Telegraph Poles: Planning Permission
Caroline Nokes Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Cat Eccles (Stourbridge) (Lab)
In Stourbridge in the west midlands, we face similar problems with the same company, which is causing havoc. As my hon. Friend rightly says, the legislation was passed in 2013, yet in 2024, we are still waiting for the full roll-out of ultrafast broadband. Although I appreciate what he says about our current adequate speeds, they could be much faster. When I was recently in Ukraine, I experienced far better internet connectivity than I do in central London or Stourbridge town centre. Our European neighbours are enjoying much faster broadband while we languish behind, and Stourbridge residents have been left at the mercy of these third-party companies—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order—[Interruption.] The hon. Lady might like to sit while I am standing. I have previously told Members that interventions should be short and spontaneous. It is not an opportunity to read out a pre-prepared speech. If she wanted to speak in this debate, she could have asked permission from both the Minister and the Member in charge, and that would have been acceptable.
Laurence Turner
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I completely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles).
Technology in Public Services
Caroline Nokes Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Dr Allison Gardner (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I congratulate the hon. Members who have made their maiden speeches tonight. I, too, am honoured to make my maiden speech during this debate on the use of technology in public services, coming as I have from my previous role in the NHS AI and digital regulations service.
Mine is a new constituency, with the majority of the old Stoke-on-Trent South and the northern part of the Stone constituencies within its boundaries. The new Stoke-on-Trent South is hence a diverse area, combining a great industrial heritage of mining and ceramics with the agricultural and rural communities of Stoke-on-Trent and north Staffordshire. Our urban area centres around one of the six Staffordshire pottery towns of Longton, which proudly boasts the largest number of our iconic bottle ovens, including those of the Gladstone Pottery Museum, where “The Great Pottery Throw Down” was filmed. Naturally, ceramics and tableware are a major part of our history and culture. Indeed, you can spot a Stokie anywhere in the world, for they will be turning over any cup or plate to see whether it comes from Stoke-on-Trent—you know it! I invite Members present to join the “turnover club” and investigate the provenance of pottery and china right here in the Palace of Westminster.
Of course, our industrial strength extends beyond ceramics and includes innovative firms such as Goodwin, with high-tech mechanical and refractory engineering divisions, which I had the pleasure of speaking to last week. Goodwin, along with other excellent businesses, including Trentham’s Minuteman Press, offers dozens of high-skilled apprenticeships, giving our workers award-winning opportunities to develop key skills for the future. Indeed, within north Staffordshire we have Keele and Staffordshire Universities, a medical and veterinary school, and excellent further education colleges offering great courses and apprenticeships.
The rural part of the constituency includes Blythe Bridge and Barlaston, and extends to Tean, Swynnerton, Yarnfield and Oulton, with many villages in between. It is where my partner Jim’s family have lived and run their sawmills for generations. Walk anywhere in our countryside and you will see public footpath signposts made by Jim himself. History, land, family and a love for our north Staffordshire home—I am going to get emotional—are embodied in those signs.
Indulge me too as I mention my daughters, Chrissie and Lucy, and my sister Siobhan, and thank them, alongside Jim and his children, William and Sophie, for putting up with me in my passion to build a better future for everyone’s children in my constituency. Thanks are also due to the great team that supported me throughout.
With this new combined constituency, I must acknowledge the hard work of the two former Conservative Members, Jack Brereton and Bill Cash. Jack was MP for Stoke-on-Trent South from 2017. I commend him for his work in tackling the scourge of monkey dust, and for his ambitions for better transport across Stoke and north Staffordshire. I commit to continuing that important work, and welcome the moves being made by this Government to rebuild our transport services to be run for the people, benefiting our economy, opportunity and the environment. Bill Cash has had a parliamentary career spanning 40 years. Indeed, Bill was an MP before Jack was born. I wish Bill well in his retirement.
