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In 1776, a small crowd gathered at Cantley Common outside Doncaster to watch a new horse race, won by a filly called Allabaculia.

Few of those watching that first running could have imagined they were witnessing the beginning of a sporting institution that would endure for a quarter of a millennium.

Later named after the man who conceived it, Colonel Anthony St Leger, the race predates the Derby by four years. Today, it is the world’s oldest Classic, the North’s only Classic and the final leg of the British Triple Crown.

There is an old racing saying that the fastest horse wins the Guineas, the luckiest wins the Derby and the best horse wins the St Leger. Run over more than a mile and three-quarters, it is a test of speed, stamina, courage and class.

For 250 years, generations have returned, and Race Week has become woven into the life of Doncaster and Yorkshire, drawing huge crowds and producing champions whose names still echo through the sport. In 1970, Nijinsky became the last horse to complete the British Triple Crown.

Last night we marked that anniversary together in Parliament because the story of British racing cannot be told without recognising the vital role played by regulated betting.

BGC members contribute more than £350m every year to British horseracing through the Levy, media rights and sponsorship, supporting prize money, racecourses, trainers, breeders, jockeys, stable staff and horse welfare.

Racing supports around 85,000 livelihoods and generates roughly £4bn for the economy, much of it through the yards, haulage firms, feed merchants, vets, hotels, pubs and local businesses far beyond London.

The St Leger is one of racing’s great showcases. Last year, more than 52,000 people attended the four-day Festival, including more than 26,000 on St Leger Saturday, up 11 per cent and making it the best-attended British Classic of 2025. This year, we expect a crowd of more than 30,000 on St Leger Saturday alone.

The St Leger is a national sporting treasure, but it is not a museum piece. Its future depends on people continuing to watch it, work in it, invest in it and bet on it.

A substantial part of the money sustaining racing comes through one of the most frequently misunderstood parts of our industry: the high street betting shop.

Betting shops contribute around £140m a year to horseracing. They pay roughly £1bn in direct tax and a further £60m to councils in business rates. They are also racing’s shop window, where generations of fans have watched and enjoyed the sport.

Last month, the Government set out plans to give communities more say over what opens on their high streets, alongside tougher action against criminal operators. We support both principles.

But good policy must draw clear distinctions. A licensed betting shop, staffed by trained employees and operating under strict regulation, is not a rogue or criminal operator.

Betting shops are legitimate high street businesses which have made enormous progress in preventing gambling-related harm. They employ tens of thousands of people, contribute to local economies and operate under some of the toughest regulation anywhere in the world. Policy should recognise that reality rather than treating them as a problem to be managed out of our high streets.

Shop numbers have fallen by more than a third since 2019. Around 3,000 have closed and more than 15,000 jobs have been lost. The 37,500 people still working in them support local economies and bring footfall to neighbouring businesses.

For some customers, particularly older people, the local betting shop is also somewhere to see familiar faces, talk about racing and enjoy a shared interest. Racing is a sport enjoyed by people from every section of society, and it is proud to be so.

Respecting communities means respecting those choices too. An empty unit is not regeneration. A lost job is not renewal. A regulated business should not be stigmatised simply because some politicians dislike what it sells.

The Government says it wants thriving high streets with a diverse mix of businesses that serve their communities. We agree. But that should not mean politicians deciding that a licensed, regulated betting shop is somehow less worthy of a place on the high street than another vape shop, fried chicken takeaway, dingy barber, nail bar or coffee shop where the cost of two oat milk lattes would trigger an affordability check. People should be trusted to choose where they spend their money, without politicians passing judgement on one legal product but not another.

But there is a consequence here that has gone almost entirely unmentioned. The closure of 500 betting shops would cost racing around £20m. Every closed shop means a little less prize money, a little less investment in the sport and, ultimately, greater difficulty in exporting one of Britain’s great sporting products and attracting international investment.

