Sport: Team GB and ParalympicsGB

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Stephanie Peacock]

I share that concern. In my constituency in the borough of Barnsley, 34% of children are inactive. Obesity and inactivity are an important challenge that we need to tackle, and sport is central to that. We know that sport improves our health and life chances. It protects us against many chronic conditions, such as coronary heart disease, obesity and type 2 diabetes. Some 65% of schools consider sport to make a positive contribution to attainment. It is also a fantastic enabler of growth, contributing 1.25 million jobs and £53.6 billion of direct gross value added to the economy. We also know that it benefits society and communities. For example, sports-based early intervention initiatives consistently report that more than 70% of participants have reduced offending and antisocial behaviour. Grassroots sport directly contributes to preventing 10,000 incidents of crime.

It is therefore a pleasure to be debating sport today in this Chamber following our brilliant Olympic success. We all remember the success of London 2012, and I know that many of today’s Olympians spoke of that summer as being formative to their aspirations. One of the greatest political champions of the London 2012 games was the late, great Dame Tessa Jowell, alongside one of my predecessors as Sports Minister and former fellow Yorkshire MP, Richard Caborn. As he highlights in his book, some people say that politics should stay out of sport, but major sporting events are inseparably grounded in politics, and I am proud that it was a Labour Government who secured London 2012. This Labour Government will take forward that the legacy, supporting the next generation of athletes as we look to LA 2028 and building on our successful record of hosting major sporting events as we host the women’s rugby world cup in 2025 and the Euros in 2028. We will support grassroots sport so that everyone, whatever their background or postcode, can take part in the sports they love.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the shadow Minister.

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[Mr French]

It was only a matter of time before those on the Labour Benches came out swinging. What I would say is that we could look at the record of the previous Labour Government, who sold off sports pitches, and have a much longer debate about whose legacy is worse.

The previous Conservative Government began to deliver on the Olympics promise right away. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s 2015 report, “A Living Legacy: 2010-15 Sport Policy and Investment”, confirmed that 1.6 million more people were playing sport once a week than when London won the Olympic bid under Labour in 2005. To build out that significant improvement, we backed our up-and-coming athletes with more than £1.35 billion for grassroots sport facilities across the country to ensure that they had the best facilities possible to achieve their potential. Funding from Conservative Governments has also seen over £320 million invested in grassroots sports across the country between 2021 to 2025 to build, renovate and maintain grass pitches and multi-sport facilities. That included up to 8,000 new and improved multi-sport grassroots facilities and pitches across the whole of the UK, helping the next generation to avoid the waterlogged and muddy pitches that I remember not so fondly from my experiences growing up playing football and rugby.

Between 2022 and 2024, £21.9 million was provided to renovate more than 3,000 tennis courts across Scotland, England and Wales. More than £60 million was provided by the last Government through the swimming pool support fund in 2023 and 2024 to support public swimming pool providers in England with immediate cost pressures and to provide investment to make facilities sustainable in the longer term. As most people will appreciate, swimming is not just a fantastic sport but a key life skill. Communities across the country have also benefited from the last Government’s community ownership fund, which helped save more than 330 pubs, sports clubs, arts venues and other precious community spaces. Also, we must not forget the £30 million Lionesses futures fund, which is helping to provide opportunities for the next generation of Lionesses. That £30 million is being used to build approximately 30 new state-of-the-art pitches and accompanying facilities. The sites will be designed to prioritise women and girls’ teams across England.

Importantly, the prominence of female athletes such as the Lionesses, Dame Kelly Holmes and Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill has helped to increase the number of women in England who participate in sport and physical activity. That legacy continues, with 550,000 more women participating than did eight years ago. Of course, there is more to do, but the steady improvement in participation shows that creating the legacy of the London games is a marathon, not a sprint.

It is not often that I will be positive about Arsenal, but the Prime Minister will be pleased that Arsenal women’s team is leading the way in women’s football; role models such as Leah Williamson are helping attendance at the Emirates to grow to record levels. The women’s team sold out the Emirates several times last season, and average attendance at their games was better than at 10 premier league clubs.

As we move on from the Paris games and turn towards Los Angeles in 2028, another round of great British athletes will inspire more of the next generation. While nothing will compare to the home games delivered by my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Jeremy Hunt) and Boris Johnson as Mayor of London, the most recent games will surely be a springboard allowing a new generation of athletes to begin their ascendancy to the peak of world sport. The official Opposition will hold the Government’s feet to the fire to ensure that they support our athletes all the way from Sunday league to the premier league, so that they continue to perform at the pinnacle of world sport, as they have over the past 14 years. In doing so, we remember the crucial role that sport plays in our communities and for our health; I agree with the Minister’s comments on that.

I hope that today we will all finally learn more about Labour’s plans to fund support for great British sport, and to continue the strong Conservative legacy that the Government have inherited, because sport is about much more than just free tickets.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I have a little tip for the shadow Minister for future speeches: my husband David and daughter Farah are Arsenal fans.

[Matt Rodda (Reading Central) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to speak in the debate. May I associate myself with the speech made by my hon. Friend the Minister? She spoke eloquently about the importance of sport to men and women, boys and girls, and particularly to disabled people—everyone—as well as about the lifelong benefits that sport can give. I hope that the whole House will support her endeavours on this important subject.

In the time available to me—many other colleagues want to speak—I will cover three areas. First, I want to pay tribute to Paralympians and Olympians after the summer’s success. Secondly, I will highlight some of the wonderful achievements of local sportsmen and women from the Reading area and the importance of grassroots sport in our community. Finally, I will call for the owner of Reading football club to speed up the sale of the club, which is a huge local issue, and I thank my hon. Friend for her unstinting support on this important matter.