In Stoke-on-Trent South, Jack was preceded by the Labour MPs Rob Flello and George Stevenson. I thank George for his no-nonsense advice and support. I should also mention another MP called Jack: Jack Ashley, a Labour MP who I have the honour of being compared to. This is a formidable challenge to meet. Jack was elected in 1966, the year I was born and the year that we won the world cup, in which the great Stoke City player Gordon Banks played a key role. His statue stands proudly outside the bet365 stadium in my constituency. So 1966 was a good year all round, by my reckoning, as we can now add me to its accomplishments as the first female MP for Stoke-on-Trent South.
Jack Ashley became profoundly deaf while he was an MP and was reportedly the first deaf Member of any elected assembly. Although he initially thought that he would need to resign, he turned to technology, using a Palantype transcription system. Jack’s visit to the BBC’s Ceefax department even inspired a project to develop a computer program to convert stenographic outputs to TV subtitles. As a hard-of-hearing MP who wears AI-enabled hearing aids, it is fitting that I remember Jack Ashley in today’s debate.
It is the norm for MPs to claim in their maiden speech that their constituency is the most beautiful. I could, of course, argue that, describing our quintessential countryside, pretty villages and farms, the canals and of course the River Trent, or I could talk of the beauty I find in our industrial landscape—I am going to get emotional again.
However, I want to talk about the people, because it is in their spirit, their friendliness and their sense of community that true beauty lies—in the heart of the people. From Tracey, who runs Meir Watch, and Arfan, who owns Sizzlers pizzas, coming together to feed and clothe children in need, with no expectation of thanks or profit; to the fantastic PEGiS—the Parent Engagement Group in Stoke—who I had the pleasure to meet at their summer picnic, working to support SEND families, with no-nonsense women such as Michelle and Keeley cracking on and getting stuff sorted; or Jason, passionately fighting to clean up our waterways; Craig, battling grief from the loss of a friend to campaign for safer roads; and the village who reached out to me, worried about asylum seekers, not because they had given in to the politics of division and hate, but because they were worried that the children were not getting any schooling. When I attended their summer fête, they had reached out and invited the refugees to come and join in the fun—and come they did.
This is the heart of the people of my constituency, reaching out and caring for those in need without judgment, with friendly, no-nonsense, practical support, and believing in the power of community action. This is true beauty. I pledge to all the people in my constituency that I carry them in my heart and mind at all times. I am acutely aware of the trust they have placed in me. I will get some things wrong, no doubt, but know this: I will always do my best. I will work hard, I will always hold the vision of a better life for them and I will always fight for the place that is my home.
Before I turn back to the topic of this debate, technology in our public services, I will take one more little trip into history, if I may. In Barlaston we have the World of Wedgwood, where I like to treat myself to a genteel cream tea, drinking out of Wedgwood china and pretending I am posh. I heartily recommend visiting. The founder, Josiah Wedgwood, was a great innovator and entrepreneur who invented creamware and green glaze, to name just two. He understood that science—in his case, chemistry—practically applied in an industrial context turbocharged innovation and development. He was also a master marketeer, apparently, pioneering money-back guarantees, illustrated catalogues and buy one, get one free. If he were alive today, we can only imagine what his innovative and entrepreneurial spirit would make of this digital world.
Josiah was a polymath, and that is something worth noting. It is important that we recognise that in considering technological innovation, we must take a multidisciplinary approach, with the full participation of those who will implement, use, govern and be impacted by the technology day to day. Technology in the public services offers huge potential, but there are also risks if it is not properly developed and deployed, as we have seen with biased risk assessment models for child welfare and benefit fraud models.
In my previous career with the NHS, I saw the great potential that diagnostic technologies can offer, particularly in radiology, which I saw in action when I visited the radiology department at the Royal Stoke, for example. Such technologies can be transformative, streamlining pathways and saving hours of work, but they do not and should not replace human oversight. Proper governance and regulation are required, and always with a “safety first” principle. It must be transparent and accountable. I hope we get it right; in fact, we must. In delivering transformative change in our public services, we must develop the governance and regulation that will maximise the benefits and mitigate the risks—not just for the people of my constituency or the country, but because by moving forward to a bright new age with modern and innovative public services, as they once were and will be again, we can be an example to the world.
