UKPOL.CO.UK

Tag: Speeches

  • Andrew George – 2025 Speech on Fishing Quota Negotiations

    Andrew George – 2025 Speech on Fishing Quota Negotiations

    The speech made by Andrew George, the Liberal Democrat MP for St Ives, in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons on 26 March 2025.

    I beg to move,

    That this House has considered the impact of quota negotiations on the UK fishing fleet in 2025.

    It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I come at this debate as someone who is not entirely new to fisheries debates, after having been involved in them in the early days of my parliamentary career in 1997 and on a number of occasions since. On how the fishing industry is perceived by the political process, I have always found that there seems to be an inverse relationship between politicians’ desire not to interfere with the fishing industry and the inevitability that politics has to interfere in order to help establish and sustain an industry that is so important to this country. Indeed, there is a further inverse relationship in the sense that the industries that work in and are exposed to the raw power of nature seem to have a higher degree of regulation and administrative burden that is disproportionate to their sense of freedom from office-based activity.

    It is interesting that the political parties that always seem keen to use the fishing industry as the poster boys for their campaigns and send flotillas up the Thames do not seem terribly interested in discussing the detail when it comes to the hard miles.

    Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)

    I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. Although he did not name the individuals concerned, did he consider the fact that they might have other fish to fry?

    Andrew George

    We could spend all morning exchanging fishing industry puns, but I think it would be better to get back down to the nitty-gritty of trying to advance policy for the benefit of the fishing industry.

    The Minister will appreciate what goes on in my constituency, which he visited last summer when he came to Newlyn, Sennen and other areas around Cornwall to look at the activities within the industry. That was very much appreciated and he clearly has a very sincere interest in the industry. Although he is not personally responsible for what he has inherited, he has a significant task on his hands in helping the industry find a way forward. That is what I hope we can encourage him to do today, because the issue for us—I am speaking on behalf of the industry, which I have spoken to on numerous occasions—is how last year’s quota negotiations are impacting on the prospects for the industry this year.

    Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)

    I thank the hon. Member for introducing the debate in a light-hearted way—initially, at least—which is a contrast to some of the previous discussions. Is he concerned about reports that our French allies are seeking to link fishing quotas to other matters, such as access to the €150 billion defence budget? Does he agree that the Government should clarify their position on this, and will he perhaps ask the Minister to do so this morning?

    Andrew George

    I am sure that the Minister heard that intervention. It does trouble me. If we go back to 1974, when Edward Heath was involved in the negotiation of our entry into the EU, and to subsequent negotiations, the fishing industry has often been used as a pawn—a bargaining chip. It would be a great pity if that happened again. I know that fishing Ministers do not usually sit around the Cabinet table, but I hope the Minister will use his influence to make sure the message is heard loud and clear within the Cabinet and by the Prime Minister that the fishing industry is not a bargaining chip that can be handled in that manner.

    Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)

    My hon. Friend has spoken about political intervention. Fishery quota negotiations are difficult and nuanced at the best of times and understanding the granular detail of advice from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, for example, is never straightforward. It always goes badly wrong when we bring in other considerations. Does he agree that both our national security and our fishing industry deserve better treatment than the sort the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) just outlined, if indeed what is reported is true?

    Andrew George

    If we are to establish a sustainable fishing industry that is fair to UK fishermen, it is important that the industry is reviewed on its merits and on the basis of science, not on political horse-trading with other countries. I strongly accept that point.

    Aphra Brandreth (Chester South and Eddisbury) (Con)

    Given the debate we are having and the risk that our fishing communities could be used as a bargaining chip, does the hon. Member agree that, as the Government have said, food security is national security, and we cannot have our fishing communities and fishing stocks traded against defence in any way?

    Andrew George

    These negotiations are difficult at the best of times. We need to make sure these decisions are made on the basis of merit. Of course, we wish to re-establish UK fishing entitlement out to the 12 mile limit and to ensure that foreign vessels are not able to use their historic entitlements to fish within the 6 to 12 mile zone. Relative stability within the common fisheries policy left the UK, particularly in the western approaches, with a significantly poorer deal in comparison with many European countries, and that is the basis of a great deal of disquiet within the industry.

    John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)

    The hon. Member is being generous with his time. I am fortunate to represent the fishing fleet off the Berwickshire coast, which is relatively small but very active, together with the fish processing industry. The Scottish Fishermen’s Federation produced a very helpful briefing note ahead of today’s debate. One of the points it makes is that, since the UK left the EU in 2020, the UK and Scotland’s opportunities have increased greatly, and those opportunities would not have been there had we remained in the EU. Does the hon. Member agree with the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation?

    Andrew George

    No, I disagree. I think that overall, the impact on the fishing industry has been a net negative, certainly for people in my own region, who depend substantially on the export of fish to other European countries. In the past, the majority of the fish landed in Newlyn, which is a very substantial port in my constituency—at least 80%—went to France, Spain and other European countries. The impact that that and other things, including veterinary inspections, vivier export requirements and licences, have had on the industry has been significantly detrimental, so I do not accept that. That is a conversation that I would be very happy to have with the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation, but by no means can one say that Brexit has been a great success, because that is certainly not the case.

    The fishermen in my area do not feel that they have been well treated as a result of those negotiations. As a passionate remainer, I was prepared to accept that on the face of it, there was a potential benefit. There should have been—fishing was the only industry in which it was possible to make an argument that there could be a potential benefit as a result of Brexit—but that has not happened, so I reject the basis of that intervention and the point made.

    I hope that in time, the Minister will look at the opportunities, rather than taking the sort of stop-start approach that I am going to refer to today—I will get to that point after all the interventions. I hope he will look instead at a medium and longer-term setting of quotas, with rolling multi-annual quotas, perhaps of up to five years. That should be the Government’s objective, and they should work with scientists so that the industry can see a way forward, rather than having to adjust its business plans at very short notice, which is the case at present.

    I will be adding a few small points about the small-scale, low-impact fishing industry; indeed, I come to this debate as someone with a limited amount of experience within the industry itself. When I was younger, our family had a boat at Mullion, in the south of the constituency, which used to supplement our income from the smallholding that we had. It was very low-impact, outboard motor and oar-based fishing activity that involved the setting of lobster and crab pots—very little of it was mechanised; it was all pulled by hand—and mackerel hand lining. It was low-impact fishing that we could only undertake during the summer months because of the storms that came into the coast in Mullion over the winter period. I have that experience, and many members of my family are engaged in the industry.

    The Cornish fishing fleet has a value to the Cornish economy of £174 million, and 8,000 people are employed in the industry, so I particularly wanted to address the impact of the 2025 quota settlement on choke species. It is going to have a detrimental impact on the significant amount of fishing that takes place around the western approaches. The headline impact is that on pollack, which is very much bycatch fishing only. Boats under 10 metres are allowed just 75 kg per month. We have to remember that this is an ultra-mixed fishery, so even though those fishermen target other species, such as hake, it is hard for them not to catch pollack. Because pollack is healthier than the science seems to indicate, fishermen end up catching a lot more of it and, under the regulations, are obliged to land it.

    When the long-term ban was announced last year, the previous Government provided financial support for only one year, and the Minister and the new Government have not announced any other compensation for those affected by the pollack ban. I would be interested to know whether the Minister has anything to say about that. The industry asked for management measures for the recreational industry. At present, there is no management in place for the recreation fleet. The Cornish Fish Producers Organisation estimates that up to 50% of the total pollack catch around our waters is taken by the recreational angling industry.

    The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea advice for pollack is currently being benchmarked, as the Minister knows, and that formal review of the available science will lead to new advice in June. The House and I would be interested to know what power and influence the Minister has in that regard before June and over any decisions taken after June when the benchmarking process has been completed. Will he commit to introducing new management of the pollack stock on or before the completion of the benchmarking process? The industry cannot wait until next January.

    There are similar problems with Dover sole. Our fleet is targeting megrims and monkfish, but Dover sole are known to be abundant in many areas. In areas VIIe, VIIf and VIIg, Dover sole are relatively abundant, and therefore the total allowable catch for those areas is relatively good, but data is lacking for areas VIIh, VIIj and VIIk, which has led to a much lower total allowable catch as a precaution. For example, each boat can catch 400 kg of Dover sole per month in area VIIe, but in VIIh it is limited to just 30 kg per month. Because of the catches that have been experienced, that is a significant diminution in the activity that the industry can pursue.

    In 2023-24, the Cornish Fish Producers Organisation fleet worked with the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science to collect genetic samples of sole in VIIe and VIIh areas to provide evidence of the genetic links between the two stocks. Unsurprisingly, they saw that Dover sole swim between those areas. If that is proven and accepted, there will be greater confidence in setting fishing opportunities for the fleet to target monkfish and megrim in those other areas. I hope the Minister will prioritise the review of the scientific evidence at the UK-EU Specialised Committee on Fisheries, with a view to making a joint request to ICES to amend the total allowable catch for Dover sole in that area.

    Similarly, the industry is working with scientists, CEFAS and environmentalist non-governmental organisations to aid the recovery of the stock of spurdog—a slender shark found in our waters—by providing bycatch and discard data. The spurdog fishery reopened in 2023 with a 1 metre maximum landing size as a precautionary management measure. Spurdog is a non-target species in a mixed fishery, so its increasing abundance is leading to increased unavoidable bycatch, forcing vessels to discard fish over 1 metre in length. In December the written record agreed that that rule should be reviewed in 2024 and 2025, but so far no meaningful adjustment has been made. Will the Minister promise to follow through on the commitment to review the 1 metre rule and work with the industry to develop more sustainable management measures?

    There has been a dramatic recovery of bluefin tuna in our waters over recent decades. In the past, the Atlantic bluefin tuna saw drastic cuts in catch limits, and a crackdown on illegal and unreported catches across its whole range. The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas has taken that action over the last 20 years to reach a tipping point. Over the last decade the recovery has benefited that fishery, and has reached the shores of Cornwall, where sightings of bluefin tuna have increased by a factor of 60 since just a decade ago. The total allowable catch set by the International Commission is over 40,000 tonnes, more than half of which is allocated to the EU. In 2021 the UK received 50 tonnes of quota, initially for bycatch. In 2025, the UK quota is 66 tonnes, with 45 tonnes for commercial hook-and-line vessels.

    Sixteen tonnes, almost a quarter of the entire quota, is set aside for accidental mortality from recreational catch-and-release permits. Tuna are vulnerable to unintended mortality due to the long fights they often endure with anglers, so mandatory training and strict handling procedures have been applied to some vessels, and 1,700 tuna have been released with minimal mortality. But in 2024 recreational catch-and-release permits were introduced, with a voluntary code of conduct and training. Will the Minister join a roundtable meeting of MPs, fishers and scientists to look at how the UK tuna industry can be managed more sustainably?

