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Oral Answers to Questions
(1 year, 8 months ago)
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Kate Hollern (Blackburn) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Lucy Frazer)
Fans are absolutely at the heart of football. As we set out in our White Paper, we are introducing an independent regulator for English football clubs, which will put fans back at the centre of how football is run. The regulator will require every club to meet a minimum standard of engagement and will ensure that fans have veto rights on issues such as a change of badge or home shirt colour, and are consulted on any stadium sale. Those are strong protections for fans across the country.
Kate Hollern
I agree with the Secretary of State. The Blackburn Rovers Supporters Trust is an integral part of Blackburn’s community and is at the heart of everything that happens. The trust was pleased that the White Paper eventually came forward, and welcomed most aspects of it, but it was disappointed that the Government did not make shadow boards or the golden share a requirement of the IREF’s licensing system. It feels that the reforms will not achieve the spirit of the fan-led review if fans do not have a voice. Will the Secretary of State consider, with the participation of supporters trusts, making shadow boards a minimum requirement for the football regulator’s licensing system?
Lucy Frazer
What the hon. Lady says about football clubs being at the heart of their community is the case up and down the country. Our reforms make sure that fans have an integral say in matters that affect them. We are already seeing, and will see, shadow boards at premier league level, but I am confident that the changes that we are bringing in will give fans a greater say in football.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Ind)
Can the Secretary of State outline to the House how the independent regulator will help with the financial sustainability of clubs, and how it will limit the power of owners, who may wish to gamble with their club’s future to reach the premier league and may fail, as was the case recently with Derby County?
Lucy Frazer
The hon. Member makes an important point. Financial stability is one reason that we have brought in an independent regulator: to ensure that clubs are stable and are not destroyed, which then destroys communities, as I mentioned. The independent regulator will ensure financial stability and there will be owners’ and directors’ tests to ensure that we know who owns clubs and that they have the funds to maintain them.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Stuart Andrew)
We know that many charities are seeing increased demand for their services from individuals, and they are contending with increased running costs, which is having an impact on their financial situation. With Government support, charities have shown significant resilience over the last few years. I and my Department regularly engage with sector stakeholders and continue to monitor the impact of rising costs.
Patricia Gibson
Research into charities and donation trends has revealed that 36% of consumers will cut their charitable donations in the next three months, which may see charities lose up to £580 million. What recent assessment has the Minister made of the impact of the cost of living on the charity sector amid concerns of economic viability? What additional steps can the Government take to support charities through these difficult times?
Stuart Andrew
The hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise this issue; it is one reason that I have made sure that I am continually engaging with the sector to understand exactly what the situation is and how it is dealing with it. There has been significant support in the past and I continue to talk to colleagues across Government about how we can help. I was also pleased that this week, as a result of the dormant assets scheme, a further £76 million has been allocated specifically to address cost of living problems.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Stuart Andrew)
The Government believe that the opportunity to play sport and get physically active should be available to everyone. Sport is central to our national cultural identity, so it must be welcoming to all. We are working closely with Sport England, UK Sport and national governing bodies to improve inclusion across the sector, from the grassroots to the elite level.
Andrew Jones
I thank the Minister for that answer. I am a patron of Harrogate Gateway FC, which is a football club specifically for people with learning disabilities who just wish to play the sport they love. How does my right hon. Friend work with national and regional sporting bodies to ensure there are clubs and teams in all our communities that enable participation in sport, with all of the benefits that flow from that?
Stuart Andrew
I join my hon. Friend in saying thank you to Harrogate Gateway football club for the work it is doing in helping people with learning disabilities. Sport England recently awarded £1.5 million to Special Olympics GB to help provide innovative opportunities, and inclusion in sport is an integral part of the work we are doing. I am delighted that, yesterday, we ensured equal opportunities for girls and boys at school, announcing over £600 million for school sports. Our forthcoming sport strategy will set out further detail about how we want to make sport more inclusive.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
The Government’s failure to include swimming pools and leisure centres in the list of energy-intensive industries that would qualify for support with their energy bills post April is leading to a number of these centres being closed. What assessment has the Minister made of the impact of the closure of swimming pools and leisure centres, particularly on some of the poorest communities in England? What is he doing to get the Treasury to change its mind?
Stuart Andrew
I have had extensive engagement both with the sector and the all-party parliamentary group on swimming, as well as with the Local Government Association recently, to understand exactly what the situation is, and I have to say that it is different in different parts of the country. We are making an assessment, and I am having further discussions with colleagues across Government about what may be a plan for the future.
Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)
Following the Lionesses’ stunning success in the Euros, it is important that we capitalise on the momentum behind women’s football, so we welcome the Government’s commitment to equal access to school sport for boys and girls—we have been calling for that for a long time. How are the Government going to make sure that schools have the facilities to be able to deliver that and how are they going to measure it?
Stuart Andrew
As I said a moment ago, I am delighted that we made the announcement yesterday of over £600 million—it is a significant investment—to ensure that the provision of PE and sport in school is available and that there is equal access for boys and girls. We are also working on a kitemark, so that we will ensure that the quality of the provision is—
Mr Speaker
Order. Can the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) come back into the Chamber until there have been two full questions? I have one more Member waiting, too. Carry on, Minister.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Stuart Andrew)
Think-tanks in England and Wales that have charitable status must ensure that they abide by the same rules that apply to all charities under charity law. That includes meeting the Charity Commission’s reporting requirements, and in so doing, demonstrating transparency and accountability to the public.
Peter Grant
A number of think-tank charities do exactly what the Minister has suggested, and they gain plaudits from transparency campaigners for their willingness to be open about who funds them. There are others that refuse to give out any meaningful information. They take millions of pounds from American oil companies, and produce so-called research briefings that deny climate change and encourage Governments to ban legitimate protest against oil and gas development, for example. A lot of them are housed at 55 Tufton Street, and pay their rent to a wealthy donor to the Conservative party. They do not ever educate anybody, which for an education charity might be seen to be a wee bit of a problem. What they are in effect doing is laundering money, by taking money from sources that are, by law, prohibited from funding party political activities in the United Kingdom, and using it to promote politically biased research. When are the Government going to get to grips with that, and recognise that a research institution that does not follow the rules of ethics is not a research institution and is not an educational charity, but a political organisation that should be regulated and taxed on that basis?
Mr Speaker
Order. Come on folks, or we will not get anybody else in. Let us help each other.
Stuart Andrew
If the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) has a specific concern about an individual charity or organisation, he needs to raise that with the Charity Commission. It is the regulator, and he must take that up with the commission.
Lia Nici (Great Grimsby) (Con)
I thank the Minister for meeting me a few weeks ago to talk about Grimsby ice rink. The ice rink is coming up to 50 years old, and it probably has about two years of life left. Places such as Grimsby have not had the kind of investment from Sport England that we would really like, and it could be key to regenerating a new area in Grimsby that is currently very deprived. Can he meet me?
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Stuart Andrew)
This is a difficult time for DCMS sectors, including our cultural and charitable organisations, given increased running costs. We remain firmly on their side. The Government have taken action to support such organisations with their bills, but my Department is continuing to engage with both cultural and charitable organisations to monitor the impact.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
Thanks to the Government’s economic illiteracy and punitive welfare policies, cultural organisations are facing closure and millions are living in poverty. Cultural community groups and food banks almost entirely rely on donations to stay afloat and meet demand. Is it not an abdication of this Government’s duty—and unsustainable—to leave it to charitable donations from the public to fill gaps left by the state?
Stuart Andrew
As someone who spent 16 years of their life working in the charity sector, I would say no. I think that charities have an amazing role to play within our communities, and we have been right behind them. During the covid pandemic, we provided more than £750 million for them, and, as I say, we are continuing to work with them to ensure that they have the support that they need.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
The cost of living crisis appears to have caused the BBC to announce that some of the finest musicians in the world will lose their jobs. The BBC’s new strategy for classical music plans to “deliver savings” by axing the world-famous BBC Singers, the only full-time professional choir in the UK, and making 20% redundancies in all BBC orchestras. These plans have been described as
“a dark and shocking day…for the world of choral music”
and “cultural vandalism”.
I urge the Minister and the Secretary of State to support the call on the BBC to reconsider the devastating and damaging decision to disband the BBC Singers and make 20% of jobs redundant in all of its orchestras.
Stuart Andrew
As the hon. Lady will know, of course, the BBC is operationally independent, but my colleagues in the Department regularly meet the BBC, and I am sure they will be happy to raise many of the issues that she has just brought to the House.
Sir John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Lucy Frazer)
I know that my right hon. Friend has a keen interest in this matter and a great deal of knowledge on it. I was pleased to discuss this matter, and a number of others, with him very recently. The mid-term review is an important milestone in the Government’s road map to BBC reform, and work is well under way. We are currently analysing feedback from a wide range of stakeholders and will set out the detail on the timetable in due course.
Sir John Whittingdale
Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the requirement to be politically impartial must cover all those who are presenters on the BBC, including the highest paid? While individual contracts are a matter for the BBC, will she confirm that the mid-term review will cover the issue of enforcement of that rule on freelancers, as well as full-time employees?
Lucy Frazer
As somebody whose grandmother escaped Nazi Germany in the 1930s, I think it is really disappointing and inappropriate to compare Government policy on immigration to events in Germany in the 1930s. It is important for the BBC to maintain impartiality if it is to retain the trust of the public, who pay the licence fee. The BBC is operationally independent, and I am pleased that the BBC will be speaking to Gary Lineker to remind him of his responsibilities in relation to social media.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
Further to that, will she meet again with the director-general to ensure that the BBC reviews the contract of well-known multimillionaire lefty Lineker—who presents himself as a sports presenter with very scandalous views about Government policy—to decide whether he is a sports presenter or a political pundit who should be paid about £1.3 million less than he currently is from the public purse?
Lucy Frazer
I think that I have made my views on this subject clear. The BBC has a 10-point plan in relation to impartiality, but it is absolutely important that it maintains impartiality so that the public retain trust in it.
Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)
It is now over six weeks since it was revealed that the chairman of the BBC helped the former Prime Minister to secure an £800,000 loan before he was selected for the job. Today he remains in post. What immediate steps has the Secretary of State taken to restore trust in the independence of the BBC, in the appointment system and in the Government?
Lucy Frazer
As the hon. Member will know, there is an investigation by the commissioner for employment. It is ongoing and I am awaiting the outcome.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
The Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Julia Lopez)
Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Ministers regularly engage with music industry representatives from across the live music and recorded music sectors. I met representatives from Live to hear directly about the challenges facing musicians. I look forward to meeting the Music Venue Trust shortly, to hear more from the grassroots music sector on the cost of living pressures.
Pete Wishart
I am sure the Minister will want to join me in congratulating Mae Muller on being selected as the UK’s representative at Eurovision in Liverpool.
Surely the Minister acknowledges that the creative sector has probably been the most heavily impacted sector throughout this cost of living crisis, and that musicians have probably been the most impacted within that sector. Earnings for recordings are next to zero, Europe is effectively closed to them, musicians who want to travel to the US face visa problems, and studios and rehearsal spaces are at great risk because of sky-high energy bills. The charity Help Musicians has found that 90% of musicians—the lifeblood of the music sector—are worried about how they are going to pay their next food bill, and half are thinking about leaving the industry. Does the Minister believe that this is the worst possible time to be an aspiring musician, and what is she going to do to rectify the situation and support our musicians?
Julia Lopez
As a musician himself, the hon. Gentleman is a tremendous champion of the music industry, and I appreciate all the work he does. He has raised a series of points. On an individual level, the Government have put forward a substantial package to help people through the cost of living crisis. That is an extension of the cultural recovery fund. We also have the Arts Council England fund for supporting grassroots live music. He highlighted issues about US visas, which I am very concerned about and on which we are engaging with US counterparts. I encourage him to get the industry to engage with that consultation, and I am happy to engage with him on some of the issues he raises.
Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
Many musicians are self-employed and lose out on cost of living payments, particularly early on in their careers, because of the operation of the minimum income floor. They have variable incomes early on, which was raised on Monday with Department for Work and Pensions Ministers. Will the Minister and her DCMS colleagues give their support to meeting representatives of self-employed musicians, to find a workable way through and to make sure that they are not unfairly penalised by how they build their careers in their early stages?
Lucy Frazer
The Department is very alive to the challenges facing freelancers, and we are looking at this in the creative sector vision. I know that my hon. Friend is passionate about this area, particularly in relation to opera. I assure him that it is something on which we continue to engage with other Departments.
John Nicolson (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP)
Further to the pertinent question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), industry surveys indicate that half of musicians across the UK are contemplating leaving the industry. Not just individual musicians are affected. Grassroots music venues run at pre-tax profits of barely 0.2%. With the triple whammy of Brexit, covid and the cost of living crisis, many may have to close, destroying the ecosystem that nurtures and sustains emerging talent. What assessment have Ministers made of the potential impact that easing the tax burden on music venues could have on improving the outlook for this important sector of our music industry?
Lucy Frazer
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising those important questions, some of which we engage on regularly with the Treasury, particularly energy. As I said in my previous answer, we have schemes to support grassroots venues. The ACE scheme has been extended to March and we will continue to look at what more we can do to support this important sector.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Lucy Frazer)
I know that the hon. Member, as vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on gambling related harm, has a keen interest in this issue. Tackling gambling-related harm is a priority of mine. I have met the Betting and Gaming Council, the British Amusement Catering Trade Association and the Bingo Association, as well as some of those with lived experience of gambling harms, including the Gambling Commission’s lived experience advisory panel and those involved with Gambling with Lives. I also recently discussed with the Young Gamers and Gamblers Education Trust how gambling affects young people. All of that will support our evidence-led gambling review, and we will publish a White Paper setting out our conclusions shortly.
Margaret Ferrier
I know this is an important area for the Minister, too. Figures published by Public Health England estimate that the total cost of gambling harm to public health ranges from £754.4 million to £1.475 billion. These costs have been attributed to suicide, depression, homelessness and alcohol dependence among adults, so when will the Secretary of State publish the long-awaited White Paper? Will she commit to including a statutory levy and stringent affordability checks to ensure people are protected and do not gamble more than they can afford?
Lucy Frazer
The hon. Lady rightly highlights the impact gambling can have on some vulnerable people. This is the most thorough review of gambling laws since the Gambling Act 2005 was passed, and we need to get it right so that our regulation is not just fit for the digital age but protects those who are vulnerable. We are looking at the best available evidence, including from the 16,000 submissions to our call for evidence, and we will be publishing our findings very shortly.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Lucy Frazer)
The Government are committed to supporting our world-leading broadcasters and film and television industries. This includes ensuring that public service content is easy to find on a wide range of TV platforms; delivering our UK global screen fund, which is investing £21 million in the international growth of independent screen productions across the UK; and continuing to support the screen sector’s tax reliefs, which provided more than £1 billion in support in the last financial year.
Michael Fabricant
Back in 1982, at the Oscars, Colin Welland said, “The British are coming!” Do you know what? The British have come. I understand that—[Interruption.] You are making me laugh, Mr Speaker. I understand that, by next year, we will have more film stages in the UK than in Hollywood. Will my right hon. and learned Friend continue to support the British film industry, which generates so many US dollars for the British economy?
Lucy Frazer
I will continue to champion this fundamental sector. I am pleased to see that productions supported by the Government’s film and TV production restart scheme and the UK global screen fund were recognised by both BAFTA and Oscar nominations. Indeed, these schemes have supported £3 billion in production spend across the UK and protected more than 100,000 jobs. We are committed to supporting these sectors and to building on our record production spending of more than £6 billion in 2022.
Mrs Murray
Cornwall is a fantastic setting for TV programmes such as the fantastic “Delicious” with Dawn French, filmed at Pentillie castle, and the new “Beyond Paradise”, filmed in Looe, or big movies such as “Alice in Wonderland”, filmed at Antony House. Those are just three productions that go beside the likes of “Poldark”, “Doc Martin” and even James Bond. What more can be done to promote Cornwall as a filming location?
Lucy Frazer
I agree that Cornwall is a fabulous backdrop for any film, and the UK global screen fund has supported the launch of “Enys Men”, which was also filmed in Cornwall. I was pleased to see Screen Cornwall’s British Film Institute-funded report on how to establish Cornwall as a creative cluster of significance.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
I was delighted earlier this week to host a group of female film and television composers in the House of Commons to celebrate their achievements, but our pipeline of writers of music for film and television is under threat if our musicians cannot travel easily to tour in the United States. I am glad the Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Julia Lopez), expressed concern about this when she answered my recent question, but she said:
“The UK Government cannot interfere in another country’s processes and must respect their systems, just as we expect them to respect the UK’s processes.”
Can the Secretary of State not do a bit better and at least tell the House that the Government are making representations to the US authorities, on behalf of our wonderful musicians and composers, to try to make sure they do not implement these punitive increases in visa costs?
Lucy Frazer
Yes, we are making representations, across Government. Ultimately it is not our decision, but we will be and are making those representations. The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about skills and the pipeline, which I am looking carefully at.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
York’s XR Stories has opened up new and unique opportunities in the digital creative space and will accelerate the UK’s global digital media offer, which, as the Secretary of State will know, will play a significant role in the future creative economy. So what steps is she taking to invest in the digital creative cluster? Will she meet me to talk about York’s opportunity to accelerate the UK’s place in a global space?
Lucy Frazer
We have a number of creative clusters across the UK and I am absolutely committed to ensuring that they continue to grow, because the creative industries have grown at twice the rate of the wider economy since 2010, generating £116 billion in 2019. The sector is important to me, as I know it is to the Chancellor and the Prime Minister.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Ind)
The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Lucy Frazer)
It was my pleasure to join schoolgirls and England Lionesses for football training in Downing Street yesterday, as we marked International Women’s Day. The event accompanied a major package of support for school sport. That, alongside our recent plans for an independent regulator for football and the biggest ever investment in grassroots facilities, shows that the Government are committed to protecting the long-term sustainability of the game, and sport in general.
Today, we are announcing that youth clubs, charities and many other organisations will benefit from our £30 million know your neighbourhood fund, which aims to create volunteering opportunities and tackle loneliness in disadvantaged areas.
Andrew Bridgen
Although not legislated for, intrusive affordability guidelines from the Gambling Commission are estimated to be costing the British horse-racing levy at least £40 million a year and are driving punters either to the black market or away from the sport altogether. Will my right hon. and learned Friend outline to the House whether the Gambling Commission warned her Department of the impact those decisions would have on the sport?
Lucy Frazer
I assure my hon. Friend that the Government remain committed to supporting the horse-racing sector and have committed to review the levy by 2024.
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
First, let me welcome the new Secretary of State to her promoted position. I have always found her to be a thoughtful and effective Minister, and I look forward to working with her in the future.
Since the gambling review was launched, 10 different gambling Ministers and Culture Secretaries have all failed to publish a White Paper. I know that the Secretary of State is personally committed to gambling reform, but, as she just said a few moments ago, she wants to look fresh at these issues herself. Does she not recognise that this is a massive disappointment for all those concerned —the families who have lost loved ones, those waiting for more research and preventive reports, and even the industry itself, which wants regulatory certainty? So when will she publish the White Paper?
Lucy Frazer
I thank the hon. Lady for what she said, and I look forward to working closely and collaboratively with her on things that matter to our constituents across the country. I recognise that it is important to get the review out as soon as possible, and I assure her that that is what we are doing. I also wish to recognise that while the review has been going on, action has been taken: regulators have banned gambling on credit cards; they have clamped down on VIP schemes; they have strengthened the rules on how online operators prevent harm; they have updated advertising—
Mr Speaker
Order. I am sorry but I have only 10 minutes to try to get people in. We have to think of other Members; it is not self-indulgent Front-Bench day.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
The Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Julia Lopez)
I thank my hon. Friend for championing a fantastic festival in his constituency and congratulate the organisers on their 20th anniversary. VisitBritain has found that 3% of trips in the UK are made to attend a festival, which equates to more than £1.4 billion a year in spend. That is making a tremendous difference to communities such as the one he represents.
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)
Julia Lopez
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. What happened in her constituency was an absolute tragedy and I pass my condolences on to the people affected. We have received her letter, and I am terribly sorry that it has not yet received a response. I was made aware of that only last week. I am asking for this to be looked into, because I appreciate that she has highlighted things that she sees as gaps in the system, but, as she knows, the Met is also investigating this. I will look very carefully to see whether they highlight issues that the Government themselves need to consider.
Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)
It was encouraging to see the news this week that Amazon Prime video is taking steps to adopt the British Board of Film Classification ratings. However, this makes the decision of Disney+ to continue to disregard UK best practice even more disappointing. Do the Government agree that it makes it far harder for parents to properly regulate their children’s viewing when age ratings are unfamiliar?
Julia Lopez
I know that my hon. Friend has done a lot of work on supporting parents and children in transparency in this area. Something that we want to do in the media Bill is to regulate video on demand in the same way that we do with broadcast. We continue to view the BBFC age ratings as best practice, and I too welcome the news this week about Amazon taking on those ratings.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Stuart Andrew)
As I said earlier, I am acutely aware of the difficulties that are being felt, but they are happening in different parts of the country, which is why we are taking time to have a look at exactly where those specific problems are and what measures we may be able to take to introduce some help and support. The other thing to think about is that some of these buildings are very old and very expensive to run, so we perhaps need to consider a longer-term solution as well.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
As my hon. Friend will know, the creative industries have grown at twice the rate of the wider economy since 2010. Does she agree that, by harnessing the power of science and technology, the sector can continue to prosper and grow? Will she meet me to discuss what more we can do to ensure that this is the place in which to create digital content?
Julia Lopez
I thank my hon. Friend for championing this role and for all the work that he does on science, technology, engineering and maths, which has such an important overlap with what is going on in the creative industries. We have a creative sector vision coming up, and I am also pleased to highlight that his council, Basildon, has put forward a fantastic bid for a creative centre for screen and immersive tech, and we will be announcing soon whether that has been successful.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
Stuart Andrew
The hon. Lady is right to raise the issue of community boxing clubs. I was very pleased to visit one in Bradford very recently. These clubs are often run by superb volunteers, and that will be a feature in our sporting strategy.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
Does the Secretary of State agree that the coronation is not only a wonderful opportunity to celebrate our culture and history—in Lincolnshire, for instance, we hope that the King’s Champion from Scrivelsby will go on having a role, as he has done for 1,000 years—but an opportunity to bring in new people who have never been before. Will she encourage groups representing the young, in particular, to be represented?
Lucy Frazer
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: this is an opportunity for everybody across all parts of the UK to take part. There will be the Coronation Big Lunch street parties and the Big Help Out, as well as screens out for people to enjoy what is a very important celebration on the day itself.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Sports Minister come to Huddersfield to see what is going at Huddersfield Town AFC and Huddersfield Giants, in the teams and the stadium? Will the Secretary of State support my campaign to keep the National Rugby League Museum in or very close to the George Hotel, where it was founded?
Stuart Andrew
How could I possibly refuse an invitation to come down the road to Huddersfield? I would be more than happy to do that and look at the issues that the hon. Gentleman raises. Of course, you would want to ensure, Mr Speaker, that rugby league remains in the heart of the community in which it serves.
Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)
I know from a previous answer that Ministers share my concern that high energy costs have led to the closure or reduction in hours in around 350 public swimming pools. Will Ministers join me in urging their Cabinet colleagues to give public pools the support that is available to other sectors to enable them to continue playing their essential role in keeping people healthy?
Stuart Andrew
I thank the Chair of the Select Committee. I repeat that I am completely aware of the situation faced by many pools and leisure centres. The multiple questions that I have had on that today certainly help my case in my discussions with colleagues across Government.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
Which is the greater evidence of political bias: Gary Lineker criticising the Government’s language from his private Twitter account, or the chairman of the BBC giving donations to the Conservative party?
Lucy Frazer
I think that we have dealt with both those questions today. It is important, when people funded by the BBC make comments, that the BBC considers them. I know that the BBC is speaking to Gary Lineker.
Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood)
The Speaker’s Committee has not had discussions with the Electoral Commission on the matter referred to. The commission will publish a full report on how the May elections were delivered. That will cover how voters found taking part and any lessons that can be learned for the future. As part of that process, the commission will examine evidence about how the new voter ID requirement was implemented. It will collect data from every local authority that held elections, including about the number of voters who did not bring an accepted form of ID to the polling station and were therefore unable to vote.
Jeff Smith
I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. It is good news that data will be collected on the number of voters who get turned away for not having ID at a polling station, but as we all know, parties often have tellers outside who will remind people about the voter ID requirements, so how can the Electoral Commission collect data on voters who turn away before they even get into the polling station?
Cat Smith
My hon. Friend, who is a seasoned campaigner and is familiar with the scenes outside polling stations, has identified the potential gap in the data. Of course, polling station staff will not be able to collect data from people who do not go into the polling station. However, the commission has identified that as a potential issue and will undertake public opinion research on the reasons why people did or did not vote in the elections.
Munira Wilson
The new voter ID regulations have removed from millions of people across the country the right to vote unobstructed, and local authorities are already reporting a number of problems in implementing them. If we cannot collect accurate data on how many people are turned away, there is a risk that results may be challenged, undermining trust in our democracy. Does the hon. Lady agree that the plans should be halted for the May elections and scrapped altogether?
Cat Smith
It is clear that the issue of elections being challenged in electoral courts would be a matter for the courts, not the commission. The commission is doing everything possible to ensure that the polls are delivered as successfully as possible and to the highest standard. There does remain the established petition process to challenge the result of elections in the circumstances that the hon. Lady identifies.
Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
The Second Church Estates Commissioner (Andrew Selous)
My right hon. Friend is a tireless campaigner for families and young children. The Church strongly supports family hubs and their further expansion. The Church is already supporting many of the “Best start for life” recommendations through our messy church and toddler groups, and the Archbishops’ commission on families and households will report next month.
Dame Andrea Leadsom
Is my hon. Friend aware that the 75 local authority areas in England that are taking part in the Government’s family hub and best start for life programme are required to work with not just the public sector, but charities, faith groups and volunteers, to roll out the support services to give every baby the best start for life? Can he tell us what connections there are between the Church and those local authority areas to make that a reality?
Andrew Selous
I am delighted to hear what my right hon. Friend says. I can tell her that the Church works commission chaired by the Bishop of Durham includes 15 major denominations and is working very closely with the National Centre for Family Hubs. Churches are already involved in delivering 18 out of the 24 areas for delivery, and the key to that is good local authority joint working. I am pleased to say that there is lots of momentum—long may that continue.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the hon. Gentleman join me in welcoming the new Bishop of Huddersfield, announced yesterday? We will give her a very good welcome in Huddersfield. Those family hubs are something that she is very keen on, because she was part of their creation.
Andrew Selous
I am delighted to welcome the new Bishop of Huddersfield, and I am equally delighted that she is keen on family hubs. She will have a crucial role to play in making sure they succeed in the hon. Gentleman’s area.
Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood)
The Speaker’s Committee has not held recent discussions on the matters raised. The UK has one of the most transparent political finance regimes in the world. However, the Electoral Commission has highlighted that modernisation and additional safeguards are needed so that voters can have greater confidence in the system. Its recommendations include new duties for parties to conduct risk assessments of donations and “know your donor” checks, and a requirement for companies to have made enough profit in the UK to fund any donations that they make.
Kirsten Oswald
I have spoken before about the Tories and unincorporated associations potentially being used as a route for foreign money to influence UK elections, with £1.7 million in registered donations linked to climate sceptics and fossil fuel interests. What is the Electoral Commission doing to bring more transparency to funding that is being channelled through those associations and mitigate the influence of lobbying groups?
Cat Smith
The Electoral Commission has highlighted the weaknesses in the transparency requirements for political donations by unincorporated associations. They are not required to ensure that those who donate to them are permissible donors; there are also no transparency requirements in law for unincorporated associations that donate to candidates, rather than political parties or campaigners. The commission will continue to recommend changes to the law to ensure that voters can have greater confidence in political finance in the UK.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
Cat Smith
The Speaker’s Committee has not held recent discussions on the matters raised. The Electoral Commission regulates the spending of organisations campaigning during the regulated period ahead of an election or referendum. It also regulates donations to political parties, candidates and campaigners. Unless a think tank is engaged in regulated campaign activity or itself makes donations, it will fall outside of the commission’s remit. The commission does not have a role in regulating spending on political activity more generally.
Chris Stephens
According to an audit by openDemocracy and Who Funds You?, the least transparently funded think tanks have raised more than £14 million in the past two years from mystery donors, with the likes of the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Adam Smith Institute and the TaxPayers Alliance refusing to declare all their funders. That is followed with estimates that $6 million is coming in from America. Is the Electoral Commission not concerned about the public influence that those right-wing think tanks have on our politics?
Cat Smith
As the hon. Gentleman knows, the commission does not have a role in monitoring the political activity of think tanks unless they are engaged in regulated campaigning ahead of an election or a referendum. The charitable activities of think tanks are regulated by the charity regulator for the relevant part of the UK, but the Electoral Commission would be happy to facilitate a meeting with the hon. Gentleman if he wishes to discuss this matter further with the commission.
Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)
The Second Church Estates Commissioner (Andrew Selous)
The Church will always support marriages and family relationships that are committed to mutual flourishing —Jesus’s first miracle was, after all, at a wedding in Cana in Galilee. The Archbishops’ commission to strengthen families and households will report next month.
Nick Fletcher
The 2021 census has shown that people living on their own are more likely to be renting, less financially secure, have lower levels of happiness and higher levels of anxiety. Some 60% of people living alone are men. Marriage is a sacred bond between man and woman. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should promote marriage at every opportunity and bring back tax allowances to suit?
Andrew Selous
My hon. Friend is right to look at all the measures that can support marriage, given that in the UK 23% of households are lone-parent households, compared with, say, 13% in the Netherlands. He is also correct that there is a lower burden of family taxation in France, Germany and the USA. There will be a range of measures to support marriage in the Archbishop’s proposals next month, which I hope my hon. Friend will support when they are published.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Can I say how very pleased I am to hear that answer from the hon. Gentleman? I am one who believes very much in the sanctity and importance of marriage. I have been married for 35 years to a long-suffering wife, Sandra. My mum and dad were married for 60 years, and Sandra’s mum and dad were married for 60 years, so we believe in marriage and its importance, as do others in this Chamber. What is the hon. Gentleman able to do to ensure that those having difficulties in marriage can have Relate discussions to ensure that their marriage can last for all their lives?
Andrew Selous
I am grateful to my friend the hon. Gentleman for raising that point. It is certainly my hope that churches across the country will be involved in the best possible marriage preparation, but also marriage support, because all of us get into bad habits, including the hon. Gentleman and me, and need little pointers and reminders from time to time.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
I am not sure this is the right place to advertise virtue or claim vice.
Can I put it to my hon. Friend that the Church of England Children’s Society 50 years ago supported the social entrepreneur Bob Holman in establishing family centres? Can we praise the Church and all its parishes for the way they help to support the confidence and competence of parents, who often go through difficult situations?
Andrew Selous
I am grateful to the Father of the House for reminding us of that important fact and of what the Church has done in the past, and I hope he will be equally supportive of what our right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom) is doing with her fantastic initiative on family hubs. That is an important continuation of that early work.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
Andrew Selous
I would be delighted to meet Michael Ipgrave, the new Lord Bishop of Lichfield, and I look forward to doing so very much indeed.
Michael Fabricant
I thank my hon. Friend for his answer. In fact, I was present in the other place when the now Lord Bishop of Lichfield, Michael Ipgrave, was introduced. We have many outreach projects in Lichfield. There is the St Michael’s church project, which has set up a film club that meets every month, and it offers a meal and a warm space. There is “Burntwood Be A Friend” and so many others. Is there any manner by which different dioceses can learn from each other?
Andrew Selous
I thank my hon. Friend for his continuous support for not just the cathedral, but the whole diocese of Lichfield. He makes an excellent point about sharing best practice. Dare I say it, but in public life and in government, we often do not do that as well as we could, and it would be good if the Church could show the way and lead as an example in that area. He is absolutely right.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
Andrew Selous
At the General Synod last month, it was agreed that the “Prayers of Love and Faith” would be finalised, that pastoral guidance for clergy would be produced, and that a culture of welcome towards LGBTQI+ people would be embedded throughout the Church.
Mr Bradshaw
I would be grateful for an assurance that there will not be any backsliding on the timescale on that, and that the pastoral guidance will deal finally with the issue of priests being able to marry and be freed from the current celibacy rules. On a wider issue, the hon. Gentleman will be aware that a number of provinces in the global Anglican communion have in effect made a unilateral declaration of independence from the Church of England. A small number of parishes here have begun to withhold their money from their dioceses in protest at these very small steps forward. Is it not increasingly clear that a small minority in the Church of England will never be reconciled with treating lesbian and gay people equally, and it would be better to let those people go, so that the Church can focus on the majority of Anglicans in this country who support treating lesbian and gay people equally?
Andrew Selous
The pastoral guidance is being worked on, and the bishops remain committed to implementing their response to Living in Love and Faith, which the General Synod approved last month. The timing may depend on the July Synod’s response to the pastoral guidance and “Prayers of Love and Faith”. The Synod is a democratic body and, like this Parliament, its decisions cannot be guaranteed in advance.
On the second part of the right hon. Gentleman’s question, he is correct that our proposals do not go far enough for some and go too far for others. There have always been disagreements in the Anglican communion, as there have been in the Church of England, and we need to learn to disagree well.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
Andrew Selous
The murder and abduction of Christians in Nigeria is distressingly common, totally abhorrent and has gone on for far too long. The Bishop of Guildford was in Nigeria last November to support the Church of Nigeria, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, who knows Nigeria well, stays constantly in touch with the situation there.
Bob Blackman
I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. Clearly, the recent election in Nigeria has led to a complete spike in terms of violence, particularly towards Christians. What attempts are being made by the Church to reach out to Christians in Nigeria to assure them of our support, and to the victors of the election to make sure that they safeguard Christians in that country?
Andrew Selous
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing that matter before the House. He is right to do so. I know that the Church of England and the Anglican communion will do exactly what he says. It is worth putting on the record that, even before the elections, 21 Christians were killed, and churches, houses and food were destroyed. In November last year, female students at the state university were raped in Bokkos and in January Catholic priest Isaac Achi was burned to death and another priest was shot and injured in Paikoro. Open Doors believes that Nigeria has the highest recorded level of violence against Christians in any country.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
Of course, violent Islamist militants are not the only threat to Christians in Nigeria. The so-called motorbike bandits that operate in the border areas are abducting women and causing all kinds of violence. In the middle belt, Christian farmers face mass displacement and murder. It is not just about sending solidarity through the Church of England to Christians in Nigeria. What more can the Church of England do to influence the British Government and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to do more to assist Nigeria in defeating those militants who are persecuting Christians?