Affordability checks pose another challenge. The Gambling Commission has confirmed that the checks will proceed, so what matters now is whether the promise that they will be genuinely frictionless is honoured.

If credit reference agency data is inconsistent, customers could still find themselves restricted or asked for payslips and bank statements simply to continue with a legal activity that 22.5 million adults enjoy safely every month.

Racing customers are particularly exposed because the sport is seasonal. Someone may bet very little for much of the year and then have several more bets during Cheltenham, Aintree, Royal Ascot or the St Leger. That is normal behaviour for a racing fan, not necessarily a sign of financial risk.

Our modelling suggests the proposed approach could reduce Levy receipts by around £13.2m a year and push more than 70,000 customers towards the illegal gambling market.

That market pays no British tax, buys no media rights, contributes nothing to the Levy and offers none of the protections of the regulated sector.

We are not asking for special treatment. We are asking for fair, proportionate policy based on evidence and an honest understanding of how closely racing, betting and local communities are connected.

Our message to the Prime Minister, and indeed former prime ministers, is clear: please do not treat the betting shop as something you accidentally trod in. It is so much more than that, and it deserves respect.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, people came to Doncaster to watch a horse race. What began there became part of Yorkshire’s identity and Britain’s sporting heritage.

The St Leger is, fittingly, a race about staying power. After 250 years, few sporting institutions have shown more.

That legacy is worth protecting. As Parliament marks this extraordinary anniversary, public policy should create the conditions for racing to flourish and for the partnership that sustains it to remain strong.

Hospital helipads are a critical part of the emer­gency healthcare infrastructure supporting air ambulance operations across the UK. For patients requiring urgent specialist care, safeguarded 24/7 on-site helipad access is an important part of the journey from the scene of an emergency to definitive hospital care.

The APPG for Air Ambulances report, Critical Moments, Life- Saving Infrastructure: The Case for Safeguarded 24/7 On-Site Hospital Helipads at Major Trauma Centres and Specialist Hospitals, published in June 2026, sets out the need for a national policy framework for safeguarded 24/7 on-site hospital helipad access across the UK. The report was prepared with research and evidence contributions from Air Ambulances UK, the UK’s air ambulance charities, the HELP Appeal and the University of Liverpool’s Flight Science and Technology Group.

The report assessed 43 Major Trauma Centres and special­ist hospitals and found that more than half did not have 24/7 on-site helipad access at the time of publication. The findings highlight significant variation in helipad provision and the need for a more consistent approach across the UK.

This creates a wider challenge for the emergency care pathway. Air ambulance crews provide advanced pre-hospi­tal care at the scene of serious incidents, but many patients then require rapid transfer to specialist hospitals for defini­tive treatment.

Where an air ambulance cannot land directly at a hospi­tal, patients may need to land at a secondary off-site loca­tion before continuing by road. The report highlights that this can introduce additional delays and complexity into the patient journey, potentially affecting access to definitive care and contributing to longer hospital stays and more complex treatment pathways.

The report is not primarily about securing large-scale capital funding. Rather, it highlights the absence of a co-ordinated national, policy-led framework to enable safeguarded 24/7 on-site hospital helipad operations.

The report sets out six recommendations requiring action across three government departments, the NHS and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), highlighting that delivering a fully operational network of safeguarded 24/7 on-site helipads requires a co-ordinated, cross-government framework. This includes the Department of Health and Social Care provid­ing national health policy, strategic provision and oversight; the Department for Transport supporting aviation policy and regulatory oversight through the CAA; and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government ensuring 24/7 helipad access and safeguarding are properly reflected in the national and local planning system.

This work forms part of a wider effort to secure the future of air ambulance care. The UK’s 21 air ambulance charities work alongside the NHS to deliver lifesaving pre-hospital emergency care, collectively responding to an average of 137 missions every day.

Air Ambulance Week 2026, taking place from 7–13 September, will celebrate the people and communities who make these missions possible. This year’s theme, Every Mission Starts With You, recognises the donors, fundraisers, volunteers and supporters whose contributions help keep air ambulance services flying.