I start with the amazing success of our local Paralympians at this summer’s Paralympic games. I mention in particular Gregg Stevenson, a Paralympic rower who trains in Caversham, where the British rowing base is. Gregg has been through enormous challenges in life, yet he won gold for GB in the PR2 mixed double sculls. He suffered disability in 2009 while he was a member of the 59 Commando Squadron in the Royal Engineers through a bomb blast in Afghanistan, which caused him to lose both legs. He has come back from that tragedy to become a Paralympic rower. It is important to remember the contribution of our service personnel, as well as other disabled sportspeople. What an amazing achievement for him.

While I have the opportunity, I would also like to mention Ed Fuller, another Paralympic rower training locally who attended the University of Reading. He was one of the crew who won gold for ParalympicsGB in the mixed coxed four events in Paris. I also praise Will Arnott, a Paralympian from our community who plays boccia—an unusual precision ball sport, similar to bowls but less well known—for his hard work and dedication, and his success this summer.

Our Paralympians are all wonderful ambassadors for sport. I thank them from the bottom of my heart for their work for ParalympicsGB to raise the profile of the Paralympics, and para sport in general, among young and older people, both in the Reading area and across the country. I appreciate that colleagues are lining up to speak, but I would like to mention briefly a few prominent sportswomen from our community and say a little about grassroots sports. I thank Fran Kirby for her work in football, including for the Lionesses. She plays for Brighton & Hove Albion now, but she started as a Reading player and went to school locally at Caversham Park primary school. She is much loved in our community, and it is worth paying tribute to amazing stars like her, who blaze a trail for other women. I also thank Amanda Handisides, who is a Team GB ice hockey player, and of course Morgan Lake, who was born in Reading. She is a well-known high jumper who has represented GB on many occasions.

I also mention our wonderful grassroots sports. I cannot do justice to all of them, but I thank our local teams in football, hockey, cricket and many other sports for their enduring work at the grassroots. In a sense, I have to declare an interest: my family and I have benefited from it.

I turn briefly to Reading football club. Let me tell the story of what has happened, and call for action from the owner, Mr Dai Yongge, who has delayed selling the club, which has caused huge problems for fans, players and the club. Reading is one of the oldest clubs in the football league, yet it is in real difficulty. We have had a successful career and an illustrious history over many years, including two spells in the premiership, the highest-ever point tally achieved in the championship and numerous other successes. Sadly, we have never got to an FA cup final, but we have had some amazing cup runs, yet unfortunately our club has fallen into a difficult period because of irresponsible ownership.

Reading’s case is similar to that of a number of other clubs, as I know from working with colleagues. I am glad to see that the previous Government’s Football Governance Bill has been brought back by our Front-Bench team, and I hope that soon becomes law and deals with the problem of irresponsible ownership, which has been experienced across the country by a number of clubs, many of them in medium-sized towns and cities. I know other colleagues have strong feelings about that.

Before I call for action from Mr Yongge, I point out how difficult this situation has been. The reason why the club has been so badly affected by his ownership is repeated financial mismanagement: he failed to pay His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs on time and, as a result, points were deducted, meaning that Reading were relegated from the championship to league one. That was not because of anything that happened on the pitch. That is grossly unfair on the club, the players and local fans—it is completely and utterly unacceptable. The same thing could happen to other clubs in the football league in exactly the same way, due to the same issues of irresponsible ownership, and of owners failing to live up to the standards that they should be adhering to.

Sadly, the powers available to the English Football League are not as great as they might be, and I hope that the Bill, which will hopefully come to Parliament shortly, will tackle this and set a high bar for ownership. It is interesting that Mr Yongge was not allowed to buy Hull City; the Premier League was able to intervene to avoid that. The EFL did not have the power at the time to stop him buying Reading, and that is an absolute tragedy for our fans, the players and the club. I hope something can be done about it.

We have been hoping for a sale since last October. The former Member for Bracknell and I attended a march in Reading town centre with several thousand fans last October, and we managed accidentally to stop all traffic on a local A road. The fans sent a strong message to Mr Yongge that he needed to get on with selling the club, finding a preferred bidder and working with them to move things on, so that a new owner could invest in the club. In the last year, the situation has not been properly addressed. He has been in discussion with Rob Couhig, the former owner of Wycombe Wanderers, but sadly that fell through a few days ago. It has been announced that a new preferred bidder has come forward. I urge Mr Yongge to take all reasonable steps to engage with the new preferred bidder quickly, and to conclude a sale, so that we can move on, take our wonderful club forward, and get it back up to the premiership, ideally, though the championship will do for the moment. I urge him to get on with selling the club and to take action on behalf of the people of Reading.

I would like once again to show my appreciation for Olympians and Paralympians. They do amazing work representing this country and are ambassadors for sport across the world. I also thank local sportsmen and women, and young people involved in sport. Finally, once again, I call for a quick sale of Reading FC.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, Max Wilkinson.

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[Max Wilkinson]

My hon. Friend makes a strong point. That could be critical health infrastructure designated under our party’s proposals.

Those pitches, pools and courts have traditionally been provided by local authorities, but the defunding of councils over many years has left many areas struggling to maintain facilities. The running costs of swimming pools are high and the need is acute. The previous Government’s swimming pool support fund is a start, and in Cheltenham we have benefited from some investment as a result, but more must be done.