Andrew Selous
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his interest in this matter, which needs as much attention as we can give it. The Government are actively implementing the Bishop of Truro’s recommendation that the Church of England checks regularly with the Government that all those implementations are being put into place. He is right to mention that. It is ongoing work, incredibly serious, and we need to keep focusing on it.
Business of the House
(1 year, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business.
The Leader of the House of Commons (Penny Mordaunt)
The business for the week commencing 13 March will include:
Monday 13 March—Second Reading of the Illegal Migration Bill.
Tuesday 14 March—Debate on a motion on homelessness among Ukrainian refugees in the UK, followed by a debate on a motion on seizure of Russian assets. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.
Wednesday 15 March—My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will deliver his Budget statement.
Thursday 16 March—Continuation of the Budget debate.
Friday 17 March—Private Members’ Bills.
The provisional business for the week commencing 20 March will include:
Monday 20 March—Continuation of the Budget debate.
Tuesday 21 March—Conclusion of the Budget debate.
Thangam Debbonaire
I thank the Leader of the House for the forthcoming business.
The Leader of the House announced the asylum Bill. A week is supposed to be a long time in politics, but when it comes to Tory promises on small boats, in 86 weeks nothing has changed. Six hundred and two days ago, in the very place where the Leader of the House stood just now, her predecessor but one announced the Second Reading of the Nationality and Borders Bill. The Government’s promises on small boats then are the same as we hear now. We want to stop the dangerous crossings—we want to—but it is clear that nothing that comes from the Government Benches is ever going to work. We have been here before, just like last year and the year before. Has the Leader of the House actually undertaken any post-legislative scrutiny of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 before they have another go? Do the Government think they achieved their aims on small boats? Let me help her out. The answer is no.
We were told that that Bill would end illegal migration and stop the people smugglers, but crossings have surged. Last year, arrivals reached a new high of 45,000, up from just 299 people in 2018. We were told the Bill would break the business model of the gangs, yet gangs made a record £180 million over the past 12 months from channel crossings, up more than a hundredfold in the last three years. We were told that asylum claims would be sped up, but less than 1% of them last year have been dealt with. And we were told that the Bill would end the use of hotels, but the number of asylum seekers housed in hotels and contingency accommodation has soared to a record level of over 37,000 people, costing over £5 million a day. The list of broken promises goes on and on.
There is no sign of change. The Home Secretary blames anyone but herself and her predecessors for Tory failure on small boats, but it is clearly on them. They have been here for 13 years. I notice that she is continuing to attack her own civil servants, who, according to her, are part of a so-called “activist blob”. Let me tell those civil servants: we know you have been working hard to deliver the Government’s policies and the next Labour Government will treat you with respect. She is also blaming Labour for blocking Tory policies. How? They have a majority, last time I looked! Is the Prime Minister so weak that he cannot keep his Back Benchers in line? Are we too good at convincing them of the Government’s failure? And it is not just on the Nationality and Borders Bill. The Guardian has recorded 43 announcements the Tories have made that then failed to tackle the channel crossings, from jet ski patrols to social media bans. Recycled rubbish. Rinse and repeat. If the Government had it their way, would they try again in another 602 days?
The Government treat legislation and precious time in this House as nothing more than a feeding frenzy, with Bill after Bill chucking red meat for a noisy minority of Back Benchers. Is that an attempt to whip up support for weak and failing leadership? Is that the best that the Leader of the House’s party has to offer the country? This time, will she at least give us the tools to scrutinise the Bill? Why have the Government, again, failed to publish an impact assessment with figures showing where the money will come from? Is it because it is uncosted? When will they publish an impact assessment? Will it be before Second Reading on Monday, or after? What do the Government have to hide? What about the practicalities?
My caseworkers tell me that the Home Office are having IT problems right now. How will they cope with processing all the other people affected by the Bill? Where will they put them? Under the Bill, will a woman who has been trafficked to the UK for sexual exploitation, or an Afghan interpreter who worked with our brave forces, be told, “Your case won’t even be heard.”
The Government’s plan is unworkable and it is time for change. I look forward to swapping places with the right hon. Lady and announcing the day that this House will consider Labour’s credible plan for stopping small boats. [Interruption.] Are they listening? Labour’s plan to crack down on criminal gangs through a new cross-border police unit. Labour’s plan to clear the backlog and end hotel use through fast-tracking asylum decisions. Labour’s plan for agreements with France and other countries on returns and family reunions. Labour’s plan to reform resettlement schemes. Labour’s plan to tackle humanitarian crises at source. Labour has a plan. Is it not time that the British people had the chance to vote for it?
Penny Mordaunt
First, let me thank all Members who took part in events to celebrate International Women’s Day, and put on record that our thoughts are with all those women around the world who are standing up for human rights and democracy, particularly schoolgirls in Iran, who are facing the most brutal oppression. I thank everyone for the announcements on International Women’s Day. The Government have made many, and the Opposition too. I was buoyed by the shadow Chancellor’s pledge that Labour will end the “blokey culture” that lets men dominate the top positions—said with a distinct lack of self-awareness, I might add. I can no longer boast that we have had three female Prime Ministers on this side of the House because, happily, female leadership is becoming the norm in all political parties, bar one. For the sake of the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire), I hope that changes soon.
Let me turn to the hon. Lady’s point about small boats. On civil servants, she will know that the Home Secretary has distanced herself from that language—she did not say that. We put on record our thanks to all civil servants for the work that they do. Before the debate descends to unfortunate depths, I want to remind the House that in the last two decades 300 people have lost their lives crossing the channel. They have been hit by cars, crushed by lorries, suffocated inside containers, electrocuted and hit by Eurostar trains, and drowned at sea. Many more died en route to the channel. I remind the House that in one night, more people died crossing the Mediterranean than were lost on the Titanic.
Deterring and preventing such horrors is the right thing to do. A good outcome requires some pragmatism and a reality check from everyone in this House. We want to honour our moral obligations to particular people. We want to help those who would otherwise not survive in refugee camps, as we did during the Syria conflict. We want a system that works well and is not overwhelmed. That is pragmatic, moral and compassionate. That is where the country is at and where their Government are at. It is where the Labour party claims to be, but its actions tell a different story. Labour says that it wants to stop the boats, but it is not prepared to help us do it. It is both for and against free movement, strikes, appearing on picket lines and nationalisation.
I say to the confused British public, “Look at what Labour Members do, not what they say. Are they discouraging strikes? Did they vote for minimum service levels to protect your interests? Did they support our measures to protect border security? Did they support tougher sentences for heinous crimes or the deportation of foreign criminals? Will they help us to stop the boats? If they answer no, how can they be on your side?”
Labour is borrowing from the Gary Lineker playbook. It is a party of goal-hangers and the occasional left-wing striker, hanging around the goalmouth, poised to seize any opportunities and take an easy shot—but that only works if the ball is in the right half. This country does not need goal-hangers; it needs centre-forwards. It needs people who put in the hard work, who take tough decisions, who grip a problem and work out how to solve it, and who create those opportunities. That is what we are doing. It needs a team captain who knows his own mind, has a plan and knows what colour his football shirt is. Labour might be up at half-time, but the second half is yet to be played.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
I will not follow my right hon. Friend down the centre-forward path, as Tottenham did not succeed yesterday, but may I draw her attention to something in The Daily Telegraph today? Although the Government did not announce it at the Dispatch Box, we now understand, finally, that their position on the Wuhan lab leaks and on China’s involvement is that the location of the outbreak was “coincidental”. That Government policy has never been stated publicly, so will she make time for a Government statement, or preferably a debate, on whether the Government believe that China poses a threat and that the leaks from the labs may well have been the reason why millions died?
Penny Mordaunt
May I commiserate with my right hon. Friend on the Spurs result?
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise this issue. I know that many hon. Members on both sides of the House want answers to these important questions, which have huge implications for our national security—as an aside, he will know that the integrated review refresh will appear shortly. I will certainly take up his question with the Foreign Secretary and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, because I know that people are interested not just in the statements that this Government make, but in our assessment of what other Governments have said on this important matter. I undertake to write to him this afternoon on those points.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
A few weeks ago, the Leader of the House praised the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson), claiming that he spoke for many within Britain. He, of course, has voiced support for capital punishment and has instructed the poor and vulnerable on how they could subsist on a pittance if only they tried harder.
Well, Gary Lineker clearly speaks for many, many more of us, judging from the reactions when he voiced his revulsion at the language around the Government’s latest migration Bill. I am sure that the sight of that lectern emblazoned with its slogan shook him as much as it did me, once I realised that it was not a spoof. Ah, those three-word slogans, so beloved of some political operatives. “Stop the boats,” “Take back control,” “Oven-ready deal,” “Build the wall”—truly Trumptious tag lines, finessed by shady campaigning strategists to deliver grubby psychological jolts to the public’s consciousness that will really drive their ugly, misleading messages home. For a party whose Members are perpetually outraged at supposed threats to their own free speech, the Conservatives’ clamour to clamp down on Mr Lineker’s opinions seems deeply ironic.
Does the Leader of the House agree that it is beyond time we had a debate in this place about the use of populist rhetoric in politics and in public life before it is too late? It could refer specifically to exactly those dark times in the past that provide us with warnings about where a politics that increasingly calls on such language could be heading if we do not have the freedom to call out all such despicable attempts to other our fellow human beings. I note from the FT recently that lack of trust in politics has risen in importance as a concern for the public, so such a debate might help to restore some of that trust.
Or perhaps this might. When can we have a debate—in Government time, of course—about the Prime Minister’s tax affairs? When he was quizzed yesterday about the overdue release of his tax returns, he replied only that he would publish them “very shortly.” Our First Minister has released her tax returns from 2014-15 up to the most recent return, so why not him? Admittedly, hers show only the salary that she has received as First Minister over that time, while I appreciate that his will be rather more complicated, but will the Leader of the House use her good offices to make it happen sooner than “shortly”?
Penny Mordaunt
I personally like the hon. Lady very much, so I have decided to go easy on her this week, because she and her party have had a rough old time. [Interruption.] They have: they have had a rough old time. They have been attacked from all sides—of their own party. However, the hon. Lady’s colleagues have risen in my estimation. They have admitted that, in their judgment, their record in government has been poor as we all think it has been. Who would have thought that the path taken by the SNP leadership contest would be the road to Damascus? Of course, given that it is a road managed by the SNP, it is a poorly surfaced single track waiting for a dual carriageway which will never be delivered; but it is welcome nevertheless.
Yes, this week I am going to lavish praise on the SNP. While we, here in Westminster, grapple with complex issues to stop the boats, the SNP’s “stop the boats” policy is highly effective—specifically, stopping boats that would otherwise be servicing the good people of the Clyde and the Hebrides.
The hon. Lady raised important points about building trust and the importance of free speech and moderate language, so let me draw her attention to a speech that I made the other week, entitled “Trust in Britain”. It dealt with these themes, and as Leader of the House of Commons, I think they are very important. Let me draw the hon. Lady’s attention particularly to this section of my speech:
“The value of free speech is not just in your freedom to say something, but also in your ability to listen and learn something. It is also the freedom to change your mind and the freedom to be uncertain.”
I take these matters very seriously, and I hope that the hon. Lady and her party do as well.
Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)
On 1 December, when I raised the issue of recognition of the Ukrainian holodomor as a genocide, the Leader of the House advised me to apply for a debate in the usual way, which I did. This Tuesday I led a Westminster Hall debate on the issue during which I and others called for the Government to recognise this awful genocide, and asked whether, if they could not recognise it, Parliament could be given the opportunity to do so. The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, the hon. Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty, informed me that whether Parliament could vote on the issue was
“a matter for the Leader of the House.” —[Official Report, 7 March 2023; Vol. 729, c. 89WH.]
Will the Leader of the House therefore arrange a debate and a meaningful vote in Government time, so that the House can recognise the holodomor as a genocide and show its strong support for Ukraine?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank my hon. Friend for the attention she has given to this issue. It is not just a matter of history, but clearly resonates with what is going in the world today. I also congratulate her on securing that debate in Westminster Hall. We understandably reserve as much Government time as possible to get legislation through, but, as my hon. Friend will know, the route of an early-day motion is available if Members wish to express support for a particular matter. The definition of genocide is a legal one and not something that a Government would determine, but I remind her that the Backbench Business Committee can also grant debates on substantive motions.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
I am eternally grateful, Mr Speaker.
Bearing in mind what the Leader of the House has just said, I remind Members that we particularly welcome applications for debates that they had intended to air in Westminster Hall. These debates offer a great opportunity for Members to air issues of concern to themselves and their constituents, to inform Ministers representing relevant Departments of those issues, and to hear from the Ministers how they intend to rectify the problems involved.
I wonder whether the Leader of the House could give the Chancellor of the Exchequer a little nudge to include in his Budget statement next Wednesday a proposal to increase the £500 quarterly allowance for tax-free childcare support. That limit is already entirely inadequate, and the gap is being exacerbated as childcare providers are understandably being forced to increase their daily fees. Parents are already paying more than they can afford to providers who are making losses, cutting costs, and desperately struggling to avoid closures.
Penny Mordaunt
It is good to see the hon. Gentleman back in his place, and I thank him for that advert for the work of his Committee. I know the Chancellor and all relevant Ministers will be focused on the issue that he raises, which is timely because of payroll that must be met next month. I will certainly nudge the Chancellor, as the hon. Gentleman asks me to, but I know that that nudge will not be required.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
As we marked International Women’s Day yesterday, will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating Formula 1 on recognising the need for, and launching, the inspirational F1 Academy to develop and nurture female talent in motorsport, and wish Susie Wolff, the newly appointed managing director of that academy and the most recent female driver to get behind the wheel of a Formula 1 car at a race weekend, and her whole team the best of luck as they launch this important and necessary initiative? Can we have a debate on what more we can do to encourage more women into the great British success story that is motorsport?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank my hon. Friend for allowing us all to celebrate that achievement and for all the work he does in heading up the all-party parliamentary group for motorsport. It is a fantastic sector offering amazing careers, and I encourage all women, whether they want to get behind the wheel of a car or be part of the support team or of the incredible industry surrounding the sector, to go for it.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
The inequality of health outcomes for people with learning disabilities was one of the greatest tragedies of the covid pandemic. Public Health England estimated that the death rate for people with learning disabilities was four times higher than for the general population. Given the inequalities those people and their families already face, does the Leader of the House think it is acceptable that the funding for a learning disability centre in Bury North was reported as being considered as a bargaining chip by the former Health and Social Care Secretary, after an adviser suggested it to persuade a Conservative MP to vote with the Government on lockdown measures? Can the Leader of the House raise this issue and ask the Health and Social Care Secretary to investigate and to assure me that resources for people with learning disabilities are planned, as they should be, based on need?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank the hon. Lady for raising that incredibly serious point. It is a concern to us all in this place, but it would also be a concern to members of the public. We clearly do not have a full picture from the leaked messages, and I think the whole situation is highly regrettable, but she will know that there are very strict rules about how such decisions are arrived at, whether through a funding programme or a particular request from a constituency. Ministers are often not involved in the assessments that go on. The questions I have asked since seeing that report have reassured me, and indeed the Member concerned, my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly), has confirmed that he was not spoken to in those terms.
I also remind the House that we have a Select Committee, the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, and the Chair of that Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), raised concerns about the matter at the time as well. It is not just the checks we have in Whitehall, but the checks and scrutiny we have in this House, that should give Members of this House and the public confidence that such things do not happen.
Lia Nici (Great Grimsby) (Con)
Today, if someone wanted to travel to or from Grimsby by train, they would find it very difficult. There is one train leaving Grimsby at around 2 pm, and another train back into Grimsby at 8.40 pm. TransPennine Express has offered the unions overtime of £480 a day, but the unions have refused it, and now my constituents cannot get anywhere by train. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is about time the unions stopped playing with people’s lives and the levelling-up agenda and got back to work properly?
Penny Mordaunt
I am very sorry to hear of the situation in my hon. Friend’s constituency. That is clearly not acceptable. We often say that we want more people to use public transport and leave their cars behind, but for many people the car is their only option. We must ensure those services work, and she is right in her assessment. The next Transport questions is not until 20 April, so I will write this afternoon on her behalf and bring that to the Transport Secretary’s attention.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
Many Conservative Members want us to leave the European convention on human rights, but that would make it impossible for European countries to enter into return agreements for people who have failed their asylum applications in the UK and would undermine our ability to extradite people who have committed serious crimes, because they could simply claim that their human rights were at risk because we were no longer signatories to the ECHR. Can we have a debate in Government time to explain that to the fools on the Conservative Back Benches, who want to put the security of this country at risk?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. I have often commented in business questions on the Labour party being keen on sometimes supporting, or not being seen to criticise, the legislation that the Government are bringing forward. His approach is novel in that he asks about things that we are not going to do, as we have said. He knows full well what our plan is on small boats and I urge him to support it.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
Can we have an urgent debate in Government time about the strengths of the civil service? Does the Leader of the House agree that, although there may be a need for challenging discussions between Ministers and officials, the use of generic descriptions such as “snowflake” are unwelcome, inaccurate and entirely inappropriate?
Penny Mordaunt
My hon. Friend has been a Minister, and a very good one at that, so he knows that we work with wonderful people in many Government Departments, who are diligent and determined to deliver for the Government of the day. I am pleased to have the opportunity to put on record our gratitude to them. As Ministers, we need to take responsibility for what happens in our areas. We need to explain our policies and motivate the people who we work with, whether they are in the civil service or other organisations that we work with. Where there are obstructions to that happening, clearly there is a civil service code and it needs to be dealt with. I repeat that the Home Secretary has distanced herself from those sorts of comments. The public want us in this place to focus on the matter at hand, which is stopping the dangerous and horrific trade in human beings.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
My Liberal Democrat council in Bath has put together a climate and ecological emergency action plan to protect nearly 11,000 hectares of land for nature by 2030. In contrast, the Conservative Government have been happy to let many environmental targets go that would halt nature’s decline by 2030. The Ecology Bill is a private Member’s Bill going through the House of Lords, but there will not be time to debate it in this House, because it will go to the back of the queue. It has significant cross-party support and would set legally binding targets to halt and reverse biodiversity decline by 2030. Will the Leader of the House support a debate in Government time on that important Bill?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank the hon. Lady for her question, which she can clearly raise at the next Environment, Food and Rural Affairs questions on 30 March. I gently point out, however, that I do not think any Government have done as much to make their objectives legally binding, whether on biodiversity, water quality or net zero.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Ind)
After a pandemic that saw considerable excess deaths, we would normally expect a period of less than the expected number of deaths, where those who sadly passed before their time during the pandemic reduce the number of those passing after, but that is not what we are seeing. Referring to the Office for National Statistics figures on deaths registered weekly in England and Wales, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities’ “Excess mortality in England”, and Continuous Mortality Investigation’s mortality monitor, the Office for Statistics Regulation stated last month that
“all three do reflect the trend of a marked increase in excess death”.
Can we therefore have a debate in Government time on excess deaths, an issue that sadly affects every constituency and community in the land?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising the issue. It is incredibly important that we analyse and learn from our experiences in the pandemic to ensure that we are as prepared as we can be if, God forbid, such circumstances arise again. Many hon. Members on both sides of the House will want to focus on that, so I encourage him to apply for a debate in the usual way.
Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating Pontypridd and all those involved in their well-deserved champion award at the Let’s Celebrate Towns awards last week here in Parliament? Our local business improvement district is working tirelessly to make Pontypridd the jewel in the south Wales valleys crown, despite bank closures and the impact of the cost of living on our local businesses. Can we please have a debate in Government time on what more we can do to support our local high streets and make them the premier destination for all those wishing to visit?
Penny Mordaunt
I am very pleased to join the hon. Lady in congratulating all her constituents who have been involved in that. It is the best thing when local people are given the opportunity to be in the driving seat and shape their communities, and this Government believe in empowering local communities to do that. We have clearly put in place funding to assist that through the future high streets fund and other such funds, but we have also taken a great deal of care to enable good practice to be shared across the country, which will ensure that other parts of the UK can benefit from the wisdom of her constituents.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
Ashfield man Andy Jones has worked tirelessly over the past few months with his employer, Unique Positive Solutions, to open their own Spectre Coffee shop in Sutton-in-Ashfield. This a place for veterans, family and friends to come for a free drink and a chat in a warm, safe environment, but it is also being used by Unique Positive Solutions, which is funding the project, as a recruitment hub. I know that the Leader of the House is keen to come to Ashfield, but in the meantime could she please give a special mention to Andy and Unique Positive Solutions, who open their coffee shop this coming Saturday?
Penny Mordaunt
What a fantastic project! I will put my order in early—a black Americano, please—and I will come and visit my hon. Friend’s constituency and this amazing project soon. This is very clever because it is providing service and support for a community that we all value and treasure, but also enabling it to have more opportunities. I congratulate everyone involved, and also my hon. Friend, who has supported it.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. I was not quite sure whether the hon. Gentleman had actually asked for a debate or a statement. Just a little reminder that this is about the forthcoming business and the Leader of the House’s responsibilities.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Can we have a debate about the quality of the responses of Leaders of the House? I had the great pleasure of being in the shoes of my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) for something like eight years, and I saw a variety of Leaders of the House, but I have not seen one who comes prepared with a script that she then proceeds to read out, taking no notice of any question asked of her. Can I perhaps suggest that she has a quiet word with the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom) or even the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), and learn how to be Leader of the House?
Penny Mordaunt
Well, I am always happy to receive feedback, and I shall do my best to do much better next week.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
Too often, new housing estates are left in a poor state. The houses are sold, but the roads are unfinished, drainage defective, play areas incomplete and landscaping poor. I have seen that in a number of developments in my constituency, but I am particularly thinking of the residents of Snapdragon Way and Garten Close, who, among others, have had enough. Can we have a debate about mandating developers, local authorities and utilities to co-operate and finish developments that they have started in a timely manner, because residents simply should not have to live in new houses on streets that look only half put together?
Penny Mordaunt
I am very sorry to hear about this situation, and I know that my hon. Friend has been working tirelessly to get people to step up and take their responsibilities. He will know that the next questions on this matter are on 27 March, but I shall write on his behalf to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to ask for its advice about what possible remedies it could suggest to my hon. Friend to get people to step up and take responsibility.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Has the Leader of the House talked to any of our wonderful nurses who are struggling to make ends meet? They are absolutely desperate, but the flow of new people coming into nursing is small and many nurses are leaving to go either to the private sector or to places such as Australia. Could we have an urgent statement on this before the Budget?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that. He will know that, clearly, the Budget will seek to address many things, so I do not think that pre-empting it is particularly helpful if he wants answers on these matters.
We know that nurses—and all those working in health- care and our public services, which are so important—work very hard. The hon. Gentleman will also know that the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), is working very hard to discuss a whole raft of matters with nurses and others. The benefits of the system that we have in this place is that all Members of this House, including Government Ministers, speak to their constituents every week.
Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)
Earlier this week, once again, commuters in picturesque Leigh-on-Sea faced long queues to buy tickets. One resident reported missing her train to London due to the length of the queues. I am therefore delighted that the Government have announced that they will roll out contactless ticketing to 52 stations along the c2c line—something that I have been calling for ever since I was elected. However, please can we have a statement in Government time to tell us which stations will be in that 52? I very much hope that it will be heavily used stations with ticketing challenges, and that Leigh-on-Sea and Chalkwell will both be in that first tranche of 52 stations.
Penny Mordaunt
I congratulate the hon. Lady on the incredible campaign that she has mounted to ensure that Leigh-on-Sea and Chalkwell are prioritised. I cannot disclose when that will be announced, but I hope that it will be soon. If she is successful in that hope, I think it will be in great part thanks to her making an excellent case.
Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)
The Financial Times has identified that 90% of vape and vape juice producers in the UK seem to be failing to comply with environmental regulations. That is in the context of all of the disposable single-use vapes sold in the UK containing enough lithium in their batteries for more than 2,500 electric vehicles, and enough copper for more than 370,000 home electric vehicle charging stations, according to its research. But what happens? They are thrown away. They are littered. Even those that are put in the bin cannot be recycled properly. That is before we even get to the question of how they are marketed, which ASH Scotland—Action on Smoking and Health—has rightly raised.
The Scottish Government have commissioned an urgent review into reusable vapes. Can we have a statement or debate, in Government time, on whether this Government will deal with the issue with equal urgency?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank the hon. Lady for raising this important point. Given that Question Time sessions for the two Departments primarily concerned with this issue are a little way off, I shall write on her behalf and ask a Secretary of State to respond.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
One of our manifesto commitments was to halve rough sleeping, and then end it by the end of this Parliament. During the pandemic, we actually achieved it under the Everyone In programme. The Government have thrown a lot of money at attempting to halt rough sleeping, but recent figures demonstrate a 26% rise in the number of people rough sleeping, and, indeed, a rise in the number of people threatened with homelessness. Could we have a debate in Government time on what action the Department will take to actually deliver on our manifesto commitment and end rough sleeping for good?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point. I know that he is an assiduous campaigner on this matter, not just for his constituents but across the country. Rough sleeping levels are currently 35% lower than they were a few years ago, and we clearly had some opportunities during the pandemic to tackle some of the difficult issues that had been driving people on to the streets. We need to continue that, and we are putting forward £433 million in the rough sleeping accommodation programme, which will deliver 6,000 move- on homes and accompanying support services.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
On Saturday I was the guest of a number of WASPI women to watch their play, “Stung”, which was absolutely brilliant. Yesterday I met other 1950s-born women in the pouring rain on Parliament square. The all-party parliamentary group on state pension inequality for women also took evidence from BackTo60 and CEDAWinLAW. These women are not going away.
The Leader of the House knows that the ombudsman has already found maladministration relating to the 1950s women, but why is the Department for Work and Pensions still sending out letters with incorrect information? I have one here from 12 January 2023, saying that the state pension age is 60 for a woman and 65 for a man. May we have a debate in Government time on the incompetence of the Department for Work and Pensions and on how we can get the WASPI women the justice they deserve?
Penny Mordaunt
The hon. Gentleman knows that this is a complex situation and that different categories of women in that group are affected in different ways. DWP questions is a little way off. If he could pass that particular example to my office, I will raise this with the Department. Clearly, if incorrect information is going out, that needs to be rectified swiftly. I thank him for raising it.
Holly Mumby-Croft (Scunthorpe) (Con)
As I have said many times in this House, we have a lot of people to be proud of in Scunthorpe, and Tony Jacklin is certainly one of them. He held both the US and British Open titles, he revitalised the Ryder cup, and he was the first person to get a hole in one on the telly. Could we have a debate on how we can facilitate recognition for people like Tony who have made real, historic contributions to British sport?
Penny Mordaunt
One of the ways in which my hon. Friend can do that is by raising the issue in this House. I am sure that all Members will want to join me and my hon. Friend in praising Tony for his huge achievements. He was recognised with a CBE and remains a very influential person in all aspects of sport. My hon. Friend knows how to apply for a Westminster Hall debate, and she could also use an early-day motion if other Members of the House want to express their support and thanks to him for all he has achieved.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
Last night I received a distraught email from a hard-working and dedicated civil servant who lives in my constituency. He described how he and his colleagues are demoralised and tired of being demonised and blamed by Ministers when they are serving the country as best they can, without exception, whatever their personal views of Government policy.
In the light of the Home Secretary’s outrageous email to Conservative party supporters, does the Leader of the House agree that political attacks on the integrity of the civil service are never acceptable, and will she grant a debate in Government time on the importance of Ministers upholding the ministerial code and the work of the civil service?
Penny Mordaunt
The fact that this is the third opportunity I have had in this question time to say how much we appreciate the work that civil servants do, and to recognise that they work hard to deliver on the policies of the Government of the day, should give people confidence that that view is shared by Members across the House. That sentiment has been expressed by Members on both sides of the Commons today. I say to the hon. Lady, though, that if we wish to provide reassurance that civil servants are respected and their contribution valued, it is not helpful to attribute the remarks to which she alludes to the Home Secretary. The Home Secretary has very clearly said that those were not her remarks and that she did not approve those remarks, and I know that she would want me to put on the record her thanks to all those in her Department and the agencies that work with them.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
May I add my words of support to my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Lia Nici) for raising the issue of the appalling—in fact, almost non-existent—services provided by TransPennine Express? Today there is an eight-hour gap between services, but it should be an hourly service. Would it be possible for the Transport Secretary to come to the House to make a statement and assure us that TransPennine’s franchise will not be renewed and that he will give the final approval to restoring the direct train service between Grimsby, Cleethorpes and King’s Cross, which would alleviate many of the problems?
Penny Mordaunt
I am very sorry to hear about this situation. Given that Transport Question Time is some way off, as I said, I will write to make sure the Secretary of State has heard my hon. Friend’s concerns. We will not have to draft a new letter, just change the date, because he has raised the matter many times in this place. I hope it is swiftly resolved for his constituents.
Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)
On 22 March 2018, I said:
“For the past two years, I have been helping a constituent with her ongoing attempts to have her former local government employer rightfully added to the redundancy modification order.”—[Official Report, 22 March 2018; Vol. 638, c. 401.]
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities recently sent an email saying
“the Redundancy Modification Order was paused due to resource pressures”
and that the Department is
“currently unable to provide a view as to the timescale for completion of a revised consolidation order.”
Does the Leader of the House agree it is ridiculous that people have been waiting more than 10 years for this to happen? This is a non-contentious issue, so will she please use her good offices to get the Department to pull out its finger and get this done?
Penny Mordaunt
That is not a satisfactory situation, and I will be happy to raise it with the Department after this session. The next Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Question Time is on 27 March, and the hon. Lady may be interested to know that my noble Friend Lord True, the Leader of the House of Lords, and I met all the permanent secretaries yesterday to make very clear the level of service we expect from their Departments.
Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)
The Black Country was built on metals, and metal engineering, iron founding, surface engineering and heat treatment still play an important part in our local economy, providing well-paid jobs and opportunities to truly level up our communities, but the industry faces acute issues with rising energy prices and recruitment. Can we have a debate in Government time on how we can support the metals industry, particularly in the Black Country? I have raised this with Ministers in the Treasury and the former Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, but we need a debate on the Floor of the House to ensure the future of this vital industry for my communities in Tipton and Wednesbury.
Penny Mordaunt
My hon. Friend is right that this is an incredibly important sector and a real sovereign capability for this country. He will have many opportunities to raise it on the Floor of the House, because it is relevant to so many Departments, but I suggest that Business and Trade Question Time on 23 March might be the nearest opportunity.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
My constituent Shireen Gale complained to our local trust as she feels that her now sadly deceased mother was given a delayed cancer diagnosis. The Leader of the House will know that it is standard procedure, after exhausting the complaints processes within an organisation, next to complain to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, but the PHSO has refused to deal with her complaint, advising her that she should have complained to it at the very outset. This makes no sense, because how on earth would she have known the outcome of her complaint at the outset? Can we please have an urgent debate on the functioning of the PHSO?
Penny Mordaunt
We will all be familiar with the process of making a complaint, and that sounds like a very odd set of circumstances. If the hon. Lady wants to pass on the details to my office, I will be very happy to raise it with the Department of Health and Social Care to get its advice.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House consider a debate to recognise the real human beings caught up in the Home Secretary’s asylum backlog? My constituent, whose husband was executed by the Iranian regime and who has applied for asylum, has been told that she will have to wait at least six months, despite my representations, just to get an interview and at least another six months before she can expect to get a decision. To use the Leader of the House’s own words, how does that honour our moral obligation to refugees?
Penny Mordaunt
The measures we are bringing forward will help us on our moral obligation. This requires some pragmatism. We have particular moral obligations to particular people in particular parts of the world. We have historically wanted to give the finite support we can offer to people who are most vulnerable, with the plight I mentioned earlier of lone or disabled children in Syrian refugee camps being a prime example. If we have finite resource—I understand that the concept of finite resource to the Labour party is a difficult one to manage—we want to direct that to the very people the hon. Gentleman is talking about. This system is overwhelmed by people who do not have a just claim to seek asylum—
Penny Mordaunt
I am showing her humanity, because I am going to support measures that will enable us to get these systems under control. I say to the hon. Gentleman that I fully understand why he asks this question—
Penny Mordaunt
The hon. Gentleman is perfectly entitled to be angry at my answer. I am angry at the situation where we have finite resource that cannot help these people who need assistance. We need to direct that to people whom the system—an asylum system—was set up to protect. That has always been our judgment as a Government. It has always been our action as a Government. If he is serious about helping this situation, he will look at this legislation seriously and actually help us stop the system being overwhelmed, so that we can direct this support to the people who need it most.
Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)
I thank the Leader of the House for her business statement. There is not a scintilla in it that is in the interests of the people of Scotland, least of all the Budget, as I am sure we will find out on Wednesday. I know her views on the constitution as regards Scotland, as she articulates them every week at this time, with no small measure of dripping superiority and patronisation. One of her and her colleagues’ favourite tropes is that Scotland is really lucky to be in this Union and we have the most successful devolved assembly anywhere in the world. Will she issue us with a statement or even give us a debate in Government time to show the parallels against which she is judging Scotland’s fortunes? Where are these other devolved Administrations that are not as lucky as Scotland? There are not any, because the right way to exist is independence.
Penny Mordaunt
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. I have spoken many a time about the benefits of Scotland being in the Union—about the tax dividend to every man, woman and child in Scotland of about £2,000 per head. There are other reasons that do not just appeal to the head; they also appeal to the heart. We are a family of nations. There are families who stretch across these nations. It is one country and four nations. There are tremendous strengths in that approach. I know that we will never agree on that, but I will keep making the case and trying to convince the hon. Gentleman. As I learnt the other day that we share a birthday, I wish him many happy returns on that too.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
The state of our railways is deeply concerning, with rising passenger costs set against poor service delivery on the TransPennine Express. In York, our digital and advanced rail cluster is being held back by the delayed Government announcement about the Great British Railways headquarters. Can we have a statement to set out how the Government are going to fix our broken rail network and unlock GBR?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank the hon. Lady for that statement. She knows that there may be announcements coming forward on related matters—I do not know, but it might be something that the Chancellor touches on in the Budget statement. Transport questions are a little way off, so I shall write to make sure that the Secretary of State has heard her concerns.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
The cost of fuel is a driver of inflation across the economy, and hard-pressed motorists pay tax twice on their fuel: they pay fuel duty and they pay VAT on top of that. Will the Leader of the House make a statement setting out whether she supports cutting the regressive tax of fuel duty in the upcoming Budget to help support growth across the economy and tackle inflation?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. She knows that that has always been this Government’s track record. In stark contrast with the Labour party that raised fuel duty by more than 40%, we have cut fuel duty. I know that she will want to make representations to the Chancellor. I cannot pre-empt the Budget, but I shall make sure that he has heard what she said.