    I will not detain the House for much longer, but there are other issues that I know the Minister is aware of, and which I have spoken to him about—particularly the impact of regulations on the small-scale fishing industry: day boats, under 7 metres, that fish around our coast and take less than 1% of the annual catch. Last summer I met Jof Hicks on the island of St Agnes in the Isles of Scilly. Over the last five years, he has gone out of his way to develop a fishery that has the lowest possible impact because there is no plastic or fuel involved: he uses sail and oar, and he makes his own crab pots entirely from natural materials—growing his own withies and tamarisk to make the pots. He is sustaining a living from that. Admittedly, some of the restaurants on the Isles of Scilly are able to provide him with relatively healthy prices for his produce, but he is nevertheless demonstrating that it can work. However, he complained to me that all the same regulations that apply to supertrawlers apply to him with his home-made boat and locally made lobster and crab pots. I urge the Minister to have a close look at that, perhaps with me. I am not arguing that this is the future for the fishing industry, or that we can feed the nation by this method, but it can make a measurable difference and provide an alternative way of catching fish in areas such as mine, and no doubt in other places. We could forge a different approach. If we could take unnecessary burdens from the shoulders of people such as Jof Hicks, that would be enormously appreciated.

    I will bring my remarks to a close, because many others wish to speak. I hope that the Minister will respond to the questions raised. I believe that politicians and the fishing industry are all pushing in the same direction—towards a sustainable industry based on the best available science—but we need to ensure that the regulations that are informed by that science do not create unintended consequences that have a detrimental impact on fish stocks and the fishing industry.

    Things have changed. The culture has changed, and the industry is much more engaged with a science-based approach than perhaps it was when I first engaged in these debates nearly 30 years ago. I hope that we will continue with openness and dialogue, and that we will push for efficiency in the way we update the regulations this year. The pressures on the fisheries I mentioned earlier, which are being affected by choke stocks such as pollack and Dover sole, need to be addressed before the end of the year.

  • Stephen Doughty – 2025 Speech at the Aurora Forum

    Stephen Doughty – 2025 Speech at the Aurora Forum

    The speech made by Stephen Doughty, the Minister of State at the Foreign Office, on 11 March 2025.

    Well thank you very much, David.

    In the genuine spirit of bipartisanship, David was an absolutely excellent Minister for Europe, albeit from a different political philosophy.

    And I certainly look to his example in trying to do this role today in very difficult and challenging times.

    And really it is genuinely an honour to host you all here in this beautiful venue.

    And thanks to Aurora Forum and Wilton Park and everybody else here at Goodwood who’s helped put this together.

    And all the sponsors, all the different governments who participate, and we come here very much as friends and likeminded counterparts in some very, very challenging times.

    And indeed Goodwood House itself has witnessed many centuries of history, and we’re obviously here at a pivotal moment not only for Ukraine but for the security of our Continent and indeed the whole world.

    I’ve just come from another conference down the road at Wilton Park with Ukrainian friends and colleagues, with Ministers, members of the Rada and others, talking about Ukraine’s economic resilience and economic recovery needs and all our shared commitments on that.

    But obviously to be able to move to that more hopeful future, we need to ensure Ukraine’s security and sovereignty now.

    And that is a moment in which we stand united in a desire for a strong, just and a lasting peace.

    Determined to contain Putin’s reckless actions and continue to put pressure on the Kremlin, while stepping up to ensure that Ukraine has the support, including the military support, that it needs.

    And I was in Kyiv just about ten days ago under yet another bombardment in the night of drones and missiles.

    I visited Bucha, which many of you will know saw some of the worst atrocities that we have seen in Europe in decades.

    And to see, yet again, drones having attacked that small town that’s endured so much suffering just hours before I arrived killing civilians, a journalist and others just shows us the stark reality of what Ukrainians are facing every single day.

    But their strength and resilience is absolute, as it has been throughout this conflict.

    We also have to be looking very closely at how we invest in our own defences – which is why the UK has announced our own biggest sustained increase in spending since the Cold War.

    And that we need to pull together as Europe to drive urgent action, but also working with the United States and our other partners across the Atlantic and Ukraine to make progress.

    We all know that that is vital for our Continent’s future security.

    On a more personal note, support for Ukraine is a cause that I care deeply about.

    It’s one that’s personal to me, there are many ties between Ukraine and my own home area of South Wales. My own city was twinned with Luhansk.

    It was a Welshman that helped found one of the cities in the Donbas, Donetsk, and we even of course have a Sebastopol in the South Wales valleys harking back to the Crimean war when Welsh troops fought in a different era.

    And it’s also one I have a personal connection to. In my own time I taught English in Lviv many years ago and I’ve had many friends and counterparts from Ukraine over the years.

    And each time I have been back since this barbaric, unprovoked conflict began, I have witnessed again that courage and resilience of the Ukrainian people.

    This morning before joining with all of you I spoke with the Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister, Stefanishyna, and reiterated the United Kingdom’s unwavering support.

    And this afternoon, we are going to discuss our collective support in detail at our Ministerial roundtable, and it’s great to welcome fellow ministers, many of whom I’ve had the pleasure of working with over recent weeks and months, and I hope that  will become a regular feature of Aurora.

    Not that we’re just coming together, discussing very important issues, sharing perspectives but we’re also agreeing joint plans of action.

    And we all hope for positive steps forward at the talks in the next few days. We’re going to do all that we can to put Ukraine in the strongest possible position for lasting peace, and the ability to deter and defend against future aggression.

    And in that endeavour, and indeed in the wider European security endeavour, it has never been more important for the UK and our Nordic-Baltic partners to work together.

    We have a lot of shared experience, a lot of likeminded approaches, and we act as a bedrock and a base for wider European security.

    It is a huge honour to be the UK minister responsible for relations with this part of the world, one I know well.

    I have many deep Nordic-Baltic connections in my own family and my own history. I’ve worked in Denmark, my brother studied in Norway, and I was taught Finnish folk music by one of our own participants here today when I was a 16-year-old in Canada which is a very unique and deep connection!

    I’ve had the pleasure to visit nearly every country in the Nordic-Baltic region before coming into office and since. I haven’t yet been to Latvia, the Faroes or Greenland but it won’t be long before I do, I’m sure.

    And you know, it is very clear, we see the reality, we see the threat from Russia, we see the threat to European security, we know the history.

    Putin’s war, his imperialist ambitions, are close at hand.

    We recognise that, we recognise the very serious threats to all of you, your border is our border, and your security is our security. And that’s why we stand with you as the United Kingdom.

    And I have seen for myself that new iron curtain between Lithuania and Belarus – and I’ve met the border force who are resolutely monitoring the security of our NATO border there.

    I’ve had the privilege to join British Royal Marines training with their Norwegian counterparts in Northern Norway.

    I’ve conducted a tour in NATO’s Northern flank with the Norwegian Coast Guard with Maria and her colleagues recently.

    And I also was, I think, the first British Minister in ten years to attend the Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik, where I thought it was very important to show our shared ambitions to work alongside you all in the Arctic region and indeed in the Polar regions more generally, not only for the science and peacefulness of those regions but also their security against hostile threats.

    And of course, my colleague the Foreign Secretary travelled to this region on his first trip in the job, to Sweden.

    We feel your sense of threat. We hear your concerns. And that’s why we’re stepping up our collective partnerships with all of you in this room, across Europe and beyond for the sake of our security, and to better face global challenges.

    That includes seeking an ambitious new security pact, a new partnership, with the EU to strengthen co-operation on defence, security, energy, climate and much more.

    But, of course, this goes far beyond the EU and encompasses our ironclad commitment to NATO and indeed the Joint Expeditionary Force, the JEF, which the UK is proud to lead.

    And the Prime Minister was glad to attend the JEF leaders’ summit in Tallinn a few months ago, discussing further measures to support Ukraine.

    He and the Defence Secretary have made a point of visiting and thanking British military personnel – indeed your military personnel – deployed in the region in recent months. Because together with our allies we stand ready to defend NATO’s eastern flank and to uphold European stability.

    And, as I speak, our JEF nations are working side-by-side to combat the risk of sabotage, of hybrid activity, in the Baltic and indeed to monitor the Russian shadow fleet, which we all know does so much damage.

    And we are working together to constrain the activities with not only economic implications but wider maritime security implications.

    We’re also intensifying our efforts together to counter Russian hybrid threats, including sabotage, cyber attacks, disinformation.

    And the Maritime Capability Coalition, led by the UK and Norway, is transforming the Ukrainian navy.

    Those are just a few short examples of the UK promise to step up and put our money, our boots and our actions where our mouths are on European security, and of course we will discuss that in more detail during this forum.

    But of course, there is much more to our relationships than security and defence, vital as those are.

    Our economic and trade ties and the strong links between our citizens and our cultures are all part of the rich mix that strengthens our bonds.

    It is the UK government’s number one mission to advance economic growth to build a more secure and prosperous future for citizens here.

    And in this, we hugely value our links with our Nordic-Baltic partners.

    Our trading relationships with the eight countries here today are worth more than 95 billion pounds a year and rising.

    And there is huge appetite to invest and work in mutual collaborations in each other’s economies.

    Take the UK’s ambitious new Green Industrial Partnership with Norway as just one example.

    By combining our world-leading capabilities on clean energy to drive economic growth we have the potential to create thousands of new skilled jobs in both of our countries.

    This is an important part of the UK’s plan to secure home-grown energy and put us on track to make Britain a green and clean energy superpower by 2030.

    And, of course, together our countries are also at the forefront of innovations – indeed, the UK and many of the countries in this room regularly feature on lists of the most innovative nations on earth. And we are particularly proud to co-host NATO’s Diana initiative with Estonia.

    Our collective experience in AI, quantum technologies, drone technology and innovation will be crucial in protecting our societies and developing new capabilities in the future.

    And the countries, businesses and academics in this room count themselves, rightly so, as world leaders. We’re delighted that you are all here.

    I could speak at length about wider partnerships on everything from climate finance to digital government. But I know we are all keen to get down to business, to get down to discussions, so I hope this forum will be an important moment to galvanise those efforts. At ministerial level, between those in think tanks, the academic space, between businesses and the other partners in this room.

    We’ve all got to continue to learn from each other, urgently, and to work together, urgently, as we write the next chapter in our partnerships as strong supporters of Ukraine, strong defenders of European security.

    Standing together to defend our security and values at this critical moment, and, fundamentally, to advance the causes of prosperity and peace.

