April 2026

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that local authorities like the Liberal Democrat-controlled Three Rivers district council in my constituency should be issuing, for instance, article 4 directions to protect our areas from a proliferation of HMOs?

In my constituency, 44.4% of children are living in poverty, according to the latest Government figures. Yet Oxfam reports that just 56 billionaires in the UK now hold more wealth than 27 million people combined in our country, and their wealth rose on average by more than £230 million each last year. Does the Chancellor accept that child poverty is not inevitable but the result of political choices about who this Government want to protect? Can she explain how the child poverty taskforce can su

11. What steps her Department is taking through the child poverty taskforce to help reduce levels of relative poverty.

I thank the Minister and the shadow Minister for their speeches, which I think have very fully answered the comments that I tried to make in opening the debate. I also thank colleagues across the House for their contribution to this important subject. I was pleased to hear the Minister say that she will chair the national road safety board. I very much hope that she will use that opportunity to help drive the more comprehensive approach to this matter that I set out in my opening remarks. In par

I think I agree with what the hon. Gentleman says, except that I would not wish to make an exceptional case for the countryside. This issue affects all part of our country. As he will know, the royal town of Sutton Coldfield is an ancient town and is therefore not part of the countryside as such, although within the royal town of Sutton Coldfield we have the biggest municipal park in Europe, so we at least doff our caps to the issue of rurality. I was listing the number of clear principles that

The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely good point, and he adds that particular tragedy to the tragedies that I have already mentioned. Of course he is right that, with modern technology racing ahead in so many ways, our data should be better and more effective at informing the decisions that are made. He made that point with great eloquence. What is currently lacking is a clear, coherent and sustained national strategy to bring these efforts together. At present, responsibility for accident preve

As the hon. Member will see as I develop my speech, I very much agree with him. In Birmingham, we have the seventh highest number of accidental deaths in England. Each year, more than 550 families in our city lose a loved one due to a preventable accident. That is more than one death every day. Across the west midlands, more than 2,000 people annually die due to accidents, the equivalent of wiping out a small village year after year. Nationally, there has been an 8% rise in accidental death rate

I beg to move, That this House has considered the potential merits of a national accident prevention strategy. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. Today, I want to draw the House’s attention to what can only be described as a silent and spiralling crisis in our country: the devastating human cost of preventable accidents. This is not a new issue, but it is getting worse and, crucially, it is still not given the level of sustained national attention that its scale demands

In my constituency of Horsham, Chess Dynamics, which is part of Cohort, is a world-leading developer of counter-drone and air defence technology—exactly the capabilities that we need. Yet Chess, like much of the defence industry, has been kept on hold since last year, awaiting clarity on the defence investment plan. Without it, it cannot commission new air defence systems, leaving the next generation of Royal Navy frigates potentially exposed. It needs to know now. Will the Minister agree to mee

4. What discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Defence on the effectiveness of the defence industrial strategy.

What consideration has my right hon. Friend given to joining the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank to make sure that we are really pushing the investment that we need to see in defence in the current world situation?

The waiting list for gynae care was north of 600,000 when we took office. Today that figure is finally moving in the right direction, but we cannot make as much progress as we would like because the system simply was not designed with women in mind… Women’s health pathways are being prioritised in NHS Online, and menopause and menstrual health services will be among the first to go live when it becomes operational this year. [Official Report, 16 April 2026; Vol. 783, c. 1049.] Written correction

My hon. Friend is speaking wisely of the time when Boris Johnson was before the Privileges Committee. Does he believe the House should remember that that Prime Minister lost an anti-corruption champion, who resigned over the issue? Conservative Members would be well placed to remember what happened when the Privileges Committee found misdeeds and wrongdoing on the part of that Prime Minister.

Parliamentary appearance by Mrs Kemi Badenoch

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec. It is a pleasure to see so many Members in this debate. It is always ominous to have my Deputy Chief Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra), sitting next to me in a debate—I do not know whether that is an expectation of great things or a sign that there will be a meeting without coffee. Might I say that he made a very, very good speech? I hope the Minister takes it on board. In all seriousness, I tha

My hon. Friend makes an important point. In addressing all these things, we must think about who is most at risk and what the appropriate way is to intervene. A point was made earlier about how rural areas are particularly at risk. We know that those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds—the people in the poorest neighbourhoods—are most at risk of being involved in serious incidents. That is true for road safety, as it is for other things, but my hon. Friend is right to raise the issue of ruralit

Of course.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We think of all those who have lost their life at work; I think that about 120 people each year are killed in the course of their work. There is also a much more widespread problem of people suffering ill health, particularly relating to work-related stress and mental health. The best employers work really hard on those issues, often in consultation with their trade union health and safety reps. The Health and Safety Executive is Britain’s national regulator f

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I thank the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir Andrew Mitchell) for securing this debate. I am pleased to respond on behalf of the Government. I offer my condolences to all those affected by the incidents in his constituency that he mentioned, including Natasha’s family and friends. I pay tribute to him for raising awareness of this important issue. As the right hon. Gentleman rightly suggests, it is not unreasonable to exp

I thank the Minister for his inclusive and thorough response to some of the concerns raised today. I will certainly be writing to him on behalf of my constituent who is sitting behind me. I also thank the obviously doting father and grandpapa, the omnipresent hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for his contribution—quite an imaginative one it was, too—and, as ever, my colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart), who put the right, honourable and proper Liberal Democra