Education and Opportunity

Emily Darlington Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Emily Darlington (Milton Keynes Central) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I welcome you to your role. Can I also say how fantastic it is to have an all-women Deputy Speaker team? Thank you for calling me to speak in this debate on education and opportunity. In it, I would like to pay tribute to my great-grandmother, Emily Jones, who married Thomas Thomas and made sure that her seven children could read. This started our family’s journey from the mines of the Welsh valleys to her namesake standing here in the Chamber today. Malala Yousafzai told us:

“One child…one book and one pen can change the world.”

I pay tribute to the other Members who have made their maiden speeches here in the House today. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker), it is great that you have Great British Railways, but if you come after Network Rail in Milton Keynes, we will have words.

I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr (Steve Witherden) that I know what it is like to have those strong Welsh women role models. I give him my condolences, but I am sure his mother would be so proud of him here today.

My hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Laura Kyrke-Smith), one of five Labour MPs now representing Buckinghamshire, shares with me a passion for international development. Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouthshire (Catherine Fookes) can count me in on her ambition to get 50% of women into this place and I suggest that we have our first meeting in Usk, where I was married.

I am the first MP for the new constituency of Milton Keynes Central. It encompasses half of Milton Keynes North and half of Milton Keynes South, and I am sure that my hon. Friends the Members for Milton Keynes North (Chris Curtis) and for Buckingham and Bletchley (Callum Anderson) will pay tribute to their predecessors, but I would like to wish Ben and Iain luck in their future and thank them for the collegiate way we have always interacted over the years. I would also like to pay tribute to the late Brian White and to Phyllis Starkey, fantastic former Labour MPs for Milton Keynes, and to the late Kevin Wilson, the best MP Milton Keynes never had.

Another former MP for my seat is Robert Maxwell. I have very little in common with him, except that in his maiden speech in 1964 he pleaded against the closure of the Oxford-Bletchley-Cambridge line, which we now know as East West Rail. He was right. He also argued that science, research and technology would be how the UK would become an economic success and how we would improve our NHS. He recognised the challenge of translating those discoveries into products and services, and that challenge remains today. I wonder what he would think of the new town of Milton Keynes, which embraces innovation.

We have robots that deliver our groceries. We are at the forefront of driverless technology. We are at the heart of AI, and of regulation, with the British Standards Institution based in my constituency. We are the home of the Open University, the vision of Harold Wilson and delivered by the fantastic Jennie Lee. It was the first university to do distance learning, with learning and opportunity for all at its heart—a true Labour institution. Milton Keynes college delivers opportunities for young people, but hon. Members might not be aware that it also delivers the biggest education to prisons across our country.

It is innovation that has led to our economic success, but we have also been innovative in our approach to building our city. We are all pioneers. We have all chosen to live in Milton Keynes. We have moved from across the UK or from across the world to build a better life for our families and ourselves. As Members may have realised from my mid-Atlantic accent, I too have moved around many times. I was born just across the river at St Thomas’s, then my father and I emigrated to Canada when I was young due to a lack of science funding in the UK. My summers were spent in south Wales, learning about my heritage and learning from the strong women in my family. I moved back 24 years ago to care for my gran, and she would be proud that I am here. I now call Milton Keynes my home with my husband and two children.

Perhaps it is the lack of history in Milton Keynes that allows us to embrace change. We are different by design. We are building a new kind of city and, as we deliver our manifesto commitment to build new towns, we from Milton Keynes have this advice: it is not just about homes, roundabouts, hospitals and schools. It is about communities and green spaces. It is about places of spirituality and worship. It is about places to gather to celebrate and commemorate. It is about places to explore and exercise, and places to reflect and heal. From Campbell Park to the Milton Keynes Rose and the country’s first ecumenical church, which hosts the community iftar, Milton Keynes values these spaces.

The cohesion of a city is based on its community, its culture and its people, and it is done by design, not by happenstance. In Milton Keynes, we work hard to celebrate our city by celebrating our diversity. In just the past few weeks, I have had the pleasure to attend the African diaspora festival; Nelson Mandela Day; Art in the Park, organised by Islamic Arts and Culture; MK India Day, which 15,000 people attended; the midsummer festival, celebrating our pagan past; and the Tamil sports day. These events are open to all, in that Milton Keynes spirit, bringing together people from all backgrounds to bind us as Milton Keynes citizens, to learn about the plurality of our ancestry and to celebrate the diversity of our patina, but bound by our British values, which encompass the ideals of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect and, most of all, tolerance.

A society is judged by how we treat our most vulnerable, including our children in care—my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton Itchen (Darren Paffey) spoke so passionately about his experience—our children with SEND and the growing issue of mental ill health, our refugees, our rough sleepers, our carers, our elderly, our young people at risk of knife crime and all those who suffer from sexual violence and domestic abuse. The previous Government presented these crises as consequences outside their control, but if that were true, why are we here? I am here because I have worked on all these issues in Milton Keynes with colleagues from the amazing city council, which is the only local authority to reduce rough sleeping in the past few years—no one has to sleep rough in Milton Keynes.

Milton Keynes is the first city to state its ambition to become a white ribbon city. There is more youth support to prevent knife crime. Communities, parish councils and groups are delivering food parcels, and we are supporting our children in care with housing and employment. There is new support for unpaid carers, who are our heroes. People have the right to have end-of-life care in their own home, and there is the biggest retrofitting and building of council housing in a generation.

But there are limits to what can be done locally, so I have made my way to Parliament to get the change that Milton Keynes both needs and deserves. On my journey here, I have found that the reputation of this place is at an all-time low. Even worse, it is a place that causes fear for some people because of the divisive language used both here and on the campaign trail.

When a country is divided, it makes it weaker. When arguments lead to violence, it makes our citizens scared. When the rights of one are played against the rights of others, it weakens all of our rights. When we focus on what divides us rather than what we have in common, we lose good MPs like David Amess and my friend Jo Cox. Let all of us who seek to unite our country focus on the “United” in United Kingdom and the “Great” in Great Britain.

I am only the second Emily ever to be elected to this House and, like the first, my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), I will speak my mind. I end my speech with another Emily, Emily Davison, who was never elected but did find herself in a closet in this House. We will be judged by the British people for our deeds, not our words.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call Sam Carling to make his maiden speech.