    Thank you very much.

  • Daisy Cooper – 2025 Response to the Spring Statement

    Daisy Cooper – 2025 Response to the Spring Statement

    The speech made by Daisy Cooper, the Liberal Democrat Spokesperson on the Economy, in the House of Commons on 26 March 2025.

    The people of this country are crying out for change, but they feel they are just getting more of the same. Of course, it was the Conservative party that wrecked the public finances, but we are eight months into the new Government and people are left wondering, “Where is the change that was promised?” The Chancellor says that the world is changing, so why will she not change course with it? The Chancellor said she wanted a dash for growth, but with her national insurance jobs tax she shot herself in the foot before she even crossed the start line.

    After the Government’s disastrous Budget, the Government had the chance today to change direction, fix our finances, kick-start growth and deliver a small business Budget. The Government could have scrapped the jobs tax, which will hammer our high streets, and instead ask the big banks, social media giants and online gambling companies to pay their fair share instead. The Government could have changed their approach to trade, launching talks to boost growth through a new trading deal with our European neighbours. Instead, the Government have made the wrong decisions to cut public services, hit disabled people and inflict more pain on our small businesses and high streets. In doing so, they have delivered no change and almost no growth at all.

    After years of Conservative mismanagement, people can see just how broken our public services are. They cannot see a GP, they cannot see a dentist, they are fighting for an education plan and, they are picking up the pieces of a broken social care system. Everything is broken. Nothing works. That is why people are impatient for the change they were promised.

    We have to bring the welfare bill down and support more people into work. That is right for people and our economy, but cutting support for someone who needs help getting dressed and washed in the morning is not just wrong; it does absolutely nothing to support that person into work. If anything, it does the exact opposite. It will also have knock-on impacts for the entitlements of their family carers, too. Will the Chancellor come clean about this? If the Government are serious about cutting welfare spending, they must get serious about fixing health and social care. Will the Chancellor speed up the social care review and ensure that it concludes no later than the end of this year?

    In the Chancellor’s quest to slim down the civil service, I wonder why she has not looked at the mountain of red tape created by the previous Government’s terrible trade deal with Europe. A whopping 2 billion extra pieces of paper have had to be completed by businesses since Brexit, enough to wrap around the world 15 times. If we manage to cut the red tape, we can give British businesses a tailwind, deliver far more growth than is currently predicted, increase the fiscal headroom to deal with global headwinds, and free up precious time and money in our civil service. That would be real change.

    Business was promised change too. Today’s statement should have been a small business Budget. We Liberal Democrats have repeatedly raised the alarm about the impending damage of the national insurance jobs tax, bigger business rates bills and changes to reliefs for family farms and family businesses. Those changes will be a hammer blow to small and family businesses, leaving communities facing the prospect of an epidemic of boarded-up shopfronts. They will be a hammer blow to community health and care providers who stop our NHS from falling over. This is not the change that was promised. Instead, I say again that the Chancellor should look again at much fairer ways to raise the tax revenue our public services desperately need by reforming capital gains tax more fairly and asking the big banks, the social media giants and the online gambling companies to pay their fair share.

    I know the Chancellor must contend with President Trump’s trade war, which is causing global economic turmoil, but our response to Trump’s bullying cannot be to cower in the corner and just hope that he is nice to us. We cannot sit on our hands while British steel is hit with Trump’s tariffs. We Liberal Democrats warmly welcome the Chancellor’s move to raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, but instead of cutting the aid budget, which abandons the world’s poor and damages our soft power, she should be covering the cost by raising the digital services tax, handing the tab to Elon Musk and Trump’s other billionaire backers. At the very least, can the Chancellor categorically rule out any reduction in the tech tax in an attempt to appease the White House, especially when disabled people in Britain face eye-watering cuts?

    To conclude, I have a series of questions. Will the Chancellor recognise that cutting public services that are already stretched is a false economy? Will she accept that trying to bring down the welfare bill without fixing health and social care is a road to nowhere? Will she listen to the warnings of small and family businesses that her jobs tax will do more harm than good? Will she look at the fairer ways of raising revenue that we Liberal Democrats have put forward? And will she take the bold action we need to grow our economy by rebuilding our broken trading relationship with Europe? The public were promised change. Where on earth is it?

    Rachel Reeves

    The hon. Lady says, “Where is the change?” Let me tell her: more money into our NHS, with 2 million additional appointments and waiting lists falling five months in a row; rolling out breakfast clubs in primary schools from April this year; increasing defence spending to protect us in a more uncertain world; additional support for carers, the living wage up, the Employment Rights Bill and so much more. That is the difference we have made in nine months, and we have only just got started.

    The hon. Lady talks about trade. We believe in free trade. We are an open trading economy and we benefit from trade links around the world, including with our single biggest trading partner, the United States of America. It is right that we work with our allies in the United States to ensure that that free and open trade continues. That is in our national interest and this Government will always act in our national interest. At the same time, there will, as the hon. Lady knows, be a summit between the UK and the EU in May, where we will look to re-set our relationship, so we can see more free trade and the better flow of trade, especially for our smaller businesses to be able to export around Europe.

    The hon. Lady talks about welfare. She has not admitted that there is a single problem in the welfare system as it exists today. I am not willing, and this party is not willing, to write off one in eight young people who are not in education, employment or training. It is why, for example, we announced this week, with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education, an additional 60,000 training places to train people up in the construction industries of the future, and a £1 billion package of personalised targeted support because there are many disabled people—the hon. Lady knows this—who are desperate to work but are not getting the support and were denied support by the previous Government. That is why we have said there will be additional support for the most sick and disabled, and that personal support for getting people back into work. That is the right approach, so that we have protections for those who need it, work for those who can, and a sustainable system that is here for generations into the future.

    I want to take on the hon. Lady’s main point. She wants all the money for public services, but she does not want to raise the taxes to pay for them. At the moment, we spend £105 billion a year in interest on Government debt. It seems that she would just like more of that debt. She says that people cannot see a GP or a dentist. How does she and the Opposition parties think that we pay for those things? They cannot object to the tax increases and support the money we have invested in our public services. To say otherwise, I am afraid, is fairytales and the magic money tree—it just does not add up. The difference on the Labour Benches is that we will put money into our public services, explain where it comes from, and ensure that the public finances are on a firm footing. That is the difference between our party and the Opposition parties.

  • Meg Hillier – 2025 Response to the Spring Statement

    Meg Hillier – 2025 Response to the Spring Statement

    The response made by Meg Hillier, the Chair of the Treasury Select Committee, in the House of Commons on 26 March 2025.

    My right hon. Friend inherited a very difficult challenge when she became Chancellor of the Exchequer last July, and she is absolutely right that the books need to balance. This is not other people’s money we are spending, but taxpayers’ money—our constituents’ hard-earned money—and she is right to be tough as Chancellor. We look forward to quizzing her at the Treasury Committee next week, and I am sure she is looking forward to it just as much.

    The Chancellor announced an extra £2 billion a year in capital spending, and she talked about extra defence spending. Could she give some more detail about where she hopes that extra £2 billion a year will go?

    Rachel Reeves

    I thank my hon. Friend for that question, and I do indeed look forward to attending the Treasury Committee next week. I was pleased to serve on the Treasury Committee in the past, and it is a pleasure to give evidence to it.

    We will set out in the spending review—my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary will set out in the spending review—the allocation of the additional capital money. However, I was able to announce today the £2.2 billion for defence from next year, as well as the £2 billion as a downpayment to build the affordable and social housing that we need. Those are two examples of the priorities of this Government to get Britain building and to secure our national security.

  • Mel Stride – 2025 Response to the Spring Statement

    Mel Stride – 2025 Response to the Spring Statement

    The statement made by Mel Stride, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 26 March 2025.

    At the last Budget, the right hon. Lady said that she would bring stability to the public finances, but this statement, more appropriately referred to as an emergency Budget, has brought her to a cold—[Interruption.]

    Mr Speaker

    Order. Rightly, I wanted to hear the Chancellor, and I now want to hear the shadow Chancellor. [Interruption.] I do not need any help.

    Mel Stride

    This emergency Budget has brought the right hon. Lady to a cold hard reckoning. She has become fond recently of talking about the world having changed, and indeed it has. This country was growing at the fastest rate in the G7 only about a year ago. Just as the OECD, the Bank of England and other forecasters—including, we learn today, the OBR—have stated, growth has been halved for this year. It has been cut in two as a consequence of the decisions and the choices that the right hon. Lady has made on her watch. Inflation was down to 2%—bang on target—under a Conservative Government on the very day of the last general election. We are now told that this year we will be running at twice the level as was forecast under us in 2024. That will mean prices bearing down on households and on businesses right across the country, because of her choices.

    The OBR also says that unemployment will be rising this year, next year and the year after. In fact, across the forecast period it will not decline at all. So much for the right hon. Lady’s back to work plans. We have already seen what it means when it comes to controlling borrowing under this Chancellor. She has come forward now with a plan to squeeze spending later on in the forecast period, and she has of course told the OBR that these are the elements of spending restraint to which she will stick, but what do the markets think? Given her track record, and the fact that she has failed to control spending and borrowing to date, what does the right hon. Lady think the markets will make of her latest promises?

    Of course, the right hon. Lady says that none of this is her fault. It is the war in Ukraine, it is President Trump; it is tariffs; it is President Putin; it is the Conservatives; it is her legacy; it is anyone but her. What the British people know, however, is that this is a consequence of her choices. She is the architect of her own misfortune. It was the right hon. Lady who talked down the economy so that business surveys and confidence crashed through the floor. It was the right hon. Lady who confected the £22 billion black hole, a smokescreen that was only ever there to cover up for the fact that she and the Prime Minister reneged on their promises to the British people during the last general election, and a black hole that the Office for Budget Responsibility itself—ironically, at the Government’s behest—has said it will not legitimise. She chose to be reckless with a sliver of headroom against her fiddled targets. She borrowed and spent and taxed as if it were the 1970s. Little wonder that the Chancellor has tanked the economy, little wonder that we have an emergency Budget, all because of her choices.

    The Chancellor likes to tour the television studios and tell everyone that they should be thankful that she will not be ramping up taxes in this emergency Budget as she did before, but that will be cold comfort to the millions up and down the country who are waiting in fear and trepidation for the start of the new tax year, buckling under the burden of tax that will rise to the highest tax burden—on her watch—in the history of our country. May I ask the right hon. Lady whether, when she replies, she will give that much-needed reassurance, particularly to businesses, that she will not be ramping up taxes still further in the autumn? Even a basic economist knows that if you tax something, you get less of it. You do not need to have worked at the Bank of England for 10 years to know that.

