Oral Answers to Questions

Lola McEvoy Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I remind the hon. Gentleman that when his party was in the coalition Government, they did not do anything about social care—they simply cut all our public services and we had to pick up the results of that. I do not know the details of the particular case he refers to, but I will ensure he gets a better answer than that in writing.

[Lola McEvoy (Darlington) (Lab)]

Q13. Olivia is a young constituent in Darlington. Her testimony was instrumental in securing a ban on stranger contact for under-16s. She has the letter that the Prime Minister sent her framed on her wall. Olivia and millions of young people across the country will be safer because of him: his commitment to hear the stories of ordinary people and the injustices that they face, and then to take action, has delivered real change. Given that social media has, for better or worse, played such an influential role in our tenure in this House, will the Prime Minister share with all of us any of the viral moments that have had cut-through in the Starmer household?

[The Prime Minister]

I need to tread very carefully here. I got into a lot of trouble at a primary school when an eight-year-old encouraged me to do the “six-seven” thing, and the whole class joined in—it went viral. When I left, the headteacher told me sternly that it was against the school rules, and I have to say that I was totally pathetic and I simply said, “I didn’t start it”.

Civil Service Pensions

Lola McEvoy Excerpts

Monday 6th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

The simple answer is yes, and I am sorry to hear about what has happened with Scott and Pamela.

[Lola McEvoy (Darlington) (Lab)]

I recently met a woman who had spent her career fighting fraud for the Department for Work and Pensions. If she had behaved in the way that this company is behaving around her pension, she would have been fired on the spot. It is one rule for ordinary working people and another for these outsourced companies, which behave so terribly on the taxpayers’ money. In Darlington, we have a Capita base with over 1,000 employees. Capita recently announced that it could no longer afford to pay the real living wage. How much profit is it making on this £200 million contract that it is failing to deliver?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I have not hesitated to use commercial levers to withhold millions of pounds from Capita when it has not delivered the performance it should have. My hon. Friend puts her finger on a very important point: it is for Capita to have a sense of self-awareness about its own conduct and the consequence for a lot of very vulnerable people.

Defending Democracy Taskforce

Lola McEvoy Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis]

I thank the right hon. Member again for the work that he did. He is right to raise the important contribution that the then Cabinet Secretary, now Lord Case, made in setting up the defending democracy taskforce.

I genuinely welcome the points that the right hon. Member makes. He has been very good about providing helpful bits of information and intelligence over the past 18 months or so, and I always really appreciate that, because it is it is well meant and well received. I understand why he raises the concerns about China, which have been very well debated in this House. I believe that he understands how seriously I take those threats. A huge amount of activity is taking place across Government. For reasons that he will know very well, we do not often get into the detail of all that, but I hope that he will understand that that activity is under way, and a crucial part of it is, as he described, working with our allies. We do that very regularly.

The right hon. Member is right to raise the important role that journalists play. He will remember from his time in the Home Office, working with colleagues across Government, that a lot of resource and time is invested in our protective security regime. We do not tend to say much about it, but I assure him of the seriousness with which we take these issues, and I agree with him about the importance of free speech and the role that journalists have to play. It is completely unacceptable for anyone in this country to be intimidated by any foreign power, and the Government will always stand against that activity.

[Lola McEvoy (Darlington) (Lab)]

I put on record my personal thanks to the Minister for the support that he has given to many Members of this House, including newly elected Members like me, and I welcome a newly elected female Member, the hon. Member for Gorton and Denton (Hannah Spencer), to the House today. Will the Minister elaborate on the work of the defending democracy taskforce, and talk about any time spent looking into the algorithms that reward rage-baiting and extremist opinions? I feel that they are degrading our public debate, outside and inside this place.

[Dan Jarvis]

My hon. Friend is a great constituency MP, and it is profoundly concerning to me, and I am sure to other Members who have been in this place for a number of years, to hear about the threats, harassment and intimidation that newer Members have had to face in recent times. It is completely unacceptable, and I pay tribute to their resilience in standing against it, but we want to work very closely with them to make sure that they feel properly supported.