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
This morning, I hosted an event with Shelter, which was exposing and shining a light on the hundreds and thousands of children and families living in temporary accommodation. Will the Leader of the House ensure that there is a debate, in Government time, on building a new generation—at scale—of social housing?
Penny Mordaunt
The hon. Gentleman will know that we have invested heavily in social housing, and we have actually built many more social homes than his own party did when it was in government. This is an incredibly important point. I shall make sure that the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has heard what the hon. Gentleman has said today. The hon. Gentleman will know how to apply for a debate in the usual way.
Kenny MacAskill (East Lothian) (Alba)
Since the establishment of the welfare state, there has been an acceptance of the need for a minimum level of income below which no one should fall, and, more importantly, that it should be set at a level that will maintain decency. Initially, it was supplementary benefit and now, whether in work or on benefits, it is universal credit. Research from the Trussell Trust and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows that the current levels for a single person are £35 a week below what is essential to maintain basics, and that figure is £66 for a couple. Can we have a debate on the requirement, irrespective of what the Budget brings about on pensions and benefits, for the basic maintenance of a decent standard of living below which nobody in this country should fall, because people are going hungry, people are cold and, sadly, people are dying?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. He will know that we have the Budget coming up and that we also have a particular system and timeframe for uprating benefits. On both benefits and pensions, we have taken the most generous approach to uprating. One thing of which this Government can be proud is reform of the welfare system—that hugely complex tangle of benefits that did not provide work incentives and that left people with nothing as they transferred between different parts of that system. Universal credit, I think, is a huge and positive transformation of that. Since we came to office, we have worked to make sure that people receive the living wage and to raise personal tax thresholds—in fact, we have doubled them. This is a matter of extreme importance to us.
Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)
Modern slavery often results in trafficking, exploitation and abuse, yet for nearly a year now the Government have failed to appoint an independent anti-slavery commissioner. Given the changes being introduced in the Illegal Migration Bill, will the Home Secretary make an urgent statement on the progress of this process and when we can expect an appointment? Perhaps the Leader of the House can show some humanity in her answer to me, unlike in her previous answers.
Penny Mordaunt
I hope all Members think that I am assiduous in the work that I do, raising the matters that they mention on the Floor of the House with the Departments and, if they are particularly urgent cases, doing so immediately following the session. I shall do the same for the hon. Lady, and raise the issue that she mentions with the Home Secretary.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
At least 10 regional building societies are now known to have taken commission to refer their elderly and vulnerable customers to the Will Writing Company. That was ostensibly to give them free advice on writing their wills, but was in fact part of an elaborate scam involving the Philips Trust Corporation and several other companies. Those people were given dishonest and unauthorised financial advice, and were conned into transferring all their money and homes into a trust. Now that the Philips Trust Corporation has gone into administration, they fear losing everything. Can we have an urgent debate in Government time on why Britain’s regulatory framework has utterly failed, yet again, to protect our vulnerable people from organised fraudsters? In particular, can we have a statement from the relevant Minister on how so many building societies seem to have become unwitting accessories to that fraud?
Penny Mordaunt
The hon. Gentleman raises an extremely disturbing and important case. He will know that both the Treasury and the Department for Business and Trade, as it now is, have been focused on combating fraud—particularly fraud and scams of that nature. If he passes the details to me, I shall certainly ensure that the Chancellor and his team, and the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, have heard what he has raised.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
My constituent’s young Afghan wife is finally being granted a visa, but the Home Office is insisting that, to hand in her passport, she travel to a third country for which it will be difficult for her to obtain a short-term visa as they are not granted for Afghans. I have raised this case many times with many Ministers since August 2021. We are working to very tight timescales, but I have not heard back from the Minister for Immigration on my request for a meeting. Can the Leader of the House please help me to facilitate a good outcome for that vulnerable young woman?
Penny Mordaunt
I will certainly do that for the hon. Lady. I know she has not mentioned the third country for security reasons, but that will be a major part of the answer. I will speak to the Minister directly on this matter today and ask for an official to contact the hon. Lady’s office to get it resolved.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Yesterday, on International Women’s Day, the BBC released a report highlighting an unprecedented year of restrictions for Afghan women and girls. In the last 12 months, a multitude of restrictions have included mandatory full veiling in public places, a ban on higher education, and being unable to work in a range of sectors. The restrictions disproportionately affect women from religious minorities; members of the Hazara community face atrocities committed by that Government and by Daesh. Will the Leader of the House join me in making a statement of solidarity? We in this House can be a voice for the voiceless Afghan women and girls.
Penny Mordaunt
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising this important matter again, as he does at every opportunity. He is absolutely right: we need to keep eyes on what is going on in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and support those brave individuals—both men and women—who are taking a stand to ensure that women and girls are not oppressed. We hope that their situation will improve swiftly.
I draw the attention of all Members of the House to the Leader of the House of Commons Twitter feed this week, where they will see lists of the Twitter handles of women’s rights campaigners in many countries, including Iran and Afghanistan. I am encouraging people to follow those people, largely women, because this is not just about ensuring that their issues are at the forefront of our minds, but about our ability to amplify their message and to send a message to those who would do them harm that we have our eyes on them.
Point of Order
(1 year, 8 months ago)
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Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. In an exchange earlier with the Leader of the House, I raised the asylum case of a constituent of mine whose husband was executed by the Iranian regime. Not many things shock me in this place, but I was genuinely shocked that the Leader of the House—quite rightly doing what she does to defend Government policy—failed to even emote a simple scintilla of sympathy about the situation that my constituent has been placed in. Is any mechanism available under the Standing Orders by which the Leader of the House might be able to come to the Dispatch Box and express sympathy, and perhaps even do what she has done for other constituents by offering to take the case to the Home Office for further scrutiny?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
The Leader of the House is at the Dispatch Box and clearly wishes to respond, so I will first ask her to do so.
The Leader of the House of Commons (Penny Mordaunt)
Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sorry if I did not appear sympathetic to the particular situation. I am very sympathetic to the situation, and if there is something that the hon. Gentleman thinks I can do to assist, of course I will. I always make that offer to Members of this House.
However, I would just reiterate to the hon. Gentleman that if he wants the asylum system to work well; if he wants the finite resource we have to be focused on those people in all parts of the world who need our support; and if he wants us to be able to make a judgment about taking disabled children from a Syrian camp because we are the kind of country that can give those children the right support that they need, he needs to help us stop the boats and get the situation under control. I have always tried to work in a collegiate way. I can understand the hon. Gentleman’s frustration at the current situation; I am frustrated at that situation too, and we intend to do something about it.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I think it is important that I respond to the point of order from the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan). As he knows, I am not responsible for the answers of Ministers; however, he has put his point forward and the Leader of the House has responded. I suggest that we leave it at that.
Supply and Appropriation (Anticipation and Adjustments) Bill
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 56), That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Question agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time.
Question put forthwith, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
Question agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
Backbench Business
International Women’s Day
(1 year, 8 months ago)
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Dame Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered International Women’s Day.
May I say how great it is to see you in the Chair for this now annual event on the Floor of the House of Commons, Madam Deputy Speaker? I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting us this time, and also members of the all-party parliamentary group on women in Parliament, who yet again proposed the debate.
It is a great privilege to be able to open today’s debate. I will start by recognising the incredible achievements of every single female Member of Parliament in the House of Commons and every female parliamentarian, not just in this Chamber but at the other end as well. I have been fortunate to have so many women helping me throughout my life: family, friends, work colleagues and fellow parliamentarians. I would particularly like to say how inspired I am by my colleagues on both sides of the House—their tenacity, their ability to make change happen and their resilience, getting anything that gets in their way out of the way so that they can get things done. I salute them all for what they have already achieved, and for what they will go on to achieve in the future.
I pay a particularly fond tribute to two women in my party: my right hon. Friends the Members for Epping Forest (Dame Eleanor Laing) and for Maidenhead (Mrs May). Both have gone out of their way to make sure that they encourage women in my party to be the best they can be. It would not be proper to not also remember the late Cheryll Gillan. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] On the Conservative side of the House, she was the mother of our party, and we miss her greatly. She was an amazing colleague.
Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)
My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) is one of my inspirations in this House, but I think it is really important that we are able to talk openly about how much respect we have for colleagues across the House. I can see a number of women on the Opposition Benches whose work I have followed, not only since I have been in this place, but before I became an MP. I remind everybody that, as much as we see the ding-dongs on the tellybox, a lot of us get on and are trying to make big changes here together.
Dame Maria Miller
That is an excellent friend— I mean that is an excellent comment from my hon. Friend, and she is absolutely right. I should at this stage point out that there are a couple of us on the Government Benches who have not slept overnight, so please forgive us, Madam Deputy Speaker, if we stumble over our words. [Interruption.] No, a lot tamer than that; we flew back on the red-eye from the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.
Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
I am moved to intervene because the right hon. Lady mentioned Cheryll Gillan. While there might have been many things we disagreed on, there were many things we did agree on. She did incredible work on autism and championing neurodiversity. Also, when I joined the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, she was a very supportive member and helped to show me the way. She is much missed across all Benches.
Dame Maria Miller
I thank the hon. Lady for those kind comments. It demonstrates how we work together and have shared interests. Just to refer back to our venture to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women earlier this week, I chaired a panel of young women, and they were asking about how we work together, and where the political divides were. I have to say that I used Jo Cox’s words that there is more that unites us than divides us. That is another thing I would like to remember fondly today.
Having women in Parliament and in leadership really matters—we know that—because it changes the conversation, the discussion and, above all, the decisions that are made both here and in organisations across the country and around the world. To mark International Women’s Day, at the start of this week I led one of four delegations of UK parliamentarians to the UN Commission on the Status of Women. My delegation was from the all-party parliamentary group on United Nations women. We thank the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association for its support in helping that delegation happen.
At the CSW in New York, thousands of women from around the world met to discuss the status of women, with four delegations from our Parliament. There were 18 hon. and right hon. Members and noble Members of the House of Lords at that global event. The event was at times harrowing, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) will draw later on some of her work while she was there. It was harrowing in particular to hear directly from women from Afghanistan, Ukraine and other parts of the world, including Colombia and Mexico, about their own personal experiences, particularly around sexual harassment and worse. The Afghan women we heard from talked about the brutal beatings, the torture and worse, but they are still there, prepared to protest to regain the hard-won rights of the past two decades. We also heard from women in Iran living with a brutal regime. We must continue to play our part in this Parliament, as we have a proud tradition of doing, in keeping these women’s plight at the fore and ensuring that their need for support and change is never forgotten.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
It has been difficult to watch as women’s rights have been stripped away in Afghanistan since the withdrawal of troops. Now, Afghan women who were divorced and able to escape abusive marriages under the previous Government have found those divorces nullified and found themselves at risk under adultery laws. Does the right hon. Member agree that the Government must pick up the pace with the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme to make sure we can offer sanctuary to those women?
Dame Maria Miller
In bringing this matter up, the hon. Lady is doing what we all must do, which is to raise these issues in public. That is what the Afghan women I met were pleading for—to make sure that their plight was not forgotten—and they were enormously grateful for hon. and right hon. Members raising these issues, so that not only does the world media not forget, but our colleagues on the Treasury Bench do not forget either.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the right hon. Lady for bringing this debate forward. Unfortunately, I have a meeting today so I cannot make a speech.
This is not just about the politicians across the world; it is also about the likes of my mother, who is 91 years old —soon to be 92—and still gets up to make fresh scones, drives a car and looks after my brother, who is disabled. It is also about my wife who runs the home, volunteers at an animal shelter and cares for the grandchildren, giving childcare to help make ends meet. I am a grandfather of three beautiful and wonderfully sassy granddaughters, who I believe will change the world, and I am the proud employer of six fiercely strong, independent and intelligent women. My point is clear: does the right hon. Lady not agree that on this day, and indeed every day, we have much to be thankful for with all the women in our lives who have shaped us and who continue to shape our world and make it a better place?
Dame Maria Miller
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He is always a great supporter of women. He raises an important issue, which is that women have many different roles in this country and in our national life, and we should celebrate all those roles in this debate. But, above all, we need to ensure that women have a choice as to what role they take on, and we should never allow barriers to get in the way of them succeeding and reaching their potential in life. I am sure his sassy granddaughters would agree with that.
The Commission on the Status of Women, as well as being harrowing at times, was also enormously uplifting. It was empowering to hear from other female parliamentarians, NGO leaders and activists about how they are working and campaigning for change. I had the great pleasure of meeting the Speaker of the Belize Parliament, the honourable Valerie Woods, who is also deputy chair of Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians. The Inter-Parliamentary Union had many meetings at the CSW, which serves to remind us of the importance of organisations such as the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and the IPU, in the light not only of our Parliament, but of Parliaments around the world. They are incredibly useful organisations for women to be able to drive change and learn from other Parliaments.
As I said, the UK Parliament had four delegations—the biggest group ever to be at the CSW—demonstrating that the significance and importance of women’s rights among colleagues across the House has never been more heightened. At the UN this week, thousands of women from across the world saw laid bare the global erosion of women’s rights since the Beijing declaration was adopted in 1995: the reversal of Roe v. Wade; 4 million women and girls out of education in Afghanistan; women in Ukraine rendered victims of sexual violence at the hands of aggressors. Closer to home, two women are murdered by their partners each week in the UK—I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) will be talking about that in her contribution to the debate.
There is no doubt that in the UK over the past decade a huge amount of progress has been made. I pay tribute to the Minister for Women and her predecessors—of which I am one—for all they have done to ensure that we continue to see momentum in women’s rights. The Minister has done so much, particularly on women’s health, and I pay tribute to her work in that area. Although I will speak about some of the challenges that we have to face, and ways to address them, it is important to keep at the back of our minds that huge progress that we have made as women, and the huge contribution that women make to public life, making this place, and other places, better as a result.
How do I know that this place is better for having women in it, and why it is important that we continue to push for more women to enter public office? True representation is the answer to that question. Representation—good, strong, diverse representation—is vital in political life because it encourages trust in political bodies. Engagement in democracy is stronger when people see themselves in their elected representatives. Representation tends also to result in diversity. That in turn results in a greater range of ideas, which for a deliberative system such as our democracy is hugely important to improve our decision making.
In the business world, research by McKinsey found that, for every 10% increase in gender diversity in senior executive teams in the UK, earnings in that company before interest and tax rose by more than 3%. There is a dividend not just for commercial organisations, but for organisations such as ours in ensuring that that diversity is in place.
Margaret Ferrier
The right hon. Lady is generous in giving way. I was at a Balfour Aviation event last week, where it was pointed out that women remain significantly under-represented in more senior roles, with only 6% of pilots being women. The training is incredibly expensive and we have heard about the barriers to becoming a high earner that many women face. Does she agree that the Government could be providing more financial support aimed at encouraging women into industries such as aviation where they are under-represented?
Dame Maria Miller
The hon. Lady raises an important point about pilots. I know her point is slightly broader than that, but pilots face issues in staying qualified to fly, if they have children. That is one of the reasons— I met that sector of the industry a number of years ago—it sees such a haemorrhaging of women out of the industry. But she makes a broader point. Over the last decade and a half, we have made some important progress in getting in place the idea and notion that having more women in senior roles in organisations is important. On STEM—science, technology, engineering and maths— I actually think those on the Treasury Bench should be singing much louder than they do on their success in putting STEM first and foremost in young women’s minds. When we compare STEM graduates coming out of our universities now with the graduates who came out of our universities in 2010, there are now more women than men coming out with STEM degrees. We do not shout about that enough, but she is right that those women are still on a junior level. We need to ensure that the barriers have been removed so they do not, as we see in the case of pilots, end up having to move out of the industry because barriers are in the way. She makes an important point.
As I say, in the business world, research from McKinsey found that gender diversity increases earnings and that companies in the top quartile for diversity outperform their industry mediums. McKinsey believes that that is because diverse companies are better able to win talent to improve customer understanding, employee satisfaction and decision making, leading to what it calls a virtuous circle.
If diversity can improve our businesses, it can improve our Parliament, too. Where our performance metrics are not found on balance sheets, they are found in the decisions we make for the future of our country. Diversity and deliberative processes, by which I mean voices from more backgrounds bringing new ideas from different life experiences, are foundational to what we do here. The Center for Talent Innovation identified that 56% of leaders do not value ideas they do not personally see the need for. Given that we know that women have experiences of life that are very different from those of their male counterparts, we can see from that figure how important it is that we have more women not only in this Chamber but at the decision-making table of Government.
What is the solution? We need diversity in leadership, and having women central in our debates adds legitimacy to our democratic process. It means that our work in scrutiny is done in a more rounded and full way, and policy can be made that more fully encompasses the needs and dreams of the people we serve. The UK electorate and all electorates are half women, so representing women’s voices here is directly important to at least half of our constituents. Gender equality in Parliament is all about democracy and improving our democracy. It is clear to see why it is important that we make an ever-increasing effort to ensure that diversity can thrive in this Parliament.
Our Parliament has come a long way and we have a very reforming Speaker, who has put the role of parliamentarians front and centre in this place and picked up some of the issues that are incredibly important to women not only coming into Parliament but staying in Parliament. I am thinking particularly here about personal security. However, our Speaker has also inherited an enormous backlog of issues that have not been tackled for a variety of reasons in recent years. It is my belief that the House of Commons must continue to renew its energies in this area to ensure that it is not only the political parties that are working hard to get more women into the House of Commons, but the House of Commons itself that is appealing and is a place where people want to come and have a career. The women who have the capacity, the capabilities and perhaps even the personality to come into Parliament have a lot of choices and different ways they can use their lives. If we do not make sure that the people who have the best capacity are attracted to come to Parliament, as well as have a vocation, we are going to miss out on the brightest and the best, a phrase that is often mentioned to me by Ministers who are responsible when I talk about this issue.
One of the ways we can ensure that we increase the appeal of our Parliament is through gender-sensitive audits, to ensure that we have an understanding of what makes our Parliament strong, and where we can improve it and make it more appealing for women. I pay tribute to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, which developed the concept of gender-sensitive Parliaments in 2010. Since then, multiple Parliaments around the world—including our own—have conducted gender-sensitive audits to see how they fare. That was developed further by the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, which put together a toolkit to make it easier for all sorts of Parliaments to implement such an audit.
Dame Maria Miller
Will the hon. Lady forgive me if I do not? I do not want to incur the wrath of Madam Deputy Speaker.
The point of gender sensitivity is to create environments in which both men and women can operate equally. There are seven key aspects, which include: the numbers and positions of women; the legal and policy framework of the legislature; mainstreaming of gender equality; the culture, environment and policies of Parliament; the role of political parties; and the position of parliamentary staff. All those aspects can tell us a lot about how men and women are faring in their Parliaments. The House of Commons conducted a gender-sensitive audit in 2018, which was welcome, but that feels like a long time ago. Some colleagues were not even here. Our audit of how Parliament works for people today, not three or four years ago, should be foremost in our minds.
It is clear that there is more to do. I refer to the Fawcett Society’s report “A House for Everyone: The Case for Modernising Parliament”, published in December, which I am sure colleagues are familiar with. It brought into focus the problems around retaining female parliamentarians, which I know concerns colleagues on both sides of the House. The number of women in Parliament taken as a snapshot is all well and good, but Fawcett’s work reveals that, because women face disproportionate challenges, they tend to stay in Parliament for one fewer term than men. That means that those women do not get the opportunity to reach the seniority or level of experience of their male counterparts.
On what we do next, the all-party parliamentary group on women in Parliament will produce a workstream to ensure that we have a clear plan to get an equal Parliament by 2028, to coincide with the centenary of the Equal Franchise Act 1928. When that work plan is put into place, I hope that we can share it in Parliament through further debate.
It is a great pleasure to open the debate. On behalf of those colleagues who are still at CSW in New York, I wish a happy International Women’s Day for yesterday to everyone in the Chamber and those who are watching at home. I encourage everyone to ensure that the legacy from our time in Parliament is encouraging and achieving the objective of having more women on the green Benches, to make this place a fairer and even stronger parliamentary democracy.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) for opening the debate and for all her work for women over the years. I share her comments about celebrating our wonderful women parliamentarians and all their achievements. It is very good to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Madam Deputy Speaker, and our excellent female Clerks at the Table, too.
My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) will read out the list of UK women killed this year, which is truly heartbreaking and a reminder of the dangers that women and girls face in our country. Three years ago, my constituent Libby Squire was on that list. She was a young woman studying at Hull University whose life was taken in 2019 by a predatory man who had been prowling the streets of Hull looking for a victim. But Libby’s murder was not an out-of-the-blue attack: in the 16 months before Libby’s rape and murder, the perpetrator had committed a string of sexually motivated offences, including indecent exposure, masturbating in public, spying on women through their windows and stealing sex toys and underwear.
Very sadly, we know that the behaviour of men who expose themselves is devastatingly everyday, common and normalised. When I asked women MPs earlier this week about their experiences of men indecently exposing themselves, everyone had a story, whether it had happened outside their sixth-form college, on public transport or on the way to school. Just today I received a letter from an 80-year-old woman who recalls being a victim of indecent exposure when she was 18. She still lives, 62 years later, with the impact of that assault.
We found out at Libby’s killer’s trial that many of his earlier crimes had not been reported to the police. Why was that? It was because victims often feel that they will not be taken seriously by the police and that reporting will not actually trigger any action. We know that these crimes are committed by predators and can be a precursor to more extreme violent behaviour. We ignore these warning signs—these red flags—at our peril.
Earlier this week, Wayne Couzens was sentenced to 19 months for indecent exposure, having committed a string of non-contact sexual offences in the years before his arrest. One of those incidents, when he exposed himself to staff at a McDonalds drive-through, happened just days before he kidnapped, raped and murdered Sarah Everard. In handing down the sentence, Mrs Justice May reported that Wayne Couzens’s ability to commit these deeds with impunity only
“strengthened…the dangerous belief in his invincibility”.
Very sadly, as with Libby’s murderer, the offences escalated.
A review of evidence from 2014 found that a quarter of men who exposed themselves went on to reoffend, with as many as 10% going on to commit serious sexual offences.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
Is it not true that most people underestimate what an assault on a woman is like? It is really only when it happens to you that you understand the impact. It is so important that we listen to the women who have been through an assault and understand the trauma that it has caused them.
Dame Diana Johnson
Absolutely. I am very grateful for that intervention. I think every woman in this Chamber or watching this debate will fully understand the impact that it can have.
I return to the statistics. Since 2018, almost 250 men found guilty of indecent exposure have subsequently been found guilty of rape. Indecent exposure and non-contact sexual offences are gateway crimes that are still not taken seriously enough. In the years since her daughter’s murder, Libby’s mum, the formidable Lisa Squire, has fought to raise the importance of reporting these “low-level” sexual offences. She has been working with Humberside police on the Libby campaign to urge women always to report them to the police. Her call on women is, “These offences are not trivial. They are not harmless. If you are the victim, please report it to the police. It could save another woman’s life.” She has already managed, alongside Humberside police, to reach 17,000 young people in the Humberside area. She is also working with the Metropolitan police and Thames Valley police. I spoke to Lisa this morning; she is a formidable woman, and I have no doubt at all that we will see change because of the work that she is doing.
Of course, reporting is not the only hurdle. This week, we heard from one of Couzens’s victims, who said in her impact statement:
“Four months after you exposed yourself to me, you raped and murdered an innocent woman. There were opportunities to identify you and they were not taken. I did not feel that, when I reported your crime, it was taken as seriously as I felt that it should have been.”
If women are to report crimes, they must have faith that they will be believed and respected, that action will be taken, and that, most importantly, the police themselves are not a danger.
A recent analysis found that of the 10,000 indecent exposure cases logged by police in 2020, only 600 reached court. That is simply not enough. I have tabled amendments to Home Office Bills to try to tackle the issue, but sadly the Government did not accept them. I met Home Office Ministers, with Lisa Squire, to talk about what more the Government could do. As Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, I raised the issue directly with the previous Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel).
I believe that the Government must do much more about tackling violence against women and girls. The Prime Minister declared this to be a national emergency back in November, but he did not make it one of his top five priorities. Why not make it the sixth priority? If this Government will not accept this as a national emergency, I hope that the next will. Indecent exposure is not a minor crime—we know that it is frequently a stepping stone to escalating violence against women by predatory men—and perpetrators, although pathetic, are not harmless; they are often very dangerous. We must take this issue far more seriously, doing so for Libby, for Sarah, and for all the women taken from us. Just like women down the years fighting for a cause—the suffragettes, the Bow match girls, the Ford Dagenham equal pay strikers, and Hull’s own headscarf revolutionaries—we will persevere and we will see change.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
It is absolutely wonderful to be back in the House today—if I am a bit bleary, it is because I have just got off the all-night redeye and have had only a couple of hours’ sleep—and it was wonderful to be present at the annual conference of the Commission on the Status of Women, along with Members in all parts of the House, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller), and to see much joy among so many thousands of women. This was the first time the commission had met in person for four years. There was a particularly moving moment yesterday when a very informal lunch was attended by a handful of British parliamentarians from both Houses, a Canadian senator, two young Mexican Members of Parliament, three Afghan women’s rights champions, and two Ukrainian MPs. Madam Deputy Speaker, the sisterhood is strong.
There is so much that I want to say that I thought I would try to keep myself ordered by giving the House an A to Z, so here it is: some of it happy, and some of it sad.
A is for Afghanistan, with 4 million girls not at school, women not allowed to work, and women subjected to public floggings, rape and torture. It is gender apartheid at its worst. As the Afghan women said to me yesterday, if an Afghan girl cannot go to school and an Afghan woman cannot leave her home, why can the Taliban send their daughters not just out of their homes but out of their country to go to school in other countries? What they ask of the UK Government is that we and our allies impose travel bans on the Taliban, and do more to sanction their assets.
B is for a network of paths in Chelmsford called the “Bunny Walks”. It used to be overcrowded, overgrown, dark and dangerous—a no-go zone for women—but, thanks to the Government’s safer streets fund, it now has lights and CCTV, the undergrowth has been cut back, and it is being enjoyed by women and men and, indeed, people of all ages. I would encourage colleagues, if they have dangerous parts of their constituency, to look at the safer streets funding, because it makes a huge difference.
C is for contraception. Some 257 million women want access to contraception, but cannot get it. If a woman cannot control her own body, she has no control over the rest of her life. Women’s rights to sexual health and reproductive services are being pushed back across the world. Yesterday I visited the United Nations Population Fund, which does amazing work to prevent maternal mortality and to ensure that women have access to contraception. That vital organisation would like to pass its thanks to the UK Government for our leadership in the support that we give it.
D is for domestic abuse, the most hideous of crimes. But there is really good news from Essex, where reports of domestic abuse are down 8% this year. I thank Essex police, under the leadership of our police, fire and crime commissioner, Roger Hirst, for the huge focus they have put on tackling domestic abuse.
E is for education. A child whose mother can read is 50% more likely to live beyond the age of five, 50% more likely to be immunised, and twice as likely to attend school as the child of a mother who cannot. I thank the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office for prioritising girls’ education in the women and girls strategy yesterday.
Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Going back to Afghanistan, is it not very short-sighted of the Taliban not to educate girls, considering that an educated mother educates her children, and an educated child then contributes to a very productive society?
Vicky Ford
This is exactly the point. Educating girls creates benefits for the girls themselves and for the whole society—not just greater economic growth, through women being able to go out and work and create their own incomes, but societal benefits such as the health benefits I have just mentioned.
F is for freedom. Last month I met a survivor of domestic abuse who had just escaped from her violent partner with her three children. As a Member of Parliament, I said to her, “Is there anything more that we could do for you?” She looked me in the eye and said, “No, Vicky —I’ve got everything. I’m free!”, with her arms in the air. May we have more of those free women.
G is for girls. They are our future, but we should not think that the experiences they face today are the same as the experiences we had growing up. Adolescent girls are disproportionately negatively affected by online harassment. We need to listen to them, understand their experiences and let them inform us, especially as we seek to make laws and policies that affect them.
H is for the hijab and headscarves, and for the brave women of Iran who are prepared to risk their own lives because they believe in the right to choose whether they should have to wear one.
I is for impunity. Women as young as four and as old as their 80s have been raped by Russian soldiers in Ukraine—barbaric sexual violence committed by order of military commanders. We must hold the perpetrators to account, take them to court and break the cycle of impunity on conflict-related sexual violence.
J is for Julia Jeapes, my association chairman. None of us would be here without the volunteers in our parties.
K is for Kaja Kallas, the Prime Minister of Estonia. We need more strong women leaders in this world. K is also for Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia, where the rains have just failed for the fifth season and more than 20 million people, mostly women and children, are living in extreme food insecurity.
L is for levelling up, which is not just a north-south issue. In Mid Essex from 1 April women will have access to IVF on the NHS for the first time. I thank Health Ministers for ending the postcode lottery of health funding.
M is for marriage; child marriage sometimes sounds as if it could be a romantic and beautiful thing, but it is so far from that. A child entering into marriage often faces rape and a life of slavery. I say thank you and congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham), and the noble Baroness Sugg in the other place on the work that they have done pulling through the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Act 2022, to make sure that no person under the age of 18 can get married in this country.
N is for numeracy. I am a mathematician; there are not many mathematicians in this place and certainly not many women mathematicians. We must end the stigma that suggests that girls do not do maths. I am celebrating the fact that year after year we see more and more girls doing maths A-levels; we should encourage them to continue to do more.
O is for online safety. There are some excellent measures in the Online Safety Bill to protect women; the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls gave the UK a shout-out for our legislation in a meeting yesterday, particularly the measures to prevent deepfake porn videos.
P is for pornography. We need to do much more to tackle the online pornography that our children are coming across and watching; often they just stumble across violent pornography, as a result of which, girls are increasingly being subjected to violent sex. I hope the Government will look favourably on the amendments that the noble Lord Bethell will be tabling to the Online Safety Bill in the other place.
Q is for queens. I miss our late Queen deeply. As the Foreign Office Minister at the time, I had the honour of meeting foreign leaders as they came to sign the condolence books, and the deep grief amongst women leaders was huge. The late Queen wrapped her own arm around women leaders across the world, and I wish our new Queen all the best as she prepares for her coronation.
R is for rape. The rate of prosecution for rape is on its way up, but it is still too low and the Government must keep focusing on it. S is for the abhorrent Stephen Bear, a violent, abusive, misogynistic man who has just been sent to jail for revenge pornography—and long may he stay there. So much praise must go to the brave Georgina Harrison, who was determined to see him stand trial for what he has done.
T is for thank you. The late Madeleine Albright said there was a “special place in hell” for a woman who does not support other women, but I think there is a special place in heaven for men who put their own heads above the parapet to defend women’s rights. I thank the Father of the House in particular for being here today.
U is for Ukraine and the women of Ukraine. Despite the rapes, despite the 6,000 children who have been abducted, despite the deaths of children, partners, sons and grandparents, the women of Ukraine continue to stand firm and brave and fight for their freedom. Their fight for freedom is the world’s fight for freedom and we will stand with them, not only on International Women’s Day, but every day for as long as this takes.
V is for violence in politics. Online violence makes women MPs silence our voices and puts women off standing. Too many women in the UK face real threats to their safety. We must stop the hate speech and make it clear that violence will not be tolerated in our politics.
W is for wonderful. We often complain about all the challenges women have, but we often forget to say that being a woman is wonderful and I would not have it any other way. X and Y are chromosomes and Zs are for sleep, so I thank hon. Members for listening and not falling asleep.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
I pay huge tribute to Counting Dead Women and the Femicide Census. The first year I read the list of killed women—women who had been killed by men—none of the women’s names sparked a moment of recognition for anyone other than their bereaved loved ones. This year, there will be names on this list we have all heard of—women who, following their brutal killings, have become household names. Were it not for the arduous work, over a decade, of Karen Ingala Smith and, latterly, her work with the Femicide Census to painfully keep the list, and to fight every day for killed women to be an issue of major public concern, working alongside brilliant and crusading bereaved families—mums, dads, brothers, sisters, daughters and sons—the names would be equally anonymous this year.
These amazing campaigners have made sure that killed women are no longer just a name recorded in a local newspaper. They have made sure that the issue of femicide, and all the failings that lead to an increased risk, are a national priority for the people of Britain. Reading this list is the honour of my life. Today, we are joined by families whose loved ones’ names appear on this list, or have been on previous lists. Bearing witness to them matters.
Here is the list from Counting Dead Women and the Femicide Census of women killed, where the primary suspect or named killer is a man, since this time last year: Sabita Thanwani; Yasmin Begum; Shotera Bibi; Sherry Bruce; Helen Lawrie; Emma Baillie; Ramona Stoia; Alyson Nelson; Susan Farrance; Katie Kenyon; Buddug Jones; Inayat Begum; Dolet Hill; Tanysha Ofori-Akuffo; Samantha Drummonds; Diana Gabaliene; Aimee Cannon; Amanda McAlear; Shannon Stanley; Lorraine Cullen; Karen Wheeler; Lisa Fraser; Ania Jedrkowiak; an unnamed women; Mari O’Flynn; Julie Youel; Antonella Castelvedere; Kerry Owen; Saira Ali; Jennifer Andrews; another unnamed woman; Margaret Una Noone; Sakunthala Francis; Sally Turner; Somaiya Begum; Zara Aleena; Wendy Morris; Abi Fisher; Margaret Barnes; Hina Bashir; Samantha Murphy; Madison Wright; Lauren Howe; Becci Rees-Hughes; Mairi Doherty; Kathleen John; Helen Barlow; Mckyla Taylor; Elinor O’Brien; Ashley Dale; Karen Dempsey; Wendy Buckney-Morgan; Lizzie McCann; Margaret Griffiths; Susan Moore; Katie Hurmuz-Irimia; Jacqueline Forrest; Patricia Bitters; Harleen Kaur Satpreet Gandhi; Hollie Thompson; Ruth Stone-Houghton; Jillu Nash; Jill Barclay; Diana Dafter; Hilary Round; Angie White; Yolanda Saldana Feliz; Deborah Gumbrell; Caroline Adeyelu; Keisha Christodoulou; Emma Potter; Alexis Karran; Clair Armstrong; Jacqueline Rutter; Lorraine Mills; Fatoumatta Hydara; Ruta Draudvilaite; Mary Andrews; Michelle Hanson; Maureen Gitau; Cynthia Turner; Anju Asok; Ailish Walsh; Natalie McNally; Sabrina Cooper; Stacey Warnock; Francesca Di Dio; Courtney Boorne; Elle Edwards; Stephanie Hansen; Gabriella Rudin; Beatrice Corry; Jacqueline Kerr; Holly Newton; Anne Woodbridge; Emma Pattison; Valentina Cozma; Erica Parsons; Lorna England; Edna Berry; Darrell Buchanan; Eliza Bibby; Sarah Brierley; Sarah Albone; Sandra Giraldo; Charlotte Wilcock; Jane Collinson; and Helen Harrison, whose name had to be written on as I walked into the Chamber—every year, there is a final name.