Natasha Irons (Croydon East) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for Dorking and Horley (Chris Coghlan) for his moving and powerful words. It is an extraordinary thing to become a Member of Parliament, and becoming a Labour Member of Parliament who gets to sit on the Government Benches is even more extraordinary. I share the sense of pride and urgency that we have heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow West (Patricia Ferguson) and for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner) and from the hon. Member for North East Hampshire (Alex Brewer) in their maiden speeches, and I congratulate them on their contributions to this debate.
It is the honour of my life to represent Croydon East in this place, so I thank the people of this new constituency for putting their faith in me. I will never forget what a privilege it is to be their voice in Parliament, and I will do all I can to fight for Croydon’s future. As south London’s most iconic borough, Croydon is a place so big that it needs four Members of Parliament to represent it. Like the reunion tour of a much-loved ’90s band, my constituency has been reformed under an old name with new boundaries, so I pay tribute to my predecessors, starting with the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) for his work for the people of Selsdon and his commitment to public service. While I cannot apologise for campaigning against him in the election, I can attest to the number of constituents who spoke highly of him and his contribution to their community when I met them on the doorstep.
I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon West (Sarah Jones), who is not only Croydon’s first female MP, the founder and chair of the all-party parliamentary group on knife crime and violence reduction and now a Minister in this Government, but the kind of MP where everybody knows someone who has been helped by her. I thank her for her kindness, advice and encouragement over the past few months, and hope to build on her legacy and continue to stand up for Croydon in the way that she has always done. I am thrilled to join those Members and my right hon. Friend the Member for Streatham and Croydon North (Steve Reed), someone who continues to work tirelessly for his constituents and who, as Secretary of State, is now taking on the urgent fight to clean up our waters. I look forward to us working together in the best interests of Croydon.
Croydon East represents so much of what is great about our city. Whether it is the bustling life of South Norwood, the close-knit communities of Addiscombe and New Addington, or the stunning views from Shirley Hills, Croydon East is a place filled with diversity, ambition and strong values. However, even in this vibrant corner of south London, the shadow of inequality persists. Whether it is the fact that a child in Croydon East is twice as likely to live in poverty as one just a few miles away in Croydon South, or that a man living in New Addington North has a life expectancy a decade shorter than a woman living in Shirley South, these stark disparities remind us that too many remain trapped in a cycle of inequality.
When we talk about technology in public services, we must not get lost in grand plans and digital transformations: we must remember those who use these services, and how they will be put to use. What do they mean for the community leaders at the coalface of the cost of living crisis—those who run services such as the Food Stop, Pathfinders and the Community Family Project in New Addington that often step up when there is no one else to step in? What do they mean to groups such as the Friends of Shirley Library, which is fighting to keep the library open—a place that not just tackles loneliness and isolation, but plays a critical role in closing the digital divide? What do they mean to my constituent Michael Lyons, a veteran who has campaigned to ensure that the memory of servicepeople from the first world war lives on? How will we ensure that digital public services remain as accessible to him as they are to the rest of us? With a considered application of technology, we have an opportunity to break down barriers instead of creating new ones, to bring people closer to democracy instead of driving them further away, and to rebuild our public services so they work better for the people who need them most.
As someone who grew up in south London in a family that was always political but did not think that politics was for people like us, I know that the decisions that we make in this place have the power to change lives for the better. Choices that have been made in this room took my family from sleeping on our living room floor to decent social housing. They enabled my mother to go back to university to retrain and to get a better job. And they gave me the opportunity to go to university, to get a career in public service broadcasting, to serve my community as a local councillor and to make my way to these Benches.
As an MP in London’s youngest borough, I want to spend my time here putting the wellbeing of our young people back on the political agenda. There is no longer-term plan than ensuring that our young people have the opportunities they deserve, so that they can go on to live the successful lives that we want them to. We need a national plan for what it is to be a young person in this country, and I look forward to showing how Croydon stands ready to lead that vital work.