    So what did the Chancellor tax? She taxed jobs and wealth creation. She has destroyed livelihoods. Businesses have been clobbered, big and small—small companies, the backbone of our economy—and enterprise has been crushed on the altar of her ineptitude. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has told us that a third of the businesses affected will shed labour, with Morrisons losing 200 jobs, Tesco 400, and Sainsbury’s 3,000. No wonder the Federation of Small Businesses has said that outside the pandemic, business confidence has been left at its lowest level on record. However, it is not just businesses. It is charities, it is GPs, it is pharmacies, it is those who transport children with special educational needs, and it is hospices caring for the sick and the dying. In this House, the Labour party had the opportunity, yesterday and last week, to stop that, but they voted our amendments down, and we will never let their constituents forget it.

    If you ramp up taxes, Mr Speaker, and if you ramp up borrowing and spending without any commensurate improvement in productivity, it leads to growing inflation, and inflation has been increasing on this Government’s watch. It means that interest rates stay higher for longer. The Chancellor has just trumpeted the fact that there have been three interest rate cuts since the Labour party came to office. She knows full well that there would have been more than that had she managed—[Interruption.] She knows full well that interest rates are higher for longer because of the choices that she made. This has led to servicing costs for our national debt running at twice the defence budget, and today we have learnt from the OBR that debt interest is to increase still further—and none of this money will be spent on public services. It will be going down the drain.

    The real black hole is not the one that the Chancellor invented; it is the one that the Chancellor created. Is not the central problem that this Chancellor is a gambler? Even with her fiddled fiscal targets, she left way too little headroom. Is not the truth that while the right hon. Lady said of the last Budget that it was a

    “once-in-a-parliament reset”,

    she rolled the dice on a wafer-thin margin, and she lost? Reckless, with her fingers crossed, she fiddled the targets and she missed them. [Interruption.]

    Mr Speaker

    Order. I am not sure about the language being used. I think there are better and more constructive words that the shadow Chancellor would prefer to use in future.

    Mel Stride

    May I just point out that all the Chancellor’s fiscal headroom disappeared, not just some of it? In fact, she went underwater to the tune of £4.1 billion. Reeling from one fiscal event to the next is not a way to run the public finances, and breaking your fiscal rules to the extent that the right hon. Lady has in just six months is a public humiliation.

    May I now focus briefly on defence spending? We on this side of the House welcome the fact that the Government will reach 2.5% of GDP by 2027, as we pressed them to do, and we note the stepping stone along the way that the right hon. Lady has just announced, but we should go further than that. The 3% target should be brought forward to this Parliament. So may I ask the right hon. Lady: given the geopolitical tensions that she has raised, what provision she has made in her headroom, in her fiscal plans, for increasing defence spending more quickly in this Parliament, if that proves necessary? May I also ask her this: would she scrap the absurd Chagos deal, and put that money behind our armed forces?

    The economy is in a perilous state, but there was a different way. There were different choices on taxing and spending and borrowing, and on productivity, and on welfare. Let me just say a few words about welfare. It was the privilege of my life to serve as the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and when it came to welfare reform, with that privilege came a deep responsibility: the responsibility for welfare reform to be properly thought through, with a very clear plan—[Interruption]—I know that Labour Members do not like it, because it is an alien idea to their party—so that we could be fair to the taxpayer, but equally fair to the many people up and down the country, some of whom are highly vulnerable. That was an approach, on our watch, that led to £5 million of savings across the forecast period, and 450,000 fewer people going on to long-term sickness and disability benefits as a direct consequence.

    We would have gone further—much further—and we set out a clear plan in our manifesto to do exactly that, but those in the party opposite rushed their changes. They had no plan. There was not a single mention of the personal independence payment in the Labour party manifesto, and when they got into office, the Labour Government pussyfooted around and dithered. Why? Because it is deeply divisive within their rank and file. Then suddenly, when the Chancellor decided that she had run out of money, out went the word to find some savings in welfare, to scrabble around, to yank every lever possible.

    Then there was the spectacle, frankly, of what the OBR has said about the simply shambolic changes that were announced only last week by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. We have gone from incompetence to chaos. There have been more changes to this policy than there were at the last minute to the right hon. Lady’s LinkedIn profile. The result is the worst of all worlds: a wholly inadequate level of savings on welfare, with welfare costs spiralling ever higher, and changes that are likely to harm many vulnerable people. May I ask the right hon. Lady: when the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions came to the House last week with these changes, she did not provide an impact assessment, but was this because the OBR had not signed off the numbers, was it because the Department did not have enough time to produce one, or was it only provided today, as many of us suspect, because this was thought to be a good time to bury bad news?

    The forecast for growth is down, the forecasts for borrowing costs and inflation are up, and business confidence has been smashed into a million pieces. This Chancellor is constantly trying to blame forces beyond her control. The right response is not to duck responsibility, but to build a resilient economy. The right hon. Lady would have us believe that that is what she is doing, but how can we believe this Chancellor? How can we trust this Chancellor? She is the Chancellor who said she would not increase borrowing, but she did. She said she would not change her fiscal rules, but she did. She said she would not put up national insurance, but she did. She said she would not cut the winter fuel payment, but she did. She said she would not tax farmers, but she did, and she said she would not move to more than one fiscal event a year, and she just has. Now we are all paying the price of her broken promises. Today’s numbers confirm it. We are poorer and we are weaker. To govern is to choose, and this Chancellor has made all the wrong choices.

    Rachel Reeves

    I know that the shadow Chancellor has not been in his role for very long, but at least he is not misquoting Shakespeare today. If this was a Budget, it would be the Leader of the Opposition responding. I am glad that she is still in her place, but I know she will want to get back to her office for a lunchtime steak soon.

    The right hon. Gentleman talks about Budgets. Let me remind the Conservative party that the only emergency Budget we have seen in recent years was in response to their party’s disastrous mini-Budget—a mini-Budget that crashed the economy, sent mortgage bills spiralling and left a £22 billion black hole in our nation’s finances. Conservative Members may have forgotten about the damage that they did to our country, but the British people never will.

    As always, the shadow Chancellor talked a lot, but he did not offer a single alternative. He says he opposes our tax rises, but he cannot tell us whether he would cut the NHS to reverse them. He says he wants economic growth, but Conservative Members abstained on the very planning reforms that the OBR has said will kick-start growth. Mr Speaker, you do not change the country by abstaining or by sitting on the fence; you change the country by leading and by taking action, and that is what this Government are doing. The shadow Chancellor says he wants businesses to trade, but he does not want us to talk to the second largest economy in the world or, indeed, our biggest trading partners in the European Union. He simply is not serious. Four months into the job, and he has got no clue.

    The right hon. Gentleman wants to talk about growth, but he does not say anything about the fact that the OBR has upgraded growth next year and every single year after. He talks about pensioners, but he forgets that it is his party’s policy to scrap the triple lock, which we are protecting and which will mean the state pension rising next month by over £400. He talks about wages, but he forgets the fact that we are boosting wages by boosting the national living wage from next month. The shadow Chancellor says nothing about living standards or this morning’s fall in inflation, because the last Parliament was the worst on record, and the OBR has today revised up its forecast for family finances. Working people are always better off with Labour.

    The right hon. Gentleman is learning something, because at least this time he has asked a couple of questions, so let me respond to them. He asked what the markets should make of this. What the markets should see is that, when I have been tested with a deterioration in the headroom, we have restored that headroom in full. That is one of the choices that I made. He says that it is a sliver of a headroom. Well, it is 50% more headroom than I inherited from the Conservative party. When I was left with a sliver of headroom, I rebuilt it after the last Government eroded it. That is the difference that we have made. While they left the public finances and the public services in a mess, we wiped the slate clean, which means that we have the flexibility now to increase defence spending, as the leader of the Labour party has done. The Conservatives had 14 years to increase defence spending, and now they lately come to the party.

    The shadow Chancellor mentions welfare reform and his time at the Department for Work and Pensions. What a legacy: one in eight young people not in education, employment or training, and 1,000 people a day going on to personal independence payments. The OBR says today that welfare spending as a share of GDP will now start falling—a far cry from what we had under the Conservative party. The shadow Chancellor speaks about employment. The OBR says that employment will increase, that wages will increase and that living standards will increase. What a change, after 14 years of the Conservative party.

    The world is changing, and no one can be in any doubt about it, but the Conservative party is stuck in the past—divided, out of touch and carping from the sidelines. Conservative Members have no plan: no plan to kick-start growth, no plan to fix our public services and no plan to keep our country safe. The only plan for change they are working on is a plan to change their party leader, and we cannot blame them for that.

    If the Opposition have no plan, let me remind them about ours. The minimum wage up, real wages up, house building up, NHS investment up, investment in our schools up, investment in our roads up, defence spending up—and every single one of those policies is opposed by the party opposite. They are opposed by the Conservatives, opposed by Reform, opposed by the SNP, opposed by the Liberal Democrats and opposed by the Greens. It is the anti-growth coalition in action. They are the blockers. We are the builders—securing Britain’s future, protecting working people and delivering change.

  • Rachel Reeves – 2025 Spring Statement

    Rachel Reeves – 2025 Spring Statement

    The statement made by Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the House of Commons on 26 March 2025.

    This Labour Government were elected to bring change to our country, to provide security for working people and to deliver a decade of national renewal. That work began in July, and I am proud of what we have delivered in just nine months: restoring stability to our public finances, giving the Bank of England the foundation to cut interest rates three times since the general election, rebuilding our public services, with record investment in our NHS bringing waiting lists down for five months in a row, and increasing the national living wage to give 3 million people a pay rise from next week.

    Now our task is to secure Britain’s future in a world that is changing before our eyes. The threat facing our continent was transformed when Putin invaded Ukraine. It has since escalated further and continues to evolve rapidly. At the same time, the global economy has become more uncertain, bringing insecurity at home as trading patterns become more unstable and borrowing costs rise for many major economies. The job of a responsible Government is not simply to watch this change. This moment demands an active Government—a Government not stepping back but stepping up, a Government on the side of working people helping Britain reach its potential. We have the strengths to do just that as one of the world’s largest economies, an ally to trading partners across the globe, and a hub for global innovation. These strengths and the progress we have made so far mean that we can act quickly and decisively in a more uncertain world to secure Britain’s future and to deliver prosperity for working people.

    As I set out at the Budget last year, I am today returning to the House to provide an update on our public finances, supported by a new forecast from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, ahead of a full spending review in June. I will then return to the House in the autumn to deliver a Budget in line with our commitment to deliver just one major fiscal event a year.

