Week beginning 7th September 2026

Welcome back to a second week! What did our MP do last week?

A note: when I refer to "votes" I mean formal divisions of the house. Parliament often decides on questions by near-unanimous verbal approval however it is hard to know if van Mierlo was in the house at the time and if he verbally supported it or not. Somewhat surprisingly there doesn't seem to be a record of when MPs are present in parliament.

Monday 7th September 2026

Monday began with the secretary of state answering questions about the planning system and the ambitious targets that the government has set for house building.

Next Angela Rayner had to announce that local government reorganisation cannot go ahead as planned due to legal advice that the government had received. This reorganisation would have lead to Oxfordshire County Council and each of the five district councils (including South Oxfordshire District Council) being replaced by just three unitary authorities which would be responsible for all local government functions. Henley and Thame would be in Ridgeway district which would consist of what is currently West Berkshire and most of South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse.

The government would not share their legal advise that lead to them pausing the reorganisation however the tories have accused them of gerrymandering in the drawing of the new boundaries.

There was a debate on the protests over the weekend.

Westminster hall saw a petition created by a student sabbatical officer to make misogyny a hate crime. Sex is one of three protected characteristics not currently covered by hate crime legislation (the others being pregnancy/maternity and marriage/civil partnership). If misogyny was made a hate crime it would act as an aggravating factor to a crime leading to more severe offence. It would also mean that it would be centrally monitored.

Tuesday 8th September 2026

Tuesday started with two foreign policy debates - Argentina's claim to the Falkland Islands and sanctions against illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank of Palestine.

Van Mierlo highlighted the petition created by the Aston Rowant CofE Primary School in Thame advocating for Palestinian children's right to education. Nearly all the schools in Gaza have been damaged in the war according to Unicef.

There was a debate about government plans to stop children taking naked images on their phones at the operating system level. This is aimed at stopping self generated CSAM that are used for blackmail and extortion. Adults would have to provide ID to Apple/Google in order to take naked photos.

The Health Bill which would remove the NHS England organisation and make the government directly responsible for many of its functions was read. It will also create a single patient record, a new system to store health information in a way that can be accessed by patients other health care workers. Currently patient information is stored by each organisation separately.

There is concern that the single patient record could be outsourced to Palantir, an American company who also provide surveillance and military technology to customers including ICE, who's CEO has said that American tech companies have an obligation to defend America and who seem interested in gaining soft power in other countries. Palantir already provide the Federated Data System, a similar system to a single patient record, however the contract expires in 2027.

Freddie van Mierlo supported many amendments, mostly related to increased reporting of specific issues in the NHS such as medicinal cannabis and radiotherapy. He proposed amendments that would make the government produce a strategy for access to speech therapy, a report on dementia care, a independent body for oversight of funeral services and better early access to medicines for those with serious or life threatening conditions.

There was then voting on some amendments. Van Mierlo voted Aye for a inquiry into corridor care and Aye for an amendment that opposed the merging of the Health Services Safety Investigations Body into the Care Quality Commission. He did not vote on an amendment, obviously targeted at trans health care workers, that would legislate for single sex spaces in various areas for NHS staff. These amendments all failed due to Labour opposing them.

He voted No for an amendment to ban puberty blocker use for transgender children even in clinical trials. This failed with every major party left of centre opposing it except a single LibDem.

Lastly, there was a debate on retirement homes taking advantage of their older customers with unexplained price rises. Cognatum Estates, which runs Remenham Row in Henley (over the river from Hobbs, just upstream of the bridge), was singled out for this practice.

Wednesday 9th September 2026

Plans for the NHS in the summer as temperatures increase were debated. The government has allocated a £6.75 billion investment in NHS buildings and facilities over multiple years. £1.5 billion will be invested now, with Wycome Hospital among those benefiting.

A bill from the Lords to allow the government to strengthen consumer protections around air travel was read. In particularly it will allow to government to remove the cap on compensation for damage to accessibility equipment like wheelchairs.

Thursday 10th September 2026

On Thursday, van Mierlo spoke on a question about national resilience to the cabinet, asking how the government will support parish councils in developing resilience to fire.

The air traffic control issues that occurred on Tuesday and Ukraine were debated.

The Social Housing Bill was read. This would restrict "right to buy" in a few ways - it would stop tenants of social housing from buying their house until they had lived there for ten years (up from three), reduce the discount that they receive on the house and stop tenants in rural areas from buying at all. This is aimed at stopping the decrease in social housing that has occurred since the policy was introduced.

The bill would also introduce protections for tenants who are victims of domestic abuse so that the abuser has to leave rather then the victim.

The tories introduced an amendment to kill the bill because they objected to the restriction of the right to buy policy and also because they wanted social housing to be reserved for British citizens. Currently everyone who is legally resident in the UK is eligible but those here without permission (such as asylum seekers) are not. This amendment failed with every other major party voting against it - van Mierlo did not vote.

Finally water management was debated, with a suggestion that new builds should collect rainwater rather than adding it to sewage pipes.

Friday 11th September 2026

On Friday, parliament debated the assisted dying bill. This would have allowed adults with mental capacity and a terminal illness that gave them less than six months left to live to chose to die in a clinical setting.

A similar bill has passed the house of commons before with more MPs voting for it than against it however the house of lords used procedural methods such as filing an unprecedented 1,200 amendments to delay the passing of the bill until it ran out of time.

Parliament voted again on assisted dying with the vote splitting parties - van Mierlo voted Aye but it failed with 286 noes against 270 ayes.

Parliament also marked the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Endnote

Thank you for reading the second edition of Last Week! I hope you will return next week to find out what our MP is up to.

If you are interested in writing for this, email me.

-- Tom Brandis

Link to share this page: https://last-week.tombrandis.uk/week/2026-09-07/

If you spot a mistake or want to tell me anything email me at tom@tombrandis.uk.

For further infomation see Hansard (the official parliament report).

To contact Freddie van Mierlo email freddie.vanmierlo.mp@parliament.uk. You can follow him on Bluesky.

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