 Find out more at www.airambulancesuk.org

 Join us during Air Ambulance Week

Tuesday 8 September | 11am – 1pm | Room S, Portcullis House

Air Ambulances UK, in alignment with the APPG for Air Ambulances and the APPG for Aviation, invites you to meet the air ambulance and aviation community to hear about the lifesaving work taking place across the UK, and learn more about the policy priorities shaping the future of air ambulance and aviation services.

Katie Lam is the Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government and the MP for Weald of Kent.

For far too many people in Britain today, the phrase ‘anarcho-tyranny’ is a frighteningly accurate description of day-to-day life.

In short, it describes a situation in which the law-abiding are punished, while rule-breakers get away with wrongdoing. Despite no longer having the will, or ability, to maintain control over rule breakers, the government compulsively creates new rules and new sanctions for the law-abiding, in order to maintain some semblance of authority. Sound familiar?

Though there are many contenders for the government department most guilty of imposing anarcho-tyranny, the Ministry for Housing, Local Government, and Communities must surely warrant a place on the podium. Few other departments are as guilty of making life harder for people who are just trying to do the right thing, while turning a blind eye to the most flagrant misconduct elsewhere.

On the one hand, young people who work hard and do the right thing are finding it harder and harder to move out and start building their own lives. Thanks to this Government’s Renters’ Rights Act, rents are rising, and landlords are busily offloading their properties – meaning fewer options for those looking for somewhere to live. At the same time, Labour have totally failed to tackle the problems in our planning system, and their tax hikes and red tape are just resulting in fewer new houses being built. That’s particularly true in Sadiq Khan’s London, where housing starts fell to their lowest ever level in 2024-25; construction began on just 4,170 new homes across the entire capital.

For people wanting to rent, to buy a new home, to make changes to their existing home, to build houses in the places that people want them, or to rent out property that they already own, the answer from this government has consistently been more regulations, more rules, and more restrictions.

That’s not to mention the rise in council tax, or the department’s absurd ‘Anti-Muslim Hostility’ definition, a rebranded version of their Islamophobia definition, a backdoor blasphemy law which will prevent public servants, including the police, from talking openly about difficult subjects like Islamist extremism or female genital mutilation.

At the same time, the department is a soft touch when it comes to rule-breakers.

A small minority of travellers are breaking the rules and being allowed to set up new caravan sites, without permission, causing massive disruption to the people living nearby. Far too many councillors openly pander to particular ethnic, religious, or racial groups in their campaigns, including through campaign materials in foreign languages. Some of the most expensive property in the country is being used as taxpayer-subsidised social housing, often for people who have come here from abroad – today, nearly half of London’s social housing goes to people born overseas.

And far too many people see local councils handing out dodgy contracts, or wasting taxpayer money, while failing to deliver basic services.

People are fed up, and rightly so. We all deserve to live in a country where people who work hard and do the right thing are rewarded. Those who work hard, and who want to, should be able to buy a new house, in the place that they want to live, without having to save up for several decades. They certainly shouldn’t have their hard-earned money spent on providing subsidised housing to foreign nationals, in some of the country’s most expensive properties. Nor should they have to put up with the disruption caused by those who break the rules, or with the religious and cultural separatism which has taken root in far too many of our towns and cities.

I’m so grateful to Kemi for asking me to hold the Government to account on all of this, as Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities, and Local Government. James Cleverly has left big shoes to fill, and I look forward to following in his footsteps.

It’s also a real privilege to join so many talented colleagues in the Shadow Cabinet – both existing and newly-appointed. Kemi has put together a superb team, and I’m proud to be working alongside them. I can’t wait to start taking the fight to this Government.

Donald Trump has been accused of “lying” after he shifted position once again on the war in Iran.

The US president said America now has “almost total control” of the Strait of Hormuz.

Posting on Truth Social, Trump said: “I’m not trying to force Iran to the bargaining table, as ABC Fake News reported. I couldn’t care less if they sign a worthless, to them, agreement.