In the case of athletics facilities, a lack of funding in the sector has left local athletics clubs crowdfunding to keep facilities going. I am aware of the success enjoyed by Hereford and County athletics club in saving their track. However, in my own constituency, the Prince of Wales stadium is in dire need of repairs to its track so that the Cheltenham and County Harriers can once again host meetings of the standard that they require. I urge everyone involved in that endeavour to come together and seek a solution in partnership with any willing and able organisations, without delay.

Wider partnership working at local level is certainly required to support grassroots sport, and I pay tribute to the many trusts, charities and clubs that have stepped in to fill gaps in provision left by cuts to local council budgets. In Cheltenham, however, we have one really positive story to tell. The “feed Cheltenham” leisure card, which is run in conjunction with food banks, the Cheltenham Trust and the local council, gives anyone who subscribes to our local food banks free access to our leisure centre, lowering barriers to taking part in sports and physical activity for those most in need.

As a child and a young man, I took inspiration from the sportspeople I saw in front of me: Matthew Le Tissier —whose politics remain his own—Alan Shearer, Tim Henman, Serena Williams, Darren Gough and so many more. Sadly, while I could never match Alan Shearer’s goals on the football pitch, I eventually coincided with his hairstyle, and I will take some solace from that. I enjoyed many days at the Dell watching Matt Le Tissier and others, but the majority of my consumption of sports was on free-to-air television. Today, youngsters simply do not have the same opportunity to be inspired. I urge the Government to consider extending free-to-air coverage of international cricket, rugby, golf and tennis, and even extending protection to some live premier league football coverage.

For both sporting and economic reasons, is it not time for London to have its own NFL franchise? Expanding on the success of the London series of games at Wembley and the Tottenham Hotspur stadium, it could bring many hundreds of millions of pounds to our economy every year and bring the joy of NFL to many more fans in this country.

Sport instilled in me a lifelong love of physical activity, which I am extremely grateful for—my arthritic toes are perhaps less grateful. However, that love was most recently indulged during recess at Cheltenham’s Man v Fat football club. The organiser, Jamie Baron, told me how the combination of goals on and off the pitch helped him lose two and a half stone. The club’s 38 players have lost a combined 51 kg in the past eight weeks, helping improve their physical and mental health. I was proud to join the Egg Fried Whites team against a side I am told is known as the Lardies in Red. The opportunities that lay before us if we follow their lead and embrace sport for good can help us crack the public health challenge facing our nation. In this debate, I urge Members to think about sport and physical activity not just from the elite sport perspective, but about how it can help us solve the wider challenges, including public health and fixing our NHS.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call Sarah Hall to make her maiden speech.

[Sarah Hall (Warrington South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to address the House for the first time. It is a huge privilege to stand here today representing my home, the constituency of Warrington South. It is an honour I will never take for granted. I come to this place as only the second woman to represent Warrington South. The first, Helen Southworth, was a mentor of mine. Helen’s work on runaway and missing children was hugely important. Commenting at the time, she said:

“Someone said to me it was about children below the radar. Our job has been to make sure these children are on it.”

I want to continue that work, ensuring that all children across Warrington South feel happy and healthy and are afforded every opportunity to thrive. I will ensure that every child is on our radar.

I also come to this place as the second member of the Hall family to represent Warrington South. The first, my father-in-law Mike Hall, was elected in 1992. Mike was the epitome of what a constituency MP should be: a hard-working campaigner who is remembered fondly for his time in this place. I will forever be grateful for the encouragement and guidance he has given me over the years. During Mike’s maiden speech 32 years ago he paid tribute to his son, Thomas. Today in my maiden speech, I pay tribute once again to Thomas—now my husband and father to our two children George and Freya. Today is also another important day—his birthday. I want to put on record a very happy birthday to him, in the hope that gets me back in his good graces. Thomas, George, and Freya are my world, and I would not be in this place without their love and support.

My second name is Edith, which makes me the second Edith to represent Warrington in this place. The first was the formidable Edith Summerskill—the first woman MP to represent Warrington in Parliament. She fought relentlessly on issues close to her heart—for women’s rights, against child neglect and for better healthcare provision, to name a few. Having seen from her time as a doctor how poverty led to poor health outcomes, she made it her mission to fight for access to healthcare free at the point of need. Years later, she recalled attending her first confinement as a newly qualified doctor. Shocked at the state of the home and the undernourishment of the mother, whose first child had rickets, she said:

“In that room that night, I became a socialist”.

Following in her footsteps, I want to tackle the root causes of poverty. As a local councillor I worked with many local groups and charities that support residents to make ends meet: the Bread and Butter Thing, Warrington food bank, Bewsey community shop, Warrington citizen’s advice bureau and many others. They all do fantastic work, but demand for help is high.

Edith Summerskill wrote many letters to her daughter, who would also go on to become a Labour politician. She wrote in one letter:

“The shades of the women who blazed the trail that you and I might be free to fulfil ourselves seemed to sit with me on the green benches of Westminster last night. I feel now that you in your turn will go forward to destroy finally those monstrous customs and prejudices which have haunted the lives of generations of women.”

I put on record my thanks for her work to champion the rights of women, paving the way for future generations of women in this place, in Warrington and across the country.

I also pay tribute to my predecessor, Andy Carter, who served Warrington South from 2019. While he and I are not politically aligned, I know that he worked hard for Warrington South. Being a Member of Parliament brings with it great responsibility, and he did not shirk that responsibility when he served on the Standards and Privileges Committees.

