April 2026

I could not agree more with my right hon. Friend. It is absolutely astonishing that the decision to appoint an individual to the most important ambassadorial role that we can offer took place in a meeting of which there now appears to be no record. We have three clear issues: a discrepancy in the documents that have been published; an inaccurate recollection of events in response to questions in this House, whether inadvertent or deliberate; and a failure to provide full transparency in relation

I am mindful of Mr Speaker’s advice about repetition. I will keep my remarks short and to the point. We have had a number of speeches in which Labour Members have debated whether the threshold for referring this matter to the Privileges Committee has been met. If we look at the evidence, there are clearly some very concerning issues arising from the documents that have been released into the public domain, and from what has been said on the Floor of this House and what has not. Let us take the a

17. What assessment she has made of the potential impact of the conflict in the middle east on energy costs.

In my constituency, the owner of a haulage business—a vital industry that keeps our economy moving—has reported a 40% increase in the cost of diesel. It is at risk of going bust, while companies like BP are reporting record profits. Given that the impact of the conflict will be felt up to eight months after its conclusion, will the Chancellor please commit to cutting fuel duty, to keep my businesses and my residents on the road?

In a debate about misleading the House, it makes me wonder when Members of this House accuse others of not voting on a motion that did not lead to a vote, so I will not take an intervention. I will certainly not take an intervention from the hon. Gentleman. He is a noise maker, not a truth issuer. On the evidence before us today—contradictions, procedural failures and an emerging pattern of conduct—there is plainly a case for referral. Where doubt exists, it should be resolved through proper scr

This has been a long and sometimes interesting debate. We have had some revelations. I was interested to hear the speech by the leader of the Liberal Democrats, the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey). I am sure we are all delighted to hear that the Liberal Democrats are now opposed to sanctimony. I was also interested to hear from the Father of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), that he is not particularly political. I welcome the

My right hon. Friend is exactly right. Indeed, it is worse than that, because this post is the nexus of the entire Five Eyes intelligence co-operation. Our service is not like that of the Americans. In the American embassy, the CIA is freestanding; the ambassador does not matter. In our service, the ambassador runs the local secret service element, as it were, so he or she is entirely responsible and has entire access. That is an issue with the Americans in particular, because they are incredibl

The waiting list for gynae care was nearly 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 next year.

That is entirely true, and in fact, the current Trump Administration made the same point to the Government before the nomination of Peter Mandelson. That perverse logic led to the most obviously unwise public appointment in modern times, and the implied message, unfortunately, was clear: “Government appointments rest on networks of patronage; great offices of state are perks to be handed out to friends.” It is systemic. They even tried to secure an ambassadorial appointment for Lord Doyle, a man

Sometimes the wisdom of the House is crystallised in the comments of us ordinary Back Benchers. That was particularly evident today in the brave speech of the hon. Member for South Shields (Emma Lewell) and, indeed, the intervention of the hon. Member for Birmingham Perry Barr (Ayoub Khan) on the Leader of the Opposition. Both Members said, in effect, that what we have lived through in the last several months is a tragedy—not just for the House, not just for the Government, not just for the Labo

The Committee will not be surprised to hear that the Government do not support a sunset clause, for two primary reasons. First, these reforms address a challenge in our system that not only is acute—because of the crisis, which we inherited from the previous Government, that has been allowed to run out of control—but has long-term drivers, meaning that the demand pressures on our court system are not going away. Of course we want to get the backlog down to a sustainable level, but that will not

The hon. Member for Chichester rightly acknowledges the significant amount of work that the Government are currently undertaking in this space, and we had an opportunity to debate that in Committee earlier. In relation to the new clause, it might be worth briefly explaining why such an extension would not provide significant benefits compared with the systems already in place. In relation to bail decisions, a transcript of the hearing is rarely informative for victims. What victims need and want

I beg to move, That Standing Order No. 22D (Select committee statements) be amended in paragraph (3), by leaving out “5 sitting days” and inserting “10 sitting days”.

I have brought forward a number of motions today to facilitate implementation of recent recommendations of the Backbench Business Committee and the Procedure Committee. I thank both Committees for their recent reports on these matters, and I will briefly speak about the motions. Members should note that the explanatory notes are also available in the Vote Office. First, I will deal with Select Committee statements. Currently, a Select Committee statement must be made within five sitting days of

I thank all Members for their contribution to today’s debate. I thank the shadow Minister for her kind words; I agree that the changes are eminently sensible. The Chair of the Procedure Committee does a fantastic job. We work closely with her Committee and the Modernisation Committee. I thank her and all Procedure Committee members for their important work. I welcome the changes to campaigning. I think that Members will be relieved to know that, once we are into the campaigning season, there wil

I do not accept that the vast majority of the changes we are introducing are unprecedented; in the main, we are shifting caseload from the Crown court to the magistrates court, and we already have a way of testing that. Trials for either-way offences, some of which are already retained in the magistrates court, give us a direct comparison. People can elect the Crown court, and we can see that those retained in the magistrates court are dealt with more promptly. We also saw evidence from internat

I will take one short intervention.

I present a petition on behalf of 116 constituents from East Grinstead, Uckfield and the villages, and a further 87 online signatories. My constituents suffered unprecedented and unacceptable water outages in January. Although nothing will compensate them for a week without running water, there has at least been recompense for householders. That is not the case for local businesses, however, which have lost thousands of pounds in trade and income. I and the East Grinstead Business Association ar

We are not going to do a pilot, not because piloting is not a good idea per se, but because a pilot would necessitate legislation, which is why the hon. Lady has proposed it in this way, and because it would lead to a criminal justice system with different models running in parallel. That is okay—that happens with pilots and trying new things, I understand that—but fundamentally we are not piloting the changes to courts because of the extent of the crisis we are in. We need to bear down on the b

The Prime Minister has called this motion a “stunt” and “pure politics”, but he and the Labour MPs rallying around him forget the seriousness of the allegations against him. The allegations regard misleading the House of Commons over statements relating to the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States—an individual with well-documented links to a convicted sex offender and human trafficker. Swatting away those allegations as a “desperate political stunt” and refusing to l