“I like our position now much better, with almost total control of the Hormuz Strait, and their economy totally collapsing.”

But just two weeks ago, the president claimed that the US had “total control” over the economically-vital waterway.

In fact, he first claimed America controls the Strait in June.

Trump’s latest U-turn comes just days after he was mocked online for declaring “mission accomplished” in Iran.

Social media users were also quick to call out his flip-flopping on the Strait of Hormuz, which carried one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquified natural gas before the war began in February but which has been effectively closed ever since.

Listen to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.

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Lee Anderson wants to climb a hill, the highest point in Nottinghamshire. It’s not a natural hill but the slag heap for the Silverhill Colliery.

This was where his father and grandfather worked as coal miners. Anderson followed them into the pits after school. He had come here a few weeks previously to scatter the ashes of an “old miner mate”.

Taking a seat next to the old colliery wheels, restored and reinstated, it’s a fitting setting to explore how Reform will adapt now Andy Burnham has launched his campaign to win back working-class support for Labour.

Anderson admits that Burnham poses a “different” electoral challenge to Reform compared with Keir Starmer, describing the former Manchester mayor as a “good communicator” (although stresses that Burnham’s predecessor Starmer set an “awful, dreadful” bar).

“The bounce is not a Burnham bounce,” he insists. “It’s a get-rid-of-Starmer bounce, the most unpopular prime minister ever, ‘we’re fed up’. Of course, a few of them Labour voters who came to us over the past two years at local elections might say they could consider voting Labour now they’ve got a new leader. But come and ask me in six months about those same voters. Will they vote Labour? I’ll give you the answer now, and it’s no.”

Burnham is Anderson’s fifth PM since he was first elected in 2019. A former Labour councillor, his defection to the Tories in 2018 and subsequent victory in Ashfield at the general election was cited at the time as evidence of a great realignment. Labour’s electoral coalition was breaking down, it was said, as the interests and concerns of its constituent parts diverged.

His subsequent defection to Reform UK meanwhile sounded, for the commentariat, the death knell of Boris Johnson’s realignment and the emergence of Reform as the dominant force on the right.

Now as Reform slips behind Labour, and the Tories threaten to draw level in the polls, does Anderson think the wheels are coming off the bandwagon?

“It’s funny that people in your industry forget the previous 365 polls, which put us in front. That’s all they’re talking about. What about the last two years?” he says. “We’re not complacent. We know we’ve got a job to do.”

“We are making a huge difference in policy. Not just the Labour Party, but the Tory Party as well,” Anderson continues.

“Some of the policies that the Tories and the Labour government have spoken about, they wouldn’t have been speaking about them if it weren’t for Reform UK.”

Anderson highlights the party’s controversial stance on the European Commission of Human Rights (ECHR) as an example. “We’re leading on leaving the ECHR. The Tories I know still in Parliament don’t want to leave the ECHR. They’re all a bunch of wet liberals. Labour’s talking tough on immigration now. That’s because of us. It’s not because of Labour’s spads or policy team or the backbenchers; it’s because of us.”

There’s only seven of us. I suppose I’m the only one who’s got a slight accent

After leaving the mines, Anderson worked at the Citizens Advice Bureau, “seeing people in real poverty, helping them”, before moving into charity work. “When I was working on minimum wage for a local homeless charity, I didn’t blame the government or go online and say ‘this is crap’. I went and got another job. In fact, I had three jobs, at three different charities,” he says, working with “young kids, care leavers… looking after them, making sure they’re okay”.

He believes left-wing opponents save their most vehement dislike for him because of this background: “A lot of it’s jealousy because I’ve come through the working-class route.”

