually beneficial international partnerships.
We, the Leaders of the G7, reaffirm our commitment to international cooperation on development and investment finance as a driver of shared prosperity and highlight our willingness to provide support to the most vulnerable. Partner countries of the G7, Kenya and the Republic of Korea, also support this declaration. We recognize that the impact of the international development finance architecture has served the most vulnerable for decades. Fostering durable growth, reducing global poverty and strengthening global resilience against external and natural shocks are key shared goals. Alongside private capital, blended finance and fair and transparent lending, concessional official development assistance continues to play a strategic role in supporting partner countries and addressing global challenges in alignment with our mutual interests and our existing development objectives.
However, we recognize the need to update the current international development system to ensure it fully meets the needs of future generations and current challenges. While traditional development policies have achieved important results, they have at times had limited impact in reducing financial dependency on external assistance, strengthening country ownership and creating pro-growth incentives. The development architecture has also become overly complex, resulting in a suboptimal use of resources. Excessive macroeconomic imbalances, crises and conflicts, lingering poverty and debt vulnerabilities inflate financial needs, disproportionally affecting the most vulnerable. Public resources continue to play a strategic role, yet they are insufficient alone to meet global development needs. We need to catalyse structured reforms to rationalize the development architecture and ensure its efficiency and impact.
We are united in reforming the development cooperation system and shaping mutually beneficial partnerships that take into account our strategic interests and those of our partners and foresee a strategic and catalytic use of concessional resources where they are most needed. We welcome the support of our African partners for a renewed approach, as expressed at the Africa Forward Summit. The success of efforts to promote development and prosperity also relies on partner countries’ ability to mobilize domestic resources and attract private capital. We aim to support our partners ability to self-finance and reinforce partner countries’ ownership, accountability, long-term economic sovereignty and resilience while respecting their development priorities. We stress that achieving the empowerment of all women and girls and the full and equal enjoyment of all their human rights and fundamental freedoms is a key driver of development and economic growth.
We will continue to support partner countries, including through strengthening domestic resource mobilization and developing capacities for tax administration. We welcome the commitment to strengthen collaboration on domestic resources mobilization made by the Platform for Collaboration on Tax at the conference held in Tokyo in March 2026. Where appropriate, we will develop programmes which encourage co-investment with partner countries and produce positive incentives to engage in necessary institutional reforms. Such programmes will support partner countries in raising revenues, spending effectively, borrowing sustainably and adequately managing fiscal risks.
We will enhance efforts to address escalating global debt vulnerabilities that threaten economic stability and constrain fiscal space for essential public service interventions. We underscore the importance of making further progress in the G20 towards a common approach to debt restructurings for vulnerable middle-income countries that are not eligible for the Common Framework. We will promote the strengthening of the implementation of the G20 Common Framework to ensure debt treatments are delivered in a predictable, timely, orderly and coordinated manner. We call for increased support to countries that have sustainable debt and a strong reform agenda but face high debt service that crowds out growth-enhancing investments, notably by accelerating the implementation of the IMF-World Bank 3-Pillar Approach. We will also continue our efforts to strengthen the global debt architecture, notably by calling for greater transparency in debt data and lending practices among all stakeholders. In this context, we urge all G20 creditors to participate in the Data-Sharing Exercise of the World Bank. We note the launch of the Borrowers’ Platform and look forward to continued dialogue with all relevant parties, including the private sector and in the Paris Club, to advance these efforts.
We will seek to support more effective mobilization of private capital to finance long term development and impact at scale. To make development projects attractive to private investors, we will use our Development Finance Institutions and call on Multilateral Development Banks to promote the use of risk-sharing instruments, guarantees, blended finance, co-financing mechanisms, market instruments and address exchange rate risk. We stress the benefits of derisking solutions and reinforcing the guarantee architecture, notably through the African Trade and Investment Development Insurance (ATIDI). In this regard, we also welcome work by the African Development Bank and the World Bank Group, including through the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), to support growth, promote a sound investment climate and mobilize private capital in Africa. We aim to remove investment barriers and support initiatives to foster sound policy and regulatory environments in partner countries, including through the G20 Compact with Africa, and will promote standardized and investable projects, and strengthen data availability and transparency.
We will promote supply chain resilience and diversification, and resilient transportation, energy and digital infrastructures, in line with the G20 Principles for Quality Infrastructures Investment, including through the G7 Partnership on Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII). To that end, we will promote a new approach to economic and development corridors, derisking and mobilizing private capital, including through the G7 Infrastructure Investment Council. We also recognize the importance of reliable critical minerals value chains for shared prosperity, and aim to harness the economic potential of critical mineral value creation through international cooperation along the supply chain and mutually beneficial partnerships based on high standards, transparency and local value creation. In light of supply chain disruptions, we task our ministers to work with and monitor international financial institutions and international organizations to evaluate the global impacts of access to essential inputs such as fertilizers and to coordinate support for countries in need, so as to address global food security.