This year, we also remember Brianna Ghey, a young woman brutally killed where a young woman and man have been charged. The youngest on the list was 15-year-old Holly Newton and the oldest was 92-year-old Anne Woodbridge.
I want to mention Joanna Simpson, who was killed before the tradition of reading this list began. Her killer, who spent days—if not weeks—digging the grave that he would bury her in, was found guilty not of murder but of manslaughter. Her family are with us today and I join them in their campaign to stop his release from prison just 13 years after her brutal killing.
I also want to mention the women who never get named on the list who are suffering terrible domestic abuse and sexual violence, such as Bianca Thomas, who fell—“fell”—from a tower block window following years of domestic abuse. There are many women who never make it on to this list, because no one is ever charged with their killing.
I have read hundreds of inquest reports and domestic homicide reviews over the years. Everyone pushes for lessons to be learned and tells us that next time it will be different—it never is. This week alone, I have spoken to a woman whose perpetrator turned up at her home while on bail for trying to attack her with a weapon. A call to the police left her waiting seven days for a response.
Femicide is currently not mentioned in the domestic abuse strategy. This is not okay. I urge the Government to hurry up and release the long-overdue sentencing review into domestic homicide. There is no reason why we are still waiting; all these women died in the time that we have been promised this review.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and for reading that list. Every year, it is just as powerful, and every year, it is a shocking indictment of our society. This year, the list included my constituent Fatoumatta Hydara. I put on record the names of her two daughters, three-year-old Fatimah and one-year-old Naeemah, who were also killed in the fire started deliberately at their home that claimed Fatoumatta’s life in November.
Jess Phillips
I thank my hon. Friend. Unfortunately, the list, as it currently stands, does not include the children who are also killed. In lots of these cases, such as the famous case that we all know about in Epsom where a child was killed, many children were also slain by violent men along with their mothers, and we will never ever forget them.
The families and the Killed Women campaign, who join us here today, would want me to make it clear that lessons are not being learned. Warm words are no longer enough. We honour these women not by reading out their names, and not by making any of the promises that happen in this place. We honour them with deeds, not with words.
Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
May I thank the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) for the speech she has just given? I thank her for doing what she has just done each year because, by taking this step, she has drawn a huge amount of attention to this issue, and we are all talking about it a lot more as a consequence. Personally, I am grateful, and women up and down this country should also be grateful.
I am very pleased to see the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar) witnessing that speech in his place. I hope he will take this in the spirit in which it is meant when I say that I hope he was listening, because we still have a culture in this country in which our criminal justice system devalues women when it comes to being victims of crime. It is all very well for us to pass these wonderful laws in this place about equality, saying, “We’ve got the Equality Act, isn’t it marvellous”, but behaviourally there is still massive prejudice and discrimination against women, and nowhere is that more clear than with the murder of women. If a man murders his wife, he is treated less severely by the courts. That surely is wrong, and it is something we must absolutely tackle.
It is so depressing that when, over recent months, we have seen higher-profile cases of this nature hit the headlines, it is done in a very voyeuristic way. We still end up talking about these women, who have been victims of terrible violence, as if it is some kind of soap opera, and that just is not good enough.
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the hon. Member for her powerful speech on this subject. Does she agree with me about the role of the media in reporting these crimes? This goes back to that tragic murder, but essentially a number of these men are depicted as family men for whom something just went wrong, but they should be viewed as what they are—murderers.
Jackie Doyle-Price
The hon. Lady makes her point very powerfully. The way the media reports these things is like a soap opera, not a crime. It is about creating a story out of someone being the victim of a hideous act of violence. She is quite right to highlight the fact that people say, “Oh, it’s a family man who has done this”, and “Well, they were feeling so diminished because they’d lost their job”. That happens, and at the same time we have female sex workers murdered every week of the year who do not even merit a mention. That just illustrates the pervasiveness of the culture in this country that still treats women as objects, and it is still very much a world that runs according to men.
I am standing here listening to myself, and thinking, “God, what happened to you, Jackie?” When I was growing up in the 1980s, I thought the battles of feminism were won. I never thought I would be standing here banging on about the rights of women, but as time progresses I just think we are going backwards. It is almost as if Parliament has passed these laws to establish equality, and that means it is all right—job done—but the job has not been done at all. In many respects, this has gone backwards. I do not want to be treated like a delicate little flower, but, because we have a law that does not do that and that establishes my rights, that has given a lot of men a behavioural excuse not to treat me with respect and not to recognise the fact that, being a woman, I do have vulnerabilities. I do have vulnerabilities, and I am quite happy to accept that. I know some of my male colleagues think that I do not, but I do.
Dame Maria Miller
Does my hon. Friend agree with me that one of the things the Government have done in the last 10 years, by making relationships and sex education mandatory for all school-age children, is to start to embed in the education of all our children in this country what a good relationship looks like, which is going to be very pertinent when it comes to the treatment of women in the future?
Jackie Doyle-Price
I agree with my right hon. Friend, but I have a word of caution on that, because it has to be with the right materials. I am afraid that we have a bit of a wild west out there, because we have had all kinds of organisations bidding for Government money to produce materials for this space, and I certainly feel that some of the materials I have seen are not appropriate to be shared with school-age children.
Dame Maria Miller
Would my hon. Friend join me in urging Ofsted to do a deep dive on this issue, so that it can look at exactly the point she has made? It is an issue I have raised with Government Ministers and with Ofsted directly.
Jackie Doyle-Price
I think that point is actually a very good one. To guarantee the quality of these tools and the content there needs to be a degree of inspection. We know we will find bad actors everywhere in society, and perhaps in schools we need to make sure that we do have that protection.
Wera Hobhouse
Very briefly, because I know there is a lot of pressure on time, is it not also important that the people who deliver these courses—the teachers in the room—have to be specialist teachers, rather than leaving it to a maths teacher?
Jackie Doyle-Price
I actually have less sympathy with that point. I think we should all understand what standards of good behaviour are, and it should be intrinsic. Frankly, no teacher should be allowed in a classroom if they do not understand respect. It comes down to that ultimately, and I think all teachers should be equipped with that.
Jackie Doyle-Price
If my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend do not mind, I will make some progress, because at the moment my speech has been entirely interventions.
I am glad to see the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) in her place because I want to talk about abortion. It is very important that we in this place—the mother of Parliaments, this advanced democracy—challenge ourselves about whether the laws we have are really fit for purpose, particularly when on things such as abortion we are quite good at lecturing the rest of the world. My fundamental view is that our abortion law is currently not safe. The most important thing we can do in this place is make sure that our laws do no harm. I have said this before in this House, but the law we have regulating abortions—the Abortion Act 1967—is older than me. I have not worn too well, but, frankly, that has worn even worse. It is in desperate need of reform. I am afraid that while we treat this as an issue of conscience, we are failing women, because that law predates medical abortion. It deals with a situation where the only terminations women could have were surgical, which, as we all know, are more dangerous, and the law is drawn up on that basis, which is why it relies on two doctors having to certify that the procedure is necessary. Do we really need two doctors now, when we have the availability of medical abortion? I just do not think it is necessary.
Back in the 1990s, when Kenneth Clarke was Secretary of State for Health—so we are going back a long way—the abortion law was amended at that point to enable abortions to take place in settings different from the licensed establishments that the state approves of. However, it took until the pandemic for that to be made a reality, and the reality made was not the one intended at the time the law was passed in the 1990s. It recognised that we now had medical abortion, which could be administered safely by pill, and the whole idea, when Ken Clarke accepted that amendment, was that we would be able to access abortions in places such as family planning clinics and places of beauty, instead of the stigmatised list of places that have to be regulated by the Secretary of State. That, by the way, has made sure that our abortions are a monopoly service provided by two providers in the independent sector; they are very rarely done by the NHS. Earlier this week, we discussed the Public Order Bill and the whole issue of protest, but would there really be so much protest if abortion services were more embedded in our established national health service, instead of being shunted away into the back streets somewhere, which makes them a target?
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
It is worth remembering that an early Conservative woman Member of Parliament, Margaret Thatcher, in 1967 both voted to decriminalise male homosexual acts and stayed up all night to help get David Steel’s Abortion Bill through the House of Commons.
Can I put it to my hon. Friend that, given that it is now so common and that there are over 200,000 abortions a year in this country—it takes two to tango, so that is 400,000 people contributing, some perhaps more than once, but not many—we ought to make it easier? People who decide that having an abortion is appropriate, should be able to do it easily and safely, without embarrassment.
Jackie Doyle-Price
That is exactly the point that I was coming on to make. I absolutely respect why Members of this House have ideological objections to abortion and why they will always vote to restrict it. However, the fact is that abortion is an established right in this country, and it is our obligation to ensure that those laws are safe and that women can access abortion as early as possible in their pregnancies. That is actually the most important thing and the safest thing, and that is why they must be much more readily available.
Let me make a point to the Front Bench—which I fear will fall on deaf ears, just because we continue to see this as an issue of conscience, rather than of safety—that this is something that really ought to be reviewed. I would suggest to the Minister that we have, in our women’s health ambassador, Lesley Regan, someone who, as a former head of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, is eminently qualified to undertake a review, perhaps not to make recommendations, but to just highlight how the current abortion law is not fit for purpose, so that we can properly review how we might improve it.
The way in which the Abortion Act is established is not encouraging a healthy debate about the issue either—on both sides, I might add. That is the starting frame of reference, so we end up in this ridiculous debate about time limits. Ultimately, we just need to get away from that and think about it as a health procedure. When that Act was passed back in 1967, it was a radical and empowering measure that advanced women’s rights, but here we are, more than 50 years later, and we need to take a good look at it.
Jackie Doyle-Price
I will give way to the right hon. Lady, because I know that she has very passionate and informed views on this, and has done so much on this issue.
Dame Diana Johnson
I am grateful to the hon. Lady. I am so pleased to hear her make this speech. What is even more worrying is that, while the 1967 Act is more than 50 years old, it is of course underpinned by the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, which is a Victorian piece of legislation that says that abortion is a criminal offence. Really, until we decriminalise abortion and treat it as a healthcare matter, we really will not get rid of the stigma. That seems to be the thing that we need to do in this country—decriminalise it and treat it as a healthcare matter—which I think the hon. Lady is supportive of.
Jackie Doyle-Price
Absolutely. It must be treated as a healthcare matter. However, on the point that the right hon. Lady raises about the 1861 Act, I looked into that when I was a Minister, to see how many convictions there were, and, to be honest, we still need to have some kind of protection maintaining the criminality of abortion where there could be coercion involved. Again, these are issues that are still crimes against the woman.
Dame Diana Johnson
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way again, and I will be very quick, but decriminalisation does not mean deregulation. Of course, all the healthcare laws that apply to our clinicians, nurses and everybody else would still need to apply, so things such as coercion absolutely would be regulated for and treated as an offence. However, the underlying issue of women being criminalised in that Offences Against the Person Act has to go.
Jackie Doyle-Price
I think the fact that the right hon. Lady and I are having a ding-dong about this, while we actually want the same outcome, illustrates just how badly that debate has taken place, because of the bookends of the 1861 Act and the 1967 Act. Again, it comes back to us all wanting better outcomes and a safe system for women. That should be our starting point, not those two pieces of legislation. We can probably strengthen the protections for women regarding coercion if we look at it in that way.
As usual, I like to use this speech to challenge ourselves about what we are not getting right for women. But I have not got until midnight on Sunday, so I will have to be a bit more limited in what I am able to tackle. However, I am pleased to have been able to say what I have about abortion today.
I also want to come back to the point, which the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North made in her speech, about indecent exposure. I absolutely amplify her overall argument. To be honest, flashing is not seen as a crime. It has been totally normalised. I heard on the radio, just this week, that as many as 50% of women have been victims of that crime. I cannot emphasise enough that sexual violence is something that escalates, so the moment that some things are tolerated, that behaviour will only increase. Wayne Couzens is perhaps the best example of that.
This is where I come back to equality laws and advances that are meant to empower women. I want to talk about the whole issue of contraception. Yes, it has given women the opportunity to take control of their fertility and enjoy their sexuality, and all the rest of it, but it has also generated a culture in which men feel even more entitled, and where girls are feeling more and more forced to become sexualised beings, earlier perhaps than they are ready to. That is why I feel very strongly that we need to keep our safe spaces.
Vicky Ford
I would just like to point out to my hon. Friend—who I really value and who is saying some great things—that I do not think it is contraception that has led to many of the challenges that young women are facing today, especially more violent dangers and sex. The contraceptive pill has been around for 70 years, but the violence that women face today is also linked to pornography and other issues.
Jackie Doyle-Price
I am sorry, but my right hon. Friend is clearly not understanding what I am saying at all.
Jackie Doyle-Price
Yes—well, she has had no sleep. The point is that we have a culture where girls are expected to be sexualised at an earlier and earlier age, and more and more of that behaviour is being tolerated. We have a situation where we have the growth of gangs, and we talk about boys stabbing each other, but we do not talk about the sexualised sharing behaviour that happens among those gangs.
Going back to my earlier point, that is why we really need to jealously guard our safe spaces. We have had this debate a number of times before, and, similarly to the abortion debate, we end up debating things on a very polarised basis when, actually we are talking about safety.
I was very concerned to read in Parliament’s gender guidance that the advice given to anyone, in regards to gender, is that people should be encouraged to use the facilities that they feel comfortable with. I then went on to read that, as part of the restoration and renewal project, 70% of our toilets will be gender-neutral, and the remaining 30% will be split evenly between males and females, so we will only have 15% of toilets, under that will be female-only.
At the risk of upsetting some of my male colleagues here—actually, I think some of them are not very comfortable with shared-gender spaces either, mainly because they do not find men’s toilets very nice, and are even more embarrassed to have to share them with women, if truth be known—it is important that women have their own spaces, so that we can maintain our privacy and dignity.
Again, that comes back to the point about indecent exposure, because those of us who jealously guard the need for women to have their own toilets and changing facilities are not scared of trans people; we are scared of male sexual predators. The truth of the matter is that a male sexual predator will use every tool at his disposal to get access to his victims.
Ultimately, this is a behaviour that none of us understands, but there are some men who are actually very proud of showing off their penises—God knows why, because they are not the best things to look at at the best of times. They love their penises so much that they want everyone else to see them. Well, we don’t.
For that reason, I will not apologise about continuing to maintain my defence of us having our own facilities that men, for whatever reason, will not have access to. We now have to work hard to establish that proper respect. While more than 50% of women are victims of indecent exposure, we have not reached the level of respect that every woman in this country deserves from their male counterparts. It is incumbent on all of us. I know we are mainly women here today in the Chamber, but I also say to my male colleagues here, thank you for being here, and please do your bit to ensure that we all enjoy that freedom as well.
Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
It is a huge pleasure and privilege to speak in this debate. There have been some fantastic and powerful speeches by right hon. and hon. Members. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller), who opened the debate. I have fond memories of us trekking down the corridor to the former Speaker’s office to advocate for baby and parental leave for Members of this House, to try to take this place forward. It is right, as other Members have said, that female parliamentarians often work cross-party to achieve progress. It is not the Punch and Judy show that folks see on the television week in, week out.
I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) for her incredibly moving speech. It has become a grim tradition, it is fair to say, that every year she discharges her duty of reading the names of women who have been killed by violent men. That is incredibly important.
One of those names was a constituent of mine, Aimee Cannon. Her mother, Wendy Cannon, is here with us today in the Gallery. I want to share the details of what happened to Aimee. I stress that these are Wendy’s own words, and we are privileged that she is willing to share them with us through me, her Member of Parliament.
On 5 May last year, Wendy and her husband were enjoying a Friday night. It felt like any other typical Friday night as they began thinking about the weekend. Wendy had been communicating with their daughter, Aimee, via WhatsApp. Aimee had been telling them how much she was looking forward to work the next day. Aimee worked at a beauty salon. She had plans to celebrate at a birthday party that weekend, and she was also going to help out at a charity fundraising event for a children’s hospice. In spite of her own challenges—anorexia, self-harming, domestic abuse and addiction—she wanted to help others. She had a big heart. That was Aimee.
On Saturday her parents became worried about Aimee’s lack of contact. Aimee’s father went to her house and found her dead with multiple injuries. The police described the attack as a brutal and sustained attack. Aimee would have been frightened, in pain, alone and dying in a place that she should have felt safe in. Aimee was only 26 years old, and she had so much to live for and so much to give.
Aimee’s parents and their grandchildren’s lives will never be the same again. Aimee’s mum Wendy told me that they stagger from day to day in a dark maze of grief, lost in a legal system that they do not understand. They have one question: how many more women have to die before we recognise that gender violence is now becoming an epidemic in our society?
I am incredibly proud of and grateful to Aimee’s parents for their courage and bravery in sharing Aimee’s story, and for allowing me to share it today. When Wendy first came to see us to get support, we sat together and she told me about Aimee. And we cried—a lot. Wendy said to me this morning when she came to Parliament that she had heard the Prime Minister’s legitimate concerns about his daughter’s safety while walking to school. She said that she hears that—but imagine how she feels.
The challenges that Aimee faced in her life are, sadly, shared by many women across the UK. I have spoken before of women from my constituency, Kirsty Maxwell and Julie Pearson, who were both killed abroad at the hands of violent men. It was their untimely and tragic deaths that led my team and me to start our work on deaths abroad and consular assistance. There are so many other women we could talk about, though some are very often missed off our lists, forgotten about or unnamed.
We are privileged to be here and in this position as female parliamentarians. I am in this place because of generations of women who have come before me, who fought for our right to vote, to get paid equally and to get treated fairly, and who fought for real progress at their own expense, both professionally and personally. In fact, yesterday I had the privilege of taking some of the WASPI women—from the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign—to the suffragette broom cupboard, a little-known shrine for those feminists among us. On the night of the 1911 census, Emily Wilding Davison hid herself in that cupboard so that she could record it as her address, in the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft. Her census form gives the postal address as:
“Found hiding in crypt of Westminster Hall”,
and the pencilled note on the bottom left gives the date, “3/4/11 Since Saturday”. Emily was arrested on nine occasions, went on hunger strike seven times and was force-fed on 49 occasions. She died after being hit by King George V’s horse at the 1913 Derby when she walked on to the track during the race, sacrificing herself so that we can be here today.
There was something almost prophetic about showing those incredible women, who have faced such injustice, that place where another great woman suffered and sacrificed to make her point.
Sir Peter Bottomley
Emily Wilding Davison taught for a time in Worthing, which gives me a constituency link. I think her view was that if she could not vote, she was not a person and therefore she should not be recorded by the census. I do not think that she aimed to be recorded as being in Westminster; she just wanted to hide here.
Hannah Bardell
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that providing that incredibly helpful education.
As we walked past the statue of Falkland, to which suffragette and activist Margery Humes chained herself, one of the WASPI women told me that they should have brought their own chains. It is a brutal and harsh reality that more than a century later, we have women facing similar injustice who have to fight way past retirement age and who are dying before they get the justice to which they are entitled.
I am reminded that it is Endometriosis Awareness and Action Month. My co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on endometriosis, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), and I have been to a number of events and briefings this week, as we do throughout the year, to talk about, discuss and campaign for better diagnosis, support and funding for research and treatment for those who suffer from such a brutal and life-limiting disease.
Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)
My hon. Friend makes an important point about a reality that blights the lives of many women. Will she also call for similar research and focus to be shone on polycystic ovary syndrome, which is another blight on the lives of many women?
Hannah Bardell
I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. So often, women are being left behind by the lack of resource for, research on and understanding of diseases such as endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome.
All over the UK we have incredible groups, such as my local one in Livingston, Endo Warriors, run and managed by Candice and Claire, two remarkable women. I was reminded yesterday that, unlike other diseases, endometriosis and, I believe, polycystic ovary syndrome, still have some of the worst support and understanding by clinicians, and that post-op care comes nowhere close to what people get if they have almost any other injury, disorder or disease.
I want to mention briefly Marie Lyon, who heads up the campaign on Primodos, another scandal of our time. I know that the Minister is familiar with this. We have to pay tribute to those women and parents who have suffered at the hands of Primodos, the hormone pregnancy drug, because they are still fighting for justice decades on from the harm that has been done to them and their children.
Some progress has been made, though—it is not all grim. In Scotland, for example, we have become the first country in the UK to publish a women’s health plan, which is an important first step, and I know that the UK Government are following in our footsteps by focusing on the rights of women and girls in their international development strategy. That is incredibly welcome, but what is not welcome is the cut in international aid, which is going to hit some of the poorest areas in the world the most. It needs to be reversed.
The simple fact is that women today still face vast inequalities. The issues are complex and interlinked, whether they be childcare costs, the cost of living, access to affordable healthcare or traditional stereotypes, many of which we have heard about from Members throughout the Chamber. Women of colour, trans women, women on lower incomes and women across the LGBT community continue to be disproportionately impacted. Not only are this UK Government bringing forward illegal and illiberal policies that will shame us the world over, but having no recourse to public funds has a brutal impact on many women who are seeking refuge and asylum. I have seen that at first hand when constituents come to me.
According to the World Economic Forum’s “Global Gender Gap Report 2022”, it will take another 132 years to close the gender pay gap.
Internationally, we see women striving for the same rights as men. I pay tribute to the incredible women in Iran who have stood up and risen up against an authoritarian Government, and to the women in Afghanistan who are fighting for the right just to retain the ability to be educated, and who face a brutal reality following the departure of the troops. The west has left the women of Afghanistan behind and we must look to what more we can do. And I pay tribute to the women of Ukraine, including my constituent Natalya, who is interning in my constituency office. She had to leave many of her family members behind, as they are fighting in that horrific conflict.
There are many incredibly important women in all our lives. One of them is my mum. She stood for election to this place in 2010. She was unsuccessful but, five years later, I am pleased to say that I beat the man who had beaten her.
I grew up as a child of a single parent. I was born out of wedlock, and I want to say to all the single parents and single mothers how incredible they are, that they are loved, wanted and valued.
One of my favourite stories about my mum is about our dinner traditions. One of our favourite dinners—some may be familiar with this, and some may not—was a pick-and-mix dinner, which often came at the end of the month. It did not dawn on me until adulthood that my mum creatively made up the dinner with whatever was left over at the end of the month because, quite often, there was not much left to spend. Her creativity in presenting us with lots of different wee bits as an entertaining game worked every time. We loved it and I still love it. Her door was always open to anyone, no matter how little we had. We had Christmases with folk who did not have anywhere to go and camping trips with other folk’s kids. Mothers, especially single mothers, are really quite exceptional.
I close by paying tribute to the incredible Emma Ritch. She was the executive director of Engender and passed away suddenly in 2021. She is desperately missed by her family, friends and colleagues, and I was the beneficiary of her excellent advice on more than one occasion. I am so pleased that the Emma Ritch law clinic will shortly open in her memory at the University of Glasgow.
To all the incredible women, to those who identify as women and to women like Aimee who, in spite of all the challenges they face, display enormous kindness and generosity for others, we salute you. I know that my constituent Wendy will continue to fight for women’s equality, in Aimee’s memory, with her army of friends and family, and I look forward to going on that journey with them.
Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak again in a debate on International Women’s Day. #EmbraceEquity is this year’s hashtag. Although we are approaching equality of resources and opportunities, equity recognises that each person has different circumstances and that we may need to allocate different resources and opportunities to reach an equal outcome.
I thought I would use this debate to highlight the work to promote tech and STEM careers to women and girls, which is one of the themes of International Women’s Day 2023. We keep returning to careers in STEM because we are still not maximising the potential of women in these industries. Even if there is equality in provision and training, it is not being accessed equally, so we need to examine why.
I have several interests, chiefly through the all-party parliamentary group on women and work, which I co-chair with the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), who has just left the Chamber. As the hon. Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) said, we work together across the House in many ways. My interest also comes from my work on university technical colleges, an education model that offers transformational opportunities to young people. Finally, like many others, I have an interest as a mother and grandmother. [Interruption.] Yes, I have three grandchildren.
I have been a strong supporter of UTCs since they were introduced, and I was instrumental in encouraging the establishment of my local UTC in Portsmouth. Every young person interested in a STEM career should have the same chance to have the education that a UTC provides—this should include coding in every school’s core curriculum—but most UTCs are now oversubscribed, and there are sometimes 10 applicants for every place. I am backing the Portsmouth UTC to launch another UTC in the Solent region, as it will help many of my young constituents to access an amazing route into STEM careers.
Last week, I visited the London Design and Engineering UTC, where girls make up 36% of the intake, which is fairly typical of most UTCs. Fifty-one per cent. of UTC teachers are women. I hope the proportion of girls attending UTCs quickly increases to nearer 50%, and 50% of applicants for next year are female, so there is some progress at last.
Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)
Those figures are really interesting and obviously a great empirical example, but does my hon. Friend have any thoughts on how we may have achieved 50% of the teachers being female but only a third of the students being female? What is the difference between those two numbers?
Mrs Drummond
Interestingly, I think 65% of secondary schools have women as teachers, so the proportion is slightly less. I have met female UTC teachers, and they are all highly skilled scientists and mathematicians, as is my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) and my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby). It is a shame because we are sort of putting them in here and not into the community, where they could be teaching the next generation.
A third of female UTC graduates go on to STEM destinations. Some 70% of girls go into higher education, compared with 55% of boys. Twenty-four per cent. of girls go on to apprenticeships, mostly at level 4 or higher, against just 4% nationally in other schools. The fact that only a third go on to STEM destinations should raise alarms. This year, the APPG on women and work published our report on the cost of being a woman at work. We had a lot of input from the tech industries, including some shocking statistics about women in tech. In 2017, PwC discovered that only 3% of women say that tech would be their first choice, which is shockingly low considering the good salaries and prestige that come with the industry. The five most valuable brands are tech companies—Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta—yet 78% of students could not name a woman working in technology, which is probably not surprising given that only 26% of the tech workforce are women.
The tech industry has produced awe-inspiring, life-improving inventions, but it has also contributed to growing online misogyny and gadget misuse, including spy cameras and stalking. Surely having more women working in the industry would help lead to tech being better adapted for women and to more work to combat the negative aspects for women.
Vicky Ford
I am sure my hon. Friend will be interested to know that the theme of this year’s Commission on the Status of Women meeting at the UN was “Women and the impact of technology.” I know she wished to be there herself, but the key issue of trying to make sure technology works for women was the highlight of the global conversation. The point about needing to have more women in the tech sector, working on developing new technologies, was repeatedly reiterated. What she says is spot on.
Mrs Drummond
There is also the impact on education in more remote countries, or even in Afghanistan. We would hope that people could access education through tech. If we can get more women working in tech, education could be provided which perhaps even the Taliban would agree with.
Chloe Smith
My hon. Friend is being very generous with her time. I agree with her point on Afghanistan, on which I heard some particularly powerful anecdotes from the Street Child charity only last night. Does her APPG, and the other groups with which she is working, have broader thoughts on the future of work? Is there an avenue to have a wider debate about women’s interests in that, not that I believe there is any such thing as a woman’s interest in a ghettoised form? I wonder what her thoughts are on that.
Mrs Drummond
I set up the all-party group in 2015 with that sole purpose of changing policy on the barriers to women in work. Each year, we have produced a report, and I will pass on some copies to my right hon. Friend, because we cover the whole gamut of women in the workplace. This year, we have been focusing on tech, which is why today’s debate is so important.
We need to change the way we use the internet, and having more women at the top will help because we need to be more inclusive. As we have said, that will help in education around the world, too. Careers advice must push tech as an option. Tech companies must link in with schools and provide mentoring. It will take time, commitment and long-term investment, but it will make a massive difference to our productivity. There are mentoring programmes for women already in the tech industry and they are proving successful. Cornell University has estimated that that could lead to a 15% to 38% increase in promotion and retention rates for women. As I have said, there are very few women at the top of tech companies.
It is good to have a day when we can focus on how far women have got in so many areas. We have also heard some harrowing speeches today. It is great that we can encompass every single aspect of what it is like to be a woman. Tech must reduce its barriers to women using it effectively and entering it as a career, and then we can really embrace equity.
Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)
When I was a teenager, I used to question why there are so many ways to tell the relationship status of a woman—Mrs, Miss, Ms—but there is just a Mr. I am still wondering that as a grown woman. Articles always include the age of the woman after her name, but only sometimes the age of the man. Why is that? Our laws and language are designed to keep women vulnerable and exposed in a particular way.
Wera Hobhouse
I was a secondary school teacher and, although a married woman, with four children, in my middle age, I was always “Miss”, whereas a man was always “Sir”. Is that not bizarre?
Dawn Butler
It completely is. Again, it is about language, and what it is designed for and to do.
Dame Maria Miller
The hon. Lady brings up the interesting issue of inequality in titles. I was very fortunate to be able to receive a damehood recently and I am greatly honoured to have it. But I note with interest that the spouses of those of my colleagues who have been knighted have a different title entitlement from that of my husband. Does the hon. Lady agree that her point about titles needs to be looked at on both sides of the coin—for men and for women?
Dawn Butler
Absolutely. We talk about equality and equity not only in actions, but in language. It all needs to be looked at, because certain systems and structures are designed in a certain way. As I said, it is to keep women exposed and vulnerable. For example, for sex workers, working alone is okay, but working in pairs is illegal. How on earth does that keep women safe? Just this week, during the debate on buffer zones around abortion clinics, many men were telling women how they should think, what they should do and who they should listen to about their bodies. Our structures are riddled with misogyny, racism and so much else, and it is time that we change how women are written about.
I have campaigned for many things in this House. I have campaigned on domestic abuse policy, and trying to allow 10 days’ paid leave for people, particularly women, when they leave abusive relationships. In those 10 days, it could save a life because that is when they are most vulnerable. You are not safe when you leave an abusive relationship; you become more vulnerable.
I have campaigned for changes in the use of language by the Met police, for instance, when they deliver briefings and press releases about missing and murdered women. I have also campaigned for changes in the judiciary, which is filled with many—please do not take offence at this, Mr Deputy Speaker—old white men with outdated views. I need to recognise the work of Judge Anuja Dhir KC, the first person of colour to become an Old Bailey judge. She is doing her very best to change how the judicial system works, but she is just one woman, powerful as she is. Today, I am campaigning for and championing the work of Level Up, and calling for a clause in the Independent Press Standards Organisation editors’ code on reporting fatal domestic abuse. The code needs to be one that journalists are legally bound to, not a voluntary code, and I will tell the House why.
The way in which the press report domestic abuse is often inaccurate and undignified, and prioritises sensationalist headlines over responsible reporting. There is often negative framing of victims, and when this goes viral it is amplified over and over again. That is extremely damaging because it reinforces negative framing around the victims, and what is seen as acceptable or “deserving” behaviour of the woman—as it often is—who is killed. Thus, “sexism”, “misogyny”, “extremism” or “terrorism” are never words used when describing violent men. Why not? We have an epidemic in our country of domestic violence, domestic abuse and violence against women and girls. Level Up introduced the UK’s first guidelines on this and the BBC, The Mirror, The Guardian and the Metro have all taken that on board, but more needs to be done.
The recent coverage of Nicola Bulley, Emma Pattison and Brianna Ghey shows us that the media reporting of women who are violently abused or killed is out of control. Emma Pattison was killed, along with her young daughter, by her violent husband and this was reported with the headline, “Did living in the shadow of his high achieving wife lead to unthinkable tragedy?” Another headline read, “Husband of Epsom College head who ‘killed her and their daughter before turning his gun on himself’ said he was ‘desperate to do more with his days’ after his business failed”. Why on earth would we accept our media reporting the murder of a woman and a young child in that way in our country? It is unacceptable and in this House we should be able to legislate against that, which is why we need a new, enforceable editors code.
It is not an isolated incident when a woman is killed every three days by a man. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) read out those names today and that list never gets shorter. This is an epidemic.
Vicky Ford
I agree that this must not become an epidemic, so I would like to draw the hon. Lady’s attention to some of the work that has been done in this area in Essex, under our police, fire and crime commissioner and chief of police, particularly to intervene with perpetrators. The change hub works with them and it has resulted in a 95% reduction in violent incidents caused by those perpetrators. A campaign that encouraged people to self-refer led to more than 115 people referring themselves as perpetrators and they were then worked with. May I encourage her to look at the work in Essex to see whether she could get it into her own police area, as this work with perpetrators seems to be helping to reduce domestic violence?
Dawn Butler
First, let me correct the hon. Lady: this is not becoming an epidemic; it is an epidemic. It is an epidemic when a woman is killed every three days by a man, and we need to start—
Dawn Butler
I need to finish my point. We need to start referring to it as such. Yes, some good work is being done and there is good practice, such as some police forces having independent domestic violence advisers, but it is still not working because a woman is still killed every three days. So yes, we can acknowledge the good work, but I am not here today to do that; I am here today to push for changes in legislation so that we can save lives.
Women and girls who are victims of abuse are never responsible for the abuse, and we need to start at that point. It is the perpetrator who is responsible, and media reporting must reflect that. Let me read out a few more headlines: “Husband jailed after he snapped and smothered nagging wife to death”, “Henpecked husband killed wife”, “Wife jibes about penis size drove hubby to murder”. These headlines are shocking. There will be people listening to this debate who will say, “Well, Dawn can’t be telling the truth; she must be lying.” I am not lying. Those are actual headlines.
The hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) talked about culture and language, and I must say that this fake culture war going on at the moment is extremely damaging to women and to other minoritised groups in our society. People say, “Why can’t I say what I want to say? Why can’t I do what I want to do?” This sort of language is having a damaging effect, and it is why we will not make progress.
Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)
The hon. Lady is making some really important points about how language in the public discourse and in the media is often dehumanising, as we heard in the headlines she just read out. Those women were described in the most ridiculous fashion, considering the context. More broadly, the language of the media is also often very objectifying of women. On all of these fronts, it would be really helpful if one of the takeaways from today was that some of the people who are listening to this debate might think about that and perhaps change some of the ways they describe women.
Dawn Butler
I agree with my honourable friend. When a woman has been killed or murdered, the media will try to find a picture of her in a nightclub, or holding a drink, or with her hair down, or wearing a short skirt or dress, as if that was the reason she was killed or murdered. The misogyny that exists in our structures must be rooted out.
I do not just talk about these things. I have worked hard on the House of Commons complaints procedure to change how this place works and operates. I am also working with the police. Wayne Couzens and the messages from the WhatsApp group prove exactly what black people have been saying for a really long time: structures built for the promotion of a certain type of white man are riddled with racism, misogyny, homophobia and everything else that tries to belittle others. It is an uncomfortable truth, but it is a truth that must be aired.
When our police forces, jurors and judges are drawn from a society that allows outdated and damaging portrayals of domestic violence, the damage is clear: there is still one woman killed every three days by a man. It is time for us to make this long-overdue change if we are to reduce the number of women killed every year. I recognise that some work has been done, and that some work is being done with the Met police, but it is not enough.
I wondered whether I should read out these WhatsApp messages to the House, and I have decided that I am going to read out a couple. This is a police discussion on domestic violence. The police said that the women who suffer from domestic violence have one thing in common: they are women who do not listen. Wayne Couzens and another police officer had a joke when they saw a young drunk woman on the train. The officer was asked:
“Did you finger her to see if she was ok?”
The officer responded:
“I considered it. But she was a right old lump. So I just raped a bystander instead.”
There is more of that on the police WhatsApp groups. It is absolutely appalling and disgusting. It is time for us to legislate, and to recognise that words have consequences. Domestic terrorist groups in our country are on the rise. We have seen the growth of incels. We have nearly 3,000 incels in our country and they are very much underground, which is concerning. Teachers have been asked in the classroom, “Miss, have you ever been raped?” That is the kind of language that I have been talking about. The incels talk about how they can watch women being murdered. This is really damaging.
I want to end with two well-known sayings:
“A world that does not love, respect and protect its Women is doomed to perish! Because Women are Mother Earth!”
G.D Anderson said:
“Feminism isn’t about making women stronger. Women are already strong, it’s about changing the way the world perceives that strength”.
Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)
It is a true privilege to speak in today’s debate. This time last year, I could not take part because I had not yet made my maiden speech. It is a particular pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler), who made a fascinating speech. I really commend the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), who is no longer in her place, for her contribution. Nobody in this place, particularly someone listening to it live for the first time, can fail to be moved by it. It is incumbent on us all to try to eliminate violence against women. I look forward to the day when we can come to this Chamber and have this debate and the hon. Lady does not need to read out that harrowing list.
I wish to start with three words: women, life, freedom. Many Members in this Chamber will know that those words are the strapline for the recent uprising in Iran. Yesterday was the first International Women’s Day since the brutal killing of Mahsa Amini, whose murder by the medieval regime was a lightning flash around the world. She has now become such a symbol of bravery, courage and hope.
The women of Iran have been the victims of systematic oppression for the past 44 years. It is not just about religious dress codes; women are banned from singing in places, from taking part in certain sports, and even from attending certain games in stadiums. In short, they are treated as second-class citizens. However, as we all know, it has become far, far worse than that in the 175 days since the recent uprising. Following the death of Mahsa Amini, 82 Iranian women have been murdered by the regime. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have been disproportionately targeting women—targeting their eyes, targeting their chest and targeting their genitals. Only this week, we heard horrifying reports of several schoolgirls being poisoned in revenge for their role in the recent protests.
I mention all of this because all that it takes for evil to prevail is for good men and women to stay silent. I am proud that, in this place, we are not staying silent about what is going on in Iran. It is a salutary lesson to consider that if any of us were to stand up and say these things in Iran, we would be in mortal danger. I have two young women who encourage me to join these protests. Every time, I think how lucky we all are that we can do this—that we can stand up for women. We could not do any of this if we were living in Iran. It is vital that we keep sending that message to the Iranian women that we stand with them, that this murderous regime has to go and that the eyes of the world are on them.
Dame Maria Miller
My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. It is a point that was made endlessly to me over the past three days in New York at the UN Commission on the Status of Women. The women who were there from Iran, from Afghanistan and from Ukraine need to hear vocal support from colleagues in Parliaments such as our own and at events such as the UNCSW. Does my hon. Friend agree that, when it comes to the agreed conclusions of that event, we need to be reflecting just the point that she has made: that the plight of these women cannot be forgotten.
Anna Firth
I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. It is so encouraging to know that those points have been reiterated in one of the highest commissions on the status of women, and it is extremely good to know that Iran has finally been taken off that commission. No such regime anywhere in the world has a place on any commission concerned with women’s right. I thank her for reminding us of that.
We are so lucky that we can stand for public office. Although I am privileged to be the first woman to have been elected as the MP for Southend West, I am not the first female MP for Southend. Of course, Lady Iveagh represented that seat between 1927 and 1935, so I have a proud tradition behind me. We have so much further to go, as we all know. Just 31% of MPs are women, and since 1918, more than 100 years ago, only 561 women—not even an entire Parliament—have been elected. I say to any women who are thinking of coming into public office, particularly if they are in Southend West: “I want to hear from you, and I would be delighted to speak to you.”
I am delighted that in Southend West, we have plenty of women putting themselves forward for election in May. I wish the very best of luck to Councillor Meg Davidson, Councillor Lesley Salter and—we hope—soon-to-be councillor, Cheryll Gardiner. I will be on the streets of Southend knocking on doors to support them, supported by the indefatigable deputy chairman Judith Suttling, who is still pounding the streets in her 80s and setting me a daunting and energetic example.
I will use the time that I have to celebrate the incredible work that women do in my Southend West community. I, alongside our local paper, the Southend Echo, will soon launch a new community champion scheme in Southend to highlight our unsung and hidden heroes. The first hero is not unsung or hidden, however. She will be none other than our one and only Jill Allen-King OBE, who has spent her life standing up for people who live with blindness and visual impairments.
For those who do not know Jill’s story, she lost her sight on her wedding day, aged just 24. Instead of collapsing in a well of despair, she got out there and has spent her entire life bringing to our community things that we now take for granted. Tactile paving—the little bumps on the pavement that we all see whenever we cross the road—is down to Jill Allen-King, as are the wheelchair-level buttons in buses, and she has done lots to get access to public spaces for therapy dogs. She has attracted the attention of well-known names, including Paul O’Grady and Michael Ball. Of course, she has her OBE, but this year, she has the Pride of Britain lifetime achievement award. Despite her blindness, she has been busy teaching Ashley Banjo from Diversity to do the cha-cha-cha.
Sir Peter Bottomley
Just to demonstrate that I have been around for a time, in 1986, when I became the junior Transport Minister, with responsibility for mobility for disabled people, Jill Allen-King took me for a walk around Westminster, helped to put in the first tactile surfaces just outside the Palace of Westminster, and gave much other good advice. Please give her my best wishes.
Anna Firth
I thank my hon. Friend—I will absolutely pass that on.
There are so many wonderful women in Southend West whom I want to celebrate, so—in great Sir David fashion— I will now rattle through a whole list. First, the incredible Riz Awan at Citizens Advice Southend is a support for so many people across our community. She took over as chief executive as the covid pandemic was starting, and she kept the centre open to assist people in one of the most difficult of times. Also at Citizens Advice Southend is the award-winning Emily Coombes, who was recognised as a rising star by the Young Energy Professionals.
I pay tribute to Jackie Mullan, chief executive officer of the SEN Trust Southend. Jackie set up that amazing organisation to support people with learning difficulties throughout our local community, and she is a huge inspiration. I would also like to mention Rachael, a constituent of mine who came to see me in this place only a few weeks ago. She has led an amazing battle to raise awareness of functional neurological disorder.
We also have great role models in our Southend schools. Thirteen of our headteachers are women, showing that woman can, of course, take on such positions of responsibility and leadership.
Vicky Ford
As a fellow Essex MP, may I also give a shout-out to Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner Jane Gardner, particularly for her work on the Southend, Essex and Thurrock domestic abuse board? That board is commissioning fantastic work from charities—including Compass, Changing Pathways and Next Chapter—supporting victims of domestic abuse, running the perpetrator work that I mentioned earlier, and commissioning a network of independent domestic abuse advisers and independent sexual abuse advisers to work with victims. All that work, run by Jane and her team, is helping to get the numbers down so that fewer women suffer such awful abuse.
Anna Firth
I welcome my hon. Friend’s intervention; I am glad that we have also got Jane on the record.
I will next pay tribute to Denise Rossiter, the excellent chair of Essex Chambers of Commerce. Denise is an absolute force and a consummate professional. She champions Essex wherever she goes, and she is a great support to female MPs in Essex.
I must also mention Carla Cressy, who works tirelessly to raise awareness of endometriosis. I was delighted this week to host here in Parliament her event to launch Endometriosis Awareness Month.
Last week, I was privileged to attend the Jubilee Awards at Southend Civic Centre. We celebrated women who have made a huge difference during the jubilee year and beyond. Shirley Massey is the president, and Kim Bones a member, of the Leigh-on-Sea branch of the Royal British Legion. Both are always there, year after year, doing their bit for our veterans.
Ilda Stafa, who runs Welcome to the UK, has given advice, support and sanctuary to all the wonderful Ukrainian families who have come to Southend. Danielle Carbott is a real champion for our local environment, setting up the brilliant Litterless Leigh initiative. I must mention Danielle Bee, the organiser of the Bluetits Chill Swimmers cold-water swimming group—she has taken me out on one of those dips, and I can tell Members that it is an aptly named group. Brenda Knapp was nominated by staff and children because she comes into Leigh North Street Primary School voluntarily almost every day of the week. Staff and students at the school recognise that they simply could not do without her.
Helen Symmons, the female CEO of Leigh-on-Sea Town Council, is doing a great job. The Lady McAdden Breast Screening Trust, which does so much to raise awareness of breast cancer, also has a female CEO.
Karen Packer gives up her own time to volunteer tirelessly to give opportunities to guides and scouts. She is an incredible woman. During Parliament Week, I went to visit her brownie group, and we were challenged to build a Houses of Parliament of biscuits, using icing sugar as glue. It was quite a messy experience.
Finally, I must mention my incredible constituency assistant, Julie Cushion, who won this year’s Parliament’s People constituency assistant of the year award. Quite apart from her help for me, just thinking about her contribution to the community makes me feel exhausted. She is the chair of our Mayor’s charity, raising hundreds if not thousands every year; she chairs the SEN Academy Trust; she is the director of two choirs; and she is a trustee of the YMCA and, of course, of the amazing award-winning Music Man project. Quite apart from that, she helps me almost every day of the week in one respect or another, and I pay tribute to her hard work in keeping me on the road.
Finally, I could not miss out on the opportunity to once again celebrate my own incredible inspiration: my own mother, Dr Margaret Garrett. She has been a huge support to me throughout my life, and is now pretty much in sole care of my lovely dog Lottie while I am up here during the week. To her, I say just one thing: thank you.
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)
It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Southend West (Anna Firth). A number of us do hold our mothers dear; I think of my late mother, who was not fortunate enough to see me elected to this place, but I know that she is with me every day. She was my biggest inspiration, and to echo the words of the hon. Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell)—who is not in her place—my mother was also a single mother. We have to continue to pay tribute to the role that single mothers up and down the country, especially during this difficult time where a number of those single mothers are navigating the cost of living crisis but are still providing for their children.
There are so many fantastic young women in my constituency of Vauxhall, but there is one young woman who I want to pay special tribute to this afternoon: Ebinehita Iyere, who is the founder of Milk and Honey Bees, a creative space for young black women in south London. She and a number of girls wrote a book last year, “Girlhood Unfiltered”. Milk and Honey Bees is a safe space for young black girls to talk about some of the issues and challenges that they face. The work that Ebinehita has done over the past few years in providing a voice and a space for those young black girls is so inspirational, and I just wanted to make sure that she was mentioned this afternoon.
It is a real pleasure to speak in today’s debate, Mr Deputy Speaker, and to follow so many other inspirational women and their powerful contributions. As MP for Vauxhall, I am proud to represent the Brixton community that I have lived in all my life, but I am not alone in that: Brixton is in the unique position of being represented in this House by not one, not two, but three MPs, and I am proud that since the 2019 election, all three of us are women. Locally, Lambeth Council is led by Councillor Claire Holland. Marina Ahmad AM is my successor as London Assembly Member for Lambeth and Southwark, and 30 female Lambeth councillors provide strong leadership across our borough. I am delighted that any young girl or woman growing up in Vauxhall today has so many women to look up to, not just in politics but in our local businesses, our schools, our voluntary and community organisations, our wonderful cultural centres and our fantastic Oval Invincibles cricket team, who have won both The Hundred titles on offer since that tournament was launched in 2021.
We should be proud of the progress we have made. We know that representation must be used to improve the rights of women and girls locally, nationally and globally; therefore, International Women’s Day is not just a celebration of our achievements, but a chance for us to recognise how far we must still go to achieve global gender equality. One area in which we still see a marked disparity is between men’s and women’s health outcomes. Women often do not get the treatment they need as quickly as men do, and that problem is driven by the lack of awareness about women’s health and the cultural tendency to view illness through the lens of a man. As co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on HIV and AIDS, I wish to focus the rest of my remarks on the impact of HIV on women.
Women make up a third of people living with HIV, with an estimated 31,000 women living with HIV in the UK and 20 million worldwide. In 2021, 556 women were newly diagnosed with HIV in England, accounting for 27% of all new diagnoses. The vast majority of those cases were likely due to exposure during heterosexual contact. What is most shocking is that black African women accounted for 38% of all women diagnosed, followed by white women, who accounted for 15%. Of the women diagnosed in 2021—this is a really shocking statistic—35% lived in London, and 47% were diagnosed late. That is a key issue that is highlighted by so many organisations and charities leading the fight against HIV and AIDS.
Last month, we celebrated National HIV Testing Week, and I was proud to join other parliamentary colleagues across the House to demonstrate how quick and easy it is to get tested, but testing is only one tool in the prevention of HIV and AIDS. I put on record the fantastic, formidable women who are leading the fight against HIV and AIDS in the UK: Susan Cole, Deborah Gold, Lisa Power, Sophie Strachan, Angelina Namiba, Amanda Ely, Professor Yvonne Gilleece, Dr Claire Dewsnap, Professor Jane Anderson, Anne Aslett and Dr Laura Waters. Those are just some of the women I have met in my role as co-chair of the APPG on HIV and AIDS who are taking on that fight. If we are really to look at how we deliver services and make sure that we end new HIV transmissions by 2030, we must ensure that we remember women’s voices.
We must have a strategy for tackling the persistent health issues that remain. The stigma, poverty, gender-based violence and immigration problems all intersect, with the result that women living with HIV struggle with not only their physical health, but their emotional wellbeing. To tackle this, we must achieve gender parity in the HIV response. That will involve ensuring equitable investment, priority and attention to women in HIV prevention, research, data and services. We must also ensure that HIV research addresses specific knowledge gaps around HIV in women, which will support the full participation and meaningful involvement of women. Finally, we must allow for better access to pre-exposure prophylaxis and other forms of HIV prevention.
Lilian Greenwood
Before my hon. Friend finishes her very powerful speech about the importance of listening to women’s voices in relation to HIV and AIDS, can I ask her whether she agrees that we also need to listen to women’s voices in a whole range of healthcare settings? I am thinking particularly of women harmed by failures in healthcare, including my constituent Sarah Hawkins, whose daughter Harriet was born dead as a result of inadequate maternity care, and whose second daughter Lottie is growing up without her big sister. I am also thinking of my constituent Peggy Gedling, who yesterday laid to rest her son Justin far too young. His life was cut short after she was prescribed the hormone pregnancy test drug Primodos. Does my hon. Friend agree that if women had been listened to, we could have avoided some of that harm?
Florence Eshalomi
I thank my hon. Friend for making that powerful intervention. When we look at the health disparities that exist, we see that it is really important that women’s voices are heard in terms of the treatment they are receiving. All of us as MPs will have received emails from female constituents detailing where they have not been listened to or believed; where sometimes, their symptoms have been unrecognised; where they have been told that they need more painkillers and “it will be okay, dear”. We need to make sure that those dedicated doctors and nurses listen to women, and believe women when they raise medical concerns.
Dawn Butler
My hon. Friend is making a very powerful speech. On the subject of women, the NHS and medical interventions, does she agree that structures such as body mass index, which was created to identify the average body of a man, does not relate to women? We have to look at all the systematic, structural misogyny that exists in our systems.
Florence Eshalomi
I thank my hon. Friend for making that really important point. In terms of how we identify some of the problems that women face, one of the other issues that we have worked on together is maternal death of black women—the fact that black mothers are more likely to die during childbirth or pregnancy—and some of the issues around their weight and long-term conditions not being taken into account when addressing those health inequalities.
On this International Women’s Day, there is a lot more that we can and should be doing. We should be working together to improve the quality of life for millions of women, not just in the UK, but right across the world, and it is incumbent on us all to work together to say that we can bring the epidemic that started 40 years ago to an end by including women’s voices.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
International Women’s Day is a time to celebrate, and there is much to celebrate about being a woman in 2023. I always think at this time of my friends, many now spread across the country and some across the world, who I have spent time with in the past. They are now too busy with children, grandchildren, older parents and their own jobs to get together, but I know that they are always there for me, I know they are really proud of me being here, and I know that I would never have made it here without them.
This weekend, I am looking forward to joining Bristol Women’s Voice for a fantastic programme of events, in particular discussing social care and the role it could play in the Bristol economy if only it was run better. It will be chaired by my friend Diane Bunyan, who was Bristol’s first female Labour leader of the council only about 20 years ago. Many women have been at the forefront of Bristol’s long, radical history. I think of Dorothy Hodgkin, who was chancellor of the University of Bristol, Elizabeth Blackwell, who was the first woman to qualify as a medical doctor, the trade union activist Jessie Stephen and Mary Carpenter and Hannah More, who were involved in social programmes. Lady Apsley was Bristol’s first woman Member of Parliament. She was a Conservative who, after the death of her husband in 1943, won the seat. Three out of four of Bristol’s MPs are women. We allowed one man to take one of the positions, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) and for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), who are supportive colleagues.
The reality is that, like the rest of the country, we are nowhere near economic or political parity. Often we hear about the challenges, and I will move between the challenges and the opportunities. We remember that some good historic achievements have been made recently, whether that is the Lionesses’ incredible success last summer, the next generation of young women and girls getting into sport, or Kamala Harris being the first female vice-president in US history. We await the first woman US president.
Women are redefining culture with historic firsts in film, television, comedy and sport. Taylor Swift became the first woman to win a Grammy for best music video with sole directing credit, and films and shows are demonstrating the varied and multiple lives that women can lead, including “Am I Being Unreasonable?”, which was filmed in my constituency of Bristol South. Labour has led the way in women’s equality since 1923, when Margaret Bondfield became the first female Cabinet Minister. It is important that we celebrate the centenary of that accomplishment and the legacy that Margaret left for all women who have followed in her footsteps.
I am appalled by the pictures, even in 2023, of international summits and events in the UK full of men with very little female representation. If we think about the women leading political movements—as we have heard again today, we think particularly of those women in Iran, and in Afghanistan and Ukraine, too—women have always been at the vanguard of social change. However, quickly, as that change starts to happen, we become relegated to a back room—often back to the home—and are rarely represented in those photographs or at those summits.
This week, I was proud to chair a session of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, which we held in Stormont on the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday/Belfast agreement. I was able to chair a session with some of the founding members of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition. Kate Fearon, Bronagh Hinds, Dr Avila Kilmurray and Jane Morrice were amazing activists well before the GFA, and they remain so today, many using that experience across the world. Women need to be represented in all aspects of politics, wherever and whenever. We are fed up with doing that service role and then not appearing in those photographs and leadership positions.
As chair of the women’s parliamentary Labour party, which makes up more than 50% of Labour MPs, I am proud to see the successes that Labour Governments have made in promoting equality, from introducing the Equality Act 2010 to championing all-women shortlists to increase female representation. Labour is the party of women and for women. I gently say to the hon. Member for Southend West (Anna Firth), who spoke about how lucky we are to be here and able to speak, that luck has had absolutely nothing to do with it. I take her point about recognising that privilege, but none of it has been luck; it has all been power that we have taken, and it always has to be underpinned by legislation, and I am afraid it is only Labour in government that has enacted that legislation.
Dame Maria Miller
The hon. Lady is rightly talking up her party’s role in all these issues, and I would expect her to do nothing less, but surely she would agree that this Government have done an enormous amount—more than any other—on the issues of domestic abuse and domestic violence and making women safer online, and I do not think she can simply ignore that. These are the issues of today, and this Government are tackling them.
Karin Smyth
I am not ignoring it, and I pay tribute particularly to the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) for the work she led in government, but we need to continue to use legislation to underpin, and it should be good legislation. I am not sure that in this week of all weeks we can be proud of what this Government have done. If we think about the trafficked women who are coming forward, that is deeply problematic, and it would be good if we could all work together to help those women.
People outside might not know this, but even on a very busy Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday in Portcullis House and so on, this place is overwhelmingly male. Although some great strides have been made in all these professions, we see that with journalists, lobbyists and even with the third sector people who come to see us. I think the environmental movement is overwhelmingly dominated by men. The camera people and the staff in most places are generally male. I had a message as we were sitting here today from my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) pointing out that yesterday at Prime Minister’s questions, all four leaders are of course male, but there were two questions from men for every one from a woman. That is the stark reality. As others have said, this place still remains 30% women.
We are celebrating how far we have come, but we recognise that more needs to be done. It is 52 years since that first women’s refuge was set up in Chiswick, and the issue of domestic abuse and violence, as we have heard again today, is still all too prevalent. Marital rape was only made illegal in the early 2000s, and the Office for National Statistics estimates that 1.6 million women experience domestic abuse in England and Wales in any given year. We know that, faced with the cost of living crisis and severe lack of funding, the number of refuge spaces in England is falling desperately short. Why, when this issue is affecting so many, is so little progress being made?
We need to work harder on this issue, and talking last week with those women from the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition was certainly instructive. They were clear that they could only come forward, and that women in any conflict situation can only come forward, if there is an ecosystem of support that they can use, both statutory and non-statutory, operating behind the scenes, and that is sadly missing in many places today. We need to help fund those refuges, and they need to be places of safety for women to seek refuge.
We recognise the resilience and strength from women today, and we are so proud to be able to voice, on behalf of all those women, what they bring to us in our constituencies. To close, it is often our friendships with one another that prove to be our biggest strength. Outwith the fact that we disagree across the House, as is necessary, we are strong political women and we work together. It is a pleasure to be a part of this debate today, and when I look around the Chamber and up to the Gallery, I see the bonds of friendship that are made between colleagues who share the desire to make life better for women. Parliament will be safe in our hands.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
It is an honour to speak in this debate that has ranged widely from local to national to global women’s issues. We have heard some powerful speeches and contributions. International Women’s Day is a time to celebrate the progress that we women have made, while recognising how far away we are from true equality and true recognition of women in law.
The most powerful speech every year is the one from the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips). She makes us all sit here for many minutes in silence to reflect on the terrible stories that we hear each year of women who suffer domestic abuse and violence. I agree that we are still very far from making real progress. I thank the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller), who always ensures that we have these discussions every year on International Women’s Day. It is important that we continue to have that debate in the House.
Disrespect for women remains endemic across society. Half of British women have been sexually harassed at work or their place of study. Women are 27 times more likely to face online abuse than men. Nearly a quarter of women have experienced sexual assault or attempted sexual assault since they were 16, and one in 14 women have experienced rape or attempted rape. These are more than just statistics—these are women, these are lives and every story is a story of trauma and hurt. We all need to recognise that for what it is. They are not statistics, they are lives, and that reflects everyday reality for women and girls across the UK.
My Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Bill aims to protect women from sexual harassment in the workplace. Too many people are suffering silently because they feel unable to report that, or because their concerns are not taken seriously—we have heard many examples of that today. My Bill strengthens protections for those women by imposing a new duty on employers to prevent their employees from experiencing workplace sexual harassment. The Bill would also make employers liable for the harassment of their staff by third parties, where they have failed to take all reasonable steps to prevent such harassment from happening. I have been pleased to see such cross-party support for my Bill, but legislation is only part of the solution. To fight misogyny, a root and branch culture change is needed.
Last Friday marked two years since the brutal murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Met police officer. Wayne Couzens exposed himself to women just four days before her murder. His victims have argued that, if their reports had been taken seriously by the police, Sarah might still be alive. The terrible story of Sarah’s murder, and the police failings that have been identified subsequently, are still difficult to come to terms with. The first report of Operation Soteria Bluestone found that some serving officers do not think that sexual offences should be a priority for policing. It quoted one officer who believed that cases of rape and sexual offences were “pink and fluffy”. That officer openly admitted to avoiding such cases in favour of burglary and robbery. The new Metropolitan Police Commissioner has said that they are investigating 1,000 sexual and domestic abuse claims involving 100 of its officers. Those are more than just bad apples; they are part of the rotten culture of misogyny.
Police in England and Wales are recording record numbers of rape offences, but rape prosecutions are down by 70% over the past four years. Last year, charges were brought in only 4% of recorded rape cases. This is a national scandal. We say these things again and again, every year on International Women’s Day we point out that we need to make progress, and we do not make progress. The Government need to listen up, because only with a momentous culture shift can we begin to address the concerns and fears that so many women have about engaging with policing and the justice system.
In my constituency, Avon and Somerset police—I want to give them credit—have shown what can be done with a dedicated, well-resourced team and the right leadership. I hope they will lead by example and take other police forces along. Their team have tripled charge rates and brought more cases to the Crown Prosecution Service. However, much more needs to be done across the country. Nearly half of women have said that their trust in the police has declined following Sarah Everard’s murder, and the Government must focus on rebuilding that trust. Liberal Democrats are calling for immediate action to ensure that police vetting procedures are fit for purpose to start rebuilding that trust.
Violence against women and girls is a global threat. During war and natural disasters, women face unique dangers. In Turkey and Syria, humanitarian groups have warned that women are finding it harder to access aid, and are at severe risk of exploitation. Conflict-related sexual violence is one of the oldest weapons known to people— I give credit to the hon. Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall), who has raised this issue in Parliament many times and is working hard on it. He has my full support. Such violence destroys bodies and communities, and its impact is felt long after the fighting has finished. The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s office has identified 171 victims of sexual violence by Russian troops, 119 of whom are women. I am sure that many colleagues across the House share my admiration for the bravery of the women of Ukraine—indeed, they have already been mentioned today. We should not underestimate the substantial trauma that women and children are suffering, especially if they have experienced sexual violence.
I also want to remember the women of Afghanistan. In January, Mursal Nabizada, a female MP who remained in Kabul, was killed. Just four of the 1,500 Afghan citizens who were eligible for the UK resettlement scheme because they were at high risk after the Taliban takeover have now arrived in the UK. Women and girls were meant to be a priority, but they have been left without a specific route to apply for safety. That is a shameful Government record and nobody can walk away from that. Women all over the world are leading movements against authoritarianism.
Many constituents have contacted me to express their solidarity with the women of Iran. I echo that and pay tribute to their courage in the face of atrocious human rights abuses. Many have reported sexual assault. Let us not forget those women, because it is very hard to take on those regimes, which are all led by men. Women’s voices have been ignored for centuries, and in many parts of the world they still are; 2023 must be the year that Governments around the world listen up and hear us.
Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), and I thank the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) for securing this debate. Let me begin by paying tribute to Lady Betty Boothroyd. She was a force of nature in this place, and a great female trailblazer to us all when, in 1992, she overturned more than 700 years of parliamentary tradition and became the first woman to be elected Speaker in this place.
I also pay tribute to some fabulous and successful women in my constituency: Deborah Frimpong is chair of Moorings Neighbourhood Forum and a formidable community activist; Councillor Averil Lekau, deputy leader of Greenwich Council, is doing great things at a local level to support women and champion their inclusion; Hend Kheiralla is the host of the Ladies of the Lake podcast, which amplifies the voices of women who have grown up, worked, and lived in Thamesmead; Debbie McFaul, is director of Crumbs Bakery, a business that truly brings in and supports the community; Karen Saunders from Greenwich Centre of Mission does a lot to support young people in our community, particularly bringing us together when two young boys, Kearne and Charlie, were murdered in my constituency; Claire Hallinan from Hawksmoor Youth Club has delivered fantastic services to young people and the wider community of Thamesmead, but has also faced considerable challenges with the state of its facilities; finally, Catherine Molnar, founder of CC Events, hosts a market in Abbey Wood and Thamesmead and has won awards for the role they play in the community.
Let me now turn to some issues closer to home. I am concerned by the rise of misogynistic influencers such as Andrew Tate, whose content sends a troubling message to men and young boys about how they treat women. I am particularly concerned that we may see a backsliding on progress that has been made in schools to tackle misogynistic attitudes, if men such as Andrew Tate are allowed to spread their hate online. Misogyny should be a hate crime, and I am proud that the Labour party has championed that. There should be no place for toxic influencers such as Andrew Tate to spread their hate and encourage violence against women and girls.
Wera Hobhouse
I have argued for making misogyny a hate crime for so long, and yesterday I was again given the reply that that would just be gesture politics. Does the hon. Lady agree that, if misogyny is a hate crime, we will give a powerful signal that all crimes will be investigated properly and not just brushed away, as we have seen? Making misogyny a hate crime would be a big signal, not just political gesturing.
Abena Oppong-Asare
The hon. Lady could not have put it better. Misogyny should be a hate crime, and I hope the Government take on board what I and the hon. Lady have said.
I am proud to chair the Labour Women’s Network, which supports women standing for election and advocates for greater female representation within our party and beyond. It is 35 years old this year. In those three and a half decades, LWN has trained thousands of women for public office, outlawed all-male panels at Labour party events, fought for tougher action on sexual harassment, made Labour’s selection process shorter and cheaper, improved parental leave arrangements for councillors, and seen the proportion of women in the parliamentary Labour party increase from 9% in 1987 to a proud 52% today.
Hundreds of women have contributed their time, skills, energy and occasional rage to our movement over those 35 years, but it would not exist at all without four women who turned their frustration into organisation: Barbara Follett, Hilary De Lyon, Barbara Roche and the late Jean Black. Every day, we are thankful for their determination to level the playing field for women. Every day, we look forward to the day when our work is no longer necessary because women have equal representation, power, agency and visibility inside the Labour party and beyond.
In the last 12 months, LWN is proud to have grown in numbers and roar. We are delighted we now have more members than ever before. We are also proud to have trained more women than ever before. Through the LWN Political School and the Jo Cox Women in Leadership Scheme, we support women to serve and lead as feminist changemakers at all levels. Our graduates include my right hon. Friends the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) and for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), my hon. Friends the Members for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq), for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire), for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) and for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), and many more, as well as our councillors, police and crime commissioners, and the UK’s only woman Metro Mayor, Tracy Brabin. More than 54% of the women selected to fight seats for Labour at the next general election are also graduates of the LWN training programme. With the greatest respect to my colleagues across the Floor, I am looking forward to seeing Conservative men replaced by talented and diverse Labour women.
The architect of our training schemes is the one and only Nan Sloane, whose good advice to stand firm, take up your space and never apologise for yourself rings in the ears of many Labour women during the critical moments in their political journeys. I would also like to pay tribute to our director Claire Reynolds for her strong leadership and drive for positive change, alongside Jane Heggie and Cat Price.
Another absolute powerhouse of the Labour Women’s Network is my good friend, the right hon. Jacqui Smith, the first ever female Home Secretary. We are immensely proud that Jacqui has served on the LWN executive committee for over a decade. As she prepares to move on to fresh challenges, from NHS leadership to broadcasting to ably chairing the Jo Cox Foundation and championing its commission into civility in public life, I wanted to say a huge thank you. Thank you for showing us what resilience in public life looks like. Thank you for smashing glass ceilings and supporting others to. And thank you for never kicking down the ladder and always finding time to encourage your sisters.
As well as LWN turning 35 this year, we have another important anniversary to celebrate: 2023 marks 100 years since the first three women Labour MPs ever were elected: Susan Lawrence, Dorothy Jewson and Margaret Bondfield. Margaret, a working-class trade unionist and universal suffrage campaigner, went on to become the first ever woman Cabinet Minister and first female Privy Counsellor. Largely written out of history since, the centenary of her election provides a welcome opportunity to correct that, as well as to run commemorative events with Labour Women’s Network. I join the calls led by my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) to see a portrait of Margaret installed in the House of Commons where it belongs.
While the LWN has been busy sorting out women’s rights within the Labour party, the Labour party has been readying itself to sort out women’s rights within the country. Labour is ready to close the gender pay gap. Labour is ready to deliver a revolution in affordable quality childcare. Labour is ready to support women entrepreneurs. Labour is ready to help employers to support staff through the menopause. Labour is ready to end the black maternal mortality gap. Labour is ready to ensure that rapists meet justice. With due respect to my hard-working sisters across the House, Labour is ready to clear up the mess the Conservative Government have made of women’s rights. It is time for a Labour Government.
I wish all sisters across the House and beyond a happy International Women’s Day. I hope we can work together in co-operation to protect women’s rights. I end by echoing the comments from my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley: we need deeds, not words.
Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)
I am very grateful to follow the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare), with whom I always enjoy working. She is always worth listening to.
I also want to reflect on the speech made by the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) at the beginning of the debate. I was not sure how I was going to begin my contribution because, to be honest, I am a bit scunnered—probably more than a bit—but she set a positive example so, before I get on to my scunner, I will follow on from what she said and reflect on the fact that women across the House can and do work together positively. Although I have significant political differences with her, with women on the Labour Benches and with others, I am really grateful for the focus that all these strong, powerful women have on issues to do with women. I put on the record my great appreciation for colleagues cross party and for the work they do.
