April 2026

My noble Friend Baroness Sherlock takes a very keen interest in this issue, in particular how we can look at the abolition of direct pay to subvert some of the instances of financial abuse and coercive control that we continue to see. If the hon. Lady would like to write to me about her specific case, I will ensure she receives a response.

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. I know that she has been representing Rebecca for some time in seeking a resolution to that case. We seek to introduce a range of changes when parliamentary time allows, but clearly there is further work to do to ensure that enforcement processes are also strengthened. Baroness Sherlock would be happy to discuss that with my hon. Friend if she feels that would be appropriate, and I would be happy to facilitate such a meeting.

As I said in a previous response, we will do so when parliamentary time allows. My noble Friend Baroness Sherlock is also considering a calculation review. There is a range of issues with the CMS that need to be looked at and resolved to ensure that the children in the middle of this get the support to which they are entitled.

Redundancy payments are not taken into account in the standard maintenance calculation, which is based on gross taxable income from earnings, although the capital may be considered through an asset variation if the paying parent holds the income in a bank or savings account and the amount is at least £31,250. The Child Maintenance Service may also take the redundancy payment into account when considering any maintenance arrears.

Part of the challenge here is that the legislation currently requires us to use earnings information and figures provided by His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, and, because redundancy payments of up to £80,000 are exempted from tax, they do not show up in that way.[Official Report, 18 May 2026; Vol. 786, c. 8WC.] (Correction) However, I hear what the hon. Lady is saying and the wider mood of the House with regard to the Child Maintenance Service, and I will share the concerns that she raises wit

Ernest Bevin was a Bristol barrow boy who became our Foreign Secretary. In between, he became not just a trade union leader, but the head of the largest union in the country. He then went on to play a vital role in the wartime cabinet as Minister of Labour. A titan of the labour movement, some suggest that he was Labour’s Churchill. In this debate, to mark the 75th anniversary of his death a fortnight ago, I will examine his achievements and their relevance today. Bevin’s accomplishments are mad

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we should commemorate that day. At the time of that amalgamation, the membership stood at 300,000 workers, but in just 15 years, Bevin would lead it to becoming the largest union in the country, with over 650,000 members. During that time as trade union leader, Bevin accelerated the rights, conditions and pay of the working class. His achievements included the introduction of a 40-hour working week, expanding holiday pay to 11 million workers and redefinin

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Bevin was a really significant figure and one of the most underestimated by history in terms of what he achieved for this country. He once said: “I’m going to be at the Ministry of Labour from 1940 until 1990”, and he would be proved right. It was not until Margaret Thatcher that certain of these rights would be removed, and as a union leader he was ambitious for change and saw the opportunity to be an MP and would prove a staunch ally to Clem Attlee. Bevi

I will try and raise my standards to the level of oratory that my hon. Friend would now expect. The role of women in the war effort proved decisive, and the mobilisation proved decisive to the overall war effort and gave Britain an advantage over Nazi Germany. As striking was the effect of demobilisation on a peacetime economy. It was all this work that led Bevin’s Labour Ministry to be likened to Roosevelt’s new deal, a theme to which I will return. Following Labour’s victory in the 1945 electi

First, may I thank the hon. Gentleman for opening this evening’s debate, and for setting out the latest Government amendments, in place of the Pensions Minister? These ping-pong sessions with the hon. Member for Swansea West (Torsten Bell) have become a regular in my diary, and I will miss him this evening. When this Bill was introduced last summer, we said that much of it was a sensible step forward that built on the work of the previous Conservative Government. We stand by that view, but suppo

The hon. Gentleman is quoting selectively from a letter that I have written to the industry. We had this exact debate with the Pensions Minister last week. There is an acknowledged and debated collective action problem; on that, there is a level of consensus, but there is no consensus that mandation is the right answer. In fact, there is a consensus in the sector that mandation is the wrong answer. This Bill contains measures that will make a difference, and will go towards fixing this collectiv

Mr Speaker, “We cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget”. That is the view of the author of the Government’s strategic defence review, the Labour peer, former Labour Defence Secretary and former Secretary-General of NATO Lord Robertson. Which will the Secretary of State choose: defending the country or paying people not to work?

Let us put some facts on the table, because it is time for the Government to confront the hard choices. We are spending less than 2.5% of GDP on defence, but 5.3% of GDP on welfare. Six million people of working age are living on benefits. Under the Secretary of State’s Government, over a million more people have gone on to universal credit and hundreds of thousands have gone on to sickness benefits—and the Government are choosing to spend even more by scrapping the two-child cap. We cannot go o

I was disappointed that the Secretary of State did not answer the question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr Snowden), so let me help him. Unemployment among 18 to 24-year-olds is at 14.3%—that means that one in seven young people is unemployed. There are thousands fewer jobs and thousands fewer vacancies under the right hon. Gentleman’s Government. I speak to young people across the country, who tell me that it is desperately difficult to get a job, and it is no wonder. His Governm

Parliamentary appearance by Mr Calvin Bailey

Because of the previous Government’s actions, the number of people not in employment, education or training rose by nearly 250,000 between 2021 and 2024, leaving many hundreds of my constituents among the almost 1 million young people in that situation today. I am glad to see, then, that the Secretary of State is taking action to support young people in Erewash through the youth guarantee. Further to that, will the Secretary of State please explain the measures that his Department is taking to a

Parliamentary appearance by Amanda Martin

I am dismayed that we find ourselves here yet again on this Bill. I remind the House that this is the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, and currently one of the biggest threats to our children’s wellbeing is online harms, not least as a result of harmful social media, alongside other online harms such as addictive gaming and chatbots. I recognise and welcome that the Government have moved a little since we last debated amendments to the Bill last week: Ministers have finally made the commit

Would the hon. Member accept that when the process exonerates the soldiers and the veterans at the end, the whole point of the process and taking them to the court in the first place is to give the daily headlines in the paper to allow Sinn Féin and the IRA to rewrite the history of the troubles?

Let me say on behalf of my party that we condemn the bombing at the weekend and we thank the police for their actions, which ensured that there were not the casualties that we would otherwise be lamenting here today. It is significant that the bomb was set off at the same time as Sinn Féin was holding its party conference, at which bombers of the past were being praised. That glorification of terrorism only stimulates terrorism again today. The logic is clear: if we can praise the bombers of the