Business of the House

Maria Caulfield Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I am very sorry to hear about that. I will, after this session, ensure that the Home Office and the Foreign Office—particularly consular services—have heard the situation that the hon. Lady describes. If she wants to give my office more details and the record of correspondence that she has had, we will do everything we can to ensure that she is given the right support to get her constituent home.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am very grateful to you for allowing me to raise a point of order from the Front Bench. It relates to comments that the shadow Leader of the House, the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), made at the start of business questions. She did notify me that she was going to make those comments, but after business questions had started. However, this point of order is more about the content of the comments, which I personally found very difficult.

I did write to my constituents over a year ago about a consultation that is being run by my local council on 15 to 20-minute communities. In that letter, I pointed to some of the rumours about 15-minute cities, because that is something that constituents have raised with me. That consultation is still live on the council’s website—it is on page 45 of its planning and appraisals document—so this is very much a constituency-based issue.

However, I find it very difficult to be accused of being a conspiracy theorist on the back of that, especially as the vaccines Minister. Whenever there is a debate in this place on that subject, the number of death threats and the amount of abuse that I get is overwhelming at times. I realise that colleagues sometimes have valid points to raise, but there is a backlash whenever those debates are held.

More importantly, being linked to antisemitism when my family in London are actually Jewish, and have had a very difficult time over the past few months, was devastating. I kindly ask the shadow Leader of the House to either withdraw those statements, or just to reflect that while we all play politics in this space, sometimes things are very personal.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Does the shadow Leader of the House wish to make a further point of order?