Finally, every Member of the House will have those people in their lives who have supported them to get here, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank mine. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh), who allowed me to see that there was room for people like me in places like this. Without her encouragement and advice, I simply would not be here. I can only hope to be half the MP that she is. I thank my mum and dad for their support and unwavering belief in me. It is their hard work and determination that changed our lives, and I am so proud to continue our family’s track record of serving our country. To my spectacular husband, who encouraged me to get involved in politics because he was sick of me shouting at the TV: thank you for your patience and your endless support, and for being the greatest dad imaginable to our lads.
It is really an extraordinary thing to be a Member of Parliament. I hope that in our time here, we make choices in this room that change the lives of the people outside of it for the better.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call Caroline Voaden to make her maiden speech.
Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to make my maiden speech. I congratulate all the other Members who have made their maiden speeches this evening, from the whiskey and sausages of Glasgow West to the pottery of Stoke-on-Trent South, the young people of Croydon East, and the beautiful tour of North East Hampshire, which I have driven through many times. I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Dorking and Horley (Chris Coghlan) for delivering an incredibly powerful and moving maiden speech with no notes—very impressive.
It is very relevant to join in this debate on the role of technology in public services following several conversations that I had during recess about the challenges of connecting Devon and, in particular, the South Hams and Dartmoor to high speed internet. It is something that I will be coming back to with the Minister. If we are going to support rural communities, small businesses, the self-employed and those studying online, we have to get them connected. We must also be aware of the danger of digital exclusion. For all those who cannot use computers, particularly older people, we must ensure that there is always a decent working offline alternative to apps and QR codes.
I am very proud to say that I am the first non-Conservative MP to be elected in my large rural constituency for over 100 years. It had a very short flirtation with Liberalism in 1923 when Henry Vivian was elected. Sadly, he lasted only 10 months before being replaced by another Conservative. Vivian was the founder of the co-operative housing movement, and it is a real shame that he did not last a bit longer, because we could really do with his legacy in South Devon.
It is a spectacular part of the UK, from the art deco hotel sitting atop Burgh Island to the eastern slopes of Dartmoor, the Rivers Dart and Avon that meander south to the sea, the headland at Berry Head where you can spot dolphins playing in the water, and the rolling hills and hedges of the South Hams. It is the place I made home 17 years ago, after leaving London. I took my two small daughters to Devon to be nearer family after the death of my husband from cancer in 2003, and it is great that they are both with us today.
Being widowed at 34 with very young children is a brutal experience, but it taught me many things—the power of community, the value of friendship and family, the strength of support from kindred spirits. Here I pay tribute to the Widowed and Young organisation, which I chaired for a couple of years. Hanging out with a bunch of widows may not sound like much fun, but being with people who understand what you are going through at a difficult time, and who can truly empathise, is transformational. I will always champion community and support groups who bring people together.
Leaving London for a rural community was a bit of a gamble. Busy London play parks were replaced by empty fields, and I was almost the only single parent in the school. I did feel like an outsider. We had no internet connection, and had to dial in through a satellite dish on the roof, which drove me completely insane; but we got some battery hens and watched in awe as their feathers grew back and they began laying eggs again. I learned to manage a septic tank and oil-fired central heating. I navigated the complete lack of buses and the absence of breakfast and after-school clubs, which was not easy for a single working mother.
Rural life poses many extra challenges, so three years later we moved to Totnes, I met my lovely second husband, and this special town became home. It is often described as alternative, but I prefer to say that it is a place that knows the meaning of the word “community”. It is a place where it is quite normal to question the idea that a planet with finite resources can support infinite growth, a place where the seriously wealthy question why they are not being taxed more to support those who have less, and a place where radical thinking is seen as a really important thing to do.
My constituency is where Agatha Christie lived by the River Dart, and further downstream, naval recruits are trained at Britannia royal naval college. We have wild camping on Dartmoor—long may it continue—paddleboarding in the bay, surfing on the south coast and the world’s biggest pirate festival in Brixham, as well as ancient family farms, stunning beaches and thousands of miles of hedgerows.
We also have the revival of the cirl bunting, a success story championed by my predecessor but one, Sarah Wollaston, who sat on several Benches in this House. Once near extinction, there are now over 1,000 cirl bunting pairs singing from the farmland of South Devon and Cornwall because of the environmental work done by farmers in my constituency. It is proof that farming for food and restoring nature can go hand in hand.