Warrington is the centre of the north-west, or at the centre, sorry—a Freudian slip. Sited at the crossroads of the M6 and M62 motorways, it is strategically important for business and industry. In her maiden speech, Helen Southworth noted:

“We in Warrington, South are innovators”.—[Official Report, 25 June 1997; Vol. 296, c. 802.]

The first canal to be built in Britain, the Sankey, runs through Great Sankey. With the Mersey, the Bridgewater canal and the Manchester ship canal, it is one of four inland waterways that are significant features and monuments to Warrington’s contribution to the industrial revolution. That innovation and ambition continues today.

Warrington South is home to a variety of business sectors. It is home to the world’s largest recycler of used beverage cans, Novelis, which provides aluminium for businesses such as Jaguar Land Rover, and DriveWorks, a firm that works with manufacturing and engineering businesses to provide innovative and bespoke design automation and 3D software solutions, selling to countries across the world. Tomorrow I will attend Warrington’s annual business conference, where businesses will come together to collaborate and drive forward positive change for our communities. It is fantastic to have so many industries choosing Warrington as their home, but as the MP for Warrington South, I want to ensure that all our children have the skills that they need for the future.

This debate is about sport, which is one of the cornerstones of our communities. In Warrington, rugby league has been a part of our heritage for generations. I am proud to say that my local team, Warrington Wolves, has a well-known supporter from this place— Mr Speaker. Over the years, I have worked to support local grassroots rugby league and the formidable Bank Quay Bulls. Getting involved in your local sports club not only has health and wellbeing benefits, but social benefits too. As a Labour and Co-operative MP, I believe that community ownership is an obvious model for sport. It gives clubs a financial solution that allows their fans and players a stake and a say in how the club is run. It puts people over profit, ensuring that the needs of the teams, fans and players are always prioritised. Even more powerfully, community ownership gives local sports an identity that is rooted in the community.

With this new Labour Government, we have an opportunity to change the way we think about communities and the role they play. If we built a system that allowed communities to take control of the assets that matter most to them—not just sports clubs, but community centres, pubs, music venues, libraries and so much more—unleashing the power of our communities and giving people a real stake and a say in the assets around them, that could be a defining legacy for the Government. I hope to play my part in realising that.

In the spirit of the pioneering women who have gone before me, I want to make Warrington South an even better place to live, no matter which part of the town you are born in, or your sex, ethnicity or religion: fighting to end child poverty; fighting for the opportunity of a good education for all, for good skilled jobs and decent pay, the opportunity to buy or rent a decent home, to live in a safe neighbourhood free from fear, and to access free healthcare as and when it is needed; and breaking down every single barrier, one at a time.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I, too, wish your husband Thomas a happy birthday. Hopefully, that will get you into the good books. I call the previous Sports Minister.

[Nigel Huddleston (Droitwich and Evesham) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I welcome the hon. Member for Warrington South (Sarah Hall) to the House and congratulate her on a very eloquent, gracious and personal maiden speech. She has shown today that she will make great contributions to this place over the coming years. I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and my declarations when I was Sports Minister—I may touch on that in a moment. I also take this opportunity to congratulate the Sports Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Barnsley South (Stephanie Peacock), and the shadow Sports Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) on their roles.

As a former Sports Minister, I know that the role has upsides, but it also comes with a lot of hard work and graft. The role often involves dealing with the downsides of sport—regulation, racism in cricket, head injuries in rugby, financial distress and so on—with sports governing bodies, and coming up with solutions in challenging areas such as trans, where we are all trying to ensure we get the right balance between accessibility and fairness and safety. I know how hard governing bodies work on that, and I know that will be a challenging area for the Minister.

There are some upsides, too. I know there is a lot of noise at the moment around declarations and attending sporting events, but as Sports Minister it is the hon. Lady’s duty and responsibility to get around the country and be a champion for all sorts of sports. I hope the noise around that does not stop her from doing her job. That is really important, because not all sporting events are Wimbledon; the job is also about championing disability sports, women’s sports and lower league sports around the country. I want to see her at those events every weekend. She will not get criticism from me for doing any of that.

There is another downside to being Sports Minister. On calls with Sports Ministers from around the world, they all introduce themselves as the former world champion of this and the former gold medallist of that. Then it comes to the Brit and it’s like, “I’ve got a medal from sports day at my school back in 1984.” Slightly embarrassing! The other downside, I am afraid, is often being required to be in photos along with a lot of very fit, handsome and beautiful people, which is slightly challenging, or being invited to enter the ring to spar with a world champion boxer. I would get asked, “Minister, would you like to participate in the 100 metres final?” with journalists waiting there with cameras just to humiliate you. “No, thank you very much!” But it is an amazing job and one that I enjoyed very much.

If you will allow me, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to say a huge thank you, as I have never had the opportunity to do so. I was appointed Minister for sport and tourism in February 2020. It was the job I had always wanted. A few weeks later, however, we were in lockdown and there was no sport and no tourism. As a result of the work with the various sports governing bodies, in particular Sally Munday and Dame Katherine Grainger at UK Sport, and Tim Hollingsworth at Sport England, and the incredible team at the Department, we were able, over time, to get sport up and running again. I am really proud that we did, because we all know how important it is to health and mental health. And let us not forget that sport is a major economic contributor to the UK. It is a massive export earner for the UK. There are hundreds of thousands of people involved in sport and supported by sport, plus it makes us all feel good and unites us.

That brings me to another point, which the Under-Secretary will find out about at some point in the future, should she ever be unfortunate enough to be reshuffled into a different role. A number of Members would say to me, “We used to like you when you were Sports Minister, but not so much now,” because the role is not particularly party political. I am glad that that will be the tone of today’s debate.