My hon. Friend is right to raise concerns about algorithms. I assure her that the subject has been discussed on a number of occasions by the defending democracy taskforce. She will understand that DSIT is the lead Department on that activity, but I heard this comparison made the other day: in days gone by, people would go into a library and choose the book that they wanted to read, but people’s content online is now often directed by forces way beyond their control. I think we should all be very concerned about that. I certainly am, and it is a matter on which I work very closely with colleagues in DSIT.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lola McEvoy Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

May I say how unacceptable the conditions that some are enduring in our hospitals are? There is no excuse, and it is our No. 1 priority. On vaccinations, we have had over 17 million patients vaccinated this year. That is an increase on last year, but I want to drive that up again next year, because vaccinations make such a difference both to patients and to staff within the hospitals, and of course we will take action on social care.

[Lola McEvoy (Darlington) (Lab)]

Q4. Merry Christmas to you, Mr Speaker, and all your fantastic staff. The year 2025 has been momentous for Darlington—Britain’s best town—but there is much more to do. I met a lovely woman when I was out door-knocking recently, who works 12-hour night shifts at a care home in the town. Her colleagues are on minimum wage and many care workers across the town are not even paid time and a half for working on Christmas day. Like so many in her profession, she wants the system fixed not for herself, but for her residents. I believe that starts with radical improvements to care workers’ terms and conditions. This workforce of mostly women do essential, skilled and exhausting work without fuss, fanfare and—still—fair pay. They deserve better. What can I tell the Darlington care workers will have improved for them by next Christmas?

[The Prime Minister]

Carers are incredibly skilled workers. My sister is one of them, and I am very proud of them and her for their invaluable work. I am pleased that we have increased the carer’s allowance earnings limit by the largest amount since it was introduced, and we are providing £500 million to fund the first ever fair pay agreement through the Employment Rights Bill that was passed yesterday, to ensure that care workers are properly recognised and rewarded.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lola McEvoy Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman overlooks the fact that at the last Budget there was a record settlement for Scotland—£50 billion a year. He talks about support. We have just won the Norway frigates contract. That is 15 years of shipbuilding in Scotland. The SNP First Minister has said what about that since Sunday? Absolutely nothing. I know we have another SNP question in just a moment. Perhaps that will be the opportunity to welcome the deal that we have won, and the jobs now for Scotland.

[Lola McEvoy (Darlington) (Lab)]

Q10. Prime Minister, last year, my online safety forum of children and young people from every secondary school and college in Darlington found that 71% of our year 10s and 12s had been contacted by a stranger online, a shocking failure that our Online Safety Act will hopefully prevent going forward. Will he join me in calling on the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), and all opposed to this vital Act, to pick a side? Are they with us, parents and child protectors, or are they with the predators harming our children online?

[The Prime Minister]

Of course, the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) is not here to represent his constituency in the House that he was elected to. No, he has flown to America to badmouth and talk down our country. It is worse than that, Mr Speaker: if you can believe it, he has gone there to lobby the Americans to impose sanctions on this country that will harm working people. You cannot get more unpatriotic than that. It is a disgrace. The Online Safety Act 2023 protects children from material on suicide, self-harm and online predators. Reform says it would scrap it. When its leader was asked, “Well, what would you replace it with?”, his answer was:

“There needs to be a tech answer. I don’t know what that is”.

You cannot run a country on “don’t know” answers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lola McEvoy Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I will of course look at the specific document that the hon. and learned Gentleman refers to. He also referred to the important consent vote taking place in the Northern Ireland Assembly next week. This Government support the Windsor framework. That is why, when we were in opposition, we voted with the then Government to support it. We are committed to implementing it in good faith, and that is what this Government will do.

[Lola McEvoy (Darlington) (Lab)]

Public procurement is a vital lever for delivering our growth mission, and growth must be felt by people in every part of our country. What steps is the Minister taking to ensure that when taxpayers’ money is spent on private contracts, the key workers delivering the contract and local communities such as mine in Darlington maximise the benefits of that public money?

[Georgia Gould]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question and for the time she spent with me last week setting out the opportunities of procurement and the needs of her community in Darlington. We have heard from the whole House today how important it is to back small and medium- sized enterprises that have roots in communities, and we are determined that the new national policy procurement statement will do that.