UK Town of Culture

Amanda Hack Excerpts

Wednesday 7th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger) for this opportunity for us all to talk about the UK town of culture competition and the benefits it can bring to our communities. It will be a pleasure to speak about my towns and my hope that they will consider a submission, but it has also been wonderful to hear about other towns, and the real pride in our local places.

This will be a hotly contested competition—not just in this room, but in my constituency. I have four towns, but I will talk about the largest, Coalville and Ashby-de-la-Zouch. They are separated by just six miles and have an amazing opportunity to go forward as a UK town of culture. They are both located in the heart of the national forest.

As I said in my maiden speech, Coalville is named appropriately, as it is at the heart of the coalmining industry in Leicestershire. The cultural heritage is centred on its industrial past and its hope for the future. The town has invested in the market square, which is called Marlborough Square. It was a central gathering place for the community, initially as a public market for farmers and producers, before evolving into a livestock hub in the 1840s. More recently, this lovely square has hosted some amazing family events, organised and supported by the local district council and our vibrant voluntary sector. Coalville’s culture was clear to see at the Midland Red bus 100th anniversary event earlier this year, which was held just a stone’s throw from Marlborough Square, at Snibston, the home of a theatre, a coalmining museum, a café and a park. In the centre of Coalville is the beautiful Mother and Child statue, and there are art installations across the town.

Coalville has so much potential to be the UK town of culture. However, it will have to fight off local competition from the second largest town in my constituency, Ashby-de-la-Zouch. A great market town originally known as Ashby in 1086, it was renamed in the 18th century after the La Zouche family. Around that time, Ashby castle was built. The town’s beautiful historic buildings line Market Street, which is a thriving shopping destination. It was a pleasure to be shown around the original features in the lovely Tap at No. 76, which was built in the era of Queen Elizabeth I. Not long after I was elected, I also had the privilege of visiting the archives at the fantastic volunteer-led Ashby Museum. If anyone makes a pit stop there, I am sure they will enjoy the museum.

Ashby’s rich history has been kept up throughout the generations. There is an active business improvement district and a great town council with an annual programme of events. That includes the Statutes, which is now in its 806th year, and the new soapbox derby, which is in its second year, to name just a couple of the great events that happen.

I have not had the opportunity to talk about my smaller towns of Ibstock and Castle Donington, but I am sure they will forgive me. This competition will be really important for our towns, and I will encourage my district council and others to consider how we get this amazing opportunity for growth and investment into my towns in North West Leicestershire. Will the Minister consider whether there is an opportunity to expand the competition to a wider range of towns, and perhaps include a UK town of industrial heritage and a UK market town of culture? Then I would be able to pick two towns in North West Leicestershire.

Online Safety Act 2023: Repeal

Amanda Hack Excerpts

Monday 15th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Lewis Atkinson]

I agree that there is significant work to be done to effectively implement the OSA. I will touch on that, and the Minister may wish to do so in his response.

Crucially, the report by the Children’s Commissioner found that children were most likely to see pornography by accident—a key point that some of the criticism of the Act fails to grasp. The horrifying statistics, showing the scale of online harm to children that the OSA is working to reduce, make it obvious why in a recent survey 69% the public backed the introduction of age verification checks on platforms, and why children’s charities and children’s rights organisations overwhelmingly back the OSA and—to my hon. Friend’s point—want it implemented more rapidly and robustly.

I have heard that some petition signatories are particularly concerned about age verification on platforms, such as X, Reddit or Discord, beyond those specifically designed as pornography sites. However, the report by the Children’s Commissioner shows that eight out of 10 of the main sources where children saw pornography were not porn sites; they were social media or networking sites. Those platforms that choose to allow their users to upload pornographic content—some do not—should be subject to the same age-verification requirements as porn sites in order to keep our children safe.

Following the implementation of those provisions of the Online Safety Act, it was reported that UK traffic to the most popular pornographic websites was notably down. Yes, it was initially reported that there had been in spike in the number of virtual private networks, or VPNs, being downloaded for access to those sites, but research increasingly suggests it is likely that that trend was being driven by adults worried about their anonymity, rather than by children seeking to circumvent the age limitations.