    Let me now turn to the OBR’s forecasts; I want to thank Richard Hughes and his team for their dedicated work. The increased global uncertainty has had two consequences: first on our public finances and secondly on our economy. I will take each in turn.

    In the autumn, I set out our new fiscal rules that would guide this Government. These fiscal rules are non-negotiable. They are the embodiment of this Government’s unwavering commitment to bring stability to our economy and to ensure security for working people, because the British people have seen what happens when a Government borrow beyond their means. The mini-Budget delivered by the Conservatives resulted in higher bills, higher rents and higher mortgages, and it was not the wealthy who suffered most when they crashed the economy; it was ordinary working people. They continue to feel the effects two and a half years later of the damage that the Conservatives did.

    Let me be clear: there is nothing progressive, there is nothing Labour, about working people paying the price for economic irresponsibility. The British people put their trust in this Labour Government because they knew that we—they knew that I—would never take risks with the public finances and would never do anything to put household finances in danger. We must earn that trust every single day.

    I set out two rules at the Budget. The first was our stability rule, which ensures that public spending is under control, balancing the current budget by 2029-30 so that day-to-day spending is met by tax receipts. The second was our investment rule to drive growth in the economy, ensuring that net financial debt falls by the end of the forecast period, while enabling us to invest alongside business.

    Turning first to the stability rule, the OBR’s forecast shows that before the steps that I will take in this statement, the current budget would have been in deficit by £4.1 billion in 2029-30, having been projected to be in surplus by £9.9 billion in the autumn, as the UK, alongside our international peers like France and Germany, has seen the cost of borrowing rise during this period of heightened uncertainty in global markets. As a result of the steps that I am taking today, I can confirm that I have restored in full our headroom against the stability rule, moving from a deficit of £36.1 billion in 2025-26 and £13.4 billion in 2026-27 to a surplus of £6 billion in 2027-28, £7.1 billion in 2028-29 and £9.9 billion in 2029-30. That compares with the headroom left by the previous Government of just £6.5 billion. That means that we are continuing to meet the stability rule two years early, building resilience to shocks in this, a more uncertain world.

    The OBR forecast that the investment rule would also be met two years early, with net financial debt of 82.9% of GDP in ’25-26 and 83.5% in ’26-27, before falling to 83.4% in ’27-28, to 83.2% in 2028-29 and then to 82.7% in 2029-30, providing headroom of £15.1 billion in the final year of the forecast, broadly unchanged from the autumn forecast.

    After the last Government doubled the national debt—[Interruption.] After they doubled the national debt, debt interest payments now stand at £105.2 billion this year. That is more than we allocate to defence, the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice combined. That is the legacy of the Conservative party. The responsible choice is to reduce our levels of debt and borrowing in the years ahead, so that we can spend more on the priorities of working people, and that is exactly what this Government will do. I said that our fiscal rules were non-negotiable and I meant it. I will always deliver economic stability and I will always put working people first. I said it at the election; I said it at the Budget; and I say it again today.

    Let me now set out the steps that the Government have taken. At the Budget we protected working people by keeping our promise not to raise their rates of national insurance, income tax or VAT. At the same time, we began to rebuild our public services after the Conservatives left a £22 billion black hole in our public finances. Ours were the right choices: the right choices for stability and the right choices for renewal, funded by the decisions that we took on tax.

    As I promised in the autumn, this statement does not contain any further tax increases, but when working people are paying their taxes while still struggling with the cost of living, it cannot be right that others are still evading what they rightly owe in tax. In the Budget, I delivered the most ambitious package of measures we have ever seen to cut down on tax evasion, raising £6.5 billion per year by the end of the forecast. Today I go further, continuing our investment in cutting-edge technology, investing in HMRC’s capacity to crack down on tax avoidance, and setting out plans to increase the number of tax fraudsters charged every year by 20%. These changes raise a further £1 billion, taking the total revenue raised from reducing tax evasion, under this Labour Government, to £7.5 billion. These figures are verified by the Office for Budget Responsibility and I to thank my hon. Friend the Exchequer Secretary for his continued work in this area.

    Last week, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions set out this Government’s plans to reform the welfare system. The Labour party is the party of work: we believe that if you can work, you should work, but if you cannot work, you should be properly supported. This Government inherited a broken system: more than 1,000 people every day are qualifying for personal independence payments; one in eight young people are not in employment, education or training. If we do nothing, we are writing off an entire generation. That cannot be right and we will not stand for it. It is a waste of their potential and it is a waste of their futures, and we will change it.

    As my right hon. Friend said in her statement last week, the final costings will be subject to the OBR’s assessment. Today, the OBR has said that it estimates that the package will save £4.8 billion in the welfare budget, reflecting its judgments on behavioural effects and wider factors. This also reflects final adjustments to the overall package, consistent with the Secretary of State’s statement last week and the Government’s “Pathways to Work” Green Paper.

    The universal credit standard allowance will increase from £92 per week in 2025-26 to £106 per week by 2029-30, while the universal credit health element will be cut for new claimants by around 50% and then frozen.

    On top of that, we are investing £1 billion to provide guaranteed, personalised employment support to help people back into work, and £400 million to support the Department for Work and Pensions and our jobcentres to deliver these changes effectively and fairly, taking total savings from the package to £3.4 billion. While spending on disability and sickness benefits will continue to rise, these plans mean that welfare spending as a share of GDP will fall between 2026 and the end of the forecast period, which is very different from what we inherited from the Conservative party. We are reforming our welfare system, making it more sustainable, protecting the most vulnerable and, most importantly, supporting more people back into secure work and lifting them out of poverty.

    At the Budget, I fixed the foundations of our economy to deliver on the promise of change. That work has already begun. There are some 2 million extra appointments in our NHS; waiting lists are down; new breakfast clubs are opening across England; there have been the largest settlements in real terms for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in the history of devolution; and asylum costs are falling—promises made, and promises kept, and every single one of them was opposed by Opposition parties.

    At the Budget, alongside providing an increase in funding for this year and next, I set the envelope for the spending review, which we will deliver in June, led by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. That will set departmental budgets until 2028-29 for day-to-day spending, and until 2029-30 for capital spending.

    Today’s statement reflects two steps that we have taken on our spending plans. First, because we are living in an uncertain world, as the Prime Minister has set out, we will increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP and reduce overseas aid to 0.3% of gross national income. That means that we save £2.6 billion in day-to-day spending in 2029-30 to fund our more capital-intensive defence commitments. Secondly, in recent months, we have begun to fundamentally reform the British state, driving efficiency and productivity across Government to deliver tangible savings and improve services across our country.

    Earlier this month, the Prime Minister set out our plans to abolish the arm’s length body NHS England, and to ensure that money goes directly to improving the service for patients. The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care is driving forward vital reforms to increase NHS productivity, and is bearing down on costly agency spend to save money so that we can improve patient care.

    The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is taking forward work to reduce the cost of running Government significantly—by 15%. That will be worth £2 billion by the end of the decade. This work shows that we can make our state leaner and more agile, and deliver more resources to the frontline, while ensuring that we control day-to-day spending to meet our fiscal rules.

    Today, I build on that work by bringing forward £3.25 billion of investment to deliver the reforms that our public services need through a new transformation fund. That is money brought forward now to bring down the cost of running Government by the end of the forecast period by making public services more efficient, more productive and more focused on the user. I can confirm today the first allocations from this fund, including funding for voluntary exit schemes to reduce the size of the civil service, and for pioneering artificial intelligence tools to modernise the state; investment in technology for the Ministry of Justice to deliver probation services more effectively; and up-front investment so that we can support more children in foster care, to give them the best possible start in life and reduce cost pressures in the future.

    Our work to make Government leaner, more productive and more efficient will help deliver a further £3.5 billion of day-to-day savings by 2029-30. Overall, day-to-day spending will be reduced by £6.1 billion by 2029-30, and it will now grow by an average of 1.2% a year above inflation; for comparison, in the autumn, that figure was 1.3%. I can confirm to the House that day-to-day spending will increase in real terms above inflation in every single year of the forecast. In the spending review, apart from the reductions in overseas aid, day-to-day spending across Government has been fully protected.

    I can also confirm our approach to capital investment. In the autumn Budget, I announced £100 billion of additional capital spending to crowd in investment from the private sector, in order to fix our crumbling infrastructure and create jobs in every corner of our country. Today, I am not cutting capital spending, as the Conservative party did time and again, because that choked off growth and left our school roofs literally crumbling. That was the wrong choice. It was the irresponsible choice. It was the Tory choice. Today, I am instead increasing capital spending by an average of £2 billion per year, compared with in the autumn, to drive growth in our economy and to deliver in full our vital commitments on defence. This Government will ensure that every pound we spend will deliver for the British people by increasing productivity, driving growth in our economy and improving our frontline public services.

    Let me turn to the impact of increased uncertainty on our economy. To deliver economic stability, we must work closely with the Bank of England, supporting the independent Monetary Policy Committee to meet the 2% inflation target. There have been three interest rate cuts since the general election, and today’s data shows that inflation fell in February, having peaked at 11% under the previous Government. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts that consumer prices index inflation will average 3.2% this year, before falling rapidly to 2.1% in 2026 and meeting the 2% target from 2027 onwards, giving families and businesses the security that they need, and providing our economy with the stable platform that it needs to grow.

    Earlier this month, the OECD downgraded this year’s growth forecast for every G7 economy, including the UK, and the OBR has today revised down our growth forecast for 2025 from 2% in the autumn to 1% today. I am not satisfied with these numbers. We Labour Members are serious about taking the action needed to grow our economy; we are backing the builders, not the blockers, with a third runway at Heathrow airport and through the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. We are increasing investment with reforms to our pension system and a new national wealth fund, and tearing down regulatory barriers in every sector of our economy. That is a serious plan for growth. That is a serious plan to improve living standards. That is a serious plan to renew our country.

    A changing world presents challenges, but also opportunities for new jobs and new contracts in our world-class defence industrial centres from Belfast to Deeside, and from Plymouth to Rosyth. In February, the Prime Minister set out our Government’s commitment to increasing spending on defence to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027—the biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the cold war—and an ambition to spend 3% of GDP on defence in the next Parliament. That was the right decision in a more insecure world—we are putting an extra £6.4 billion into defence spending by 2027—but we have to move quickly in this changing world, and that starts with investment. Today, I can confirm that I will provide an additional £2.2 billion for the Ministry of Defence in the next financial year—a further down payment on our plan to deliver 2.5% of GDP by 2027. This additional investment is about increasing not just our national security, but our economic security.