Anderson claims that the level of abuse he receives on X from “left-wing agitators”, as well as bots and people “who haven’t got the guts to put the name or a picture to a profile”, has driven him close to quitting Elon Musk’s “sewer” website, where he is an active user. “I can guarantee, if I wake up in the middle of the night, at 2 o’clock, and go to the toilet, and if I’m daft enough to go on X, which I am sometimes, and I post something, I can guarantee within 30 seconds, the same people will respond with a negative. They’re literally up all night looking to say something,” he says.

So, why hasn’t he quit X? “I thought about packing it in,” he explains, “but it makes me about £400 a month, and it’s paying for my next holiday.”

The House puts to Anderson that there is a back-handed compliment in the Labour Party choosing to be led by someone who, like him, is proudly working class. The Reform MP bridles at the comparison with Burnham.

“He tries to promote himself as this sort of working-class hero. But what’s his work history? Straight out of uni, working in politics, and fair play to him. He has made a good career out of it. He’s done what he’s wanted to do. He’s a good communicator.

“But has he ever been 1,000 metres under, on his hands and knees, doing a rotten job seven days a week, talking to real men about not just work, about politics, about the family, about the problems we’ve got? No, he hasn’t. I have.”

He dismisses No 10 North as “completely ridiculous”, saying the UK government should work from nowhere but Downing Street: “If they can’t do that, then they shouldn’t be running the country.”

But given Reform claims to be the real home of the forgotten working class, the true anti-establishment party, does Anderson wish that its top team had more people who speak with regional accents – and fewer people who sound exactly how the public expects politicians to sound?

“There’s only seven of us,” he says, referring to the party’s MPs, before adding: “I suppose I’m the only one who’s got a slight accent.”

Does he feel he is looked down on because of the way he speaks? “When I first got there [Westminster], one of the things we say here – and bear in mind, I’m trying to speak to you correctly, without my vernacular – is, ‘Hey up, duck! How you doing, duck?’ Some of the Tories would say, ‘How you going, duck? All right?’ A lot of that was joking and trying to make you feel welcome, but some of it were…” He pauses. “Yeah, snobbery.”

“But after about a year, you think, ‘Fuck ‘em’,” he continues. “I’ve got as much right to be here, and a lot of those people who were making those comments lost the seats at the last election. I didn’t. I won my seat in a different party when they all said I couldn’t. My vote share went up. And at the local elections last year, we won every single seat here, not just one. We won with over 50 per cent of the vote in every single ward in Ashfield and Mansfield.

“So, the people who were laughing, who lost their parliamentary seats – well, they’re not laughing now, because I was right.”

Restore Britain just want to stop us from winning. It’s as simple as that

Anderson is dismissive of Restore Britain, insisting that Rupert Lowe’s hard-right party will be an electoral flash in the pan, despite recently showing signs of eating into Reform support.

He acknowledges Lowe’s sizeable social media reach (“Fair play to Rupert, he’s got a platform”) but insists that “decent” people who have drifted from Reform to Restore Britain since the 2024 general election will come back to “the people’s army” before the country goes to the polls again.

“He has got a huge social media following. But what they don’t realise is – which I learned very quickly in politics – Twitter is not the ballot box. It’s not.” He adds: “Once people get to the ballot box they’ll think, ‘Well, if I vote Restore, I’ll probably get a Labour MP, I’m not going to do that.’

“Restore Britain just want to stop us from winning. It’s as simple as that.”

Anderson says his party should simply “ignore” Lowe, rather than engage in a battle for the right, and accuses Restore activists of “bullying” Reform members during the recent Makerfield election.

“They were turning up in Jeeps and threatening our staff and bullying people, trying to get on our battle bus, effing and blinding. This is not campaigning. Why aren’t you knocking on doors and putting your message across to people, rather than threatening and intimidating staff and our volunteers? It’s not the way we do politics in this country, is it?”

A Restore spokesman later describes the claims as “nonsense”.

If Anderson is right, and his party does turn it around in time for the next general election, as Farage’s chief whip he would be tasked with managing a parliamentary Reform party that will have grown from seven MPs to a three-figure total.