We should not and cannot take the amazing success of our Olympians and Paralympians for granted, and we are all here to applaud them today. They have put in an incredible amount of personal effort to achieve that success. The United Kingdom punches way above our weight in sport. That is not an accident. I think all of us would applaud the work of John Major, for example, on the initiative back in the 1990s to ensure that money went into sport—which was often controversial—through the national lottery. That has continued ever since. I know how difficult it is to argue for money for sport, but sport is so impactful on the health and mental health of the country.

What incredible success we saw this year, not only in the medal haul, which is important, but in the personal success stories and personal bests. The medals are a really good indicator of our global success, in particular —my God!—that of the Paralympians. They were second in the medal table again. That speaks volumes of the United Kingdom. We champion people with disabilities: we applaud them and literally put them on a pedestal. The Paralympics is a way to show what people with disabilities can do, as opposed to focusing all on the time on the things they cannot do.

The UK has a fantastic global reputation, in particular for disability sport. I thank everybody involved: not only, as I say, the governing bodies UK Sport and Sport England, but the broadcasters who put the Paralympics on TV at prime time. The British public watched the games in their millions. That is not the case in many other countries around the world. The Under-Secretary is probably being approached by other sports Ministers from around the world saying, “How do you do it? You have incredible success. How did you come second to China in the medal table?” and TV is one of the reasons why.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup said, we are very successful. Back in 1996, we got just one gold medal. We are the only country to have achieved gold medals in every single Olympics in the modern era. That is remarkable, and funding is fundamental to that. From 1996, because of co-operation and taking politics out of a lot of it, we have had a broad consensus on backing sport. Long may that continue.

I would also like to take the opportunity—many of us in the House are very proud of our constituents who participated in the Olympics and Paralympics this year—to applaud Olympic swimmer Matt Richards, Matt Skelhon, Issy Bailey, Rebecca Redfern and Matthew Redfern on their incredible success. I know—I have met them multiple times—that they have very proud parents.

Let us not take sport for granted. We like to applaud our sportspeople for very good reasons. Funding is majorly important. I express my huge gratitude and thanks to the sports governing bodies, UK Sport and Sport England, for what they did during the pandemic when I was Sports Minister, as well as for what they do now. I applaud them; they make us all proud. I applaud the Olympians and Paralympians too. They make us feel good and we are so proud to support them.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I should put on record my thanks to Emily Craig, a gold medallist from my constituency who comes from Mark Cross and for whom Rotherfield recently organised a tea party. If the Minister wants to win a gold medal, she should definitely come to my constituency.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Let me begin by drawing the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I am sure that Members on both sides of the House will want to join me in sending condolences to the family of George Baldock, the former Sheffield United player who, shockingly, was found dead on Wednesday at the age of just 31. He was a fantastic footballer, who played many times for Greece and was involved in two promotions to the premier league. His death will leave a huge hole for all who supported him, and particularly, of course, for his friends and family.

It is a great pleasure to speak in the debate, and to reflect for a while on the amazing success that we enjoyed in the Olympics. I say well done to everyone who represented Great Britain in both the Olympics and the Paralympics. Success in the Olympics requires preparation, and I have no doubt that our team were hugely inspired by our Prime Minister, who remembered to bring a cagoule to the opening ceremony when none of the other world leaders had thought to do so. That may have been the key moment that secured their subsequent successes.

As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on tennis, I want to take this opportunity to bang the drum for tennis, and to focus a little on the future horizon. At the elite level, British tennis has seen huge successes in 2024, including its success at the Paralympics. Alfie Hewett and Gordon Reid won gold in the men’s doubles and completed the career golden slam, having won all four of the grand slam events—and now the Paralympics. Alfie Hewett also took home the wheelchair men’s singles silver medal, and Andy Lapthorne and Greg Slade won silver in the quad wheelchair doubles.

If there were a prize for the most memorable non-medal-winning moments of the Olympics, the remarkable comeback of Andy Murray and Dan Evans in the first round of the Olympics tennis against Japan, prolonging Andy Murray’s amazing career in the process, would have been a strong contender. This year saw Andy lower the curtain on what has been a fantastic playing career. To win three grand slams and 49 main tour events, while sharing an era with the three greatest players ever to engage in the sport, is a tremendous achievement, and I think he will be remembered as one of the greatest athletes in our country’s history.

This year also saw coming-of-age moments for Jack Draper, who reached the US Open semi-finals, and Katie Boulter, who won her first WTA 500 event in San Diego and is now comfortably established among the world’s top 40 players. There were exciting signs for the future, with Mika Stojsavljevic winning the US Open girls’ singles and Mimi Xu reaching the girls’ top 10, Hannah Klugman continuing to establish herself at the top of the girls’ game, and, towards the end of the season, a remarkable run of Challenger victories that took Jacob Fearnley into the world’s top 100 male players.

Away from the elite level, tennis continues to buck the trend of falling participation that is seen in many sports. Some 5.6 million adults and 3.6 million children play tennis every year, and the strong growth in participation in recent years means that tennis is the third biggest traditional sport in terms of participation. It is also one of the most gender-equal sports, with females representing 42% of adults and 49% of children who play every year, while a range of formats including wheelchair, learning disability, visually impaired, deaf, para-standing and walking tennis provide opportunities for people with a range of impairments to take part in the sport.