    As defence spending rises, I want the whole country to feel its benefits, so I will now set out the immediate steps that we are taking to boost Britain’s defence industry, and to make the UK a defence industrial superpower. We will spend a minimum of 10% of the Ministry of Defence’s equipment budget on new, novel technologies, including drones and artificial intelligence-enabled technology, driving forward advanced manufacturing production in places like Glasgow, Derby and Newport, creating demand for highly skilled engineers and scientists, and delivering new business opportunities for UK tech firms and start-ups. We will establish a protected budget of £400 million in the Ministry of Defence—a budget that will rise over time—for UK defence innovation, and a clear mandate to bring innovative technology to the frontline at speed.

    We will reform our broken defence procurement system, making it quicker, more agile and more streamlined, and giving small businesses across the UK better access to Ministry of Defence contracts—something welcomed by the Federation of Small Businesses. We will take forward our plan for Barrow, a town at the heart of our nuclear security, working with my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Michelle Scrogham). We are providing £200 million to support the creation of thousands of jobs there. We will regenerate Portsmouth naval base, securing its future, as called for by my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan). We will secure better homes for thousands of military families—the homes that they deserve, which were denied to them by the previous Government—in the constituencies of my hon. Friends the Members for Plymouth Moor View (Fred Thomas), for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) and for York Outer (Mr Charters) and in Aldershot. That is the difference that this Labour Government are making.

    Finally, we will provide £2 billion of increased capacity for UK Export Finance to provide loans for overseas buyers of UK defence goods and services. I want to do more with our defence budget, so that we can buy, make and sell things here in Britain. I want to give our world-leading defence companies and those who work in them further opportunities to grow, and to create jobs in Britain, as military spending rightly increases all across Europe. To oversee all this vital work, my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary and I will establish a new defence growth board to maximise the benefits from every pound of taxpayers’ money that we spend, and we will put defence at the heart of our modern industrial strategy to drive innovation, which can deliver huge benefits for the British economy. That is how we make our country a defence industrial superpower, so that the skills, jobs and opportunities of the future can be found right here in the United Kingdom.

    As the previous Government learned to their detriment, there are no shortcuts to economic growth. It will take long-term decisions. It will take our putting in the hard yards. It will take time for the effect of the reforms that we are introducing to be felt in the everyday economy. It is right that the Office for Budget Responsibility should consider the evidence and look carefully at measures before recognising a growth impact in its forecast, but I can announce to the House that the OBR has considered and has scored one of the central planks of our plan for growth.

    In my first week as Chancellor, I announced that we were pursuing the most ambitious set of planning reforms in decades to get Britain building again, and in December we published changes to the national planning policy framework, driven forward tirelessly by my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister. We are reintroducing mandatory housing targets, and bringing grey-belt land into scope. The OBR has today concluded that these reforms will permanently increase the level of real GDP by 0.2% in ’29-30—an additional £6.8 billion for our economy—and by 0.4% of GDP within 10 years, which is an additional £15.1 billion in the British economy. That is the biggest positive growth impact that the OBR has ever reflected in its forecast, for a policy with no fiscal cost. Taken together with our plans to increase capital spending, which we set out in the Budget last year, this Government’s policies will increase the level of real GDP by 0.6% in the next 10 years. That is the difference that this Labour Government are making.

    Those are policies to grow our economy promised by a Labour Government, delivered by a Labour Government and opposed by the parties opposite.

    The planning system that we inherited was far too slow. The OBR has concluded that our reforms will lead to house building reaching a 40-year high, with 305,000 homes a year by the end of the forecast period. Changes to the national planning policy framework alone will help build over 1.3 million homes in the UK over the next five years, taking us within touching distance of delivering our manifesto promise to build 1.5 million homes in England in this Parliament. Those are homes promised by this Labour Government, homes built by this Labour Government and homes opposed by the parties opposite.

    The impact on our economy goes further still. I said at the election that we could not simply tax and spend our way to prosperity. We need economic growth, so I can today confirm that the effect of our growth policies, including our planning reforms, means an additional £3.4 billion to support our public finances and our public services by 2029-30. Those are the proceeds of growth, promised by this Labour Government, delivered by this Labour Government and opposed by the parties opposite.

    Earlier this week, we provided an additional £2 billion of investment in social and affordable homes next year, delivering up to 18,000 new homes, and allowing local areas to bid for new development across our country, including sites in Thanet, Sunderland and Swindon. That is more security for families across the country, promised by this Labour Government, delivered by this Labour Government and opposed by the parties opposite.

    To build these new homes, we need people with the right skills. Earlier this week, my right hon. Friend the Education Secretary announced more than £600 million to train up 60,000 more construction workers, including through 10 new technical excellence colleges across every region of the country, giving working people the chance to fulfil their potential. Those are new opportunities for our young people, promised by this Labour Government, delivered by this Labour Government and opposed by the parties opposite.

    All this is just the start. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill passed its Second Reading on Monday. That was no thanks to the parties opposite. Once that Bill completes its passage, it will help deliver the homes and infrastructure our country badly needs. I say to the parties opposite: the British people will be watching. If the parties opposite do not support these reforms, let us be clear about what that would mean: they are opposing economic growth, they are opposing more homes for families and they are opposing good jobs across our country. We on the Government Benches are clear about whose side we are on; the parties opposite must decide, too.

    This Labour Government are taking the right decisions now to secure Britain’s future. Today, I can confirm to the House that the OBR has upgraded its growth forecast next year and every single year thereafter, with GDP growth of 1.9% in 2026, 1.8% in 2027, 1.7% in 2028, and 1.8% in 2029. By the end of the forecast, our economy will be larger compared with the OBR’s forecast at the time of the Budget. That is the difference that this Labour Government are making.

    This is not just about lines on a graph; it is about improving people’s lives. Working people are still feeling the pinch after a cost of living crisis caused by the Conservatives that caused interest rates and inflation to go through the roof, so I am pleased that the OBR confirms today that real household disposable income will now grow this year at almost twice the rate expected in the autumn. Compared with the forecast in the final Budget delivered by the Conservatives, and after taking inflation into account, the OBR says today that households will be on average more than £500 a year better off under this Labour Government. That will mean more money in the pockets of working people and higher living standards—promised by this Labour Government, delivered by this Labour Government and opposed by the parties opposite.

    The world is changing. We can see that, and we can feel it. A changing world demands a Government who are on the side of working people, acting in their interest, acting in the national interest, not retreating from challenges, and not stepping back. It demands a Government with the courage to step up to secure Britain’s future and to seize the opportunities that are out there and before us. I am impatient for change. The British people are impatient for change after 14 years of failure, and we are beginning to see change happen. Our plan for change is working. Defence spending is rising. Waiting lists are falling. Wages are up and interest rates are cut. That is the difference that this Labour Government are making.

    Today, the OBR confirms that our plan to get Britain building will drive growth in our economy and put more money in people’s pockets. There are no quick fixes, but we have taken the right choices: returning stability to our economy after years of mismanagement by the party opposite, and delivering security for our country and security for working people. That is what drives this Government; that is what drives me as Chancellor; and, that is what drives the choices I have set out today. I commend this statement to the House.

  • Peter Kyle – 2025 Speech at Space Expo

    Peter Kyle – 2025 Speech at Space Expo

    The speech made by Peter Kyle, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, at the Excel in London on 11 March 2025.

    The British Space programme began in the same year that our late queen, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, ascended to the throne.

    Sixty-three years ago, the launch of Ariel One, the first British-American satellite, made Britain only the 3rd country to launch into orbit.

    In little more than a decade, we went from a nation with space ambition to one of the few countries with a satellite operation.

    Then, as I was enjoying my first birthday, Prospero became the first British satellite to be launched by a British rocket.

    All those years ago, deciding to have a space programme, designing, building and launching a spacecraft, took decades of planning.

    Fast-forward to today:

    • When, somewhere around the world, there is a rocket launching every 34 hours.
    • When the UK’s space economy is outpacing the growth of our economy as a whole.
    • And when, just this month, the second-ever private spacecraft touched down successfully on the surface of the moon. Powered by British engines, engineered in Buckinghamshire.

    An international effort, with British expertise, contributing to a successful lunar mission.

    There is no mistaking the increasing pace of change.

    Or just how much the people in this room – and the businesses you lead – now contribute towards the growing the British economy.

    So, to begin with, it’s my job to say thank you to all of you.

    Britain’s space sector is not just safe in your hands. It is thriving under your stewardship.

    And with the British economy, it’s felt increasingly, and it’s felt day by day.

    This is a government that has economic growth as our number one mission.

    And for us, growth isn’t just a soundbite.

    It is our very purpose.

    Growth rates are more than an indicator of the state of the economy…

    …They are an indication of this government’s state of mind.

    We are:

    • ambitious for Britain
    • determined to build the wealthier, fairer nation for everyone.
    • And we are impatient for the increased wealth and opportunities that economic growth brings to communities, businesses and to people alike.

    With 16% of UK GDP depending on satellite services, there’s no doubt that the space sector is important to that.

    Because Britain has never had a space flight with our own crew on board, it is too easy for some ‘armchair astronauts’ to dismiss the UK space programme.

    I believe we are approaching a space tipping point. At which it becomes simply impossible for even the most determined science-cynic to ignore.

    From how we message family and friends or check the weather, to how our country protects itself from climate change and national security threats that we increasingly face – space technologies simply underpin our lives.

    From the everyday, right through to the extraordinary.

    As heavy launches into low orbit become less costly – 95% cheaper than 40 years ago – and the barriers to entry are more easily overcome, the space tipping point now brings with it new risks that we have to face up to:

    • Hundreds of millions of pieces of space junk that threaten the satellites that support almost every part of our interconnected world.
    • As that figure rises, so does the chance of an accidental collision of catastrophic consequences.
    • And at the same time, space is becoming more and more accessible to hostile actors as well, eventually, possibly seeking to do Britain harm.

    The severity of these risks cannot be overstated.

    But neither should we be blind to the extraordinary opportunities that space technologies offer to our country and to us.

    To embed innovation in every part of our economy…

    …and open the doors to a new era of high productivity and growth.

    To secure our nation for the century ahead…

    …and make discoveries that will transform citizens’ lives.

    We reach this tipping point, and we have a narrow window to secure our stake in space.

    We sometimes talk about scientific progress as if it were inevitable.

    But there is nothing inevitable about progress as every one of you knows well.

    If we and our allies stand still, whilst our competitors stride ahead – or hostile actors get a foot in the door – we will find ourselves locked out of the opportunities space can bring.

    And left exposed further to the risks.

    That’s why space is a strategic priority for this Labour government as we deliver our Plan for Change.

    That requires strategic partnerships with our allies in Europe and around the globe, and between the public and the private sectors.

