May 2026

Businesses in my constituency are not asking for special treatment; they are asking for a Government who stop making it harder to employ people, harder to grow and harder to invest. Right now, too many feel that Labour is taking the country in the wrong direction. Through my business club and regular conversations with employers across Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, I keep hearing the same thing: costs are rising, confidence is falling and businesses are becoming more cautious about taking peop

I thank the Secretary of State for giving way and for his astounding shopping list of action that he is taking, but the Conservatives can make life easy for him: if he had not put 2% on national insurance, increased the national minimum wage and used the Employment Rights Act 2025 to remove the option of zero-hours contracts, businesses in my constituency and across the country would not have been forced to remove jobs focused specifically on young people. It is this Government who are responsib

On that point, will the Secretary of State give way?

I hesitate to even raise this, but in case the Minister is anxious about time, we can—fortunately or unfortunately—run to 5.30 pm.

Parliamentary appearance by David Pinto-Duschinsky

Parliamentary appearance by Carolyn Harris

Parliamentary appearance by Peter Swallow

Parliamentary appearance by Peter Swallow

The Welsh, known for our singing, are united in concern for Swansea’s global superstar Bonnie Tyler, who has been hospitalised in Portugal due to ill health. Will the Leader of the House join me in wishing Bonnie a safe and speedy recovery? As the song that she first recorded in ’88 says, she is simply the best.

I will finish. I am really sorry—I have a two-and-a-half-year-old who kept me up all night, and I was feeling a bit faint. I want to conclude by setting out how important it is for this Government to support the next generation and to support young people. As we bring forward our Bill, we will have young people in our minds, particularly those with special educational needs and disabilities and those who have been let down. We will do everything in our power to support them. Ordered, That the de

The Opposition have been remarkably silent for a long time about the failures in the system. They have been quick to ask us to take action, but less quick to set out what they would do differently. This is an issue that they failed to grip for years. We are tackling it head on, introducing legislation and putting investment right now into our communities. We had mention of the Experts at Hand service and the investment in new special schools that is making a difference today. Almost every single

It is an honour to close today’s King’s Speech debate on behalf of His Majesty’s Government. I thank everyone from all parts of the Chamber for their thoughtful and wide-ranging contributions. I will come to some of their comments in detail, but I start by saying that it is a shame the shadow Minister did not ask for the help of the work experience student who supported the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth) in developing his statistics today. The shadow Minister might have been a b

Nobody, and certainly nobody in my party, would argue that we should not pay the lowest-paid more, but businesses in my Chelmsford constituency tell me—I am pretty sure this happens across the country—that the issue is the knock-on effect on the differential. When businesses pay the lowest-paid more, they have to pay some of the people higher up the ladder a bit more as well, to keep the differential. The cumulative effect of that—plus other things, such as national insurance contribution increa

As Member of Parliament for Chelmsford, I am proud to represent a city with a breadth of businesses, industries and educational institutions that do so much to support people from all backgrounds into employment. On today’s theme of getting Britain working again, over recent months I have held several roundtables with local small businesses, from independent restaurants that serve as important community spaces to local shops that provide high-quality, high street based alternatives to major mult

Parliamentary appearance by Saqib Bhatti

I call Munira Wilson.

Parliamentary appearance by Mr Mark Francois

Has the hon. Member sought all the appropriate permissions?

Meur ras, Mr Speaker. As the Government work to unlock economic growth and strengthen social cohesion across the country, it is crucial that residents in every part of the UK feel that they are getting a fair share. I am concerned that support for estuary crossings may be allocated differently from support for the Tamar crossings in my South East Cornwall constituency, despite the importance of the Tamar crossings for local economies, healthcare access and nationally significant industries, such

I would not wish that on him. Given the Labour party’s manifesto commitments, some of us had rather hoped we might find in the King’s Speech a Bill to ban the proceeds of trophy hunting, something to do with hare coursing or improving farm animal welfare. The sad fact is that there was no such mention of any animal welfare issue whatsoever in the King’s Speech, and I would be grateful if the right hon. Gentleman addressed that. While I am on my feet, could I also say that, with the hospitality i