There is growing evidence that nothing does more to boost longevity than playing tennis. According to a recent study of people in Copenhagen, those who play tennis live an average of 9.7 years longer than the overall average, outperforming badminton, football, cycling, swimming, and jogging in that regard. You will be glad to know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that these opportunities to enjoy a long and healthy life are also available to Members of Parliament: the thriving APPG on tennis gives them an opportunity to play every week over the summer months here in Parliament.

However, it is important for opportunities to play tennis not to be denied to anyone because of where they live or how wealthy they are, which is why the park project launched by the Lawn Tennis Association, in partnership with the Government, is so important. It involves a nationwide investment of more than £30 million by the UK Government and the LTA Tennis Foundation to transform park tennis courts across Britain and open up the sport to many more people. The LTA’s aim is to bring back into use 3,000 courts across Britain spanning 250 local authorities, and to increase participation, with a further half a million people playing tennis in parks annually, and with more than 50% of the sites being transformed in areas of highest social deprivation. The new tennis courts at King George V Park in Staveley are one example of courts, previously in a state of disrepair in a deprived community, that have been brought back into use, and I was delighted to join my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Jonathan Davies), who was then the lead on leisure in Chesterfield Borough Council, in giving them their very first use last summer. This programme’s facilities are so transformational that it really needs to be extended by this Government, and I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to work with the LTA on ensuring that it is extended in the upcoming Budget.

Expanding access to tennis is a key objective for the LTA, but it has always been my view that allowing people across the country to watch top tennis players in action is a key part of expanding participation, and I must again express my disappointment that professional tennis in this country continues to happen largely in London and the south-east. The Wimbledon championship is the world’s most iconic and well-known tennis tournament, bringing in an estimated £56 million annually and looked forward to by players, fans and sports reporters every year. Britain currently holds main tour men's events at Queen’s Club in west London and in Eastbourne, and women’s events at Eastbourne, Nottingham and Birmingham. That had already meant that there were no men’s main tour events north of west London, but now the LTA has announced that the main pre-Wimbledon women’s event will also be at Queen’s Club, thus down- grading Birmingham and Nottingham. It is true that the LTA has held a GB Davis Cup week, very successfully, in Manchester for the last two years, but that is not a replacement for a main tour event.

Among our competitors, such concentration of events is unusual. France holds men’s main tour events in Montpellier, Marseille, Lyon and Metz as well as in Paris; Germany holds them in five cities; and the United States does so in 11. The picture is similar when it comes to women’s events, with the other major countries playing in many different cities. From 2025 onwards, Britain will hold only one event north of London for women and none for men. That is not acceptable. While I recognise that it may be more difficult to run events profitably away from London—although the recent Manchester Davis Cup sell-out was the biggest crowd ever in Britain for a tennis match—I urge the Government and the LTA to sit down and find a way to ensure that professional tennis is not seen only in London and the south-east.

The other big issue for tennis will be the finalising of plans for some lasting legacy from Andy Murray’s career. Andy’s mother, Judy, has been battling for years to create a new tennis centre near Dunblane, and it was hugely disappointing when, owing to the many obstacles placed in the way, she recently announced that the plans were being shelved. It is crucial that a lasting legacy is created to mark Andy’s amazing career, and to ensure that the increased exposure that his success brought to the sport is not lost.

Tennis is in good heart, Madam Deputy Speaker, and it is good for your heart as well. There is more to do to ensure that the sport is enjoyed at all levels throughout the country, and I hope that the Government and my hon. Friend the Minister will do their bit to keep it growing.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call Vikki Slade to make her maiden speech.

[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me to make my maiden speech in this uplifting debate to celebrate the success of the Olympics and Paralympics. I congratulate the hon. Member for Warrington South (Sarah Hall); I completely agree with her sentiments about children who are beneath the radar, and I will do everything I can to ensure that they are lifted and seen.

One of my happiest family memories is of a trip in 2012 to enjoy the spectacle and the spirit of the London Paralympics in the pool and on the track, a day that surely inspired my own children’s passion for and dedication to sport. My constituency can lay claim to Britain’s first ever track and field Olympic gold medallist: Charles Bennett, a train driver from Shapwick—otherwise known as the Shapwick Express—won the 1,500 metres in 1900 and took two further medals, but was largely forgotten until his family discovered his achievements more than 100 years later.

My own journey to this place has been more of a marathon than a sprint. It took four attempts for me to win my seat of Mid Dorset and North Poole, my home for 25 years. That journey also started in 2012, when Dame Annette Brooke, the then Liberal Democrat MP, invited me to tea and suggested that I put myself forward as a candidate. I explained that I was just a mum of four running a café and was completely unqualified for the job, having never been to university, and that “people like me did not become MPs”. She simply replied, “That is why you should stand.” Without her faith in me I would not be here, and I hope that I can emulate her work—such as her support for park home owners, protecting Dorset’s heathlands and fighting for better education funding—and that I can achieve just a fraction of the deep respect and admiration that our community still feels for her.

I turn to my immediate predecessor, Michael Tomlinson. He was so proud of his legislative roles—first as a Government Whip, then as Solicitor General, and most recently as the Minister for Illegal Immigration. I know that he took these responsibilities very seriously, but not as seriously as his love for cricket. On a recent trip to the Netherlands, he captained the Lords and Commons parliamentary cricket team against their parliamentary team.

My constituency of Mid Dorset and North Poole is made up of dozens of communities, all with their own special character. We are all linked through our landscape, particularly the Dorset heathlands, which are home to all six of the UK’s native reptiles and to ground-nesting birds. It has the most lovely walks, including on Upton heath, known to my social media followers as “my happy place.” The work undertaken by the Dorset Wildlife Trust, RSPB Arne, the National Trust and others to restore our landscapes means that we are one of the only places in the UK to have reversed the decline in nature. Eco-tourism is now supporting economic growth, preserving the way of life in our countryside, towns and villages.