I note the exceptional speech given by my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell). It was a powerful contribution. She talked about her constituent and her lovely mum. It has been nice to hear the reflections of others about their mums, too. Again, that is something we can all agree on.
I think we all want to be very clear in our appreciation for what the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) does. It really matters. I am sure it is very difficult, but these women matter and the difficulty their families are facing should never happen. It should never be experienced by any family. We need to reflect on that and on the headlines, as others have commented, that follow these tragic incidents about “family men” and so on. The hon. Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) made some very powerful comments in that regard.
Hannah Bardell
My hon. Friend speaks of the families of the women whose names the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) read out. I have just had the pleasure of spending some time with them, and what was palpable was not just the tragedy they have experienced, but their resilience. Does she share my view that they should never have had to face this and, as we have heard across the House today, we need to do so much more to ensure there are no lists of dead women to read out?
Kirsten Oswald
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for what she says. I cannot add to that. What she describes is a reality and we have a responsibility to ensure that we do everything we can. The reality is not great. Too many families know all too well the gaping holes that are left because of male violence against women, so we will keep talking. We have a responsibility to do that. As the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) said, we need to use our privileged platform here as parliamentarians to raise this issue time and again.
The right hon. Member for Basingstoke spoke powerfully about the value and importance of women in public life, and the consequent improvements they bring. An increase in the number of women in public life ties together to bring women’s situations more broadly into a better place. She is 100% correct in what she says. We have many more women in public life now and I very much welcome that, but I also reflect that, certainly in the time since I was first elected in 2015, public life has become increasingly polarised. There are challenges over and above those that we would have identified in 2015.
The hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare) was correct to be concerned about the damage that influencers such as Andrew Tate inflict on wider society. Obviously, that has a profound effect on women. We also heard that culture wars, which we hear too much about, are not without an impact on women—that is absolutely right. All those who engage in that kind of behaviour should be ashamed of themselves, because they do down and cause detriment not only to women but to everyone in our society.
Last year I was struck by hearing Members express those kinds of concerns—they were fed up and worn down by the toxic climate that they were working in. The hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) reflected that it is increasing. Can we, in good conscience, not point that out? I do not think so. We should call it out for what it is: damaging our democracy and women. Can we, in good conscience, ask young women to come forward into what is often a toxic soup of threats, abuse and misinformation? I ask myself that. However, perhaps there is a bit more of the glass half full about me after all. I think that we can and we do ask young women to do that—I think of the strong and powerful young women I know, who will always stand up for women’s rights and equality.
My reflection on equality is that if someone is coming after my rights as a woman, it is clear that the rights of every other group will be next on the agenda. I am aware that I perhaps sound a bit crabbit, as I would be described at home. Perhaps I am an increasingly crabbit middle-aged feminist, but I am happy to point out that my rights as a woman and my feminism are not at all imperilled—in fact, they are more than likely strengthened —by my making sure that I stand up for the rights of other groups.
I am grateful that hon. Members have reflected on the situation of women across the world whose rights are imperilled. We need to be clear that rights are not carved in stone forever, as we have seen tellingly in the US. We have seen grave and terrible situations for women in Afghanistan and Iran, and they need not only our solidarity but our practical support and assistance. That is our job. We need to take practical steps and stand with them. Uyghur Muslim women are forced into sterilisations and labour camps. Women across the world are in difficult situations, and I include women in small boats.
Closer to home, there are policies that cause detriment to women. I was pleased to hear the right hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) and the hon. Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) speak about the future of work and supporting women in work. We need to do that, but the reality is that there is a 15% pay gap, and warm words will not deal with that. It will take concerted action, and the strong WASPI women who I spoke to yesterday know that there is a problem. The situation is not fair for them as older women, and nor will it be for younger women. It will take decades for that issue to correct itself, if it ever does. We need to accept that reality.
I am always happy to talk at length about the positive policy in Scotland, as hon. Members will be aware. It is important that much of that policy focuses on gender and women. I would like to focus on one particular woman, as she stands down as the first female First Minister of Scotland and the first woman to lead the Scottish National party. I pay tribute to Nicola Sturgeon, a politician who has inspired me greatly and influenced many others. Many women and girls will be interested and engaged in politics and public life because of her consistent and solid support for women’s rights and making lives better.
I will close by mentioning some other women who inspire me, because we need to finish on a positive note. East Renfrewshire councillors Caroline Bamforth, Angela Convery and Annette Ireland day and daily work hard to make lives better for women. They champion women and girls in all they do, and I am very proud to have them as my colleagues.
Laura Young is a young influencer who is campaigning hard on environmental issues, including to get rid of disposable vapes, which cause problems for both the environment and young people. For her pains, she too is involved in the horrible, toxic morass of online abuse. Shame on all the people who deal with her like that. She is a young woman making a difference to the world, and she does not have to do that. Women such as her will continue to make a difference. None of the online abuse will make a difference—she is going nowhere.
Rahima Mahmut is a Uyghur human rights activist who, despite the challenges she faces, stands up day and daily for the rights of Uyghur women. Hon. Members will not have heard of Rena McGuire, but they will all be the better for knowing her. Rena is a woman from Barrhead whose community activism spans decades. She has made every effort at every point to make life better for women in her community. Although we have many challenges and we should not minimise them, there is a space for us to appreciate the sterling and tireless work of women such as Rena, who make all our lives better.
Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)
It is always an honour to speak in this debate and celebrate the wonderful achievements of women. I thank the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) for proposing the debate and the Backbench Business Committee for securing it. I associate myself with her remarks celebrating women in this place for all of their achievements. So many trailblazers have been mentioned: Betty Boothroyd, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), Barbara Castle, Maureen Colquhoun and many more. But we need many more. As my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare) said, on the Opposition Benches we are proud of the fact that more than half of our representation is female. We need to see that change across all parties and extending away from this place into local government. It was wonderful to hear many Bristolian examples from my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth), and from right across the country, of women in local government, but we need many more.
I thank everyone who has spoken in this debate, and above all my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips). She delivered, yet again, her powerful memorialisation of the women killed over the past year. It was an honour, yet again, to have some members of the families of those individuals join us in the Public Gallery. There can be no starker or more sobering illustration that so many women still lose their lives to male violence and far too many others are still living in fear of it. Let us compare our situation in safety here to the situation that those women remain in right now, in our country, in their homes, in their workplaces and on the street.
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) for speaking so authoritatively about the behaviour of male perpetrators and the need to end their impunity, including when they commit gateway offences such as exposure. I am also grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi), who was absolutely right that we should call a spade a spade, and a murderer a murderer. As the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) rightly said, these are not soap operas but despicable crimes and despicable criminals. That must always be the case in the broadcast and print media, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) so powerfully set out in her contribution. That must also be the case on social media, and I associate myself with the remarks from my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead.
We need stronger action against violent misogyny online. I am afraid that the Online Safety Bill is simply not tough enough to deal with that cancer in our society. We need more action on policing and in other areas on criminal justice, too. Police-recorded rape and sexual offences are at record highs, but just 1.5% of recorded rapes lead to convictions. More than two thirds of women have experienced some form of sexual harassment in a public space, and 86% of 18 to 24-year-olds.
The criminal justice system is in disarray, I am afraid to say; we all know that, because as constituency MPs we see it in our casework every single day. Women’s refuges—those that are still open—are full. Women and girls are being put at risk. Many of us will question, as hon. Members have done today, why there was no mention of making Britain safer for all in the Prime Minister’s five key priorities.
No one believes that ending violence against women and girls will be easy, but we certainly cannot do it with short-term, sticking-plaster solutions. We need a comprehensive approach. That is why Labour’s cross-cutting Green Paper “Ending Violence Against Women and Girls” sets out our plan to embed action across every Department. It includes proposals for a new street harassment law, tougher sentences for rapists and whole-life tariffs for those who rape, abduct and murder. It includes having domestic violence specialists in every 999 control centre. It includes making misogyny a hate crime. It would ensure the compulsory vetting of police officers in every police force. We would give victims access to the justice that they deserve. We really cannot delay.
Nor can we delay in other areas that are critical to women’s lives. Previous Labour Governments did not delay: they introduced the Equal Pay Act 1970, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and of course the Equality Act 2010. We are determined to go further. We will match that record and go beyond it by putting women’s equality at the heart of everything we do, and we will start by taking action on the gender pay gap. It is disturbing that that gap has increased by 12% in the past two years alone.
Anneliese Dodds
Those are ONS statistics. We need proper action to eliminate that inequality for women, so I am delighted to be working with my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) and with Frances O’Grady to review how we can go further and faster to close the gap. We also need action so that flexibility for women in the workplace is not just in the hands of employers. We need equal pay comparisons between employers, not just within a single employer. We need a modern childcare system, as my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) has ably set out.
As I have the floor for a few more moments, I want to talk about a group of women who rarely get a hearing in this place. I am talking about midlife women: women in their 40s, 50s and 60s. They experience a series of immense pressures—they are often expected to hold down a job, care for elderly parents and support older children—but when we look at how they are faring economically, we can see that over recent years things have moved backwards for them. In the past decade, women in their 40s and 50s have seen their real wages fall by almost £1,000 a year. Since the pandemic, 185,000 women between 50 and 64 have left the workforce at a cost of up to £7 billion to the British economy.
Karin Smyth
My hon. Friend is making an excellent point. Does she agree that it is astonishing that the Government are not looking at the issue in the way that we have done? They are concerned about growth in the economy and particularly about the loss of women from the workforce, but they are not looking at social care or childcare. Does she agree that if they want to steal our plans, they are welcome to do so and we will cheer them on?
Anneliese Dodds
I would be delighted if the Government stole those plans. I would also be delighted if they looked at Labour’s measures for the NHS, because a fifth of the women I spoke about are on an NHS waiting list. I have been up and down the country talking to women on gynaecology waiting lists, women who are not getting breast cancer referrals on time and women who have not been able to access cervical cancer screening, for which rates have been falling. We can see how big a problem there is and we can see how our plan for the workforce is so urgently needed.
We would also love the Government to steal Labour’s plan for larger employers to have menopause action plans. Many businesses have welcomed that measure, but so far the Government have not yet adopted it, although the nodding of the Minister on the Front Bench leads me to hope that they may do so. We need action on that, and we need greater action for women.
Women need answers to these questions because, sadly, too many women will feel that they have little to celebrate on this International Women’s Day in our country. Sadly, that applies even more in many other countries, as hon. Members have discussed throughout this debate. Earlier this week, I had the immense privilege of taking part in a roundtable with women activists from Iran and Kurdish women. Their strength is inspiring, but what they have been through is horrendous. We must stand with them, as has been said. We must also stand with the women of the United States, following the attacks on their bodily autonomy. We must stand with the women of Afghanistan and of Ukraine. We must stand with women in countries subject to appallingly high rates of femicide, such as El Salvador. We must stand with women from all nations in which women’s lives are devalued.
My mission as shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities is to ensure that every woman is recognised, valued and empowered to reach their full potential. I want us to be able to look forward to a future in which our debates in the week of International Women’s Day can focus solely on the brilliant achievements of women and girls in all their diversity—those women and girls who make this country great—rather than on having to detail so many barriers holding them back.
The Minister for Women (Maria Caulfield)
May I thank right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions this afternoon? I particularly thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) for securing this debate and for her work every day of the year on championing women’s rights. I thank all hon. Members who have spoken so passionately today about the issues on which they are campaigning on behalf of women up and down the country.
As my right hon. Friend pointed out, many women who have gone before us have led the way to our being here today. The hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare) mentioned Baroness Boothroyd, but there have also been women such as Margaret Thatcher, the first female Prime Minister, who broke that glass ceiling. Unlike the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), I am not afraid to compliment and pay tribute to female Members on the other side of the House. A personal heroine for me was Mo Mowlam. The hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) spoke about how women have been erased from photos and others have often taken the credit for their hard work; Mo Mowlam was instrumental in delivering peace for Northern Ireland, but she is very often forgotten when we talk about issues around the Northern Ireland protocol. However, she is very much remembered for the work that she did.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) said that there is a special place in heaven for men who stand up for women. Today I want to remember Sir David Amess, who usually spoke in these debates; I think particularly of his work on endometriosis. I am sure that he would be very pleased to see his successor, my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Anna Firth), taking part in this debate. It has also been great to see my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) spending most of the afternoon in this Chamber to listen to women speak about the issues that we face. We are very lucky to have such a Father of the House who respects female Members.
On International Women’s Day yesterday, I was particularly pleased that so many Departments were able to showcase the work that has been done and make announcements on tackling the issues that women face, many of which have been raised today. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office launched its first international women and girls strategy yesterday, which highlights the work being done globally to tackle threats to gender equality across the world. From climate change and crisis to conflicts and coronavirus, those threats disproportionately affect many women in certain countries; hon. Members have spoken particularly about Iran and Afghanistan today. Significant work is going on to support women across the world.
I want to touch in particular on the issues facing the women of Ukraine. I had the great pleasure and honour of meeting the First Lady, Mrs Zelenska, this year. While of course planes, weapons and resources are important, her plea to us in this place was to make people aware of how rape is being used as a weapon of war against women in Ukraine—there are young girls, women, older women and elderly women who are being raped as part of the war against Ukraine.
I am pleased that the UK has cemented its position as a leading global actor standing up for women who are under attack. We know the scale and severity of gender-based violence at times of conflict and insecurity. I am proud that the UK is recognised internationally for the preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative, committing £60 million to preventing and responding to conflict-related sexual violence since 2012. Last November the UK hosted the PSVI international conference in London, with more than 1,000 delegates, and secured new political declarations with 53 countries and 40 national communities. That is incredible work.
However, this debate has mainly focused on the domestic issue of the gender-based violence that women and girls are experiencing up and down the country. We heard a very moving speech from the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), who highlighted the sheer scale of the women who have been murdered in the past year. The right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) described the terrible, tragic case of Libby Squire, and the hon. Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) told us Wendy’s story about her daughter Aimee. Members cannot have failed to be moved by that.
Of course we are doing great work in improving the experience of women. We have announced the awarding of grants to rape crisis centres in England and Wales to set up a national telephone support line, open 24/7, which was launched on 7 December, and we are providing £27 million to recruit more independent sexual and domestic violence advisers. Despite all that, however, there is clearly a significant problem. Violence against women and girls was included in the women’s health strategy because it is not just a criminal issue or a justice issue. I was pleased to see both my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), the Minister for Victims and Sentencing, and the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (Miss Dines), in the Chamber earlier to hear about this staggering problem.
Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)
I have listened intently to the debate, and it is an honour to be able serve alongside such fantastic female representatives on both sides of the House. The Minister is talking about eradicating sexual and domestic violence from society. Does she agree that we should not be rewarding, in any way, any perpetrators of that sort of abuse and violence?
Maria Caulfield
I absolutely agree. As I have said, that is why we included violence against women and girls in the women’s health strategy, and as we approach the first anniversary of the strategy, I am keen for us to move towards making that our priority for the second year, working across Government. I am happy to work across parties as well, because this is such an important issue. Despite all the strategies, plans and—let us be fair—significant funding, we are still not making progress in the areas in which we want to make it. We have been presented with many images, but I was particularly struck by what was said by the hon. Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) about the way in which language is used to describe both female victims and their perpetrators, which suggests that an offence of that kind can be justified—that it simply happened, that it was a mistake, and that it was not all that significant. That has to change, which means changing the culture as well as creating the infrastructure to support it. I am keen for us to make progress on that in the next 12 months.
Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
I am very interested by what my hon. Friend has just said. She referred earlier to putting violence against women and girls at the heart of the health strategy. If we are serious about increasing the rate of convictions for rape and sexual violence, and indeed domestic violence, we should bear in mind that women report being treated like pieces of evidence. What we need is wraparound therapeutic support for victims, so they are not re-traumatised every time they try to obtain justice. Will that be a large part of what my hon. Friend is doing?
Maria Caulfield
Absolutely. We do need to look at how we support women, and that includes female MPs. I am thinking of Rosie Cooper, who simply left the House of Commons because of what she had experienced. She has gone on record as saying that she did not feel safe continuing.
Maria Caulfield
I do not have a huge amount of time, but I will give way a couple more times.
Wera Hobhouse
I will be very quick. The police are saying that they need to move away from viewing the victim as a credible witness, and move on to the perpetrator. Too often, the perpetrator gets away while the police are investigating the victim.
Maria Caulfield
I entirely agree. This is about changing culture as much as about changing the structure of services: we have seen plenty of evidence of that. Let me also pay tribute to the hon. Lady for her private Member’s Bill, which will tackle sexual harassment in the workplace. She has done tremendous work on the Bill, and we hope that it will make swift progress in the other place.
Vicky Ford
The issue of spiking has, unfortunately, been coming up in my constituency. If the perpetrators are to be caught, it is important for victims to come forward quickly and provide physical evidence, such as a urine sample, within 24 hours. I wonder whether there is more that my hon. Friend could do, using her own voice, to get that message out to victims.
Maria Caulfield
Yes, absolutely. That is why we need a cross-Government approach. We need to work with the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice team so that we have a united voice.
Abena Oppong-Asare
I appreciate the Minister’s generosity. I just want to put on record the work that Sistah Space has done—particularly in relation to Valerie’s law—for victims of abuse, especially black victims. The Minister’s predecessor started to do some work with me and with Sistah Space before the change of Government. Will she please continue that work?
Maria Caulfield
I shall be happy to do that, and we can certainly arrange to meet following this debate.
The shadow Minister was slightly dismissive of the groundbreaking Online Safety Bill. However, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford has reported that the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls has described it as world- leading. Many other countries are following our progress, and, indeed, may adopt similar legislation. The Bill will tackle criminal activity online. It will protect children from harmful and inappropriate content, and it aims to stop the rise of online misogyny. Several Members have mentioned the importance of that.
Let me say something about business. The UK is now successfully including gender provision in all the free trade agreements that we have made since leaving the EU. Our trade agreements with Australia and New Zealand, for instance, contain dedicated trade and gender equality chapters. That too is groundbreaking work. As for our domestic business focus, our taskforce on women-led high- growth enterprise was established last summer. I want to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) for her work in the all-party parliamentary group on women and work, not just her work in pushing science, technology, engineering and maths for women, but the high-growth sector work she is doing. If we deliver more women with ambition, we will improve growth in our economy and also improve the outcome for those women as they thrive in the workplace.
We know that childcare is an issue. That is why we have spent more than £3.5 billion over the last three years on early education entitlement, and have increased the funding for local authorities to £160 million this year, £180 million next year and £170 million thereafter, to allow them to increase their payments to local childcare providers. I recognise the challenges and the cost that childcare imposes on families, but I also know how difficult it is for the providers to sustain their business model.
Turning briefly to women’s health, I am proud that in the past year we have published the first women’s health strategy for England. The hon. Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) mentioned that in particular, and I am very keen that we make progress in that space, especially on maternity disparities. We have appointed Dame Lesley Regan as the first women’s health ambassador to lead that work. We announced yesterday that we are investing £25 million to roll out women’s health hubs across the country, providing a one-stop shop for women’s healthcare needs.
We will also level up IVF access to same-sex couples and across the board, ensuring consistent provision across the country, which does not currently exist. The HRT prepayment certificate will be launched from 1 April, cutting the cost of HRT by hundreds of pounds. We also aim to announce our pregnancy loss certificate later this summer, so that babies born before 24 weeks can be registered—an important issue for those parents who have lost babies. The major conditions strategy will look at long-term conditions such as heart disease, musculoskeletal conditions and dementia, the leading cause of death in women, which for too long have been ignored.
Finally, I want to touch on girls’ education, which it is a top priority for us in both our international commitment—we want 12 years of quality education for every girl, which is the best way to get girls and women out of poverty—and our domestic commitments. The Prime Minister in his first speech set out his ambition to ensure that all school pupils in England study some form of maths to the age of 18. My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) raised the issue of teaching materials in schools; the Prime Minister yesterday committed to a review of those and we will look forward to what that shows.
We need to get more women and girls into science, because, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke said, despite getting more girls into STEM A-levels and on to undergraduate courses, we only see women making up 29.4% of the STEM workforce. That is why we are running our STEM Returners pilot; there are 75,000 people, mainly women, with experience and qualifications in STEM who are not working in the sector and who we want to see return to practice.
I hope that that showcases some of the work we are doing across the board. There are many challenges—we do not deny or shirk that fact—but we are making significant progress. In particular, domestically, on violence against women and girls, I hope that this time next year we will have a better story to tell.
Dame Maria Miller
I say an enormous thank you to everybody who has taken part in the debate. This debate always demonstrates how much agreement there is across the House; I always see more heads nodding on the Opposition side and the Government side in this debate than in any other. My final comment, therefore, is, “Let us not allow party politics to get too involved in some of these issues.” They are not about party politics; they are about changing the culture of our country, to make sure that women have the same opportunities and the same barriers as men—not different ones, but not bigger ones. The more we can keep the politics out of this, the more progress we make in that culture change. I think the vast majority of this debate has demonstrated how much agreement there is. I applaud that, and thank colleagues for taking that approach.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered International Women’s Day.
Brain Tumour Research Funding
(1 year, 8 months ago)
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Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered brain tumour research funding.
I am hopeful that we will have nodding heads on both sides of the House for this debate this afternoon. I thank you for the opportunity to speak, Mr Deputy Speaker, and thank the Backbench Business Committee for making time for this debate.
I pay particular tribute to those families around the UK who are living with a brain tumour diagnosis. When I meet some of these families, I see an enduring hope, when so often their outlook seems hopeless. It is for that reason that the purpose of this debate is to demand a greater emphasis from Government and to accelerate the effort to find more effective methods to treat patients with brain tumours and ensure that they have the best care and rehabilitation possible.
Many hon. Members will remember that back in 2015, the Realf family presented a petition with 120,129 signatories calling for an increase in national funding for the research into brain tumours. The Petitions Committee picked it up and the following Westminster Hall debate led to the Government Minister at the time establishing a task and finish group to look at the issue. That group published its report in 2018 and the Government subsequently announced a £20 million fund for research into brain tumours, boosted by a pledge of a further £25 million by Cancer Research UK.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
As the hon. Gentleman knows, I have been on this journey with him since that quite remarkable Westminster Hall debate in 2016. We said then that we needed the money; we got the money, but now we find that there are structural problems still standing in the way of the progress we need. To me, that says that there is probably nobody in charge of the strategy within the Department. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if we can achieve anything in this debate, it will be to hear a commitment from the Treasury Bench that somebody will take charge of this strategy and make it happen?
Derek Thomas
Of course, I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. Actually, I want the Government to go further and make brain tumour research the priority of all cancer research, because we have not seen the progress that we should have in that time.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
A constituent got in touch with me yesterday to tell the devastating story of her young niece, who struggled to obtain a diagnosis despite several GP trips and horrendous symptoms that left her unable to eat properly or attend school. Does the hon. Member agree that ringfenced funding, specifically for research into childhood brain tumours, must be agreed urgently?
Derek Thomas
I will come on to that point later. I am grateful for the contributions that we have already heard.
I pay tribute to the late Dame Tessa Jowell, who sadly received her own diagnosis of a brain tumour soon after that debate, when Government funding was being announced. At that time, about five years ago, she said in the other place:
“For what would every cancer patient want? First, to know that the best, the latest science was being used…wherever in the world it was developed, whoever began it.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 25 January 2018; Vol. 788, c. 1170.]
Sadly, she passed away in May 2018.
Soon after, an additional £20 million of Government money was made available and the Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Mission was established. I pay tribute to Dame Tessa Jowell’s daughter and the mission for the way that they have transformed the pathway and the care that brain tumour patients get, and for the work that they continue to do. I appreciate the way that they have engaged with me and others on the all-party parliamentary group on brain tumours in their work.
The provision of £65 million heralded a significant shift in focus towards brain tumours. Given the high-profile commitment to brain cancer research, we should not be here calling for a commitment and a focus on brain tumour research five years later. Sadly, however, despite the £40 million of Government funds that were committed to research, there has been a lack of grant deployment to researchers.
It is important to note that Cancer Research UK, since announcing its commitment to spend £25 million on strategic initiatives in brain tumour research in 2018, has committed almost £28 million to that cause. That is not the case for Government funding. To date, the figures of the National Institute for Health and Care Research—the body responsible for distributing that research funding—state that of the £40 million, between £10 million and £15 million has been deployed, and that depends on how we interpret brain tumour research.
The all-party parliamentary group on brain tumours, which I am privileged to chair—perhaps I should have declared my interest at the start—decided to conduct the “Pathway to a Cure—breaking down the barriers” inquiry, which aimed to identify barriers preventing that important funding flowing to its intended recipients. We felt the need to launch that inquiry only because a series of meetings, including with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, the Medical Research Council, the Department of Health and Social Care and a Government Minister, failed to reassure us that dedicated research funding would or could be used to ramp up the research needed if we want to discover the breakthrough that every brain tumour sufferer and their family longs for.
Those of us who serve on the all-party group were able to understand the severity of the issue and the lived experience for patients, families, clinicians and researchers only because of the sterling work of the charity Brain Tumour Research. It provides the secretariat for the all-party group and brings together thousands of people across the UK to share their experience, knowledge and understanding, and to make up what I affectionately know as the brain tumour family.
In February last year, we launched our inquiry and took evidence from clinicians, researchers and patients. We released our report last Tuesday. Today, part of the way into Brain Tumour Awareness Month, we will set out what we have unearthed during the inquiry and press the Government to review and reform their method of deploying research funds to those who can make best use of them.
From our work, we know that researchers find it challenging to access Government funding, because the system is built in silos. We know that cell line isolation and biobanking are happening, but at only a minority of sites across the research community; that the pool of talented researchers is finite; and that NIHR processes act as a disincentive to researchers who can apply their expertise and intellect more easily elsewhere in the medical research field.
We also found that there are a limited number of clinical trials available for brain tumour patients, and that the national trials database is not reliable. We found that pharmaceutical companies are choosing not to pursue the development of brain cancer drugs in the UK, and that funding is not ringfenced—specifically for research into childhood brain tumours, as has been mentioned, where survival rates for the most aggressive tumours have remained unchanged for decades.
Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)
The hon. Member is touching on a point that I am sure will have been heard by every MP in this place. Constituents who, sadly, have children who have been or are affected by brain tumours know only too well that things have not changed for decades. That is why what he has come here today to talk about is so important. We need to shift the dial. It is not good enough, it is terribly unfair and the consequences of us not shifting it are obviously profound.
Derek Thomas
Sadly, I have met far too many parents who have lost loved ones. It is heartbreaking to speak to them, and to see how a juggernaut has charged through and destroyed much of their lives. They give me so much hope that we can do this work because of the commitment they have to this subject.
Before I address the specific recommendations of the report, may I thank colleagues—many of them are here today—who have given up the last year to interrogate witnesses and to take evidence? I want particularly to mention my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Holly Mumby-Croft), the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith), the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake) and Lord Polak CBE from the other place, but also Sue Farrington Smith MBE of Brain Tumour Research, Dr David Jenkinson of the Brain Tumour Charity, Professor Garth Cruickshank, Dr Antony Michalski and Professor Tony Marson, who took part in the inquiry, and most importantly, Peter Realf, whose son was lost and who triggered the petition back in 2015.
To turn to the findings, the Government must recognise brain tumour research as a critical priority. Five years ago, a remarkable effort was made by Government to respond to the shocking statistics that surround brain tumours. Brain cancer remains the biggest cancer killer of children and adults under 40. In order for survival rates to increase, the Government must go further and treat brain tumours as a key priority. This has been achieved in other countries through legislation, and I urge the Minister to see what can be achieved here. A brain tumour champion, which has already been hinted at, is needed to co-ordinate the funding and implementation of a strategy between the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
In order for brain tumour research to lead to tangible changes in survival rates for patients, it needs to receive funds across the research pathway, including discovery, translation and clinical research. I recognise the recent advances and improvements in molecular testing and prognostic information, but there is a requirement for further discovery research. That will improve the understanding of disease biology, and how best to frame and support pre-clinical trial research. For instance, a particular issue for tackling brain tumours is the complexity of drug absorption through the blood-brain barrier.
It is crucial that the Government enable the building of critical mass in these elements of the research pipeline. With no ringfenced funding to support poorly funded disease areas such as brain tumours, investment in the disease is not always prioritised. Focused calls for multidisciplinary research into brain tumours through organisations such as the MRC would support this. Additionally, making the blood-brain barrier a strategic priority and encouraging investment in cutting-edge research could yield game-changing results in the treatment of brain tumours and other neurological diseases.
On translational research, on average, it takes 15 years for an idea to move from the pre-clinical stage to helping a patient. Patients have not got that long to wait. Researchers have said they found it challenging to access Government funding for translational research, relying on charities to fund risky elements of the pipeline. More must be done to support this valley of death element of the research pipeline. That seeks to move basic science discoveries more quickly and efficiently into practice, and that shift would increase interest among the research community, ensuring a greater concentration of research expertise in this area.
The inquiry also found that there is a perception that review panels have a lack of understanding about the unique nature of brain tumour research, due to a deficit of specialists on panels. That was reported to account to some degree for low application success rates. During oral evidence sessions, it was also highlighted that a lack of feedback disincentivised unsuccessful applicants from reapplying, bearing in mind that they would potentially have spent a year on such work before their original application was ready for submission.
Positive and proactive engagement with the research community should be nurtured through a continued programme of workshops and funding toolkits for researchers, supporting navigation of the funding system and increasing success rates. Currently, due to many of those issues, and a lack of funding and support, early stage researchers, especially post-doctoral researchers, are moving away from the field of brain tumour research. They are attracted by more readily available and secure funding in other disease areas. A solution for that would be the MRC and the NIHR ringfencing opportunities, such as specific brain tumour awards, across the research pipeline.
Funding could also be prioritised for a fellowship programme, supporting early stage researchers to develop their skills in the field. There is an example within the Cancer Mission, where two teaching fellowships, match-funded by the NIHR, are taking place. That number needs to increase. Learning about brain tumours early in careers results in researchers going on to choose the discipline.
Currently, only 5% of brain tumour patients are entering the limited number of trials available. Clinicians stated that many trials that patients with brain tumours are eligible to enter are not accessible to patients, who often have physical disabilities, as participants are expected to travel long distances across the UK. Poor health and the cost implications were key barriers to patients entering studies that were available to them.
A survey carried out by Brain Tumour Research highlighted that 72% of patients who responded would consider participating in research or a clinical trial if offered the opportunity. Only 21% believed that healthcare professionals gave sufficient information about opportunities to participate in clinical research, including trials.
That approach does not take account of the benefits that new and repurposed therapeutics could provide for brain tumour patients. If brain tumour patients are excluded at an early stage, possible benefits for such patients are not identified and carried forward in later trials. Access to trials should be assessed not by the location of the tumour, but by other individual criteria such as genomic profile and medical history.
It was also demonstrated that clinicians are risk-averse to children accessing early phase trials, despite parents’ wishes. As a result of those limitations, patients are encouraged to travel overseas in pursuit of treatment not available in the UK. Some small improvements to both systems would allow many more clinicians to successfully support patients to access trials across the country.
We have touched on this briefly, but paediatric brain cancer is viewed by researchers as different from adult brain tumours because brain tumours in children are linked to physical development, rather than ageing. Current treatments for children have significant long-term side effects and much more research is needed into kinder treatments and novel drug delivery for children. Additionally, more must be done to tackle brain injury issues and the consequences of brain tumour treatments.
In this place, we often talk about the need to support people to meet their potential and to live life to the full to address issues that curtail life chances. That is no less important for children and young people who have experienced a brain tumour or brain cancer. Using the method adopted by the NHS to measure survival rates, children’s survival following a tumour is positive. However, they are often left with a brain acquired injury caused by the surgery and treatment of the brain tumour itself.
Once the child is discharged from the hospital, there is no guaranteed pathway of rehabilitation or access to suitable education, therapies, services or physio. That causes tremendous additional strain on the family as they seek to access and fight for the appropriate step-down care. In many cases, the lack of those therapies means that the recovery and life chances of the child or young person are nowhere near as good as they could or should be.
In this place, we want life to be a success. I pay particular tribute to Success Charity and Dr Helen Spoudeas, who has worked tirelessly to ensure that these brain acquired injuries are taken more seriously and that a concerted effort is made to ensure the best possible recovery. Success Charity exists to advocate for survivors and provide them with the care and support that they need and deserve. It has its annual conference at the Royal College of Physicians this Saturday, which will give families an opportunity to share experiences and make friends with other survivors, siblings and parents, and to listen to inspirational speakers.
Having given some thought to this issue, and having discussed it with others, I think that an appropriate approach would be to introduce a commitment that every child and their family would be entitled to a carefully crafted package that ensures that all the needs of a growing and developing child are met, including access to education services, and that the best person to ensure the implementation of this package would be an occupational therapist.
This Government want the UK to be considered a science and technology superpower. The UK must start setting the pace for recovery rather than fall further behind. Business as usual threatens the UK’s ability to lead clinical trials for brain tumours. Brain tumour research must be seen as a critical priority, with Government developing a strategic plan for adequately resourcing and funding discovery and translational and clinical research. Robust tissue collection and storage facilities must be put in place across the country. As a Government Minister said in this place only last week, every willing patient must automatically be part of a clinical trial, and that includes collecting and storing tissue for research. There must be equity of access to clinical trials and a robust and up-to-date clinical trial database. The regulatory process must be simplified, with the introduction of tax relief and incentives for investors to encourage investment for the longer-term periods necessary to develop and deliver new brain tumour drugs.
There is so much more that could be said, and I am sure that much more will be covered this afternoon. I hope that the Minister will take the report and our recommendations seriously, and that he will have an opportunity to come back to us at a later date—when he may have more time than that afforded to him at the close of this debate—to set out how the Government intend to respond to our recommendations. Will he also agree to meet me and members of the all-party group to discuss the recommendations of our Brain Tumour Research report? Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) and to the House for intervening on this very important debate—like others, I am fascinated by what is being said—but may I ask whether the Government have notified the Speaker’s Office that they intend to make a statement about the semi-briefings being made to the media that they have decided to pause or stop whole elements of HS2? Surely that would be best done through a statement to the House, rather than through elements of the media. I would be grateful for your guidance as to whether a statement should be made, and whether the Speaker’s Office has received any notification that the Government are inclined to do so.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for raising this issue and for giving me advance notice of his intention to do so. So far as I am aware, as we stand no such request has been made to the Speaker’s Office. Mr Speaker has made it abundantly plain on very many occasions that he expects information of this kind to be given from the Dispatch Box to this House, as a courtesy, before it is made available to anybody else. The right hon. Gentleman has made his point. Mr Speaker will have heard it, and I do not doubt that those on the Government Front Bench will have heard it as well.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
The reason that I rise to participate in this debate is that just under two years ago a constituent wrote to me. He revealed that he had a brain tumour and asked me to go along to an APPG meeting to discuss ways in which we could try to find a cure. I went along and I must confess that little did I know then that I would end up taking part in the inquiry. We had, I think, six evidence sessions and we heard from a lot of people. The report, which the hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) referred to, distils into its recommendations what we heard from those who contributed and who were very patient in answering the many questions that we put to them.
