Oral Answers to Questions

Laura Kyrke-Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Jake Richards]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising this important issue. Where it is safe to do so, we would always encourage parents to have contact with their children. The courts encourage this; it is always in the child’s best interests to have that contact. Where contact centres are necessary, they need to be close to home and, clearly, affordable. This sector is independent of Government, but if it is not working, as we are hearing from my hon. Friend, we will look into it in due course.

[Laura Kyrke-Smith (Aylesbury) (Lab)]

13. What steps he is taking to review imprisonment for public protection sentences.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Alex Norris)]

Our Government will bring forward legislation to end the IPP sentence by the end of this Parliament. We will do so through cross-party engagement. We recognise that these are complex cases, involving important considerations to do with public protection and victims, and it will take us time to get this right. I anticipate making a further announcement later this year.

[Laura Kyrke-Smith]

In the summer, I met a group of IPP prisoners, most of whom had been serving their sentences since 2006 or 2007. They told me about the extreme toll that the protracted uncertainty of the sentences takes on their mental health, and one showed me where he had been self-harming. The prisoners also spoke about the unfairness of this type of sentence, and particularly of seeing people who had committed much greater offences released much sooner than them. We must always do right by the victims of prisoners’ crimes, but these are men who have now served their original sentences several times over, so it is right that the Secretary of State is reviewing this type of sentence. What assessment has he made of the mental health impacts of these sentences, and when we can expect decisions on next steps?

[Alex Norris]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her considered question. I have had similar conversations in my constituency surgeries, and I recognise the challenges that those prisoners face. In the immediate term, IPP prisoners have greater access to mental health support, including funding for specialist assessments by psychology services. She will know—I suspect that this is at the root of the conversations she had—that the Phoenix unit opened up at HMP Aylesbury last month to provide dedicated support for IPP prisoners. I know that those prisoners, their families and, indeed, their victims are looking to see what the Government will do next. We must get any changes that we make right, and ensure a balance with public safety, but these sentences have been discontinued for a very good reason. That is a long-standing cross-party position, and it is time that we move forward.

Oral Answers to Questions

Laura Kyrke-Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

The hon. Gentleman is entirely right. What we have heard is devastating—absolutely horrific. I will discuss this issue with the Health Secretary. His Department obviously has responsibility for human tissue while we have responsibility for the coroner service and the law regarding death, and we will work together on this issue.

[Laura Kyrke-Smith (Aylesbury) (Lab)]

T2.  This month I was delighted to award my community champion award to Afzaal Hussain. After his best friend was stabbed and died in 2021, he set up In This Together Bucks, which has now removed more than 1,500 knives from the streets while also addressing underlying causes of knife crime through mentoring, mediation and support for families. Will the Secretary of State join me in congratulating Afzaal on his work, and does he agree that organisations such as his in our communities are vital to the tackling of knife crime?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jake Richards)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s constituent Afzaal Hussain for the work that he does alongside Adele Webb. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have heard in this morning’s session about the tragic consequences of knife crime, and it is so important that the Government and wider society work together to do anything we can to reduce it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Laura Kyrke-Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 19th May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Jake Richards]

This Government are undertaking the biggest prison building programme since the Victorian era. We will be building 13,000 new places by 2031. We inherited a prison capacity crisis from the Conservatives, so it takes some chutzpah for them to start asking questions about prison building. We are committed to the prison building programme that we announced in 2024, and we are confident that we will match it. We are fixing the mess that they created.

[Laura Kyrke-Smith (Aylesbury) (Lab)]

8. What progress he has made with Cabinet colleagues on the Government's knife crime strategy.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr David Lammy)]

I am delighted to be working with the Home Secretary and other Cabinet colleagues to deliver our ambitious goal of halving knife crime within a decade. In February, we published the youth knife possession guidance, which delivers tougher consequences for knife carriers. The youth justice White Paper published yesterday sets out how the Government will intervene earlier to stop children becoming involved in offending, and ensure that those who do are dealt with swiftly and effectively.

[Laura Kyrke-Smith]

I welcome the Government’s knife crime strategy, with its ambitious goal of halving knife crime in a decade, and its recognition that serious violence is both a criminal justice issue and a social failure. I commend Thames Valley police on their hard work to tackle knife crime in Aylesbury and the villages. We have seen some really good measures, such as the knife crime amnesty bins, which have had a positive effect. As the Secretary of State knows, the challenge of knife crime starts with its root causes, which include poverty and a lack of opportunity for young people. We still struggle with that in Aylesbury and the villages. What more is the Secretary of State doing across Government to address these two root causes?

[Mr Lammy]

I agree that poverty, exclusion and a lack of opportunity are all root causes of crime. Our youth justice White Paper focuses on intervening earlier to address risks before they escalate, working across Government to tackle the root causes of crime, and ensuring that every child has the support and opportunities that they need to thrive.

Oral Answers to Questions

Laura Kyrke-Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As the hon. Member knows, the previous Government cut police officers and police community support officers while also critically underfunding the criminal justice system. We are acting in London, funding the Met with up to £262 million this year, and we are investing £200 million this year to put 3,000 more neighbourhood police on our streets by spring. Through our Crime and Policing Bill, we will also give them the powers they need, including tough new respect orders to tackle crime and make our streets safer. But I do gently say to the hon. Member that the Liberal Democrats come to their feet and ask for more funding, and then given the opportunity, they vote against the reforms that would actually grow our economy.

