March 2026

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

I understand that the Minister is talking about very short-term interventions, but this is about 13,000 homes over a period running up to 2042. I was not going to be partisan about it, but this has come about because of the removal of planning requirements from cities such as London and their imposition on areas such as west Kent. That is a Government decision, and they have a mandate to execute it. They and the Green party voted through the change of green belt into this imaginary grey belt—aga

Parliamentary appearance by Mike Reader

Parliamentary appearance by Mike Reader

I am not 100% sure what point the hon. Gentleman is trying to make, but he has put it on the record. There is a huge amount of drone activity going on, and a lot of ways in which that needs to be dealt with. I am heartened by what this Government have done so far, including, to name just a few achievements: the largest pay rise in two decades for armed forces personnel, many of whom are my constituents; the first veterans’ strategy in seven years; the largest sustained increase in defence spendi

I beg to move, That this House has considered the impact of planning on women’s safety in rural areas. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. I secured this debate because I think the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has made an oversight; I hope it is a genuine oversight and that MHCLG is willing to rectify it. I am genuinely delighted that the Minister for Housing and Planning is here to respond, as I have been trying to contact him about this issue for s

I can confirm that the Liberal Democrat position is not to support new fields for exploration in the North sea. Rather, we should accelerate our own home-grown clean energy, the price of which we control. Otherwise, our constituents will forever be at the mercy of a deteriorating world order.

No, I will not be taking interventions. Lots of Members would like to contribute to the debate who have not had a chance to speak because the time has been taken up. The Opposition can feel free to mutter from the other side, but they should perhaps use the ears that are painted on instead of flapping the lips. I am astonished at the brass neck of shadow Ministers in criticising our readiness, when it was their Government who slashed £12 billion from defence in their first term, and continued th

Let me turn to jobs, which matter deeply. Those working in the North sea are skilled workers. They have kept our lights on, and must be at the heart of any transition. A just transition recognises that, although we will need oil and gas for decades to come, the North sea is a mature basin, and oil and gas workers, as well as supply chains, need support to transition. Even though the Conservatives supported new North sea drilling, the number of jobs in the oil and gas industry fell by 70,000 when

I am pleased to chair the newly formed all-party parliamentary group for warm homes. Newcastle is leading the way with its hugely impactful warm homes local grant scheme run by Warmworks in conjunction with Newcastle city council. Does the Secretary of State agree that we need to see more of these locally led grant schemes, which are helping people to insulate their homes so that they can protect themselves from any incoming global insecurity that might affect their ability to heat their homes?

Let me turn to climate change. Although fossil fuels are driving skyrocketing costs, they also drive the costs of the unabated climate change that is already hitting our farmers and our communities, through crippling flooding and droughts. Approving Rosebank alone would add nearly 250 million tonnes of emissions, pushing us beyond our climate targets and further out of line with the Paris agreement, which aims to protect us all. Opening new fields would worsen the climate crisis without cutting

We have been taking out less gas for decades now, and those decisions were taken by successive Governments. We have seen the assessment on the security of gas supply: Norway’s geological situation shows that it has more left, while our basin has less and the supply is dwindling. Expanding North sea drilling is not pragmatic; it is reckless and incompatible with the UK’s climate commitments. There is another path, however. The Liberal Democrats have been clear that we must break our overdependenc

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for her comments, which I completely agree with. I am sure that they have generated enormous response to her current petition, which is at signhelenspetition.com, should you wish to sign it, Sir John. I understand that it will be increasingly popular at this time, and rightly so, given how badly areas of east Maidstone were affected during the water outages a few weeks ago. What I and my hon. Friend have said will be no doubt familiar to the Minister, who has been

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