I pay tribute to the hon. Member, who chairs the APPG and who chaired the inquiry. He has done so brilliantly, cheerfully and in a way that has brought out the best from all of the people who appeared before us, who came along to let us draw on their expertise, to share their frustrations and to offer their ideas and suggestions. It has been an honour and a privilege to work with him and all the other hon. Members here who took part. I also thank the wonderful secretariat from Brain Tumour Research for supporting us in our work and for pulling the report together so skilfully.
A cancer diagnosis is a terrible thing, although statistics tell us that one in two of us will receive such a diagnosis during our lifetime. I think most of us, if we are honest, would say that we wince when we hear the word “cancer”, because all too often it conjures the idea of a downward path to the end of our lives. Any of us who has been through that experience, either ourselves or, in my case, with those we love, knows exactly how that feels, but death is not always the outcome. Our lives are not preordained, and we have seen real advances in the treatment of certain types of cancer in recent years—breast cancer is a good example—and, overall, I am advised that cancer survival rates in the UK have doubled in the last 40 years.
But when it comes to brain tumours, the blunt truth is that there has been almost no progress at all. The five-year survival rate for glioblastoma, the most aggressive form, is 6.8%, and the average length of survival is between 12 and 18 months.
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend refers to the average length of survival as being 18 months. Actually, it is nine months. His figure suggests that everybody completes treatment. Nine months is the life expectancy of somebody diagnosed with glioblastoma.
Hilary Benn
I absolutely take my hon. Friend’s point, which reinforces, in all of us, our awareness of just how awful this diagnosis is, and it is the answer to the question that every person who receives such a diagnosis asks their doctor: “How long have I got?” Eight or nine months is no time at all.
Dr Matt Williams, a clinical oncologist, is quoted in the report:
“Every week I have to tell patients that there is nothing more we can offer. I have now been a consultant for 10 years and these conversations are the same now as when I started.”
That is why a brain tumour is a devastating diagnosis. A patient quoted in the report says:
“It’s devastating and living with a time bomb in your head.”
That is a very good description of what it must feel like. In those circumstances, what do patients and loved ones want? What we would all want is to make sure that we are doing everything we possibly can to try to change that.
Mr Carmichael
I speak about this publicly from time to time, and I am always struck by the number of people who say to me, “Thank you for doing that, because this took my father”—or their brother, their neighbour, their friend or whoever—“and I had no idea that this had been their life experience.” When I was growing up, 40 or 50 years ago, a cancer diagnosis really was not talked about—it was almost taboo—and I think we are in the same place with brain cancers. If we are to make the progress we need, we all have to start talking about this much more. The experience has to be shared.
Hilary Benn
I agree completely with what the right hon. Gentleman has said. To borrow a phrase, it’s good to talk about brain cancer. That is why we are here in this Chamber today. We are here to raise awareness, because loved ones dying remains, among some people, a great taboo, about which we are fearful of saying anything. When my late first wife died of cancer at the age of 26, I was struck by the fact that my colleagues at work, though wonderful people, found it almost impossible to mention what had happened when I went back to work. I understand why, because before it happened to me I would have been like them. I would have thought I would say the wrong thing or cause someone to break down in tears. When it happens to you, you come to realise that there is nothing special to say; you just have to go up to the person and say, “How are you?” and listen. Yes, they will cry and you will cry, but that is so much better than people hiding it inside, with the suffering that it brings.
That is what this report is trying to do—it is trying to make sure that we are doing everything we can. There are good reasons why brain cancer is proving so difficult to treat. I learnt about that, as did the other members of the inquiry panel. The brain is a complex organ. I had never heard of the blood-brain barrier before. I am not sure I still understand it, but I heard a lot about it in the evidence we received. We learnt about treatments that had been tried and had failed, and about the desperation of those with brain tumours to get on to trials that might just offer some hope, not of a cure, but of a few more months. For someone who has received a diagnosis of a brain tumour, every second—let alone every minute, week or month—is extremely precious. We heard of the despair of people who are unable to get this for themselves or their loved ones, and it is so particularly poignant when it is children who have a brain tumour.
So we are calling for a renewed and determined focus on doing every single thing we can to change the situation, not because we are naive about the difficulties, which are many, but because it is the very least we can do for the people who find themselves in this position. So, of course, we have called for greater investment. I thought the hon. Member for St Ives explained well why the funds that have been made available and set aside for brain tumour research—I welcome them enormously—have not all been allocated and spent. It is not for want of willingness; it relates to the point he made about the lack of suitable research proposals coming forward and the frustration, which came across so clearly in that one evidence session in particular, of those who have put their research proposals to the research bodies, have been knocked back and feel, “They did not really understand what we are trying to do.” That is because those who sit on those panels may not have expertise in the field of brain tumour research, which is why we strongly encourage the research councils to look more widely at, and more favourably upon, proposals for brain tumour research.
We have a funding system that has been built in silos. It needs to be better joined up, from basic science through to clinical trials. At this point, I wish to pay tribute, as we all would, to the clinicians, scientists, doctors and others who work their socks off to try to crack this problem and find a treatment. That is why we have made some very specific recommendations. The example of biobanking and tissue samples seemed so simple when people talked about it. When we are dealing with any disease, but particularly this one, does it not make sense to pool all of the information that we have available about what we have learnt, what we still do not know, what may work and what may not? Clearly, that is not happening, even though it is a simple thing to do so that anyone undertaking research can draw upon all the available material as they apply their mind, scientific skill and determination to finding a cure.
We are also calling for patients with brain tumours to have equity of access to trials of new anti-cancer drugs that currently may be available only to patients with other types of malignant cancers. There can be a fear that if other people are brought into the trial, it will somehow skew the result. However, if a person is dying, that is not their concern. Their concern is: “Might this possibly work to save my life or the life of the person I love?”
I hope that this report and the views of all those people who so generously gave their time—we thank all of them—will have an impact as, collectively, we roll up our sleeves, redouble our efforts, and express an even greater determination to find treatments and cures for this cruel disease that shortens the lives of so many people whom we have come to know or know already and love. What keeps us going in difficult times is hope, and I think these recommendations offer exactly that. As one patient said, “If you have hope, you have life.”
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Seven Members are trying to catch my eye. I will start the wind-ups at 4.30 pm. That will mean eight minutes for Back Benchers, 10 minutes for the two wind-ups and then two minutes for Mr Thomas. If we stick to the eight-minute mark, everyone will get roughly the same time, so I ask everyone please to show some consideration for their colleagues.
Holly Mumby-Croft (Scunthorpe) (Con)
First, let me offer my thanks to the Backbench Business Committee for allowing time for this really important debate. I have been working on this issue for some time, alongside other members of the all-party parliamentary group on brain tumours who have produced this report. I wish to put on the record my thanks to all those who have contributed to the report and, specifically, to Brain Tumour Research for its help. May I also give a special thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas)? I greatly admire the way that he has led this process and the work that he has done on brain tumours over my time in this House, and I know that he will continue with that work.
Like many Members, I took a keen interest in this issue because of a constituent of mine, David Hopkins, who sadly was diagnosed with a brain tumour. He features in the all-party group’s report. In September 2020, David went to Scunthorpe General Hospital because he was unwell. That was right in the middle of the covid pandemic, so he was alone and had to go through the experience without his family with him. He was given the devastating news that he had a brain tumour—a glioblastoma. As we have heard today, the life expectancy of person who is diagnosed with a glioblastoma is between 12 and 18 months, so it is an utterly devastating diagnosis to receive for a family man and a very much-loved member of our community.
David underwent bouts of chemo and radiotherapy, and he sought personalised immune therapy in Germany that cost £150,000. Unfortunately, a scan in April 2021 showed further tumour progressions and he had to have two craniotomies. By the following July, David had exhausted all treatment options that the NHS could provide for him and began NeoPeptide vaccine treatment, again in Germany. Sadly, this did not save David and he died in November 2021, leaving behind his children, Dylan, Lydia and Sydney, and his wife Nicki. I should say that Nicki is a force of nature. We are incredibly proud of her in Scunthorpe. She has gone on to raise funds for Brain Tumour Research and she ran the London Marathon. I commend Nicki for the work that she has done in this area.
As I have already mentioned, people with glioblastoma may have only 12 to 18 months to live. The five-year survival rate for this cancer is still only 12%. By comparison, this rate has increased for cancers such as breast cancer and leukaemia to 85% and 54% respectively. This is not a coincidence; there has been extensive research and funding for treatment for these cancers, and we need to find treatment and cures for people such as David.
The Government have pledged £40 million to fund brain tumour research. That is neither a small nor inconsequential amount of money. It shows that there is political will to solve the issue, but will alone is not enough. Only £15 million of that pot has been spent, and that underspend must be addressed. As the report explains, there are serious shortcomings in the current funding system when it comes to accessing the funding. We simply need to get the money into the hands of doctors, researchers and the people who know what to do with it—the people who are, as we have heard, working their socks off to find a cure for this terrible disease. A further step that the Government can take in the right direction is to recognise that this is a priority and to develop a plan, backed by the pledged money, that will support research from beginning to end.
The report contains a number of key recommendations and proposals, and I will highlight a few of them. First, any treatment that is made available must be tested beforehand to assess its efficacy—we understand that—but there is a dearth of available trials, and the number of people participating in them is shockingly low. There are instances in which people with brain tumours are excluded from trials owing to concerns about the side effects from which they might suffer. Sometimes, people are just not aware that a trial is running until it is too late for them to participate.
Surveys have shown that people want to participate in trials—I think that we all instinctively understand that that is the case—and we should make it as easy as possible for them to do when clinically appropriate. Guidance must be given on the inclusion of brain tumour patients in early-phase cancer trials. More mutation-focused studies should be commissioned, and the available trials should be listed in one single source that is available to patients at their bedside, as well as to clinicians.
Secondly, another issue raised throughout the enquiry was one that researchers often encounter when taking their findings from labs into treatment centres. Conducting this translational research costs money, but researchers are impeded by a system that is difficult to navigate, meaning they cannot access money that the Government have pledged or put forward. It is ludicrous that scientists spend time and money and provide expertise on research that might go to waste because they cannot take it through the next steps. I would encourage the Government to look closely at the proposals to improve access to funding and for the MRC to introduce a fund to accelerate the pathway from discovery research to translational development.
The report provides answers on why we seem to be stuck, as it were, on brain tumour research, and why we have not made as much progress as we might have on tackling the disease. People suffering from brain tumours do not have the luxury of time, and we owe it to the people who will be diagnosed in future to take action that gives them the best possible chance of survival, so that families such as the Hopkins family in Scunthorpe do not lose the people they love.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I actually got it wrong. There are only two wind-ups of 10 minutes each, plus two minutes for Derek Thomas, so Members have a bit more than eight minutes. Just don’t go wildly over, please. I call Siobhain McDonagh.
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
I crave the indulgence of the House for the speech that I am about to make.
On 27 November 2021, my beautiful, unique, tough, resilient, successful sister collapsed in front of me and had a series of fits. Five hours later, in University College Hospital, two doctors named Henry told me that they suspected that she had a brain tumour, but as this was the NHS, MRI scans were not done at the weekend, so they could not confirm their diagnosis. On Wednesday, when I stepped on to her ward, she demanded—and everybody here who knows her will be able to hear her say it—that I ask the ward doctor to come and speak to her. She said, “It’s bad, Siobhain, because he can’t look at me.” And it was.
For the woman who had run Labour’s only two consecutive successful general election campaigns, and achieved her ultimate ambition to see two full-term Labour Governments, the diagnosis was of a glioblastoma. All her toughness evaporated, and there was my little sister with a diagnosis that meant that she might have nine months left—a condition for which there was no cure, for which treatment had not made progress in over 30 years. Just before Christmas, she had the tumours removed by two amazing female surgeons, Róisín Finn and Anna Miserocchi at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, but this was post Brexit, so there were not enough nurses to keep all the operating theatres open, and Margaret’s operation was cancelled three times. I leave it to Members to guess my reaction to that, and how we got that operation in the end.
The best piece of advice I have ever received in my life, and I have received many bits of good advice, was from the clinical nurse specialist. When we asked her where Margaret should go for post-operative treatment— St George’s, down the road from where we live; the Royal Marsden, around the corner; or to stay at University College—Róisín said, “We have Professor Paul Mulholland, and he is the best. He is the best in the UK, and he is the best in Europe.” I want to confirm to the House that he is the best. He is why Margaret is still alive.
What you get when you have your tumour removed, if you live that long—many people do not—is six weeks’ radiotherapy, followed by six months’ chemotherapy with a drug called temozolomide. That drug was introduced in 2005, and since then there have been no variations to the gold-standard treatment in our NHS, so when you read articles such as the one in The Times on Monday, telling us all how successful cancer treatment in the UK is—how 85% of people with a breast cancer diagnosis, 55% of people with a bowel cancer diagnosis, and 98% of people with a prostate cancer diagnosis will get to live for 10 years—do not believe that it is the same for brain cancer. The Times may have chosen a brain as the photograph for the top of the article, but those statistics do not apply.
Margaret had her treatment in early new year 2022; like so many, she could not go through with it—the treatment would have killed her. At that point, where do you go? There were no alternatives. It is not that there are a few trials: there are no trials, and there is nowhere to go. So, like so many of us who are lucky enough to have friends and family and access to money, we looked to the private sector and international travel. Margaret has been on a course of treatment with nivolumab, a Bristol Myers Squibb drug that was seen to be unsuccessful in the treatment of brain cancer, and Avastin, and has been going monthly to Düsseldorf, Germany for four days. That might seem an easy thing to do, but taking a seriously ill person on an aeroplane to a hotel, with no access to healthcare and no emergency services, would be foolhardy unless there was nothing else in this country. There was, and is, nothing.
The help that we received from Dr Sahinbas and his wife, who runs their small clinic in Germany, with hyperthermic treatment was amazing. Their kindness was overwhelming, but there were times when I thought that I would not be able to get Margaret on the plane—that somebody would stop her because she was so unwell. There was one night when I stayed and stared at her, because I did not think she was going to make it through the night, and how would I explain that to anybody?
By June 2022, Margaret had a scan, and they could not see the tumour. When I asked Dr Mulholland, “Is this normal for this treatment?”, he said, “Normal? I have never tried this on anybody before.” Nobody has ever had this drug so early in their treatment or at the quantity that Margaret has had it, or at the same time as hyperthermia therapy. Those who know about Margaret’s experience have come to me and sought support from Dr Mulholland because there is nothing else. The number that the NHS is currently forsaking and, for the lucky people who can get the funds to do it, abandoning to international travel is nothing short of a complete and utter national scandal. I wonder what my mum who came here in 1947 to train as part of the first generation of NHS nurses from Ireland would say about the NHS abandoning her daughter.
But things can be different. Things can be better—maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next year, and maybe not within Margaret’s lifetime—and they can be different if we want them to be different. I ask the Minister to please not give the NHS or the cancer research charities any more money until they guarantee that at least 200 sufferers every year get access to a trial—that would be 1,000 patients over the lifetime of a Parliament—because with those trials we can begin to understand what works and what does not.
The Minister should give no more money to the NHS trainers until they commit that every young doctor training to be a medical oncologist has to go through a course on brain tumour. At the moment, there is no compulsory training. The reason why there is nobody on those wards and nobody doing the work is that we are training nobody, and we are training nobody because nobody is required to do the course, and it was like that 15 years ago with melanoma. Some 15 years ago, the survival rates were so poor, but somebody came up with the idea that immunotherapy would be successful, and today we see successful survival rates equivalent to the best in any discipline. We also see young doctors wanting to take on the specialism, because it is exciting, there is hope, there is a future and there are alternatives.
Who in their right mind today would become a medical oncologist in glioblastoma? There is no hope, no future, no trials—nothing. It would have to be someone with the belligerence and tenacity of my sister Margaret, and we have found that person in Paul Mulholland, but there needs to be more Pauls and more determination. We must have access to trials for 200 people and the training of medical oncologists, and we must require the pharmaceutical industry—because we will make no progress without it—to trial every drug that gets licensed to deal with tumours on those with brain tumours, so that there is access to existing drugs that can be repurposed.
I am sorry about the time I have taken for this speech, but I want to tell the House that when I go to bed tonight I will keep my ear open for Margaret to hear her call my name, I will get up and I will go into her room, and it may be that she is asleep and I have imagined that she has called me. I accept that. That is my duty. It is what I have learned from my family, from my faith and from my politics. I accept that. That is my duty. It is what I have learned from my family, what I have learned from my faith, and what I have learned from my politics. I accept my responsibility. All that I want is for the NHS, cancer research charities, and pharmaceutical companies to stand up and accept their responsibility, and give some hope to the 3,200 people who will be diagnosed with a glioblastoma this year.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
That was a very brave speech, Siobhain. And please send our love from Parliament to Margaret.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
It is a privilege to follow the powerful speech from the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), and like you, Mr Deputy Speaker, I congratulate her on the bravery of sharing that deeply personal family story. No matter how difficult and emotional it was for her to share that story with us, Parliament is richer and this debate is all the more powerful for the story that she has told. I thank her for sticking with it, and for sharing that in the House this afternoon. I also send my best wishes to her sister.
This is an incredibly important debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for giving us the opportunity to debate the issues around brain tumours, finding a cure, and saving and prolonging lives. I particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) for the dedication he has shown in opening this debate, for his leadership of the all-party group on brain tumours, for working so hard to raise awareness of brain tumours, and for highlighting the importance of research in improving clinical outcomes for brain tumour patients. It was a privilege to serve under him on the all-party group inquiry that led to the recommendations he spoke of earlier, and the report, “Brain Tumours, Pathway to a Cure—breaking down the barriers”. If I wish to convey a simple message in my remarks this afternoon, it is a sincere plea to my hon. Friend the Minister to take this serious, evidence based report seriously, and to act on its recommendations for the good of all brain tumour patients today and in the future. It is to save lives.
As others have said, despite £40 million being made available by the Department and delivered through National Institute for Health and Care Research in 2018, less than half of that funding made it to researchers. In fact, as of May 2021, only £8.8 million had so far been allocated by NIHR for dedicated brain tumour research. It was said by the Department that more had not been allocated due to
“a lack of new basic science discoveries”
but I suggest that that is completely missing the point, and represents a huge omission in the types of patients being offered trial treatments.
Clinical research is pivotal to improving health outcomes for patients with brain tumours, by developing new methods of prevention, diagnosis and treatment. The benefits of clinical research extend far and wide, with evidence showing that hospitals involved in research provide higher quality care, and have lower levels of patient mortality. The APPG’s inquiry uncovered that there is a gap in research funding along the pathway of discovery, and translational and clinical research. That manifests itself first in an uneven distribution of clinical trials across the country, secondly in the inability of clinicians to secure Government funding for translational research, which takes discoveries from research to the bedside of patients, and thirdly in a lack of staff time for research, and a lack of NHS resource to support those patients on funded research studies.
The all-party parliamentary group report lays out in stark terms the extent to which years of underfunding and neglect for priority areas of research into treatments made the task of reaching parity between patient groups that much harder. In particular, the report highlights how the lack of funding for research into childhood brain tumours, where survival rates for the most aggressive tumours have remained unchanged for decades, have led to frustrated families—upset families, worried families —seeking costly and unproven treatment abroad, which in turn prolongs suffering both for patients and their loved ones. Indeed, five years after the allocation of funding, there are no new treatments and the five-year survival for patients is, I believe, still just 12%. By 25 January, just £15 million had been awarded since June 2018, with £6 million of that not easily identifiable as actually relevant to brain tumours. That, I respectfully put to my hon. Friend the Minister, is not good enough.
The report’s analysis of funding to date highlights that the Medical Research Council and the National Institute for Health and Care Research contribution was £1 million each, with Cancer Research UK contributing £13 million. Researchers have become increasingly reliant on charities such as Cancer Research UK and Brain Tumour Research. These organisations—do not get me wrong, Mr Deputy Speaker—do fantastic work day in, day out, demonstrating the urgent need for more funding, yet their calls are not being met.
At this point, I would like to pay tribute to one of the most inspirational campaigners and fighters on this cause, my constituent Sue Farrington Smith, who is the chief executive of Brain Tumour Research. She raised £108,000 in the first year of the charity following the tragic loss of her niece Ali, who passed away less than three weeks before her eighth birthday. Sue was subsequently invited to talk about Ali’s Dream at the second UK Brain Tumour Society conference in 2002. She then helped to facilitate the meeting of brain tumour charities, researchers and clinicians at a UK Brain Tumour Society workshop in March 2003 to develop a vision for the brain tumour community. Twelve years since its inception, Brain Tumour Research has provided funding in excess of £15 million to early-stage science and continues to support sustainable research across the UK, raising awareness of brain tumours and campaigning for better outcomes. Sue and everyone at Brain Tumour Research are true heroes, making a daily difference. They deserve to be recognised and credited for all they do. Indeed, Brain Tumour Research continues working with and—as others have mentioned—providing the secretariat to the APPG. I am very grateful for the support provided with the most recent report, as outlined by the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn).
To conclude, I wholeheartedly support the report’s recommendations, as detailed and outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives, including the establishment of an NIHR trials database that is readily accessible to all clinicians across the UK, with clearly defined and regularly updated eligibility criteria and location information, and an awareness campaign that is delivered through the NHS to ensure that the trial database is available to both clinicians and patients.
I want to end by looking back at the inquiry evidence sessions and reflecting on what consultant neurosurgeon Babar Vaqas told us:
“As a clinician I want to be able to sit down with my patient and input all the relevant data about their brain tumour type and their treatment pathway and then, to search an up-to-date progressive UK trial registry. This would enable me to discuss appropriate trial options there and then, giving the patient choices that a modern health provider should be able to offer.”
Let us heed those words, embrace the report and make a difference.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
There is a tradition in the House that people say it is an honour to follow the hon. Member who has just spoken. Usually, most of us do not mean it, but it really was a privilege to be in the Chamber to hear the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh). Some Members may not have got the subtleties with regard to Margaret. Margaret is not someone who will take no for an answer. In fact, you are lucky if you are still standing when you have said no to Margaret on many issues—I want to make that absolutely clear. We all send Margaret our love and wish her the very best. I thank my hon. Friend for sharing that, as I know how difficult it was.
We are all coming to the debate with different experiences. I want to thank a lady called Sonya Kean, who approached me some time ago to ask whether I would involve myself in campaigning for brain tumour research funding. Sonya has a son called Conall who suffers from brain tumours. It really brought home to me the distress that this illness causes for the sufferer and for the whole family, but also the incredible courage and fortitude that families display when they have to rise to the challenge and cope with seeking treatment and supporting the family member.
My experience with Sonya and others is that there is a real struggle to be heard at times. There is a struggle in access to treatment but also to find support for some basics. One example is time off for family members when they are taking another member for treatment, and financial support is another. The financial impact can be quite devastating on a family. That relates to the inadequacy of the welfare benefits system, particularly support for carers and carers allowance, to follow on from what my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) said.
What comes across is how wonderful the support and treatment is from incredibly dedicated, devoted, caring and hardworking doctors, nurses, oncologists and others. Paul Mulholland has been mentioned time and again by a number of people, as an example of the standard of care that everyone should receive throughout the NHS. I want to profoundly thank Sonya, Conall and the family, and all the staff and professionals who have been working so hard. I also thank the chair of the APPG, the hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas), and all its members. We have hundreds of APPGs but that is possibly one of the most effective. As a result of its diligent commitment, we have in front of us an extremely professional report that the Government now can use as the guide and agenda for their work. I thank the APPG for all that it has done.
I will not go through all the points that have been made, but there are some fundamental steps that need taking. We have been having a debate for some time around these particular areas of work. The reality is that all the health imperatives require a foundation of funding—conditional funding, I accept that. Last year we debated cancer treatments overall, and the figures are worth getting on the record. Nearly £150 million has been spent on breast cancer research; £130 million on leukaemia research; £130 million on prostate cancer research; £24 million on brain tumour research. The issue today is not just the allocation of funds but access to funds. The report very succinctly but effectively demonstrates what barriers exist and how they could be overcome.
The sufferers and families I have met are at a loss as to why the money that has already been allocated has not really reached the frontline of research. The report gives reasons for that, but it also demonstrates how the hurdles could be overcome relatively easily. It is about ensuring an element of co-ordination. I was shocked to read on page 12 that a number of researchers are simply moving away from research in the field, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central and others have mentioned, because they cannot overcome the hurdles in access to funding support.
The next step, as the report mentions, is to address the profound need for leadership. The appeal for a champion who sits across the two key Departments—the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology—is fundamental. We need someone who can bring everything together dynamically and drive the report’s agenda. Frankly, there are plenty of ex-Ministers on the Government Back Benches with enough experience to drive that agenda effectively.
One of the first steps, exactly as the chair of the all-party group says, is to have a ministerial meeting to go through the agenda with members of the all-party group and work with the appointed champion to chase the progress of its implementation. There have been too many reports on different conditions that have been well received but largely shelved because there has been no drive. The APPG has demonstrated that it can work effectively to produce a report, and I think it could work hand in glove with the new champion to ensure that the agenda is implemented effectively. It could happen relatively quickly: we could have an announcement within a fortnight, we could get the new champion in place, the APPG could meet that person and the Minister, and we would then have some drive.
The report makes a recommendation to look at the US system whereby reports are regularly submitted to Congress—in this country it would be this House—on the implementation of the agenda. I may have got this wrong, but I believe that the APPG report includes an element of legislative enforcement so a statutory duty is placed on all those participating.
Another point is about the co-ordination of the different groups, which the APPG seems to have brought together. Not only has it received information and evidence from the individual research bodies, but a discussion has clearly taken place with the pharmaceutical industry. The APPG has almost been like a summit meeting for the different agencies. Trying to formalise that in some form would be really helpful.
On pharmaceutical companies, I want to make a point that might sound discordant but is not. The report makes a recommendation about tax reliefs for pharmaceutical companies. Having looked at tax reliefs in other areas, I am not confident in the role that they have played. The argument is that they will attract venture capital towards the research and development of various drugs and treatments. I am not convinced about tax reliefs, however; I think it is better to award conditional grants, which I think are much more effective. My own view, for which I have been arguing for some time—I have to throw this in—is that we should have a state-run and owned pharmaceutical company so that we can have stable investment, rather than just investment driven by short-term profit.
What I see as the key element in the report, for which I am really grateful to the APPG, is the immediate review of the speed of decision making on the award and allocation of funding for research. That is critical. As my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden says, it is also about the speed of access to treatment. People with nine months do not have time to wait for the decision-making processes that we have at the moment, which are literally costing people’s lives. We desperately need to speed up the overall process, and the report lays the foundations for that. I also agree with the report about the ringfencing of funding for research into child brain tumours: it is a tragically neglected area and so many people suffer as a result.
The report says, rightly in my view, that many brain tumour patients and their families are feeling let down by a lack of leadership and drive from the Government. When we explain to people in our constituencies that this is the biggest killer among the under-40s, they begin to wake up and ask why it is happening. Well, I do not want to be here in a year’s time for another debate like this, and another report from the APPG, and to hear that it is still happening because the current report has not been implemented in full. I urge the Government to meet the APPG, establish a champion and start work on this agenda in the next couple of weeks. If they do so, we may be able to turn this around, and perhaps prevent more tragedies such as those that many of our constituents have experienced in recent years.
Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)
It is a privilege to speak in the debate. We have heard some excellent speeches. I wish Margaret all the best, and I also wish the Hopkins family all the best, because I have seen the devastation that brain cancer causes. I also lost a close family friend, Matthew Fearn, and I have seen that devastation in the Fearn family. It is horrible, because this is a horrible progressive disease.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) and the all-party group on their excellent report, which I have only just heard about and have been reading during the debate.
Brain tumour research is receiving growing support from the Government, which is welcome news, but, as we have heard, more can and should be done. Brain tumours are the biggest cancer killer of people under 40 in the UK, but most people only discover that they have a brain tumour when they turn up at A&E, as Margaret did. That is why Brain Tumour Awareness Month is so important.
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
We have been talking about research funding specifically, but the hon. Lady is right: many sufferers will only find out that they have a brain tumour when they experience a significant medical event. For many others, however, the symptoms will be present for a number of weeks, if not months. Does she agree that more could be done to raise awareness, among both health professionals and those who are potentially at risk, of the common signs and symptoms of a tumour?
Mrs Drummond
Absolutely. I was going to come on to that. The bad news does not stop at a late diagnosis; the effects of being diagnosed too late are devastating. The bleak reality is that the likelihood of survival for 12 months for someone diagnosed with a brain tumour in A&E is about 30%. We must do better than this for the people who are diagnosed and for their families. All the cancer charities recognise the seriousness of the situation, and I know that the Health Secretary and his colleagues do as well, but how can we improve it? How can we identify the signs earlier?
When I spoke in the debate on brain tumour research in 2016, I praised the work of Professor Geoff Pilkington at the University of Portsmouth. In 2010, the university established a centre of excellence in conjunction with the charity Brain Tumour Research. Professor Pilkington has now retired, but the work that he did made much progress, and is now being continued in other research centres funded by the charity—although, sadly, I think no longer in Portsmouth.
Historically, brain cancer has received only about 1% of the total research funding of all cancers. As we have heard, that was increased with the announcement of a £65 million boost in 2018 from both the Department of Health and Social Care and Cancer Research UK. Centres of excellence need that money, because each brain tumour is unique and needs a different treatment pathway. The biggest gaps in research seem to involve childhood cancers, although brain tumours are the most common type of cancer in children. The understandable desperation of parents—and, as we have heard, of other patients too—has led to families’ seeking treatments, often overseas, that might not always be appropriate for this specific form of cancer, or even taking treatments that are unproven.
Inevitably, how the NHS treats brain tumours will be an area where there is much pressure on more funding. The history of healthcare in this country has always been one of improved diagnosis leading to more demand for clinical facilities, and research opening more treatment pathways. All of this costs money. In areas such as proton beam therapy, while it is good that we have The Christie centre in Manchester and that the UCLH centre is being added to it, it is difficult for patients to travel to those centres, particularly if they have been disabled by a brain tumour, and that is still an area where many people have to seek private treatment.
We need to develop both an academic and a medical pathway for people at the start of their careers to focus on brain tumour work in universities and clinical settings. As the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) said clearly in her amazing speech, we have some flagship research projects, but their existence is not as secure as that of establishments working on other cancers. One thing that could be done without costing huge amounts of money is support for early-career workers to build up institutional knowledge in the NHS, in the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and in other guardians of healthcare, which would help to sustain a higher pace of research and development and deployment of treatments.
I end by thanking everyone for the work they are doing in this field. We are at a point where every small improvement in diagnosis and treatment makes a big difference to the lives of people with brain cancers and their families. That comes back the figure I quoted earlier about the time of diagnosis; we have to shift it much further forward from the A&E department, to give people support in dealing with a form of cancer that is so often extremely aggressive.
Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) for securing this important debate. It has truly been a privilege to sit here listening to the heartfelt, knowledgeable and personal speeches that we have heard today. I am sure that everyone will share my awe at the bravery of my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh). She spoke not only as a formidable MP, but as a formidable sister. I also pay tribute to the ongoing work of Brain Tumour Research and the APPG on brain tumours for their dedication to raising awareness of the issues facing the brain tumour community and their efforts to improve research, treatment, and care outcomes.
Last week, I met my constituents Khuram and Yasmin, who bravely shared their daughter Amani’s story with me, as I will share it in the House today, in an effort to bring about the change and progress that they and we all want to see. Amani was diagnosed with a grade 4 glioblastoma after collapsing on her 22nd birthday in April 2020. As we have heard, treatment options available in the UK for glioblastomas are very limited and the standard of care Amani received failed to stop the tumour growing.
After discussions with Amani’s medical team, the family decided the best and only way forward would be to access a new trial drug, ONC201. Thanks to the generosity of family, friends and strangers, more than £100,000 was quickly raised to help finance that, and her father Khuram took it upon himself to fly to Germany to purchase ONC201—a father who should have been by his daughter’s side, having to raise funds and travel to Germany to get the drug that she needed.
Amani was a strong advocate for brain tumour research and campaigned tirelessly against the lack of funding to tackle this cruel disease. Throughout her ongoing battle, she was a true inspiration, launching a podcast to discuss her diagnosis, organising fundraising events in support of Brain Tumour Research and even receiving a master’s degree at her bedside. Despite her continued strength and determination, Amani lost her fight in February last year and died at the age of just 23. Her family were and are completely devastated, but have continued to campaign ever since in her memory.
Amani’s story and her parents’ determination to honour her legacy cannot fail to move us. However, while the fundraising efforts of that family and every family like them are massive achievements individually, they are a drop in the ocean compared with what we know is needed to tackle brain tumours effectively. We are all aware of the Government funding promise made in May 2018—a total of £40 million made available by the National Institute for Health and Care Research—yet the recent report by the APPG on brain tumours found that, as of January 2023, just £15 million had been awarded from that pot, £6 million of which was not easily identifiable as relevant to brain tumours, as we have heard.
When I spoke to Khuram and Yasmin, their biggest concern was that the funding that is so desperately needed has not materialised, despite the promises. We know that investment in research drives survival rates. As Khuram and Yasmin pointed out, the development and deployment of the covid-19 vaccine is a clear example that breakthroughs can happen in a very short time when funding is available and the political will is there.
Importantly, why are patients and families told to be satisfied with a system where we see unequal levels of care depending on the disease or illness that a person has? When it comes to brain tumours, why do family, friends and the wider community have to dip generously into their own pockets to ensure that people such as Amani have access to medical treatment and newly developed medicines in the hope of fighting their diagnosis?
Tragically, as we have heard from many right hon. and hon. Members, the continued lack of funding for brain tumour research means that Amani’s story is not uncommon. We have heard that brain tumours remain the biggest cancer killer of children and adults under 40. Unlike most cancers, brain cancer incidences are rising, yet no new treatments have been brought forward and the five-year survival rate for patients is still just 12%.
