April 2026

T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.

Thank you, Sir Jeremy. The debate has also been very instructive to me. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the impact of the Community Infrastructure Levy on private homeowners.

I call Sir Jeremy to wind up—you may take your time.

Order. I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called in the debate.

Order. I remind Members that interventions should be short.

Richard Foord will move the motion. I will then call the Minster to respond. I remind Members that they may make a speech only with the prior permission of the Member in charge of the debate and the Minister. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for a 30-minute debate.

I am sorry to hear about what has happened in the hon. Member’s constituency, and I very much agree with him. We recently received the report of our expert academic panel on neurodiversity in the workplace, which was set up last year, and are carefully considering its recommendations. We will act as he suggested.

I commend my hon. Friend’s important work as chair of the all-party group and thank her for hosting me at the roundtable. This year, we funded ACAS to deliver masterclasses on recruiting neurodivergent people to 1,800 small and medium-sized enterprise representatives, addressing exactly the concerns that she raised. My Department has also set up the online support with employee health and disability service specifically to help employers on those issues. We will be considering what more we can d

It was 18 months ago, I remember, that my late friend Terry Etherton was sitting up in the Gallery beaming down at the Prime Minister because he had just announced the Government scheme to give compensation to those who had been wrongly sacked from the armed forces for simply being gay. I have a constituent who lost his job at MI6 in the 1980s for his sexuality, and he has no compensation. Those in the security services also put their life on the line for their country; it is just not fair. Will

T2. Leaked guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission suggested that it would be lawful for transgender and gender non-conforming people to be excluded from changing facilities based on a perception that their appearance did not correspond with societal gender norms, irrespective of their actual sex. Can the Minister reassure the House that such an obvious licence for bigotry and discrimination will not be included in the final guidance when she publishes it next month?

I thank the Minister for the comments that she has made so far. Conversion practices have devastated the lives of LGBT people for many years, making them feel ashamed of who they are and leaving them with long-term physical and mental harm. The upcoming King’s Speech marks eight years since a ban on so-called conversion therapy was first promised. Can the Minister reassure me that a Bill will come to the House early in the next Session, and that we will not be waiting any longer for these cruel

5. What steps she is taking to ban conversion practices.

The hon. Gentleman has the pleasure of representing a beautiful part of the world. Sherborne is a beautiful patch that needs proper fire protection. He is right. We have talked about deprivation and the challenges that industrial sites pose, but knowing how many people live in an area and how many homes need to be protected by the fire service is pretty fundamental. We need to get that right. The unfair funding settlement could mean fire engines arriving at emergencies without enough crew to res

Parliamentary appearance by Laura Kyrke-Smith

In response to the question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) on borrowing, the right hon. Lady suggested that she was following a strict deficit reduction plan. I think she made reference to a reduction in the deficit of £20 billion year on year—but, of course, it is easy to reduce something if you pump it up recklessly in the first place. Could she tell the House how much more borrowing this Government will undertake across this Parliament compared wi

The right hon. Lady does not seem to know how much additional borrowing this Government are undertaking compared with the plans of the last Government, so I will tell her: it is one quarter of a trillion pounds of additional borrowing across this Parliament. The truth is that this Chancellor is addicted to borrowing, which means, compared with what otherwise would be the case—she said exactly this, in terms, in the answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash—higher borrowing

Integrated industrial clusters such as Saltend in my constituency provide fundamental chemicals and other inputs into defence and wider industries right across the country. Yet higher energy costs and global events mean that they are under unprecedented pressure. Will the Minister look at establishing an industrial support fund, so that rather than having an ad hoc approach, such as that seen when supporting Grangemouth, we have something strategic to ensure that we do not lose the industrial ba

I think my right hon. Friend is being a little too harsh on the limited number of Labour MPs present. The entire reputation of the Prime Minister of this country—the leader of their party—is on the line, and they are not turning out for him, because they know that he is now a laughing stock. Having called round their MPs, the Government found that they had to impose a three-line Whip to get them to spare the Prime Minister’s blushes. Can my right hon. Friend be a little bit kinder to Labour Memb

The hon. Gentleman is giving a powerful speech. He says that all allegations should be investigated properly. With the greatest respect to him, the Foreign Affairs Committee is not looking into whether the Prime Minister misled the House, and neither are the police. There is no process to do that, other than the one that Mr Speaker has allowed to be brought to the House today, which is to refer this matter—whether the Prime Minister has misled this House—to the Privileges Committee to determine.

Will the hon. Member give way?