May 2026

One of the successes of the family justice system is the family mediation voucher scheme. Two thirds of families who use the scheme avoid going to court, which takes a lot of pressure off the family courts. It started in 2021 and gets renewed every year, often at the end of the year or even when the next year has started, which creates huge uncertainty. Will the Secretary of State just say that he will make the scheme permanent from now on?

The hon. Member is right to raise those important issues. We will always treat any whistleblowing complaints with the utmost seriousness. When it comes to fraud, I reassure him that, as part of the reset, HS2 is strengthening its counter-fraud capability and its internal controls and processes. When spending this amount of taxpayers money, it should be treated it as if it were our own, with the care and attention that we would apply to our own money. We are therefore taking all necessary steps t

If the hon. Gentleman would like to write to me about the case for reopening Shap and Tebay, I would gladly consider that. We are reopening some rail stations across the north of England. The Northumberland line, which I visited at the start of last year, has been an enormous success, with new stations at places like Ashington and Blyth. We are investing in rail in the north of England—that was demonstrated by our commitment to Northern Powerhouse Rail—but I am happy to look at the specifics of

I will gently correct the hon. Member. When it comes to HS2, we may be talking about tens of billions, but we are not talking about hundreds of billions. He makes a fair point about the importance of investment in walking and cycling. The Government are due to launch the third iteration of the cycling and walking strategy, and we are backing that with £600 million-worth of investment. We realise the benefits that active travel—people walking and cycling more, and using public transport —can have

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on levering in a question on air passenger duty into a statement on HS2.

My hon. Friend is right; the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) never misses an opportunity. I am very concerned about ensuring that connectivity between the UK mainland and Northern Ireland remains and that it is reliable and affordable for people. I will be sure to talk further to the hon. Gentleman about what more can be done—aside from air passenger duty, which is a matter for the Treasury. If there is anything that my Department can do to improve the situation for his constituents, I

Neil O'Brien voted AYE on 'King's Speech Motion for an Address: amendment (i)' (108-323, defeated)

Naz Shah voted NO on 'King's Speech Motion for an Address: amendment (i)' (108-323, defeated)

Before being elected to this place, I was a member of the independent panel for the community and environment fund and the business and local economy fund for HS2, which was responsible for disbursing funding to communities disrupted by the building of a whacking great railway line. Communities rightly and understandably get grumpy when large-scale infrastructure projects affect their communities but there is no obvious benefit to them—a railway line goes through, but there is no station for the

This House did not pass the motion on the Humble Address so that Ministers could decide, four months later, which inconvenient information they would prefer that Parliament did not see. Given the ISC’s concerns that the Government are redacting information far too broadly, we must ensure that the Government are not just withholding documents and information from Parliament on their own say-so. Every day this pantomime drags on, public trust erodes further. Parliament asks for transparency, Epste

Patrick Hurley voted NO on 'King's Speech Motion for an Address: amendment (i)' (108-323, defeated)

Michelle Scrogham voted NO on 'King's Speech Motion for an Address: amendment (i)' (108-323, defeated)

Andrew Ranger voted NO on 'King's Speech Motion for an Address: amendment (i)' (108-323, defeated)

Parliamentary appearance by Amanda Martin

Parliamentary appearance by Josh Babarinde

Jonathan Brash voted NO on 'King's Speech Motion for an Address: amendment (i)' (108-323, defeated)

In her statement, the Secretary of State said that she was angry, and I can assure her that I have been consistently angry about this unaffordable, unwanted railway ever since it was green lit—angry on behalf of my constituents, who have to live in hellish conditions while it is constructed. Landowners are still waiting for payment for land taken, and our roads are churned up by construction traffic, and still unfixed. There is still not the money to deliver mitigation projects that were promise

On roads, the precedent was clearly set by East West Rail, which fully resurfaced 21 roads that its heavy goods vehicles had trashed. Does my hon. Friend agree that HS2 should follow that precedent and fix that which they have broken in our communities?

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is patently absurd that the Secretary of State casually said at the Dispatch Box earlier that the overall bill for phase 1 will breach £100 billion—I predicted that years ago—yet even though the taxpayer will keep bailing out phase 1, there is no money to fund the mitigation projects that were actually promised to our communities, such as fixing our roads. It seems that the taxpayer will bail out everything else, but not the community impact.

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. In what has been a week of chaos, psychodrama and endless plotting, it must be a welcome break for the Minister to debate legislation that, as the explanatory memorandum sets out, results in “no changes to this policy and the regulatory regime associated with port State control is retained.” As I understand it, the draft regulations do not implement any new obligations, and it is therefore expected that there will be no dir