We have one of the country’s largest fish markets at Brixham, as well as shell fishermen, oyster farms and scallop divers. An energetic conversation about sustainability and the long-term future of the fishing industry is being had, and I will work with fishers and scientists, so that we can create policy here that ensures that we can continue to fish while protecting stocks for the future.
I pay tribute to my predecessor, Anthony Mangnall, who worked hard to establish the National Independent Lifeboat Association. Together with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, it provides an incredible emergency service for all those who work or play on the water. On land, we have hundreds of hospitality businesses that offer a brilliant experience—I recommend hon. Members all come and try them out—but they have taken a massive hit over the past few years, and they really need our support now to survive.
However, there is so much more to South Devon that does not make it on to the postcards or the chocolate boxes. We have Britain’s most expensive seaside town in Salcombe, where an average house costs £970,000, but not far away we have left-behind neighbourhoods where people struggle to make ends meet on low-paid seasonal work and live in poor-quality housing. This disparity of wealth can be hard to get your head around. I would like us to think really hard and creatively in this place about how we can help even out our society, so that no one is raising a disabled child in a mould-filled home within sight of a millionaire’s yacht in the harbour below.
The lack of public transport leads to loneliness and isolation, and adds to the lack of opportunities for our young people for work and socialising. We must invest in it as a public good. Our schools in Devon are hugely underfunded compared with schools across the UK, which impacts the life chances of our children. We have communities that have been hollowed out by second homes to the extent that schools are closing, village shops have long gone and the last pubs are closing. Families are being evicted so that landlords can turn their homes into short-term holiday lets, and second homes registered as businesses are causing our council to lose out on millions of pounds a year of desperately needed resources. We must close this loophole.
We have businesses struggling to get staff because no one can afford to live nearby and there is no social housing, yet developers build and build to support the immigration of wealthy retired people from other areas of the country. We have more than met our housing targets, but we are still in a desperate housing crisis. The solution is not just build, build, build; it is about land prices, what we build and where, and who buys those homes. What we need is social housing, more community land trust schemes, innovation and ideas for breaking out of the developer-led disaster we are in.
We are the home of innovation and good ideas, and I would like to quickly highlight one organisation, LandWorks. I declare an interest, as I worked there for six months in 2018. LandWorks is an inspirational prisoner rehabilitation charity that I hope the new prisons Minister will soon visit, given the crisis we are in nationally. Its amazing work has been shown to cut reoffending rates and reintegrate prisoners into society.
We also have a growing cluster of high-tech photonics companies attracting talent from home and abroad and providing highly skilled jobs. That is exactly the kind of modern manufacturing that this country desperately needs, so it was disappointing to hear last week that these companies are missing out on partnerships, funding and investment because of Brexit. One company is weighing up whether it will move its headquarters out of the UK into the EU. Members will not be surprised to hear that as a former Member of the European Parliament for the south-west who got involved in politics in June 2016, I will continue to try to find ways to mitigate and lessen the damage Brexit has caused, particularly to my shellfish exporters, my food and wine importers, our musicians, and all those sectors that are struggling to find staff.
South Devon is a constituency of many parts, and it is right at the top of the list of the most challenging constituencies in which to deliver Lib Dem leaflets—[Interruption.] Well, maybe my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) beats me on that. I want to finish by expressing my heartfelt thanks to an incredible group of volunteers who supported my campaign, many of whom were not Liberal Democrats, and who were lending their vote and their time and their shoe leather because they wanted to be represented by a different kind of voice. I would also like to thank my dad, with us today, who never tired of campaigning to help me get here—and I would just like to say that I am really sorry I didn’t campaign harder for you in 1983, when you came quite close to sitting on these Benches. I could not have done it without them all, and it is the honour of my life to represent them and all the residents of South Devon. I will work hard every day for them, for our environment, for our planet, and for a different kind of politics.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call Alice Macdonald to make her maiden speech.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. I am going to call the Front Benchers at 9.40 pm, so that gives probably our last Back-Bench speaker 10 minutes. I call Mike Martin.
Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak; I am particularly delighted to be called in a debate on technology and public service—of which more later. I congratulate all the other maiden speakers today. It is clear that we are going to have not just a good Parliament but a great Parliament.
I come to this place from Tunbridge Wells, which is famous for a few things—not least the abilities of its residents in writing to newspapers’ letters pages. Of course, I am speaking of the phrase “disgusted of Tunbridge Wells”, and as someone who has spent the last two months perusing the inbox of the MP for Tunbridge Wells, I can assure hon. Members that my constituents have lost none of their ability for forceful expression with the pen. The phrase “disgusted of Tunbridge Wells” does confuse me, though. Why is it that they are disgusted, for they live in the best constituency in the country?
I invite hon. Members who do not believe me to come to Tunbridge Wells later this month, when we will be hosting the world cup for Subbuteo. This is a big deal—it was previously in Rome and it is now in Tunbridge Wells. Hon. Members may not know that Subbuteo is actually from Tunbridge Wells: we invented it and had the factory that created the kits that were sent out to everyone. I can see recognition in some hon. Members’ faces; perhaps there are some Subbuteo aficionados in the House today. Because of this fact, we in Tunbridge Wells are particularly proud to be able to say that this September, football will be coming home to Tunbridge Wells.
At this late hour—I can see that I have eight minutes left to go, Madam Deputy Speaker—hon. Members may be pleased to hear that I will not provide a long geographical survey of my entire constituency, suffice it to say that the villages that make up the greater part of my constituency are the most beautiful anywhere and the towns, of which we have three—Southborough, Paddock Wood and Tunbridge Wells—have for centuries had visitors for sport and recreation. In the case of Paddock Wood, that is hop picking, and of course in Royal Tunbridge Wells people come to take the water.
Perhaps the most famous visitor who came to take the water was Henrietta Maria, who was Queen of England and wife of King Charles I. Henrietta—if I can call her that—was passing through a period of infertility, so it is said, so she came to Tunbridge Wells to take the water and shortly after fell pregnant with King Charles II. We know that King Charles II was restored to the monarchy and shortly thereafter we had the Bill of Rights and the glorious revolution—so if you will forgive me for a slight bit of hyperbole, Madam Deputy Speaker, I think we can safely say that Tunbridge Wells is the source of modern British democracy.
It is of course right that I speak of my immediate predecessor, Greg Clark, who I know is a good friend of yours, Madam Deputy Speaker. In addition to serving the Crown as a Minister, Greg was Chair of a Select Committee and was the epitome of the constituency MP. Many of us have spent the last couple of years knocking on doors around our constituencies and speaking to future constituents. As hon. Members know, when knocking on doors, we tend to hear the same things and themes seem to come out, and the theme in Tunbridge Wells was that Greg Clark is a good bloke. I would knock on a door, and people would tell me, “Well, we had this big family problem, and he spoke to the relevant Government Department and his office went above and beyond.” I would feel a bit deflated. I would then go to the next door, and they would say, “He was wonderful. Not only did he solve the problem; he came to see us personally to explain what he had done.” I can tell the House that it was utterly disheartening to campaign over the last two years, and I was utterly delighted when he stepped down! I wish him the very best of luck—he is going to run a technology innovation cluster at the University of Warwick, so perhaps the Secretary of State would like to reach out to him; he is a good guy to know.
I would like to finish on a serious topic: the defence of His Majesty’s realm. It has been said so much that it fades into the background, but the world that we live in today is more unpredictable and dangerous than it has been for the last 80 years. Of course, there are the geopolitics that we understand—a relative decline in western power, and previously middling powers jockeying for space and seeking to rewrite the international order; I do not need to name countries for hon. Members to know who I am talking about—but overlaid across it are a number of global trends, including climate change, demography, migration and technology regulation. As geopolitics pull us apart, all those challenges require that we work together. It is quite a difficult needle to thread.