[Laura Kyrke-Smith (Aylesbury) (Lab)]

Q11. In Aylesbury, I have been running a programme called “Your Voice, Your Future” to help young people engage with politics and shape the issues that matter to them. They have sent in ideas for the school curriculum review, advocated for better mental health support and shared their fears about smartphones and social media. Will the Deputy Prime Minister join me in recognising the contributions and ideas of young people, and what more will he do to ensure that they can meaningfully engage in national policy?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I applaud my hon. Friend. She is a passionate champion of the next generation. She will have seen my right hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) launch her curriculum review, which will deliver high standards for every child, giving them the skills they need to thrive and boosting their engagement in our democracy. I am proud that we will also be giving 16 and 17-year-olds the right to vote in our UK elections to make their powerful voices heard.

Oral Answers to Questions

Laura Kyrke-Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 16th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Sackman]

The hon. Member raises a very important point. We know that the success rate of appeals is high and the delays are severe in the SEND tribunal, which has a huge impact on children and families. We are close to the maximum number of sitting days across all our jurisdictions, to bear down on those delays, but I will certainly take his point on board as we look to reform the SEND system.

[Laura Kyrke-Smith (Aylesbury) (Lab)]

T9. The formidable team at Aylesbury Women’s Aid report continued severe delays in the charging and prosecution of domestic abuse cases. We are in touch about one survivor who lives in constant fear of her abuser, who turns up at her house and taps on her windows at night, despite a warrant being out for his arrest. What steps has the Minister taken to ensure that survivors are not left living in fear while they wait for justice?

[Jake Richards]

My hon. Friend raises a really important point. The Sentencing Bill, which we will debate later today, has really important measures that will protect victims of domestic abuse and ensure that victims are at the heart of our criminal justice policy, as well as probation services.

Humanist Marriage

Laura Kyrke-Smith Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Laura Kyrke-Smith (Aylesbury) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Tamworth (Sarah Edwards) and for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge), as well as the hon. Member for Henley and Thame (Freddie van Mierlo), for securing the debate.

It is a timely debate for me, as it was exactly this week 11 years ago that I had my humanist wedding. It was one of the most wonderful days of my life—my husband and I, surrounded by family and friends, on a beautiful, windswept and, fortunately, sunny beach in Devon, marking and celebrating our decision to spend our lives together. I had not really heard of a humanist wedding before I started planning one, but once we realised the constraints of a civil ceremony—the limits on readings, songs, numbers of guests and locations—we quickly decided that we wanted something else: a celebration of not just our formal commitment, but our beliefs and values.

Personally, although I have every respect for people of all faiths and none, it is through humanist values that I try to make sense of the world. For me, this is the one life that I have, and I try to live in the here and now, making decisions on what I feel and see that are based on logic, reason and evidence, and rooted in compassion, dignity and respect for other people. Because my husband sees the world in the same way, a humanist wedding was the right choice for us.

I pay tribute to our incredible humanist celebrant, David Pack, who sadly passed away a few years ago, but will forever remain a central part of our special day. He helped us to create a ceremony that spoke to our values, and I want to borrow his words about why humanist weddings are so important. He said:

“A lot of couples say they find it hypocritical to make promises before a god they don’t believe in…As humanists we believe that we can find a way of living and behaving decently without needing reference to any divine authority, drawing on our own human qualities: reason, emotion, experience and empathy”.

That is what a humanist wedding enables a couple to express at that key moment in their lives. We had wonderful feedback from our guests, many of whom had never been to a humanist wedding before but found it to be a very open, inclusive and moving ceremony, from the songs to the vows and the readings, many of which we had written together.

Although I could happily be sucked into reminiscing about my wedding, I will turn to the point of today’s debate. For me, that starts with the fact that, although this week is the time we celebrate our wedding anniversary each year, it is not in fact my official wedding anniversary, which comes at the end of May, marking the date that we went to an unremarkable registry office in London to do the official bit. We felt somewhat resentful at the time, and still do to this day, because it came with extra costs, extra admin and that niggling sense that the wedding we had invited everyone to a few weeks later was somehow not the real deal. That is why I am so pleased that this debate is happening, and I am so pleased to speak in support of the legal recognition of humanist marriages.

I want humanist couples to be able to marry with a British Humanist Association celebrant of their choosing, and for this to have the same status in law as any other wedding. We have heard from others about how possible this is; I understand that the law can be changed quite quickly and easily by laying down the order under the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013. No further legislative work is needed. I am so proud that Labour has long supported this. It would strip away legal risks, as we heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), and it would be free. It would also be popular, as we have heard. I hope that after today’s debate we can just get on with it.

Legalising humanist marriage would have a transformative impact for humanist couples across the country, stripping away the awkwardness, inconvenience, cost and injustice of needing both an official ceremony and a moment of celebration. It would enable humanists to make their wedding day what it should be: the celebration of their commitment to each other, in line with their beliefs and values, and the legal recognition of that union once and for all.