    And it also means being clear about the roles and responsibilities of each.

    There are some activities – like national security – which only governments can and should do.

    Others, where the creativity, the ingenuity and the enterprise of the private sector will suffice.

    And then there is a third way, where the power of partnership of governments and enterprise is the route to discovery, prosperity and to greater growth as well.

    Since we took office in July, I’ve met many of the players behind Britain’s burgeoning space economy.

    Businesses like Astroscale and ClearSpace, designing new missions to remove dangerous space clutter from orbit.

    And Space Forge, who are finding ways to manufacture semiconductors in microgravity.

    The success of businesses like these depends on world-leading research and an ambitious, entrepreneurial mindset.

    The UK is well placed to lead in both.

    These businesses also need a government that understands and appreciates their potential, has their back, and gives them the foundations to keep pushing the frontiers forward.

    Since 2015, the UK has attracted more private investment in space than any other country outside of the United States.

    We cherish Britain as a beacon for innovation, investment, stability and the rule of law.

    And we are determined to keep that beacon burning brightly in the increasingly competitive and uncertain international environment.

    Space is one of the first 4 areas singled out for attention by the new Regulatory Innovation Office (RIO).

    That Office will cut the burden of bureaucracy, freeing up your time and your resources to invest and innovate further and faster.

    Government must, always must, continue to fulfil our side of the bargain, backing British space with the support the sector needs.

    That means grant funding for innovation; direct investment into strategically significant projects; and procuring from the UK firms from government contracts.

    Take our £20 million investment into Orbex, to fund the first British-made, British-launched rocket, set for orbit later this year.

    Prime is designed to take small satellites into the polar orbits, to improve our understanding of a region right at the frontline of climate change.

    The launch will transform the UK space industry.

    It will bring highly-paid jobs to the Shetland Islands, whilst boosting Europe’s ability to access space from our own continent.

    The UK space sector is further bolstered by Britain’s membership of the European Space Agency.

    Indeed, Britain does better because of that key partnership.

    From inspiring the nation with Tim Peake’s flight to the International Space Station, to our instrumental role in the James Webb Space Telescope, our partnership with the ESA means British firms winning in this unique global marketplace.

    In the last quarter of 2024, UK businesses’ net revenues from the ESA were £80 million higher than our contribution.

    That’s a record for any member state.

    And this success is a direct result of public and private sectors working closer together to make sure the UK sees the great return on our collective investment.

    The knock-on effects of these contract wins will add up to a £1 billion of boost across our economy.

    They’ll create 3,800 highly skilled jobs, from Stevenage right up to the Shetland Isles.

    And they will ensure that British businesses have the power and investment to continue making discoveries that will transform people’s lives:

    • Like Airbus, selected to build a spacecraft to help us weather violent solar storms.
    • Thales Alenia Space, which will propel crucial cargo and scientific instruments right up to the moon’s surface.
    • And Open Cosmos, granted contracts to study the magnetic field, and using what they learn to bolster our satellites and better fight climate change.

    The immense contribution British businesses make to our island’s space story shows ambition, integrity, and leadership.

    It is testament to these traits, alongside the determination and dedication of our people.

    As we stand in this space tipping point, the government’s commitment to economic growth demands that we support science and we invest in innovation.

    We also champion the critical technologies to maximise the power and potential of the British economy.

    Your contribution and the commitment to our economic growth mission is profoundly important.

    So, I want to finish exactly where I started:

    By acknowledging your efforts and extending our appreciation for them, as you help to make Britain more productive, more prosperous, and more pioneering.

    On this planet and beyond.

    Thank you very much.

  • Peter Kyle – 2025 Speech at techUK Conference

    Peter Kyle – 2025 Speech at techUK Conference

    The speech made by Peter Kyle, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, on 10 March 2025.

    Normally, it takes half an hour to get blood samples from the Guy’s Hospital, in London Bridge, to the lab over the road at St Thomas’ for testing.

    Like anything in medicine, even that small delay can make a massive difference.

    Between a quick recovery and weeks – months, even – spent bed-bound on a hospital ward.

    The team at Guy’s are acutely aware of that fact. So – working with two innovative firms – Apian, a British start-up founded by NHS doctors, and Wing, a global drone delivery company – they decided to find a solution.

    Fed up with being stuck in traffic jams, they’re using drones to deliver blood samples for high-risk patients who suffer from bleeding disorders like haemophilia. Instead of half an hour, delivery takes just 2 minutes.

    Make no mistake. This will save lives.

    The Civil Aviation Authority’s decision to extend the trial today is brilliant news.

    Too often, though, pioneering projects like these can’t get off the ground in Britain. Or they flounder in the face of bureaucratic headwinds. Even for this trial, my officials were told that if a single noise complaint was made – the whole thing could be blown off course.

    A single noise complaint – and vulnerable people are left waiting for the care they desperately need.

    I think that tells you everything you need to know about what’s going wrong in Britain today.

    In the last decade, we’ve had a succession of strategies.

    Piecemeal plan after piecemeal plan.

    And yet what has changed?

    Growth is anaemic – at best.

    Most households are barely better off now than they were in 2010. Across the country, communities are clinging on to industries that are disappearing.

    Because no one has confronted the question of what comes next.

    You have to ask yourself – why?

    Why has government after government found it so difficult to design or deliver a coherent plan for our economy? I think part of the answer is a failure to imagine what a better future for our country could actually look like.

    That is a failure of optimism. An inability to believe in Britain’s potential.

    But – without a plan for realising that potential – it’s also a failure of pragmatism.

    What other conclusion can you come to? When the data centres we need to power our digital economy get blocked because they ruin the view from the M25?

    When life sciences firms are demanding millions of square feet in new lab space.

    But over half of applications for lab space in Oxford are snarled up in our archaic planning process.

    It doesn’t have to be this way.

    There is 10 times as much lab space in Boston as there is in Oxford, Cambridge and London combined.

    In San Francisco, it takes a couple of minutes to hail a self-driving taxi for you and your kids if you’re late for the school run.

    In many cities in China, a drone delivering your takeaway is an ordinary, unremarkable part of everyday life.

    While others have forged ahead, we risk being left behind.

    And – as ever – it’s working people who have paid the price.

    The stats are clear.

    Mario Draghi’s recent report into European competitiveness showed that the vast productivity gap between the EU and the US is almost entirely down to the growth of the tech sector.

    And Britain isn’t much better.

    That’s not because we have a shortage of brilliant businesses or innovative entrepreneurs.

    We’ve got the third largest tech sector in the world.

    Between 2019 and 2023, our digital sector grew over five times faster than the rest of the economy.

    But, for too long, government has failed to be a reliable partner for you.

    Our industrial strategy – ‘Invest 2035’ – will change that.

    It will set out a decade-long plan for our economy, squarely focused on the eight sectors with the greatest growth potential and anchored in a positive and pragmatic vision of what Britain’s future could look like.

    There is no possible version of that future which does not have technology at its heart.

    Just as there is no route to long-term growth, no solution to our productivity problem, without innovation.

    That’s why I will be bringing forward – for the very first time – a dedicated plan for our digital and technologies sector.

    That plan will be a partnership with you and with local leaders in regions with the highest growth potential.

    And it will be rooted in a firm belief that technology can be a force for good in working people’s lives.

    Whether that’s climate-resistant crops that will provide affordable food in the face of floods and droughts. Quantum scanners that will help us understand devastating diseases like dementia and epilepsy.

    Semiconductors like the ones I saw last week in South Wales, which are powering every part of modern life.

    New telecoms technologies that will allow people and businesses to access the internet anywhere in the UK – or protect our armed forces abroad.
    Drones that can save lives – or simply deliver a takeaway to your door.

    Too often, though, British businesses trying to bring technologies like these to market face a mountain of red tape.

    That’s bad for growth.

    And it’s bad for British people, who spend longer waiting for the products and services they want. I created the Regulatory Innovation Office (RIO) to change that, focusing on four of our fastest-growing, highest-impact sectors.

    Engineering biology. AI in healthcare. Space. And, of course, autonomous technology like drones.

    Today, we have announced that David Willetts will take on the role of Chair.

    David brings with him an unparalleled wealth of experience.

    He may have once sat on the other side of the House.

    But few people know the UK science and technology landscape better than him. That’s just as well – because he’s got his work cut out.

    David and Minister Vallance went to Guy’s last Friday.

    The stifling straightjacket of rules that the team faced before they could start the trial isn’t just keeping drones grounded.

    It’s everywhere you look.

    That’s why transparent, adaptable, pro-innovation regulation will be the central pillar of the digital and technologies sector plan.

    Today, I’ve set up a forum to get our regulators ready for the quantum revolution.

    Because I want them to give British businesses the confidence they need to embrace a technology that will transform every part of our lives. I’ve also launched new funding for engineering biology sandboxes which will help us accelerate regulatory reform for products like lab-grown organs for transplant or cell-cultivated meat.

    This approach is being replicated right across government – even in the places you’d expect it least.

    Right now, the humble banana – Britain’s favourite fruit – is at risk.

    Because almost all the bananas in the world are genetically identical clones, Panama disease could wipe them all out at once.

    So Tropic Biosciences – a UK start-up based in Norwich – have come up with an alternative.

    Their gene-edited, disease-resistant bananas offer hope for the future.

    Better still – they’ve also developed bananas that ripen, but don’t go brown.

    Those have already been licensed for consumption in the Philippines.

    But not yet in the UK.

    Soon, though, that might change.

    Bolstered by the reinstatement of the precision breeding working group, Ministers in Defra are working on enabling a route to market for precision bred crops, that will help us to cope in a new era of climate change and food insecurity.

    Britain must belong to the bold – not the blockers.

    Government must not be afraid to reform the way we regulate to favour innovation.

    Nor must we hesitate to embrace the unpredictable nature of research.

    One of the challenges of designing a plan for this sector is just how rapidly technology is changing. Imagine if you’d published a ten-year plan for AI the day before ChatGPT was released.

    You may as well rip it up and start again.

    Though we can see glimpses of our future in places like Guy’s Hospital, there’s much we cannot predict.

    We can be certain, though, that British science will have a pivotal role to play. To future proof our industrial strategy, we shouldn’t try and guess where research might end up before scientists have even started.

    Instead, we’ve got to be a stable partner that our researchers can rely on – working with them to tackle the challenges that will define the decade to come.

    R&D will be the anchor for this sector plan.

    Today, we’ve invested another £23 million in cutting edge telecoms research that will cement the UK’s leadership in advanced connectivity and support projects delivering real, tangible change for people and businesses across Britain.

