Oral Answers to Questions

Marie Goldman Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Abtisam Mohamed (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

14. What fiscal steps she is taking to support small businesses.

[Marie Goldman (Chelmsford) (LD)]

16. What assessment she has made of the potential impact of changes to business rates on the hospitality sector.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dan Tomlinson]

I thank my hon. Friend for her representations on behalf of businesses and constituents in Sheffield. One of the important things to note about the business rates system is that there are many smaller businesses on our high streets that pay no business rates at all. One in three businesses continue to benefit from small business rate relief and an additional 85,000 benefit from reduced bills as that tapers. At the Budget we announced an additional two years of small business rate relief for those businesses that expand into a second property. This will be helpful for small and independent businesses, and will support them to grow.

[Marie Goldman]

Chelmsford has a vibrant night-time economy. Just last Sunday, I spent the evening at a fabulous local music venue called Hot Box, right in the heart of my constituency. Venues such as Hot Box represent important cultural and social spaces for smaller cities like mine, but many are at risk due to recent Government changes to the business rates system. New analysis puts the average increase in the hospitality business rates bill in Chelmsford at nearly £23,000 over three years. For many, that is impossible to absorb. Another family-run business in Chelmsford that has been going for 25 years will see its monthly rates more than double from April. It says that it will simply have to close its doors if that goes ahead, resulting in 40 people losing their jobs. Will the Government implement the 20p discount that they have already legislated for and let all businesses in retail, leisure and hospitality get the support that they need?

[Mr Speaker]

I think the Minister has got the idea.

Women’s Safety: Walking, Wheeling, Cycling and Running

Marie Goldman Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Marie Goldman (Chelmsford) (LD)]

It is a genuine pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) for securing this important debate. As hon. Members have set out, the abuse and violence experienced by women and girls in public spaces is horrifyingly prevalent and should be called out for what it is: a national emergency.

I want to pay tribute to hon. Members from across the House for some of the things they have said this afternoon, and particularly to the hon. Member for Lowestoft, who started the debate in such a wonderful way and really set the tone. She highlighted things that we all know, as women, but that, shockingly, still need highlighting. She spoke about women having to choose either the most direct or the safest route home, and about the unspoken risk assessment we all do—those words rang true to me.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) spoke about her personal experience of harassment while cycling, and about the importance of encouraging children to start cycling early. The hon. Member for Bolton North East (Kirith Entwistle) spoke about the things we do “just in case”, and that really resonated with me. My hon. Friend the Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine) talked about her constituent, Holly, and her call for women’s safety to be designed in—that is really important, and I hope the Minister listens to that call. The hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Amanda Hack) said that women are “constantly compromising” in what they do, and that also rang very true to me. I also highlight the hon. Members of the other gender who spoke up so passionately and convincingly when they said that men’s behaviour needs to change and that they would champion that. I thank them very much for speaking out about it.

A UN Women UK study found that 71% of women of all ages have experienced sexual harassment in public spaces in the UK, as my hon. Friend the Member for Frome and East Somerset said. That figure increases to a shocking 86% for women aged 18 to 24. Part 2 of the Angiolini inquiry confirmed, in black and white, what women already knew—that it is common for us to feel unsafe walking or running in our own streets, and that as women we often actively change our daily routines to avoid very real threats, as highlighted by Members across the House.

It also found that sexually motivated crimes against women in public are not prioritised to the same extent as other serious offences. Women have felt that to be true for far too long. A University of Manchester study found that more than two thirds of women runners experience some form of abuse while running, most commonly verbal, with just 5% of them reporting such incidents to the police. That is plainly unacceptable in Britain today.

Liberal Democrats have urged the Government to implement all 13 of the inquiry’s recommendations without delay. The sense of insecurity among women worsens during the winter months as the lack of safe routes on dark evenings greatly restricts women travelling for work or leisure.

[Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)]

Richmond Park in my constituency is a very popular spot for runners and cyclists, but as my hon. Friend points out, it is so much darker during the winter months. Our dedicated police force, the Royal Parks constabulary, has recently been completely scrapped, leaving the park unpatrolled and even less safe. This means women are choosing not to run in the park at all, which reduces their options for safe running and cycling routes in the winter months. Does she agree that investing in neighbourhood policing, including the policing we used to have in the royal parks, is critical to women feeling safer?

[Marie Goldman]

My hon. Friend’s intervention is very timely. My Chelmsford constituency is in Essex, and Essex police has just announced that it feels it will have to scrap numbers from the force, which is very concerning indeed. She also highlights the importance of women feeling safe, particularly in parks. In Chelmsford, streetlights were left dark and unrepaired by Essex county council for years, leaving many women feeling unable to take the most direct and quickest route, which was through the park, from the station to their home, at the end of the day.

