March 2026

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour, who ran rings around the Prime Minister yesterday so expertly. He is absolutely right. The Red Book details to the penny how much this Government will spend on their U-turn to abolish the two-child benefit cap by 2031. There is no line on what will be spent on defence in those years, so how on earth is the MOD meant to change? The key is that the Government are not going to go to 3% in this Parliament. I am going to conclude b

I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin).

I have found this debate quite fascinating. What nonsense from the Conservatives! We are watching a party rip itself up as it worries about more defections to Reform, and Conservative Back Benchers parrot the lines of their Front Benchers. We know from media coverage that the Conservatives are promoting people to the Front Bench based on their social media clout, so I look forward to many more one-liners and AI-generated speeches as they all try to get to the front. We have heard arguments that

Parliamentary appearance by Jack Abbott

We need to be clear that this energy crisis is, in effect, an oil and gas crisis and shows us yet again just how dangerous our overdependence on fossil fuels is. Just as with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the middle east conflict shows how a single geopolitical escalation can send energy prices soaring, leaving households and businesses here in the UK exposed to shocks beyond their control. History is now in danger of repeating itself: families struggling with higher gas, petrol and food prices

I completely agree with everything the hon. Member says about the need for robust mental and physical health support for veterans, and I bow to his personal experience on the matter. Does he agree that, through Operation Courage, we are providing specialist NHS-based mental health support to veterans, and, through Operation Restore, we are providing additional physical health support? It is my understanding that, to date, up to 36,000 veterans have been supported by those two initiatives.

My hon. Friend is right that strategic infrastructure planning is crucial, which is why we are engaging in the first ever national strategic spatial energy plan, which will lead to a centralised strategic plan for the future of the network. We are also looking at how we manage demand projects such as data centres across the country in order to get the greatest advantage. My hon. Friend is right to highlight the local benefits that can come from heat networks. We will be carrying out heat network

We are delivering the biggest upgrade to the grid since the 1960s, using strategic plans to identify where new capacity is needed and accelerating infrastructure build. In west London, network operators have used innovative measures to help new developments to connect, despite exceptionally high growth in electricity demand.

The hon. Lady asks an incredibly important question, and I share her frustration. I have reflected that frustration to all those involved in this process. It is worth remembering that we had more than 600 GW in a queue, and that this process has cleared out 300 GW. That was incredibly complex, and it is the first time that any country in the world has sought to do it. It is the first time that we have done it. Clearly we have learned a lot of lessons, but the process needs to proceed much faster

I congratulate my hon. Friend’s local hospital. He rightly shows the way that cheap, clean, renewable power can cut bills not just for families, but for our public services, as GB Energy is doing, so that we can transfer money to frontline patient care.

We are taking a strategic approach to planning grid capacity and halving transmission build times through reforms to consenting, regulation and supply chains. We are working with the National Energy System Operator and Ofgem to deliver on radical connections reform, prioritising those projects that are ready to connect and strategically aligned, and to speed up access to the grid nationwide.

The two Ministers are Scottish MPs. They have been to industry, and they know what people in those areas are saying. They know the jobs that are being lost. It is so blindingly obvious that we should use things that we make in this country, rather than using dirtier imports from abroad. The question they need to ask themselves is, why is it that their Secretary of State cannot see the truth? Fifthly, the Government say that new fields will take too long to get up and running. That is dangerous,

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Ipswich (Jack Abbott) for securing this important debate. I welcome to the House all the women in the Public Gallery. I have also heard from many women in my constituency who have lived with the devastating impact of endometriosis. It is shocking that so many have had to endure years of pain, uncertainty, dismissal and a lack of access to timely diagnosis and specialist endometriosis services. According

Parliamentary appearance by Tom Hayes

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) for securing this debate and speaking so powerfully, as he always does, about loss on these issues. Frankie James Grogan lived in my constituency. He was three years old, and would have been 10 in January. Frankie was adored by his family, and everyone who met him said the same thing: that he was a joy to be around—always smiling, always laughing and always making his mum and dad proud. Frankie loved giraffes, as he love

I believe that the Minister answered that question. Norway has a very different system, and it made different decisions about consumption, based on the faster and greater adoption of techniques and heat pumps. The dither and delay under the previous Conservative Government meant that we did not move forward and reduce consumption. The truth is that expanding oil and gas production in the North sea—a mature basin from which we have already extracted 93% of resource—would do nothing to cut people’

I am very grateful to my right hon. and gallant Friend, who speaks with his experience as not just a former Defence Minister but someone who served in the Royal Navy and still does as a reservist. I ran an SME—it was not a defence SME, but I know the stress of running a company in tough times, and my heart goes out to companies like the one he talks about, which will be struggling right now. They are selling abroad but getting nothing from the British military at a time when we face intense thre

This Government are taxing people up the wazoo and piling cost after cost on to their energy bills. People on £30,000 or £40,000 a year, who are not well off, are being hammered to pay for welfare when they are already working all hours to support their own families. Now we hear that the Government are about to go back to the taxpayer again to subsidise those on welfare, but their first port of call should be to adopt our cheap power plan. It would cut electricity bills by 20% for everybody by c

No, I need to make time. Our £1 billion contract for new medium helicopters has helped to secure the future of the Leonardo plant in Yeovil, sustaining more than 3,000 jobs. We have spent millions more on drone procurement and development, including, earlier this month, an order for 20 uncrewed surface vessels, which will be built by Kraken in Hampshire and take us a step closer to our vision of a hybrid Navy. That is not a frozen procurement pipeline; it is a Government delivering for British s

I thank my hon. Friend for his important point. Women should not have to fight to get the treatment they need. I have also heard from Kelly, who told me: “Every month I am in debilitating pain and it is soul destroying. I cannot take days off work every month and there is nothing I can do but suffer. It affects my work, relationships and is ruining my life.” Then there is Lucy, who has worked in the NHS for 20 years and is now a clinical nurse specialist for endometriosis. She told me: “I grew u