Botulinum Toxin and Cosmetic Fillers (Children) Bill

Debate between Carolyn Harris and Judith Cummins

Committee stage & Committee Debate: House of Commons
Wednesday 25th November 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Carolyn Harris]

I welcome the comments from both the Minister and the hon. Member for Sevenoaks. We would welcome the opportunity to work with the hon. Lady to ensure that we strengthen the Bill. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment 3, in clause 1, page 1, line 23, after “age,” insert “including by requiring and recording proof of this information,”.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. First, I thank the hon. Member for Sevenoaks for introducing this Bill and successfully bringing it to Committee. It is long overdue. I thank her from the bottom of my heart.

I stand in support of the Bill’s principles and I want to reiterate a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East. My amendments seek to enhance the Bill and close the gaps in the wording. This amendment is a probing amendment and it deals with ensuring that a framework for age identification is present when practitioners are assessing a client for a non-surgical cosmetic procedure.

I am concerned that, as currently worded, the Bill leaves open to interpretation what reasonable steps a practitioner must make to establish the age of the person receiving the procedure. I want the Bill to make it clear that practitioners must request proof of age before any procedure is undertaken, verify the authenticity of that document and ensure that it is recorded, to ensure that there is no doubt about a client’s age. We need clear and explicit guidelines to ensure that vulnerable young people do not fall through the net.

My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East and I established and became the co-chairs of the all-party parliamentary group on beauty, aesthetics and wellbeing. I am worried about how few protections there are for children under 18 years of age when it comes to non-surgical cosmetic procedures.

I was also in attendance at our inquiry into ethics and mental health. It will be no surprise that all our expert witnesses agreed that young people are at their most vulnerable in their teenage years. They are faced with many pressures, including societal pressures, which make ideal beauty standards the norm, especially in this age of social media. We must ensure we put safeguards in place to protect our young people.

I ask the hon. Member for Sevenoaks and the Government to consider this amendment to ensure that proper mechanisms are in place to strengthen the process of age verification for non-surgical cosmetic procedures and to improve the accountability of all practitioners. The amendment requires the practitioner to formally log and prove a client’s age.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East, I welcome the opportunity to adapt the wording of the amendment should the hon. Member for Sevenoaks be unable to accept it. I ask that this amendment be considered.

Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy: Departmental Spending

Debate between Carolyn Harris and Judith Cummins

Tuesday 7th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow other members of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee. On youth unemployment, the Select Committee heard that workers aged under 25 were about two and a half times more likely than other workers to be in a sector that was shut down during the pandemic. The Government must act now to save jobs and create a plan to get young people back into work. I strongly support the TUC’s suggestion of a jobs guarantee for young workers. In essence, it would provide a guaranteed job, including training and pay on at least the living wage, for young workers who have been out of work for more than three months.

In the time I have, I will focus on the economic powerhouse that is the beauty industry—an industry that employs over 300,000 people across the UK in every town, village and city. In many places, including my own constituency, beauty salons are the lifeblood of the high street. The sector’s success is critical in our economic recovery.

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the beauty industry, which contributes billions of pounds to the economy and provides over 370,000 jobs, is no laughing matter, despite the Prime Minister’s frivolous and flippant dismissal of the question when he was asked about it in Prime Minister’s questions last Wednesday?