The Online Safety Act addresses harms beyond those done by porn. Content that is especially harmful to children and that children should not have access to includes very violent content and content encouraging limited eating or suicide.

[Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)]

Looking at those algorithms is a really important part of the Online Safety Act. When I was a county councillor looking at public health, I did a piece of work on disordered eating, and I was bombarded with content. I am not a vulnerable young person or a vulnerable adult, but my real fear is that that information is seen by people who are not as capable of managing that content. Does my hon. Friend agree that algorithm work is a key part of the Online Safety Act?

[Lewis Atkinson]

My hon. Friend is right. The proactive duty that the Act places on providers in relation to the nature of their algorithms and their content is crucial because of the type of content to which she refers. It is right that the largest providers, and those most frequently used by kids, have to take active responsibility for keeping children safe. The implementation of the OSA means that algorithms serving harmful content to kids are now being regulated for the first time. There is a long way to go, and I am sure that other Members will say more than I can in this introduction, but I want to be clear to my constituents that I support the action that the OSA is prompting to improve children’s safety and welfare online.

Various surveys set out the impact of the Online Safety Act; Ofcom is publishing its research and a formal Government review will follow in due course. However, most impactful for me was seeing a teenage boy say on a news piece recently that, now,

“when I’m scrolling TikTok, I’m free from violence.”

That changed for him in the months following the implementation of the Online Safety Act, so it is no wonder that organisations such as the Online Safety Act Network, which I spoke to in preparation for this debate, fully support the Act’s principles. The network points to early evidence that the Act is actively reducing harm to children and emphasised that Ofcom must move beyond content filters to ensure safety by design, which would, for example, include addressing features that incentivise pile-ons, targeting an individual with abuse and harassment.

New Ofcom research shows that 58% of parents now believe that measures in the code of practice are beginning to improve the safety of children online. My belief is that we should be considering not whether to repeal the Act, but how we can continue to enforce it in a robust, effective and proportionate manner.

The way in which the Online Safety Act addresses online hate has perhaps not had as much focus as it might have. As well as being a member of the Petitions Committee, I am privileged to be a member of the Home Affairs Committee, which is conducting an inquiry into combating new forms of extremism. It is very clear from the public evidence that we have received so far that, left unregulated and unchallenged, online spaces and services can be used to amplify hate, thus risking a rise in extremist action, including violence.

Analysis by the Antisemitism Policy Trust highlights that there are patterns of co-ordinated and persistent misogynistic, anti-immigrant, anti-Government and antisemitic discourse on social media, with bot accounts being repeatedly used to amplify misleading or harmful narratives that fuel hate and may increase the risk of violence. Such content often breaches platforms’ own terms of service, but under the Online Safety Act, I understand that Ofcom category 1 services will now be mandated to proactively offer users optional tools to help them to reduce the likelihood that they will encounter legal but harmful content such as that.

There is much to be done to implement those provisions in an appropriate manner. However, I invite anyone calling for full repeal of the Act to consider how we as a society deal with the rise of extremism, and a context where the internet can be used as a sort of free-for-all fuelled by hate-filled algorithms that thrive on and incentivise division and hatred, rather than consensus and civic peace.

I am aware that there are large parts of the Online Safety Act that I have not been able to touch on today; I hope that others will do so during the debate. There are questions about end-to-end encryption, cyber-flashing, the creation of abusive deepfakes, AI moderation and chatbots.

Victory in Europe and Victory over Japan: 80th Anniversary

Amanda Hack Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)]

My constituent, James Hares, was one of the brave pilots in the same unit. Despite the unit having a death rate of about 48%—one of the worst of the war—he survived, only to sadly pass away on the journey home. We have heard from so many colleagues already how those stories are largely untold and how many people did crucial work in helping to win the war—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. If Members are going to get in during this debate, interventions need to be interventions and not mini-speeches.