And while Reform is keen to take a sledgehammer to large parts of what it describes as the Westminster establishment, one institution that Anderson intends to preserve is whipping, telling The House that Reform MPs publicly criticising a Farage government would not be tolerated.

“What we’re doing at the moment is going through the parliamentary selection process. And this is what we speak about: not just becoming a candidate, but if you do become an MP, about the whipping system, about we’re there to do a job, we’re there to pass laws.”

He says MPs should always keep disagreements with their government private, dismissing Burnham’s pledge to grant Labour MPs more freedom from the whip as something you wouldn’t find in a Reform ministry: “I just think, ‘oh shut up’. He’s your leader. You should back him. Have your arguments in private. Go and see him. Give him a bollock in private. Shout at him. Scream.” Anderson would, however, seek to do away with “pointless debates” by which he means Westminster Hall debates; adjournment debates where there is only “me and probably two or three Labour MPs” in the House of Commons; and opposition day debates “where the vote doesn’t mean anything”.

“It’s great for me to put my point across and represent people and talk about stuff,” he says. “But it doesn’t change anything. It just gets you a few clicks on social media, gets you headlines.

“There’s lots of stuff we need to do in this country, and we’re wasting so much parliamentary time.”

To that end, the Ashfield MP believes parliamentary recess should be much shorter, and that it should be normal for MPs to legislate at weekends.

“We’re lazy. We’re bone-idle. Quote me on that,” he says.

“We should be at work. There’s enough that needs doing in this country not to be sat on a pit tip talking to you. The country’s in a right state at the moment, and we’ve got, what, six or seven weeks off? Then we go back for 10 days. Then we’ve got conference recess. Conference should be held over a weekend. Why have we got recess for conference?”

If you want a pint, the safest place for an MP is on the estate

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Anderson says he personally wouldn’t be bothered if the parliamentary estate stopped serving alcohol, but believes there is an important MP safety argument for keeping the bars open.

“I’ve never been a big socialiser,” he says. “I might go [to an event] because I have to be there. I don’t really want to go. If you want a pint, the safest place for an MP is on the estate.”

Asked if he has ever felt unsafe drinking off the estate, he says: “I had somebody come up to me and call me a racist in the Marquis of Granby, to my face. I told him to eff off, and he went. That’s problem solved, isn’t it? But you shouldn’t really have to put yourself in that position.” But he adds: “Is it right that some MPs get pissed, start throwing their weight around and saying silly things on the Terrace? No, it’s not. They should be banned forever.”

What about restoration and renewal? While Anderson agrees that the Palace of Westminster “is dropping to bits”, he opposes a full decant, explaining that if it was up to him, necessary repairs would be carried out “as and when” to keep the building running “tickety-boo”: “If you say we’re going to close it and spend 50 billion on it, we’ll never get back there. It’ll take 10 years, 15 years to do it all.”

A week after our conversation, Lowe seemingly extended an olive branch to Farage, posting on social media that Reform and Restore Britain should work together to defeat the left and bring about a “patriotic government” at the next general election. Farage said he was “open-minded” about collaboration but stressed that he had “no desire” to accept Lowe’s conditions, which included excluding former Tory ministers from a future Reform-Restore cabinet. Judging by Anderson’s comments on this late July morning, he’ll probably take some convincing.

Anderson believes Reform may be forced to expedite its general election strategy, telling The House that Burnham has “probably” got it in him to call a snap election. The Prime Minister has so far ruled out going to the country early, telling the BBC that doing so would “postpone” his programme for fixing the country. Anderson is unsure.

“I don’t know. I flip-flop a little bit on this,” he says. “Is Burnham willing to give up 100 red wall MPs for the sake of becoming prime minister again and getting another five years? I think he probably is. He’s probably that callous and ruthless that he would. He’d surrender this area and areas like this.”

Interview over, Anderson makes his way down the hill with its sweeping views across a parched Nottinghamshire all the way to Lincoln Cathedral in the far distance. There’s a battle ahead and he’s ready for the fight.