This Week in Parliament

The murder of Ann Widdecombe

House of Commons · 8 Jul – 15 Jul 2026

The week began in mourning. On Monday 13 July, before the day’s business, the Speaker told the House that Ann Widdecombe — Member of Parliament for Maidstone from 1987 to 2010, and latterly a figure in Reform UK — had died “in tragic, deeply troubling circumstances,” and the Home Secretary made it plain: “On Wednesday, Ann Widdecombe was murdered in her home.” Counter Terrorism Policing is leading the investigation; a 28-year-old man is in custody, not known to Prevent; no motive has been established. Tributes ran across three days and both Houses, and at Prime Minister’s Questions Sir Keir Starmer called it “chilling” that three serving or former Members have been murdered in his eleven years in Parliament. Around the mourning, a heavy legislative week: the Hillsborough Law through the Commons, a flagship immigration Bill given its Second Reading, and a valedictory air about the Prime Minister himself.

The week began in mourning. On Monday 13 July, before the day’s business, the Speaker rose to tell the House that Ann Widdecombe had died “in tragic, deeply troubling circumstances,” and warned Members, with a live criminal investigation under way, to say nothing that might prejudice a future trial. A little later the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, made it plain: “On Wednesday, Ann Widdecombe was murdered in her home.” Counter Terrorism Policing had taken over the investigation; a 28-year-old white British man was in custody and, the Home Secretary confirmed, was not known to the Prevent programme. The police, in the words of the head of national Counter Terrorism Policing, were “pursuing multiple lines of inquiry to establish the motivation for this attack.” No motive was established, and none was speculated upon across three days of tribute.

Widdecombe was the Member of Parliament for Maidstone from 1987 to 2010, a minister for employment and then for prisons, and, after Westminster, a Brexit Party Member of the European Parliament and a figure in Reform UK. Mahmood called her “one of those rare politicians who was bigger than politics,” and reached for Widdecombe’s own words from Graham Norton’s sofa: “We get one go this side of eternity—one go. Life is not a dress rehearsal.” The tributes carried a darker arithmetic. The Home Secretary named Jo Cox and Sir David Amess; the Speaker recalled that Widdecombe had been a close friend of Amess, murdered in 2021. At Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Sir Keir Starmer put it starkly: “It is chilling that during my time in this Parliament—11 years—three serving or former MPs have been murdered.” He proposed that the House consider a shield for Widdecombe, as it keeps for Cox and Amess, and the Home Secretary announced a review by Sir Robert Buckland of the lessons of the Amess murder, with fresh security guidance promised for sitting and former Members alike.

Grief did not halt the legislative machine; if anything it sharpened its purpose. On the night of Tuesday 14 July the Commons carried the Public Office (Accountability) Bill — the Hillsborough Law — through its remaining stages, seeing off three amendments at report stage by 412 to 104, 409 to 102 and 323 to 93 before the Bill passed. It imposes a duty of candour on public officials, and Starmer, the morning after, cast it as “a law for the families and the 97… a law for everyone.” A statute born of one disaster, offered as a general remedy against the state’s instinct to close ranks.

The other great theme was borders. The Immigration and Asylum Bill — promised a return on 13 July in last week’s issue, and delivered — was given a Second Reading that Monday by 264 votes to 90, a reasoned amendment to refuse it falling first by 358 to 97; the Bill is now in committee. Around it, a heavy week of Royal Assents: the Steel Industry (Nationalisation) Act and the Taxation (Energy and Vehicles) Act both reached the statute book on 15 July, and the Representation of the People Bill — the vehicle for last week’s promised curbs on foreign and cryptoasset donations — cleared its Third Reading on the 14th.

Beneath the Chamber, the written record ran to 2,137 questions from 242 Members. The heat told: as temperatures climbed, Members filed questions on the maximum lawful warmth of schools, nurseries and workplaces, and the Health and Safety Executive was obliged to concede that it has carried out no proactive inspections for excessive workplace temperature at all. A graver seam ran through the Department for Education, where Ministers set out a new pilot — announced, as it happened, on the day of the murder — to identify and support the children of imprisoned parents. And a single site drew the sharpest hand of the week: RAF Barnham, a former Ministry of Defence station now being turned into asylum accommodation, and the subject of this issue’s feature. The week held a murder and a mourning, a law for the bereaved, and — threaded through the same days — Sir Keir Starmer taking what looked like one of his last Prime Minister’s Questions before handing the office on. Andy Burnham, returned to the Commons last month as the Member for Makerfield, is the expected successor. From a murdered former Member to a departing Prime Minister, it was a week about the cost of public service.