As a county councillor, I campaigned hard for the lights to be fixed. I am pleased that they were eventually fixed, but that was with the help of Liberal Democrat-run Chelmsford city council. It is hardly surprising that inadequate street lighting and a lack of safe paths to facilitate active travel are widely reported to be significant barriers to women walking in their communities.

A report by the Institute for Public Policy Research in the last two years found that chronic underfunding of active travel across England is undermining efforts to get people walking, wheeling and cycling, instead of driving, with just 2% of the total transport budget spent on infrastructure to support active travel. It sometimes seems that we are putting our money in the wrong places.

It is disappointing to note, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bath did, that the UK lags behind its European counterparts, with fewer than one in five people walking, wheeling or cycling on an average day, compared with more than one in four across Europe. The report highlights that this failure has locked in more congestion and contributed to worsening air quality, making it harder to reduce emissions while also limiting growth. Members might wonder why I mention that, but we also know that higher levels of pollution intersect with racial and wealth inequalities, with the most racially diverse and the poorest parts of our towns and cities suffering the most.

There is even evidence that equal exposure to air pollution does not mean equal health outcomes for women and men. For example, some studies have shown that women experience more harmful effects from air pollution than men. More research is needed, but at the very least that demonstrates the necessity of inclusion when considering the importance of prioritising active travel.

The same goes for road safety more generally, and the Liberal Democrats have for some time been calling for an updated road safety strategy, so we welcomed its recent publication by the Government. My Liberal Democrat colleagues and I also welcome the publication of the pavement parking consultation outcome, albeit five years on. Although it might seem strange on the surface, women are likely to be disproportionately affected by the inaccessibility caused by pavement parking.

Women are more likely than men to be disabled and have mobility or visual impairment issues. We are more likely to be accompanying children and wheeling prams, and we are more likely to be carers, as was pointed out earlier. I was therefore pleased, in the autumn, to table an amendment to the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill that would have enabled local authorities to enforce pavement parking laws more easily. Pavement parking is not just a minor inconvenience; it puts people in harm’s way, impacts their sense of dignity and limits their access to public space. It is easy for the casual observer to dismiss some of those small changes as trivial, but they make a genuine difference in improving women’s sense of safety and inclusion.

In Chelmsford, Make Space for Girls has been doing great work to build inclusive infrastructure, which is so important for creating environments where women feel safe. The project enables girls and gender non-conforming children to design their own play spaces, and it is just as much about creating safe, comfortable physical environments as proving to these children that they can enact change in their own communities and hold power to shape their own futures. That is important, because although street lighting and safer paths play an essential role, those issues are ultimately symptomatic of the broader problem that faces our country. That is why initiatives such as Chelmsford city council’s women’s safety charter, through which local premises commit to a range of training to ensure that staff consider and prioritise women’s safety as standard, are also necessary.

Finally, the fact remains that women who are victims of violence are incredibly likely to be known to the men who attack them. We must therefore focus our efforts on tackling the societal attitudes that lead people to look away from, excuse and sometimes justify violence against women and girls. We have a responsibility to change that. It cannot be that, in a decade’s time, women are still fearful of walking our streets because of who may be lurking in the dark. We owe it to future generations of women to act. My Liberal Democrat colleagues and, I believe, Members from across the House will continue to press the Government to do so.

Living Standards: East of England

Marie Goldman Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Marie Goldman (Chelmsford) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Hobhouse, and I thank the hon. Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) for letting me speak. As a fellow east of England MP, I thank him for securing this important debate, and I hope he agrees with me that health is central to living standards. As vice-chair of the East of England all-party group, I note that my predecessors published a report on levelling-up in the region in 2022. The report found that women in the region can expect to spend 19 years of their lives in less than good health, compared with 16 years for men. According to an international Global Burden of Disease study, 42% of ill health in the east of England can be linked to preventable factors linked to socioeconomic deprivation and other health inequalities.

I regularly receive casework from constituents experiencing long delays in referrals following GP appointments. That is shown in the data, with gynaecology waiting times a particularly bad example. For example, in June Chelmsford’s Mid and South Essex integrated care board had the highest gynaecology treatment waiting list of any ICB in the east of England at 15,768, with almost half of women waiting for longer than 18 weeks for treatment—well below the Government’s 92% target. Indeed, one of my constituents wrote to tell me that she would face a 78-week wait for a gynaecology appointment, not 18 weeks. We all recognise that the longer someone needs healthcare, the more complex, financially costly and serious the consequences can be, and we need the Government urgently to bring down referral waiting lists.