With this going on, the state of the UK military is dire. We have an Army that cannot deploy a division, an Air Force that cannot defend its own airfields and a Navy that cannot crew its own ships, and sitting above that concerning situation is a hole where British strategy should sit. I stand here as someone who spent two years at the sharp end of British strategy in Afghanistan, and I can tell you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that when you are fighting a war at that level and bullets are flying and people are dying, it breaks you when the country that has sent you there does not have a strategy. This is a non-partisan point because all three main parties, including my own, sat in government during the period that we were in Afghanistan.
What happened in Afghanistan is not unique in British foreign policy. We have not really had a clear strategy for 30 years. It is a very good thing that the Government are initiating a strategic defence review, but previous defence reviews have maintained the illusion that Britain is a global power without giving sufficient resources to back up those ideas and policy goals. I have a piece of advice for the Government: in the review, before they start talking about planes, tanks and ships—technology in public service—they must have a clear idea of what British strategy is. By clear, I mean realistic. Realistic means matching their goals and aims to the resources that they are willing to put in. That is quite a difficult question to ask, which is why successive Governments have fudged it for the last few decades.
There is an easier question that the Government can answer, and if they can answer it, the rest of the review will flow smoothly: in military terms, is Britain a global expeditionary military power, or is it a power dedicated to ensuring regional security in the Euro-Atlantic area—the area from the Arctic to the Mediterranean, and from Greenland to Suez? It cannot do both. It can only do one. If the Government can answer that question accurately and clearly, then all the other subsidiary questions, like who our friends and allies are, will follow on.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. I said I would call the Front Benchers at 9.40 pm.
Animal Testing
Caroline Nokes Excerpts(9 months ago)
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Elliot Colburn
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention; I think that more than 100 of her constituents signed this petition too. I hope that the Minister heard her request—indeed, I am sure that it is an ask of all of us in the Chamber today. What is being done, and what more can be done, to try to encourage people out of using animals and into using non-animal methods?
I want to pick up again the point about animal welfare. Many people will cite the regulations that are in place in the UK for animals in experiment environments. However, this statistic might shed some light on why welfare standards are so low. As of 2021, there were only an estimated 23 full-time equivalent inspectors in the United Kingdom. That is 23 inspectors trying to look at 3 million different procedures. The fact that so much self-reporting is going on in the industry and there are so few inspectors leads, again, to the argument that non-animal methods are a much better use of money and bring with them higher ethical and moral standards.
I want to go through some of the proposed solutions before I hand over to some of my colleagues. PETA—People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals—has proposed a solution known as the research modernisation deal, or RMD, which offers a strategy to eliminate the use of animals in biomedical research, regulatory testing and education. It prioritises non-animal methods, conducts critical reviews to assess the necessity of animal use, and reallocates funds to non-animal methods. This is aimed specifically at making the UK once again a leader in innovative, ethical scientific practices. Furthermore, we have seen advances in technology such as in vitro and in silico tests, and innovative technologies such as organs on chips, which offer higher levels of protection and prediction accuracy.
Elliot Colburn
That is one of the things I want to stress, but before I do so, I will give way to the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee.
Caroline Nokes
My hon. Friend makes the really important point that non-animal methods can be much more accurate than using animals in these experiments. Does he agree that companies such as Lush, which came to Parliament before Christmas to advocate for those methods, have shown the way in which, through science, we can do better?
Elliot Colburn
I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. This is something that we cannot stress enough in this debate: it has been proven in the data time and again that non-animal methods are highly accurate, and much more accurate when it comes to predicting human responses than animal testing is. In fact, animal testing has such low levels of success when it comes to measuring how a drug or something else might affect a human that we would not accept that in any other form of business. When the levels of prediction are so poor, why are we still accepting it? It does not make any sense—not when we have alternatives that can offer much greater clarity about to how humans will react to products and drugs.
However, there are challenges standing in the way, and one of them remains funding for NAMs. Pfizer and AstraZeneca have said that they do not want to do things such as secondary species testing, but regulatory guidelines often expect new drugs to be tested on animals and there is a lack of consensus on possible transition timelines. There is also push-back from the industry, which is resistant to change. However, in advance of this debate I spoke to many scientists and industry leads who said they are crying out for change and want to be at the forefront of non-animal methods. We need to give them the tools to do so and look at the way we fund research.