While the beaches are in neighbouring constituencies, our playgrounds are our rivers, but I should stress that that is on the water, not in the water. The navigable River Frome is ideal for a Birds of Poole Harbour boat trip to catch sight of a white-tailed eagle or a deer on the foreshore, or for a sail up to the Anglo-Saxon walled town of Wareham, with its art deco cinema and pretty pubs on the quay, while the smaller River Piddle is perfect for paddling. The River Stour runs down from the north to Wimborne Minster, home to river-based Dreamboats, Canford school’s rowing facility and Poole harbour canoe club. I will fight to clean up our rivers and achieve bathing water status at Eye Bridge, where our teenagers already spend their summer days chilling out by the water, and where parents like us taught our kids to kayak. I want to support the amazing people who are working to use our natural environment to improve health and wellbeing through sport—people like Will Behenna, who founded Inclusive Paddleboarding after being paralysed and now helps disabled people enjoy the tranquillity and freedom of the water.

Off the water, Wimborne Minster is named after its ninth-century church and is home to a chained library, a museum with a mummified cat in the walls—apparently for good luck—and an annual folk festival. The Drax and Kingston Lacy estates, and the villages that go out towards Holt Heath, provide the chocolate-box images you read about in Thomas Hardy’s literature. According to local legend, much of the content for his novels came from listening to the town’s gossip when he lived in Wimborne.

Returning to sport, England saw footballing success and heartbreak this summer with the Euros, but in mid-Dorset we were thrilled that Wimborne Town football club was promoted to the southern league premier south, and that the neighbouring AFC Bournemouth opened its world-class training facility in Bearwood in my constituency, guaranteeing a pipeline of brilliant future Dorset footballers. Mind you, the pedigree is already there, as two of the England under-23 ladies’ team came through Broadstone middle school as classmates of my own children.

Given that Olympic trampolinist Izzy Songhurst from Broadstone, champion go-karters and winning sailors, among others, grew up in our constituency, I want to pay particular tribute to the volunteer coaches who make it possible for our children to have these opportunities, as well as to charities such as Dorset Community Foundation, which helps our athletes compete at the highest level or simply lets children take part in what they love.

Every child must be able to thrive, but our current education system stops that happening for so many young people. We have a curriculum that crushes creativity, a SEND system that condemns children to fail, and a grip so tight on Ofsted measures that teachers do not have the space to truly share the joy of learning. Some of our children face an even greater battle, including children in care, young carers, children who suffer bereavement, and those with disabilities or life-limiting conditions. We need those children to thrive too, and thanks to charities such as Become, MYTIME Young Carers, Mosaic, Diverse Abilities and Julia’s House children’s hospice, so many of them do. But with councils facing bankruptcy and unable to deliver much in non-statutory services, and with public donations down due to the cost of living, they need action from the Government to secure proper funding.

As an MP, my voice is my power, and I will use it to fight for them, and for all who strive to improve the lives of those who feel voiceless. I also want to send a message to people in my community who feel powerless, and to young people who are worried about the future: if you want something badly enough, keep trying. It is possible, whatever your background, your gender and your struggles. Like me, you might take the long route, but like my famous country “mum walks”, the long ones are where you stumble across the most interesting places and create lasting memories.

Like many people, I have a bucket list. It has just three things on it: to run the London marathon, to earn a degree, and to represent my community as a Member of Parliament. Well, Dad, I finally achieved one of them. Although he is not here in the Chamber today—he is watching at home—I hope he is proud. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]

I still pinch myself about being in this place. I am just a mum with four fabulous kids—Molly, Abbi, Isaac and George—and my long-suffering husband Paul. I have an incredible team of volunteers who keep believing in me, and a community who have put their trust in me to speak up for them. I want everyone living in Mid Dorset and North Pole, from Shitterton to Happy Bottom—yes, they are real places—and from Gaunt’s Common to Canford Heath, to know that they have a champion in me, and to know that I am committed to making the places that we all call home the best they can be.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

The Hansard reporters will definitely need your speech to make sure the spellings are correct. I call Sarah Coombes to make her maiden speech.

[Sarah Coombes (West Bromwich) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is an honour to make my maiden speech today in a debate that recognises the contribution of sport to our national life, and to follow two such inspiring maiden speeches.

For most people, when they hear the words “West Bromwich”, the next word they think of is “Albion.” Unfortunately, that did not prove true for the Boundary Commission, which put The Hawthorns in the next-door constituency. But that does not change the special place that West Bromwich Albion holds in the hearts of my constituents. Our historic club puts us on the map, is one of the 12 founding members of the football league and, until last Tuesday night, was top of the championship table—let’s not talk about what has happened since.

Madam Deputy Speaker, if you had looked up into the West Bromwich sky in 1878, when the team was first formed at George Salter spring works, what you would have seen all around you were clouds of black smoke coming from the forges, foundries and ironworks that powered the industrial revolution. If you had dug down into our earth, you would have found a black coal seam that fed our factories. That is how the Black Country got its name. We really were the engine room of Britain. And of course, in manufacturing towns such as mine, some of the most important people are the toolmakers. During the election, I must have met dozens of sons and daughters of toolmakers all over West Bromwich—and yet, strangely, none of them mentioned it.