As the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists noted, the public health grant must be adequately funded to address the underlying causes of sickness, especially those that acutely affect women. In Chelmsford, my city council has emphasised how important that is, helping to meet one of the statutory duties of ICBs, which is health and wellbeing, especially in the context of reduced staffing, the abolition of NHS England, and ICBs being asked to reduce their costs by 50%. I urge the Government to commit to expanding the number of women’s health hubs in the east of England in particular.

Finance Bill

Marie Goldman Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 27th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tulip Siddiq]

The right hon. Gentleman has spoken enough times in the debate, so I will not be taking yet another intervention from him.

The hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Alison Griffiths) raised questions about SMEs and high streets. The Government have been absolutely clear that we need to take difficult decisions to deliver long-term stability and growth, and that stabilising public finances is the only way to create long-term stability in which businesses can thrive. But we recognise the need to protect small employers, which is why we have more than doubled employment allowance—she may like to know that—meaning that half of businesses with mixed liabilities will either gain or see no change at all next year.

The right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) raised questions about VAT on private schools hitting SEND pupils. To protect pupils with special educational needs and disabilities who can only have their needs met in a private school, the local authorities and devolved Governments that fund those places will be compensated for the VAT they are charged on those pupils’ fees. I hope that reassures him.

The right hon. Gentleman also raised a point about faith schools. Of course the Government value parental choice and recognise that some people want their children to be educated in a school with a particular faith ethos. My hon. Friend the Exchequer Secretary met the Partnerships for Jewish Schools and the Association of Muslim Schools during the consultation period on this policy. To ensure fairness and consistency between all schools that charge fees, faith schools will remain in the scope of the policy. It is worth noting for the right hon. Member that some faith schools are likely to be less impacted by the policy if some of their income is derived from voluntary donations from the community, because donations that are freely given and for which there is no obligation are outside the scope of VAT. As such, not all the income that small faith schools receive will necessarily be subject to VAT. I hope that reassures him a bit.

[Marie Goldman (Chelmsford) (LD)]

I thank the Minister for giving way. I want to ask her specifically about what she just said about special schools still getting funding. Is she aware that many parents of children with special educational needs choose to send their children to special schools even though they do not have education, health and care plans, so do not have funding through local authorities and so will still be affected by this measure? I wonder what she thinks about that.

[Tulip Siddiq]

My hon. Friend the Exchequer Secretary says that he will write to the hon. Lady about this, but we note the points that she has made, and we are looking into them.

The hon. Member for Gordon and Buchan (Harriet Cross) asked about oil and gas investment. We recognise that oil and gas will continue to have a role in the energy mix during the transition, but we need to drive public and private investment towards cleaner energy. The money raised by these changes will contribute to public investment while the sector continues to benefit from £84.25 in relief for every £100 of private investment. To reflect our commitment to facilitating cleaner home-grown energy, the Government have confirmed that the sector will continue to benefit from a decarbonisation investment allowance with a value similar to the relief that it received prior to the November energy profits levy rate increases.

I end by saying that the Bill delivers on key manifesto commitments from this Labour Government. It provides stability, it supports businesses, and it moves us to a fairer, more sustainable tax system. For those reasons, I commend it to the House.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

VAT: Independent Schools

Marie Goldman Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[James Murray]

I am going to make some progress. I am sorry, but I have taken a lot of interventions.

I would like to address the issue of special educational needs. It is a point that many hon. Members have raised, and I know that some parents are concerned about the impact of this policy on pupils in private schools with special educational needs. Let me start by saying that we have considered this element of the policy very carefully. Our proposed policy makes sure that pupils will not be impacted where they have acute additional needs and an education, health and care plan in England, or its equivalent in other nations, specifies that these can be met only in a private school.

[Marie Goldman (Chelmsford) (LD)]

I thank the Minister for giving way on that specific point, because he is relying on those schools still being open because other parents have not left. How will he address the situation in which parents of children needing that extra support rely on such schools for their special educational needs, yet those schools have closed because they cannot afford to stay open any longer?

[James Murray]

We will take a community-wide approach that sees improved SEND provision in mainstream state schools, as well as ensuring that state special schools cater for those with the most complex needs.

Budget Responsibility Bill

Marie Goldman Excerpts

Committee of the whole House
Wednesday 4th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Ms Ghani)]

I call Marie Goldman to make her maiden speech.

[Marie Goldman (Chelmsford) (LD)]

First, I congratulate Members who have also made their maiden speeches in the Chamber this afternoon. In particular, I congratulate the hon. Member for Swindon North (Will Stone). I wonder whether his skills as a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black-belt led him to apply to be an extra in those movies that he mentioned. I will be watching out for him in the fight scenes.