    From using smart sensors to prevent damp and mould in social housing in Glasgow.

    To using 5G to help farmers in Sussex monitor their vineyards and maximise their yields.

    We’ve announced the winners of the Quantum Missions Pilot competition, too.

    The ten pioneers we’ve selected will now get to grips with the barriers that are preventing us from commercialising and adopting quantum technologies across the country.

    Every one of these investments sends a clear signal.

    That Britain isn’t just the place where tomorrow’s companies are born.

    But the place where they can scale and succeed.

    A place where the people who are deciding what the next decade looks like will be proud to call home. Because every pound these people on British soil has the potential not just to change working people’s lives, but to secure our nation’s position as a maker, not a taker, of tomorrow’s technology.

    That is why we published the AI Opportunities Plan.

    We cannot afford to simply sit back and wait for the AI revolution to shape us.

    We have got to step up and make sure that Britain is the place where the shape of that revolution gets decided.

    That will require working with companies to deliver the compute infrastructure that the researchers leading it will rely on.

    In the Action Plan, we committed to increasing the capacity of the AI Research Resource – our current network of cutting-edge super computers – by at least 20 times by 2030.

    Today, we are launching market engagement for the private partnerships we will need to meet that commitment. Details of how to take part are now online.

    If you want to work together to secure our stake in the future of this technology, I urge you to get in touch.

    So we will be bold on regulation. On R&D. On infrastructure.

    And I want businesses right across our economy to be bold, too. If we want British people to be the first to benefit from technologies like AI, we’ve got to empower companies large and small with the confidence to adopt them.

    When I talk about partnership, this is what I mean.

    Purposeful, long-term collaboration in pursuit of a common goal.

    So we’ve asked Angela MacLean and Dave Smith to work with you to overcome the barriers to tech adoption in every sector of the industrial strategy.

    But we’re also capitalising on our own position as a customer for our digital and technologies sector, using procurement to drive innovation and deliver a smaller, smarter state that offers better value for money for taxpayers. Everywhere you see, there is an imbalance of power in this country.

    Rules which favour the blockers, not the bold.

    It is that imbalance which has – for too long – made it impossible to imagine a better future for Britain.

    When regulation empowers the people complaining about the sound of drones – not the patients waiting for life saving care.

    When businesses lack the support they need to invest in risky R&D.

    And researchers can’t access the infrastructure they need to make breakthroughs that will make British people better off. When procurement favours the same old suspects.

    And firms struggle to adopt technologies that could keep them competitive in the decades to come.

    We don’t know what 2035 will look like.

    But we know that tech will have a pivotal – and positive – role to play.

    Engineering biology and AI.

    Semiconductors and cybersecurity.

    Quantum and telecoms.

    Every one of the technologies I have talked about today offers a chance to change working people’s lives for the better.

    But that will only happen if we have the courage to take that chance.

    And an understanding of the radical, far-reaching reform which will be required to do that.

    We cannot afford to be cautious.

    Together, we’ve got to shift the balance of power.

    Away from stagnation and old ideas. Towards innovation and opportunity.

    Away from the naysayers. Towards the can-doers.

    Away from the blockers standing in the way of growth. Towards you – the bold people building a new future for Britain.

    Thank you.

  • Maria Eagle – 2025 Procurement and Industry RUSI Speech

    Maria Eagle – 2025 Procurement and Industry RUSI Speech

    The speech made by Maria Eagle, the Minister for Defence Procurement, made in London on 5 March 2025.

    Esteemed colleagues. Distinguished Guests. Chers amis.

    I’m sure I speak for us all in thanking RUSI and IFRI for bringing us together at this pivotal moment for European security. And for all they do to advance Defence in our countries. As Putin continues to wage his unprovoked and illegal war against Ukraine amidst fierce debate about how best to end the conflict the common refrain coming from both sides of the Channel and both sides of the Atlantic is that Europe needs to step-up and take more responsibility for its own security. As our Prime Minister did again last week, by setting a path that will lift our defence spending from 2.3%,  to 2.5% by 2027,  and 3% in the next parliament.

    Amidst the uncertainty surrounding European security the one thing that is certain and that’s a fighting force is only as strong as the industrial base that stands behind it. So transforming European defence industrial capabilities and boosting capacity are going to be integral to this defining mission of our time. And I hope we all leave here today agreeing that as Europe’s most powerful military forces with two of its most advanced defence sectors the UK and France must spearhead this mission. Strengthening an alliance that has achieved so much since we struck the Entente Cordiale back in 1904.

    A military alliance that’s twice been pivotal in securing European freedoms. And an industrial alliance that has connected our electricity grids…

    shrunk our skies and tunnelled under the channel. Making it possible to enjoy a late morning croissant in Paris followed almost seamlessly, by mid-afternoon tea in London and more easily done than getting back to my constituency in Liverpool and faster most of the time.

    For the last fifteen years the Lancaster House Treaties have been our guiding light as our Armed Forces and our nations have again stood united in support of democracy and against the common threats of terrorism, tyranny, and hybrid warfare both in Europe and further afield.  And as we gather today to discuss the next chapter of our Defence industrial partnership I believe that the overwhelming majority of not just British and French people but the vast majority of Europeans are looking to our respective governments to provide leadership by doing more together in recognition that our combined military capabilities are the most significant stabilising force in European security.

    And as we step forward to help Europe step-up to the challenge we will be building on solid foundations. Our combined nuclear deterrents underpin Europe’s security. Our Combined Joint Expeditionary Force is on stand-by to respond swiftly to crises giving us a level of interoperability with the French Armed Forces, beyond anything we have with any other European allies. And our Industrial sector is also increasingly integrated.

    Through ‘One MBDA’ we’ve help safeguard European missile production capabilities and delivered innovative defensive and offensive systems…

    including Meteor and SCALP/Storm Shadow. Together we are co-developing powerful Future Cruise and Anti-Ship Weapons a sovereign capability that boosts our industrial resilience and will deliver the most advanced deep-strike weapons in Europe. And as part of our Maritime Mine Counter-Measures Project with Thales the UK will soon take delivery of our first set of autonomous mine hunting equipment marking an important new phase in that particular programme.

    But if we are to re-establish security across the European continent and dissuade Putin from coming back again to invade one of his sovereign neighbours we need to use our Summit in June to broaden our defence industrial collaboration beyond complex weapons. Putting something of an ‘Entente Industrielle’ at the heart to the UK-France Defence partnership that delivers more from our existing programmes that intensifies our cooperation in the most decisive domains and capabilities – including space, AI, and defeating hybrid grey-zone warfare and provides leadership to European Partners, including within NATO.

    For both our countries the need to significantly strengthen European deterrence represents a significant economic opportunity.

    And it can be a virtuous circle of enhanced capabilities, stronger deterrence, and economic growth that I believe can be mutually beneficial as we expand the range of our cooperation supporting a growing number of Defence jobs in both France and the UK.

    Last week marked the end of our public consultation on the UK’s forthcoming Defence Industrial Strategy I am glad to say because I was visiting every corner of the UK speaking to people about it, so I get a little bit of rest from travel. But that strategy will guide our approach to the sector.

    It is a strategy that will set out our wish to create new research and industrial ventures with international allies like France in order to broaden our capabilities, enhance standardisation, and boost interoperability whilst supporting our respective strengths across the defence value chain.

    We know the EU has a role to play in building a larger, more innovative, and more responsive European defence sector. And we would welcome French support as we seek an ambitious new UK-EU security pact. Continued coordination through NATO is also crucially important,

    in setting capability targets and standards, and making our collective defence industrial bases more coherent. We also know, a more resilient and responsive industrial base, requires a fundamentally closer relationship between governments and industry, hence adding that “industry” to the end of my title. I am not just in charge with procurement I am in charge of our relationship with defence industries as well. And we are recruiting a National Armaments Director, who will be held accountable for delivering that, alongside procurement reform.

    At the last UK-France Summit, our countries signed up to a closer industrial relationship. We agreed to strengthen supply chains and industrial resilience and facilitate reciprocal market access and exports. I think that recent geopolitical developments, have injected urgency into that work…

    and the need to strengthen European and NATO industrial and procurement initiatives is also apparent and that includes: the European Long-Range Strike Approach the DIAMOND integrated air and missile defence initiative and NATO’s Defence Production Action Plan and Multinational Procurement initiatives. Collective procurement will deliver more of the capabilities we need across the continent to deter Putin…

    and deliver more bang for our Pounds and Euros.

    Whilst UK and French visions for Europe’s security architecture haven’t always aligned during the Entente Cordiale era, UK and French values and interests overwhelmingly have and it is vital for European Security that we talk, and build on that unity.

    Our cooperation has long been a powerful force-for-good that has brought our people closer together and helped overcome tyranny and preserve freedoms. And we can do it again.

    So I will work closely with my counterpart Délégué Emmanuel Chiva…who I am going to be seeing tomorrow at the High-Level UK-France Working Group to put our defence capabilities and industrial cooperation at the top of the agenda of our Summit in June at the heart of our Lancaster House Treaties refresh and at the centre of our shared mission to bolster European security

    Because like our predecessors who built the Entente Cordiale to secure peace in their time we must now build an Entente Industrielle to guarantee European security in ours.

  • Stephanie Mander – 2025 Letter to Parents Cancelling Easter Celebrations at Norwood Primary School

    Stephanie Mander – 2025 Letter to Parents Cancelling Easter Celebrations at Norwood Primary School

    The letter sent by headteacher Stephanie Mander to parents in March 2025.

    Dear Parents and Carers,

    As we approach the spring season, I would like to inform you about an important update regarding our school’s traditional Easter celebrations.

    After careful consideration and discussions with our school community, we have decided not to hold the Easter Bonnet Parade or the Easter Service this year. This decision has been made in the spirit of inclusivity and respect for the diverse religious beliefs, represented within our school community.

    Our school is committed to fostering an environment where every child feels valued and respected, regardless of their religious background. By not holding specific religious celebrations, we aim to create a more inclusive atmosphere that honours and respects the beliefs of all our children and their families.

    We understand that this change may be disappointing for some, especially those who have cherished these traditions over the years. However, we believe that this decision aligns with our values of inclusivity and respect for diversity. We are exploring alternative ways to celebrate the season in future years, that will be inclusive of all children and reflect the rich cultural diversity of our community.

    One of the ways we will be celebrating inclusivity is by taking part in Refugee Week which occurs in June, as well as beginning our journey to become an accredited School of Sanctuary. Watch this space! In the meantime, we look forward to seeing many of you at the Music Festival in a couple of weeks.

    We appreciate your understanding and support as we make this transition. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact the school office.

    Thank you for your continued support.