We will use concessional resources strategically where they are most needed, particularly in least developed and most vulnerable countries, addressing the specific needs of countries exposed to external and natural shocks, remoteness, limited access to capital markets and protracted or ongoing conflicts. In countries which have limited access to non-concessional or private capital, we will invest in sectors of human development, including in health, education, early childhood development, nutrition and food systems. Where appropriate, we stand ready to support our partners in the development, adoption and implementation of their National Health Compacts and similar country-platform approaches.
We aim to address the fragmentation of the development system and to improve its efficiency and effectiveness also by strengthening coordination and collaboration among all development actors, including public development banks, development financing institutions, Multilateral Development Banks and vertical multilateral funds. We will prioritize building on successful financing vehicles and refrain from creating new ones, including where appropriate by incorporating them within existing initiatives. We recognize the value of the United Nations system as a development actor and encourage reform, including through the UN80 agenda.
As major shareholders in Multilateral Development Banks, we reaffirm our commitment to make them more effective and impactful through reforms aiming to ensure that they work effectively as a system, including with Public Development Banks. In particular, we will coordinate to enhance opportunities for private sector investors and funds to deploy capital alongside Multilateral Development Banks on bankable high-impact projects.
Delivering this transformative agenda will require sustained and collective commitment within and beyond the G7. We welcome initiatives that take this approach forward with partner countries at country and regional level. To this end, we note the recent Africa Forward Summit, the Global Partnerships Conference, the Mattei Plan for Africa, the Tokyo International Conference on African Development and the Global Gateway initiative, among others. We stress the importance of working with all stakeholders to promote fair and transparent development finance, in line with international standards and shared practices. We will strive to mobilize a broad multi-actor coalition, including emerging donors, the private sector, philanthropic actors and civil society to align with this renewed approach.
This declaration reflects the outcome of the discussion between G7 members, benefiting from productive exchanges of views with partner countries.
The statement made by Heidi Alexander, the Secretary of State for Transport, in the House of Commons on 15 June 2026.
I am pleased to inform the House that the Government published the third cycling and walking investment strategy—CWIS3—on Friday 12 June 2026.
Investing in active travel delivers benefits across every aspect of life—improving physical and mental health, boosting economic growth, cleaning up our air, and giving people of all ages real affordable transport choice to cut the cost of living.
The strategy sets out a vision that walking, wheeling and cycling are safe, easy and accessible choices for everyone. This is supported by an ambitious target that by 2035, 55% of all short stages in towns and cities will be walked or cycled.
The strategy includes three new statutory objectives:
Enable more people, particularly the least active, to benefit from physical activity through active travel;
make active travel the easy and integrated choice; and
improve safety for people walking, wheeling and cycling.
Over the five years of the strategy (2025 to 2030), we will focus on enabling millions more children to walk, wheel and cycle to school by providing safe, coherent networks that connect schools, high streets and homes. Alongside this, through the work of Active Travel England, we will establish the basis for a national active travel network by connecting the high-quality local routes already built, funded or planned.
Beyond the CWIS3 period, we are introducing an ambitious target that 60% of children aged five to 16 will usually walk or cycle to school by 2035.
The strategy projects over £4.5 billion of investment in active travel across the CWIS3 period, including £1.1 billion of funding for Active Travel England.
The strategy marks a fundamental shift in how active travel ambition is set, delivered and integrated into local transport networks. It is the first locally-designed national — delivered in line with our ambitious programme of English devolution supported by record multi-year funding.
Alongside the strategy, I am laying before Parliament a report which outlines progress in delivering the previous —second—cycling and walking investment strategy for the period 2021 to 2025.
The statement made by Sarah Jones, the Minister for Policing and Crime, in the House of Commons on 15 June 2026.
From today, UK police will have access to an EU tool to check vehicle and keeper details to support criminal investigations. This reciprocal data sharing will provide an additional avenue of investigation in tackling cross-border crime as well as serious crimes committed in the UK.
This capability will play a crucial role in assisting police in the UK and across Europe in cracking down on a multitude of crimes including trafficking of illicit substances, sexual offences and serious assaults (including murder). It will also assist the police in monitoring suspicious activity such as minor driving-related offences.
A simple search on a secure web portal will return results in 10 seconds and, in the case of a match, will provide police with the name of the vehicle keeper and important information about the vehicle. The results will also include markers on cars flagged as stolen, which can be used by police forces in helping to tackle the issue of car theft in the UK.
Vehicle registration data exchanges are provided for in the UK-EU trade and co-operation agreement and this step will contribute to our ongoing efforts to deepen the close co-operation between UK law enforcement and their European counterparts.