Another Luton resident fighting stage 4 glioblastoma is Moshin, a young father of three and husband. His family are left praying in hope and fundraising at one of the most distressing times of their lives. Should any family dealing with cancer or any health issue be spending their precious time and energy on fundraising for treatment? Another of the main issues identified in the APPG’s report was that the current funding system is unfit for purpose, because it functions in an insular manner. As a result, researchers are moving away from the field of brain tumour research towards other disease areas with more readily available and secure funding.
I will move on to some specific questions to the Minister. Will the Government hear the calls that have been made today and focus on delivering a strategy for adequately resourced, targeted and funded discovery and clinical research, with a joined-up approach from basic science through to clinical trials? Will the Minister share with us where the remainder of the promised money is, and will there be some transparency about where and how the money has been allocated? My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) asked powerfully about where some of the successful bids have come from, why they have been successful and, importantly, why others have not been.
Finally—I hope that the Minister will say yes to this one, because it requires him to make not a spending commitment, only a commitment to spend time with Amani’s parents—will he meet me and my constituents, Khuram and Yasmin, to hear from them directly about the impact that brain tumours have had on their family and how the Government can deliver change to ensure that other families in their position do not have to suffer such a tragedy? I know that it will mean so much to them that the issue is being debated in the House, but I also know that empty words will not cut it. We need firm commitments and an explanation, because no family in Luton North or anywhere else should have to go through what they have.
Lia Nici (Great Grimsby) (Con)
I have to admit that, until the last few days, I knew virtually nothing about brain tumours and brain cancer—after the last few days, I know just a tiny bit more. Often, members of the public are cynical about all-party parliamentary groups, but they do a huge amount of work, including to raise awareness for the public. One of our privileges in this place is that we can work with our constituents, who share their stories with us and tell us why we need to be aware of them so that we can do our jobs to, hopefully, raise awareness and have an impact on Government policy and different types of funding.
I am here because, as in many cases, a constituent, Julie Alison Grimble, wrote to me to ask whether I would attend the debate in order to help raise awareness about brain tumours. Her husband Neil went to the optician for an eye test, which revealed that he needed to be referred to hospital. When he went for his appointment, he was diagnosed with a stage 4 brain tumour. He was only 55 years old. He had two children, a son-in-law and one grandchild at that point. As we have heard with many colleagues’ cases in this debate, he was given a diagnosis of 12 to 18 months for how long he would be with us. Sadly, in 2021, at the age of 56—just in that year —he passed away.
This enables us to realise the amount of work that the APPG and Brain Tumour Research are doing to raise awareness, because if it had not been for Julie writing to me and telling her family story, I would not be able to try to help in a small way to raise awareness. The fact that Neil was diagnosed at stage 4 reveals that we need to make members of the public much more aware of the symptoms or signs to look for. I would like to thank the opticians and ophthalmologists out there, because it is quite often through an eye test that people learn that they need to have treatment. It is not just brain tumours; people can have a whole range of different health issues diagnosed from going to their optician. It is very important that people understand that.
As colleagues have said, the “Pathway to a Cure” report, commissioned by Brain Tumour Research and the APPG, has revealed that, astonishingly, there is an underspend in the funding for research. That also raises the point that it needs to be easier for researchers to apply, and for there not to be so many different types of funds, which makes it more complicated for people to access such research funds. On a more practical level, perhaps people studying medicine, those actually practising it and researchers may not actually be aware of what is available. I was talking to my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Holly Mumby-Croft) about this situation, and we know that every treatment comes from a breakthrough, but if there is not enough research, it is highly unlikely that we will be able to have breakthroughs and make connections with other types of cancer as well.
I would just like to thank Julie very much for getting in touch with me. I will continue to work to raise awareness and, I hope, show that we can do some good, which is the value of debates such as this.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
We now come to the Front-Bench speeches. I call the shadow Minister.
Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate, the hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) for securing it, and all those charities and organisations that work so hard to push this issue up the agenda, including Brain Tumour Research and the Tessa Jowell Foundation. I also thank all hon. Members who have spoken on behalf of their constituents so very passionately and powerfully, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), who I thought gave an incredibly brave speech, which moved us all to tears—she did not mean to move us to tears; she meant to move us to action, and that is what we must resolve to do as a result of today’s debate.
We have heard that 16,000 people a year are diagnosed with a brain tumour, 3,200 of whom are diagnosed with glioblastoma, the most common primary brain tumour in adults. Getting this diagnosis can be utterly devastating —life can change in the blink of an eye—because we know that more children and adults under the age of 40 lose their lives to brain tumours than to any other cancer. They take the lives of more women under 35 than breast cancer, and the lives of more men under 70 than prostate cancer. I think we owe it to all those who have been diagnosed with a brain tumour and their families to set out a proper plan to improve outcomes. In particular —and I think this is the most important point for all of us here today—what are we going to do differently in the next 10, 20 or 30 years, because nothing has changed in the past 30 years? If we keep repeating what we have done before, we will only get the same result.
But I do not believe that it has to be this way. We have seen huge improvements in survival rates for so many other cancers. We know that 54% of people diagnosed with leukaemia will now survive for more than five years, and 85% of those diagnosed with breast cancer will survive for five years or more. That is an incredible success story, and I think that we need to look long and hard at how that was achieved. What changes were made, yes, in research funding, but also in training, in clinical trials, and in other forms of treatment and support?
We know that when we put our minds to it—when we have leadership, focus and a plan for action—we can deliver results. We must do that here. Fewer than 12% of people diagnosed with a brain tumour will survive beyond five years and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden said, the average survival for patients with glioblastoma is only nine months. That has not changed for 30 years. We need a different approach.
Many hon. Members have rightly said that proper investment in research is vital. Since 2002, only 1% of the national spend on cancer research has been allocated to brain tumours. That is around £126 million. Over the same period, just over £550 million was spent on leukaemia research, and £775 million on breast cancer research.
I do not think that anyone doubts that has made a real difference to the outcomes we have seen, so I hope that, when the Minister stands up to reply, he will say how he will deal with this issue. We know how this works: more research goes into areas where more people are suffering from a condition, but that cannot be the answer. I hope that the Minister will say whether the Government intend to change those funding proportions, and if so, how.
However, alongside investment there must be reform, because the current system is not working. We have heard from many hon. Members that, in response to the campaigning of the late Dame Tessa Jowell, the Government committed £40 million in funding on brain tumours to be made available via the National Institute for Health and Care Research. However, as of January 2023, just £15 million of that had been awarded. I would like the Minister to spell out why that has happened and what he will do to change it.
We must be much less risk averse when allocating research funding, and we must ensure that the people who are making the decisions fully understand the issues around brain tumours and research. I think that the Minister needs to explain whether NIHR actually has that expertise on its board, and if not, what he will do to change it.
We also must look at the issue, which many hon. Members have spoken about, of research funding getting stuck in lots of different silos. The Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology must work together much more closely to ensure that early-stage research quickly progresses to clinical trials, and then to the bedsides of patients via new treatments. Is there any sort of group or format to do that? If there is, it is obviously not working, so how does he intend to change that? That is one of the key asks of the APPG on brain tumours, so I think that we really need to get to the bottom of it.
I now want to focus on the issue of clinical trials—although, my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden spoke so powerfully that I almost feel that I should just sit down and let that speak for itself. However, I spoke to Professor Paul Mulholland, who is a medical oncologist who exclusively treats brain cancer, at University College Hospital, the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, and Mount Vernon Cancer Centre. He is, rightly, extremely concerned about how few, if any, patients with glioblastoma in this country are currently on clinical trials. Unless we significantly increase both the number and the size of those trials, we will never make progress and patients will be forced, if they have the means to do so, to go to other countries. That is not acceptable.
How are we going to do that? Professor Mulholland believes that the first change required is for all medical oncologists to receive mandatory training in primary brain cancer. We may be told that they receive training in brain cancer, but that usually relates to secondary brain cancer. He believes that there needs to be a minimum period of specific training, because it is not currently required. That will increase understanding of the issues and possibly the propensity to support and understand the risks and benefits of clinical trials.
The second change required is clear targets for increasing the number of brain tumour patients on drugs trials, starting with 200 a year and increasing to 1,000 a year in five years’ time. We must have a goal and must know how we are going to get there. The third change required is that the pharmaceutical sector must be involved— no ifs, no buts. Professor Mulholland believes that the Government need to have a very targeted working group, with Cancer Research UK, the pharma companies and Health Education England saying, “We’re going to make this happen,” and explaining how and when.
I know that the Minister has received many requests for meetings during this debate, but I urge him to meet Professor Mulholland to talk through those ideas. They are different and are not necessarily what others are calling for, but he has an idea about how things need to change. We need change, so I hope that that is what happens.
For all those who have died from brain tumours, for the families who have felt that devastating impact, for all those who are currently going through all the stress, strain and trauma of treatment, and for all the families who love them and want to make a difference, we need change and we need to get it right, and I really look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.
The Minister for Health and Secondary Care (Will Quince)
First, let me congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) on securing this debate on a very important topic and for his personal commitment to making progress on this devastating condition. Like him, I pay tribute to the life and work of Tessa Jowell, who, after a long and distinguished career on these Benches, left a legacy that lives on in the numerous initiatives that the Government are supporting.
I also thank hon. Members from across the House for their valuable interventions and comments today— I will come to them in turn—especially in regard to NIHR support for cancer research, the Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Mission and our commitment across Government to cancer research funding.
Before I turn to the contributions of individual Members, I want to touch on Government commitments, particularly the Baroness Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Mission. As my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives said, in 2018 the Government announced funding through the NIHR of £40 million over five years for brain tumour research as part of the brain cancer mission. I would like to draw on Tessa’s words. She said that this
“is not about politics but about patients and the community of carers who love and support them. It is…about the NHS but it is not just about money. It is about the power of kindness”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 25 January 2018; Vol. 788, c. 1169.]
We are grateful to all those who have provided care and support and who have campaigned for better funding for research, and to those involved in brain tumour research for keeping this nation at the forefront of scientific progress. Research, as many Members have set out this afternoon, remains key to progress. There are many challenges with brain tumour research, some of which have been set out today, but as Tessa implored us, we must not leave this in the “too difficult” box. I will now try to address the comments made by hon. Members in turn.
My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives rightly praised the work of the Realf family, whose petition led to significant funding and focus on brain tumour research. He rightly pushes us to ensure that we are spending the allocated funding on brain tumour research, and he asks us to look at the NIHR’s processes to make them more user-friendly. He followed the report in calling for a brain cancer champion, as did the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). I want us to be world leading in this sphere, so I will take that point away and ask the Secretary of State. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives might pick this up and run with it himself, given how he runs the APPG and given this superb report.
I will come back to research more generally a little later, but my hon. Friend talked about applications and the application process. As part of the £40 million fund, all the applications assessed as fundable in that open competition have been funded—in total, that is 13 of 95 applications, and a further three are under consideration. I very much encourage researchers to make those applications. We have to get it right, and I will come back to this later.
My hon. Friend touched on funding committees, which play a hugely important role. We have a diverse range of applications for funding and, as a result, there is a broad range of expertise sitting on the panels. The panels may or may not include people who specialise in brain tumour research. I understand the frustration of applicants, and work is already being done by the Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Mission, through customised workshops and the work of researchers, to enable people to resubmit their funding applications after understanding why they were not successful.
The right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) rightly praised the work of Brain Tumour Research. I understand his point about not only patients but consultants hearing the phrase, “There is nothing more I can offer or do for you.” We have to do what we can to change that. He rightly says the brain is a very complex organ, which is why treatment and research are so complicated—I will come back to this point if I have time.
My hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Holly Mumby-Croft) talked about the heartbreaking experience of David. She asked us simply to get the money into the hands of researchers, and I wish it were that simple. Understandably, this does not sit in the hands of Ministers—it would be totally inappropriate if it did. It sits in the hands of clinicians and experts in this field, but I completely understand the sense of urgency with which she makes the point. We spend around £1.3 billion a year on research, and we have to ensure that it is well spent and leads to research that gets treatments and drugs to patients in this country and around the globe.
The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) gave the most powerful testimony, sharing her sister Margaret’s experience. I am so very sorry to hear of her experience, which must have been very difficult to share. She spoke about cancer diagnosis and treatment, and we have come on so much, but I recognise that this is not universal across all cancer types and that we have much more to do.
The hon. Lady made a very strong case for clinical trials, and she spoke about the need to travel abroad. We cannot do every clinical trial in the UK, although I sometimes wish we could. There is global competition, but I give her my personal assurance that clinical trials are high on my agenda. I want to make sure that our United Kingdom has the best environment for clinical trials. We have launched the O’Shaughnessy review, and we are working with the NHS, the MHRA and NICE. We are trying to encourage patients through the NHS app to sign up to clinical trials. Of course, raising awareness of clinical trials is a huge area of interest and importance for me.
Siobhain McDonagh
I completely understand all the work that the Minister and everybody else is doing, but can he explain why it is not happening?
Will Quince
I will specifically address brain tumour research, but clinical trials are taking place in acute trusts across the country. There are fewer clinical trials in this area than I would want, and I will explain why a little later. Finally, I pass on my very best wishes to Margaret.
My hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) urges us to act on the report’s recommendations, and he is right to do so. I will look at those recommendations very carefully. He touched on the £40 million, and I will come on to that a little later. He also mentioned childhood brain tumours. There is insufficient time to go into the level of detail I would want to on that subject, and I would be happy to meet him and members of the all-party group to discuss what more we can do on childhood brain tumours and the treatment thereof.
The right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington talked about the courage and fortitude of families. He shared Sonya’s experience and talked about the importance of support for loved ones, and I will raise those issues with my counterparts at the Department for Work and Pensions. My hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) shared the impact on the Fearn family, which outlines why it is so important that we get this right. She touched on the importance of awareness, and how in this area there is a high prevalence of late presentation and late diagnosis, and the impact that has on prognosis.
The hon. Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) told Amani’s story and how the family had to fundraise to travel to take part in an international clinical trial. Of course, I send my condolences to Amani’s family, and I would be happy to meet Khuram and Yasmin to discuss this further. The hon. Lady asked where the money allocated is. It sits within NIHR and remains there; funding is allocated and it awaits suitable, fundable applications, so that is where we need to focus our efforts.
My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Lia Nici) rightly praised the work of the all-party group, which probably makes this the right time to turn to the report, “Pathway to a Cure”. I very much welcome the group’s investigation and report. I acknowledge the problems and issues that have been identified. Let me be clear: we want to fund more high-quality research to accelerate the field and help patients. The report makes a number of recommendations for actions by research funding agencies, such as the MRC and NIHR, on co-ordinating action and making funding available. Crucially, the report is clear that to make advances in brain tumour research we must bring together diverse disciplines. There are detailed recommendations here, with potentially far-reaching consequences, and the MRC, NIHR and I will consider responses and come back to colleagues.
Members from across the House will understand that this debate is not necessarily the place for a detailed response to the report and every recommendation. Notwithstanding the strong case made today on the importance of research, we have to tread carefully. This is not the first condition into which I have probed and asked lots of questions about why we have not been funding all the research, and why funding is sitting unallocated, given the bids that have come in. We have to tread carefully because the clinicians and scientists rightly push back, saying that lowering the scientific quality bar for access to scarce public research funds, which would not be won in open competition, is unlikely ultimately to be a good solution. We must get this right, and at the heart of that is ensuring that we support applicants to make high-quality bids, which will then translate into funding awards. Of course, we want to fund the best science to help patients and ensure that our country remains at the forefront of scientific progress.
All Members, from across the House, rightly mentioned the crucial importance of research in tackling cancer. A theme of the report and the debate has been that of co-ordinating action along the translational pathway; that starts with the fundamental science and early translation, typically supported by the MRC, and goes through to the applied health and care research, which is funded by the NIHR. Working with the NIHR, the MRC has developed guidance and toolkits for teams to help them to navigate the scheme that is best suited to their proposal. However, I have heard today that we are not giving the right support to those making applications, and where applications are rejected we need to look into that further.
Hilary Benn
I am listening carefully to the Minister. What does he say to the argument that we heard during the inquiry that the people who sit in judgment, quite properly, on bids might not have a sufficient degree of expertise in this area to be able to judge whether the research proposals are suitable to be funded? I do not expect an answer now, but will he undertake to go away and look at that point?
Will Quince
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question, and I shall try my best to answer it. It is a question that I listened to very carefully when he posed it in his contribution, and it is one that I have posed myself when looking at the NIHR and what it does. The committees for NIHR and the programmes that come forward receive a diverse range of applications, which is understandable. Their make-up, therefore, is that of a broad range of expertise. As I said a few moments ago, they may or may not contain experts in the field of brain tumour research. However, having said that, the NIHR committees then use peer review from appropriate experts, which would include brain tumour expertise as relevant to the brain tumour proposal that is under review in each individual case. That is there deliberately to inform their decision-making. They co-opt particular expertise on to the committee, which is an option always available to NIHR if the committee needs that particular input. If clinicians and scientists are telling the right hon. Gentleman that that is not happening, or is not happening to the degree that we would want and expect it to, I would want to take that away and look at that further.
I wish to come back to a comment that the right hon. Gentleman made about brain tumours and why they remain a challenging area for research. There is the complexity of the brain itself as an organ, and the way that perception, memory, and emotion— everything the brain does—can be affected differently by different types of tumour. Brain tumours are different diseases that can differ in terms of histology, molecular characteristics, and clinical behaviour, meaning that many different treatments must be developed. Brain tissue is precious and obtaining it for research purposes can be difficult. Obtaining biopsy samples is risky and invasive, and animal models are of limited applicability. Additionally, the community of active clinical researchers is relatively small—it is certainly small in relation to the scale of need. This all makes research on brain tumours challenging, as has been well articulated today, and progress, if we are to make it—and I am determined that we will—requires a collaborative effort between researchers, clinicians, and funding agencies.
How do we grow the field of brain tumour research? This was a challenge from the shadow Minister. We have been taking action to grow the field by supporting researchers to submit high-quality research bid proposals. That has been supported by working with the Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Mission, which hosts workshops for researchers, and provides research training specifically for clinicians.
Since the initial Government announcement of £40 million over five years ago, we have spent £33.9 million on brain cancer research across Government. I am conscious that there is a difference in the two figures, but that is because we are combining spending from UK Research and Innovation with the spending of NIHR. However, as I have made clear already, we want to spend more and the NIHR welcomes funding applications for research into brain tumours, and the Department of Health and Social Care priority call on brain tumours remains open. Critically, all applications that have been assessed as “fundable” in open competition have been funded, and that will continue.
As I have said, brain tumour research is one of the most difficult scientific challenges of our age. We need to invest across the translational pipeline, from fundamental science through to effective treatments. These are long-term challenges and we are committed to them for the long term. To be clear, the £40 million announcement was a signal to the research community that we are serious about funding research in this space. It is not a ceiling. If we can spend more on the best quality science, let me assure the House that we will do so. I understand and share the frustrations that only a proportion of the £40 million on brain tumour research has been allocated so far, but this funding will remain available. I genuinely believe that the funding for brain tumour research is promising and we look forward to considering the all-party group recommendations with colleagues across Government. I am confident that the Government’s continued commitment to funding will help us make progress towards effective treatment.
Liz Kendall
As the Minister may be about to close, I would like to ask him whether he would respond to a request to meet Professor Mulholland about the other issues that he raised around training and clinical trials, because that would make a hugely useful contribution to the debate.
Will Quince
The hon. Lady pre-empts not only that I am coming to a close, but my final response. I have a little more time than I would ordinarily, but in closing such debates, one never quite gets the opportunity to answer every single question. I have never turned down a meeting with a colleague, and I do not intend to start doing so today—it is important that we consider some of the issues that have been raised this afternoon, including the report’s recommendations—and, of course, I would be very happy to meet senior clinicians and scientists in the field as well.
In closing, I want to say how much I appreciate the vital work of my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on brain tumours, of all those who have spoken so powerfully today, and of the powerful advocacy for more research on brain tumours and better treatments and care for patients, not least in last week’s report and in this important debate. It has been my pleasure to respond to the powerful points that everyone has made.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I call Mr Derek Thomas for the final word.
Derek Thomas
I have noticed that Peter and his daughter Maria, who introduced that first petition all those years ago in 2015, are here. I am sure that if they were to do it again, they would get a lot more than 120,000 people signing the next petition.
The nature of debate in this place can be very toxic, but not today. I thank the right hon. Members for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) and for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), my hon. Friends the Members for Scunthorpe (Holly Mumby-Croft), for Buckingham (Greg Smith), for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) and for Great Grimsby (Lia Nici), and the hon. Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen). I also thank the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh). We cannot go away from this place and ignore the lived experience of her sister, Margaret, and her family.
The Minister has heard those contributions, and he has the report and each of the recommendations. I am encouraged that the discussion does not end here and that the work will continue. It must, because far too many lives depend on it. I appreciate the time that you have given us this afternoon, Mr Deputy Speaker.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Thank you very much. May I say what a privilege it has been to chair this debate?
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered brain tumour research funding.
Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. We understand that the Government have just announced huge delays to High Speed 2 and other road and active travel projects via written ministerial statement at nearly 5 o’clock on Thursday afternoon. That is an outrageous attempt to avoid scrutiny for what is a very significant announcement that should have been made to this House first. Tens of thousands of jobs and billions of pounds of economic growth depend on that project. The Secretary of State should have had the decency to come to the House and explain to Members why the Government are doing that. Have you been notified of any ministerial statement on this important topic?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I thank the hon. Lady for her point of order and for giving forward notice of it. She is right that a written ministerial statement was laid not so long ago. There are two points here. The first is that Mr Speaker has made it absolutely clear that announcements of this type should be made to the House of Commons first—we understand that journalists were briefed this afternoon.
The next Transport questions is after Easter, and we are not sitting tomorrow or this weekend, clearly, so it will be at least three days before Members have an opportunity to question Ministers about what is a substantial statement. Although the Chair does not have the power to bring Ministers to the Dispatch Box, there has to be an expectation that Members will have the earliest opportunity to question Ministers on this statement. I hope that the Minister will take that back to the Department.
New Clevedon Seafront Road Scheme: Safety
(1 year, 8 months ago)
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Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)
Usually, my Adjournment debates requiring a Minister from the Department of Transport to come to the House relate to the Portishead railway, but such is the state of progress on that subject, I am able to turn to something entirely different today and regale the House with the tale of Clevedon seafront.
Clevedon seafront is a Victorian jewel. For generations, people have come to watch its famous sunsets over the water, or simply sit and have a cup of tea or a picnic by the seafront. They have been able to marvel at the engineering of Clevedon pier, or enjoy the architecture of the old Victorian part of the town. They could, and still do, come to sample the excellent pubs, restaurants and cafes that are along the seafront itself.
Now, the seafront has made the national news, but sadly for all the wrong reasons: not for that list of excellence, but for the ludicrous scheme being put in place by North Somerset Council. It is a coalition council, often referred to locally as the coalition of chaos, which is seemingly obsessed with changes to the road networks—for whose benefit, it has never been entirely clear. It has previous in this area, having sought to close our rural lanes that connect Backwell, Nailsea, Clevedon and Yatton, so when we heard about the scheme, we were naturally suspicious.
Let me begin by describing how North Somerset saw the proposal. It said:
“This exciting proposal is to provide a permanent, segregated, cycle route from the ever-popular Clevedon seafront into the bustling retail, business and dining area at Hill Road. A new one-way system and 20mph limit along The Beach and Hill Road will meaningfully alter the status quo of these roads by reallocating street space to segregated cycling and making a safer environment for pedestrians. This will be supported by making the connecting roads in the seafront and Hill Road neighbourhood area one-way and introducing 20mph zones to facilitate further safety improvements for both cyclists and pedestrians.”
Amazingly, it also said this:
“In the short term, cycling will be able to replace public transport journeys as we continue to recover from the COVID-19 crisis. The scheme will link into the flagship North Somerset Coastal Towns Cycle Route as part of the strategic cycling network in North Somerset. The scheme package will improve the provision and awareness of safe walking and cycling facilities to local shops and businesses, reduce private car dominance of this popular seafront space and improve road safety perception.”
I wonder whether the people who wrote that description ever looked at the demographics of the town, or looked to see who was actually using the seafront, because it is hugely popular with elderly residents and the disabled, or mums with pushchairs taking advantage of the sea air. Those people are not going to get on a bike to cycle to the seafront; the system is actually putting them at a tremendous disadvantage. In 2020, North Somerset Council was awarded £473,750 as part of the Government’s grant award to
“create safe routes for people to walk and cycle safely”,
but far from improving safety, I believe that North Somerset’s plans to remodel—many of us would say vandalise—the historic seafront at Clevedon will create new safety risks for pedestrians, cyclists and drivers alike.
Let me begin with the range of problems related to road safety. I do not expect my right hon. Friend the Minister, with all his grasp of detail, for which he is well known in this House, to understand the geography of Clevedon seafront, but currently, cars can park directly facing the sea. Should residents want to get out and walk along the seafront, they simply have to get out of their cars and walk directly on to the pavement. Under this new, brilliant scheme, there is a two-lane cycleway immediately adjacent to the seafront. Cars have to park in the middle of the road, drivers have to get out of their cars into the traffic lane itself, and passengers and drivers alike have to cross a two-way cycle lane to get to the seafront. This is supposed to be improving the safety of pedestrians.
We saw recently in our press examples of what might be kindly described as the eccentricity of the scheme. First, we had what were known as the wiggly lines, which none of us could find any reference to in any of the literature of road safety—no one seems to know what they are for. Those were followed by what locals have come to call the crop circle at the end, which is another road marking. None of us knows exactly what it is: it is not a roundabout or a mini-roundabout. What, exactly, its purpose is is not known to us. The scheme is not improving safety for cyclists either, because neither end of the very limited cycle lanes connects with the seamless cycleway described by North Somerset: those lanes connect with busy roads that cyclists have to cross, one of which has a considerable gradient, and the speed of the traffic coming down there is sometimes extremely dangerous indeed. In fact, when I visited recently, I was almost hit myself by one cyclist racing along the road because of the pace of the cyclists in the cycle lane. The scheme is adding to the dangers that cyclists face, not reducing them. That would be bad enough in itself, were it not for the method by which the scheme came into being.
Dr Fox
I was coming to the point about the consultation for the scheme. To say that it was suboptimal is to dramatically understate the problem. I believe that it was fundamentally flawed. The consultation opened on 5 February 2021 and ended on 7 March 2021. This was during the third covid lockdown, when most people were more concerned about keeping safe than looking for consultations from North Somerset Council about changes to the seafront. Any consultation could only have been online, or in the very limited press available at that time, as it was illegal to meet face-to-face during this period. It is therefore highly likely that the consultation would not have been visible to older generations and those without internet access. Effectively, North Somerset buried this consultation under the covid pandemic.
North Somerset Council states:
“All these groups were consulted: The Sailing Club, Sea Swimmers, Gig Rowing Club, Canoe club and Pier fishing Club”.
However, as the consultation took place while we were all in lockdown, it is difficult to see how that could have actually happened. The council claims that a grand total of 750 people wrote in support of the scheme but, within days of it opening, the petition against the scheme had attracted more than 6,000 signatures. It points to a severe deficit in the consultation scheme.
Then we have the damage to local businesses. These businesses in the hospitality sector were badly hit by the covid pandemic and were hoping that this summer would be their chance to regain some of the profitability lost during that period. However, the 64 parking spaces that were on the seafront have been reduced to barely 30. As the landlord of the Moon and Sixpence pub on Clevedon seafront said to me, “Since this scheme came in, our business has fallen off a cliff.” He is not alone. Other businesses have told me of the problems they are having in attracting custom now that people are no longer able to park close to the businesses themselves.
Why are we getting these changes? We seem to have a council that is obsessed with bicycle lanes and meddling with our road system—to whose benefit, it is not clear. Many of the businesses think that the council is blind or simply indifferent to local businesses, preferring to get the plaudits of the cycle lobby, whether in North Somerset or elsewhere. That is affecting business not only on the seafront, but in the Hill Road shopping area.
For us, the scheme is a major loss of amenity. For generations, people have come to Clevedon to look at all those elements I have described. This is a scheme for which there is no need, no demand and no desire from the local population. It creates road safety problems where none existed. It was not properly consulted upon and due diligence may indeed have been absent in the road safety elements that were the duty of the council before bringing the scheme into place. It is a waste of money, with overspending rumoured to be around £250,000. That will have to be taken from local taxpayers, or programmes locally will have to be cut as a consequence.
We need to change the council, and to do that we have to change the councillors, for which we have an opportunity in our local elections in May. Before 2019, and before the council of chaos came into being, we had a competent Conservative local authority, which I hope we will see again, but my right hon. Friend the Minister can help us by saying what the Government might be able to do directly, or through their agencies, to enable us to deal with some of these road safety issues and reassure my constituents that, even when we have a council that will not listen to what they want, we have a Government in Westminster who will.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Jesse Norman)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) on securing the debate, and on the wonderful, almost idyllic, picture of Clevedon seafront that he painted at the start of his remarks. As he will know, managing traffic on local roads is and always has been a matter for local traffic authorities. They have a range of duties, powers and responsibilities, and a considerable toolkit of measures at their disposal to achieve that. Specifically, local highway authorities have a duty under section 16 of the Traffic Management Act 2004 to manage their roads so as to secure the expeditious movement of all traffic, which, it is important to say, includes pedestrians and cyclists. Balancing the different needs of road users with the many and varied demands on roads is complex. The role of my Department is to set an overarching Government policy, and provide an enabling framework of legislation, guidance and advice. But of course we take a serious interest in issues of road safety for all road users.
Because of that overall remit, we have no brief to intervene in matters of local democratic decision making. Decisions on what traffic management measures to provide are entirely a matter for local authorities, in accordance with local democratic procedures. Successive Governments have made it clear that they want cycling and walking to be a natural first choice for shorter journeys, and the Government have set out an ambitious vision that, by 2030, half of all journeys in towns and cities should be cycled or walked. Accordingly, as my right hon. Friend will know, Active Travel England was launched in August 2022 to work with local authorities to develop and deliver new high-quality walking and cycling infrastructure schemes. ATE is an executive agency of the Department, based in York. One of its core functions is to drive up the quality of new walking and cycling schemes, and to provide local authorities with the right skills to deliver them. ATE will review the quality of designs at bid stage, design stage and after construction. It is already proving to be a valuable resource where there are local concerns about safety.
In general, the Government take, as I have said, road safety extremely seriously. Reducing the numbers of those needlessly killed and injured on our roads is a crucial priority. The Department continues to make progress in that area. For example, through the safer roads fund, we have invested in schemes to make our 50 most dangerous roads safer. All those schemes are complete or under way and, over the next 20 years, those improvements alone are expected to save 1,500 lives. We also completed the biggest overhaul of the highway code in decades in 2022, so that vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and cyclists have priority in certain situations. The Department is working on a road safety strategic frame- work, and the aim is to have it published this spring. Based on a “safe system” approach, it will consider what might be appropriate to support performance indicators on casualty reduction.
Dr Fox
My right hon. Friend mentions those who are vulnerable, but those who are elderly, disabled, or rely on motor transport to get from A to B must have their voices heard, too. It cannot simply be that we give priority to cycleways, which actually increase the danger for some of the constituents I have mentioned, the elderly, or disabled.
Jesse Norman
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. In setting out the general framework of policy, I have yet to come to a specific discussion of the situation in Clevedon, but the elderly people he describes will themselves be pedestrians as they make the final part of their journey to the seafront, and their safety, too, must absolutely be part of an overall framework that respects their wellbeing and health.
Local authorities have a statutory duty under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 to ensure the safe movement of all traffic. They are responsible for ensuring the infrastructure they provide, including for walking and cycling, is safe and fit for purpose.
As my right hon. Friend highlighted, the scheme is apparently intended to improve the public realm on Clevedon’s seafront. It received funding through the second tranche of the active travel fund, which is designed to build out priority routes that could serve as core parts of longer-term local cycling and walking networks, including direct walking and cycling routes, road crossings, safer junctions, school streets, cycle parking, segregated cycle lanes and other such schemes. I want to be clear that a number of the schemes that were made permanent from earlier emergency active travel schemes have been modified or replaced following processes of formal consultation and design review.
On the subject of the wiggly lines, it is important to say that any road markings installed by local authorities must either comply with the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2016, or be specially authorised by the Secretary of State. The Department was not approached about these markings and has not authorised them. I note with some concern that the RAC said:
“This is one of the most bizarre new road schemes we’ve ever seen”
and went on to say the
“new wavy road markings could accidentally prove to be a road safety risk”.
It seems to me that the RAC is independently validating my right hon. Friend’s concerns. If they are a safety hazard, of course that is a matter to be taken extremely seriously, not just locally but by Active Travel England and the Department as it considers the wider picture on road safety.
I reassure the House and my right hon. Friend that ATE will be arranging an inspection of the scheme as part of its regular review programme. That will also consider safety issues, such as those that have been highlighted in this debate. As I understand it, some remedial work has already taken place on the scheme, although it may not be clear yet what changes will be made finally to the scheme as a whole. Although the Department has no powers to halt or remove the scheme, and ATE does not have powers to compel local authorities to make changes to active travel schemes, they are absolutely in a position to record non-compliance on design and safety issues that have been identified. Those then can, in the normal way, become the subject of public debate, local review, and any actions or reactions through proper local democratic processes. Design review outcomes will in turn inform assessments of the capability of local authorities, which in turn will have a material impact on future funding for schemes.
On engagement and consultation, it is true that any scheme must be developed and implemented after thorough engagement with the community affected. The Department has made that extremely clear. It appears, as I understand it, that North Somerset Council did carry out some public engagement on the proposals. It is important to say that objective methods should be used to establish a genuinely representative picture of local views and to ensure that minority views do not dominate a proper consultation process. Engagement should not end when a scheme is introduced. Authorities should continue to monitor how schemes are performing and make changes if they are required. I notice that some changes have already been made to the scheme. Authorities should also be open to making changes to any scheme in the light of further experience and real world feedback. The requirement to monitor and engage with local people therefore does not end with the apparent completion of construction work on a scheme.
Let me close by saying that I am very thankful to my right hon. Friend for raising this important local issue on the Floor of the House of Commons and on the public record. ATE will be inspecting the scheme as part of the normal review process, and the Department will continue to focus on safety and the improvement of safety for all road users now and in future.
Question put and agreed to.