In West Bromwich, we are rightly proud of our industrial history, and that legacy lives on today in the vibrant manufacturing businesses in the area, from the fourth-generation family steel press company, William King—which supplies one of our midlands greats, Jaguar Land Rover—to Robinson Brothers, a chemical company that manufactures the tasty aroma you can smell when you open a jar of coffee, as well as the less tasty but safety-critical smell when you turn on your gas hob.

After the war, Britain needed workers from across the empire to staff our factories, foundries and newly formed NHS. People from all over the world—India, Pakistan, the Caribbean and more—answered that call. They made their homes in West Bromwich, Oldbury, Tividale, Rowley and Great Barr. They put down roots, often against the odds.

I recently went to the Shree Krishna mandir for its 50th anniversary celebration. People told stories and showed films of all those who struggled, fundraised and worked so hard to get the temple built and secure a base for the community. When I think about the landscape of my constituency, as well as the industrial skyline, the Rowley hills and beautiful Red House park, I think of the domes, minarets and spires of our places of worship. They include the langar hall of Guru Har Rai Saheb gurdwara, which offers free meals to all; the Sikh helpline based upstairs, which assists anyone who dials its number; the majestic Balaji temple; the grand All Saints church in Oakham, which is perched on top of the hill; and the Dartmouth Street mosques. They are an essential part of what makes my area what it is today: an exciting, creative and welcoming place.

One of my old bosses, Sadiq Khan, used to say, “Our diverse communities don’t want to be tolerated; they want to be celebrated.” In my borough of Sandwell, that is how we do it. We do not just tolerate each other’s differences; we celebrate our cultural diversity. I was proud to show Sadiq around West Brom during the election campaign, and I think he was asked for more selfies there than he was in London. The thing I did not get to show him, but that I do love showing visitors, is our wonderful food scene, particularly our famous desi pubs, such as the Vine, the Rowley Bar and Grill, and the Red Lion. Not only is the food so good at the Red Lion that it is impossible to get a table on Saturday nights; it also has beautiful stained-glass windows that tell the story of Punjabi immigration to the area.

What I love about Black Country people is the warmth, straightforwardness and willingness to get stuck in, whether that means the attendees at the regular cheese and wine afternoons at the Yew Tree community centre or the hundreds of people at my beloved Sandwell Valley parkrun every Saturday. I have noticed that the modern version of the tradition of each Member claiming to have the best constituency is now to claim the best and most beautiful parkrun, but I really do think that my own surely wins that prize—although the killer hills do not make it one for a PB.

I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to another parkrunner, my predecessor, Nicola Richards. Nicola worked really hard for the area—from her steadfast support for Albion fans and championing of an English football regulator, to arranging careers fairs for young people—and she was well respected for it. Our political culture can be adversarial, but Nicola and her team have been very generous with their time and advice since the election, which I really appreciate—they have even given us some of their office furniture.

I would like also to take this moment to mention Nicola’s predecessor, a big figure in this house over many years, Tom Watson. Tom taught me many things: that people will think it is weird if you put butter in your coffee, that party civil wars are good for drastic weight loss, and that you probably should not call other Members of this House “miserable pipsqueaks”. He also taught me that the House of Commons can be an incredibly powerful agent for change, and that sometimes you just have to be brave. Tom was a fierce champion for West Brom and he was never scared to stand up for those who needed him. If he had not encouraged me with his sincere belief that being a young woman was a good and great advantage in a parliamentary candidate, I doubt I would be standing here today.

I know what an honour and a responsibility it is to be sent here to represent my constituents. I come here to bang the drum for West Bromwich, Oldbury, Great Barr, Tividale and Rowley, and to demand the change my area needs. I will be a champion for our great midlands manufacturing businesses, which have so much to contribute to Labour’s national growth mission. That includes being on the cutting edge of green innovation, whether through getting solar panels installed on our acres of factory roofs or setting up training hubs for good green jobs. I worked at an environmental charity immediately before getting elected, and I think the task of shoring up Britain’s energy security and driving down emissions is an urgent one that is full of opportunity.

Sandwell is a great place to live and work, but we face real challenges. Deprivation and poverty are too high, with families working hard but not being able to make ends meet. GP appointments feel impossible to get, buses are unreliable and our young people are not getting the chances they deserve. Almost half of children in Sandwell are leaving school without the qualifications to get an apprenticeship or go to college or university, and of all the boroughs in the UK, ours is the one with the highest proportion of people with no qualifications at all. It is a core aim of this new Government to break down barriers to opportunity; and for us, that mission is not just timely, but urgent.

Let me end with one of my earliest memories: standing with my mum outside Safeway, handing out Labour stickers on the day of the 1997 general election. Thanks to my parents, even at the tender age of six I think I was aware that it was a moment of great national excitement and optimism about the future. Today our country faces huge challenges, but I am certain that just as the last Labour Government changed Britain, this new one will bring growth and opportunity right across our nation. It will be my job to be the voice and champion of the people of West Bromwich constituency as we deliver that mission, and I hope I can do them proud.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call Ben Maguire to make his maiden speech.

[Ben Maguire (North Cornwall) (LD)]

Many congratulations to the hon. Member for West Bromwich (Sarah Coombes) on an excellent maiden speech.

It is the greatest honour of my life to be giving my maiden speech in this place as the Member for my home constituency of North Cornwall, where I was born and brought up. I will always be grateful to the people of North Cornwall for putting their trust in me. There are unfortunately too many supporters, friends and family to thank for their hard work and dedication in getting me to this place, but I must say a special thanks to my mother, Jennifer, my father, Joseph, and my husband, Manuel, for their unwavering love and support; and a huge thank you to my agent and sister, Rosie. To every single member of my campaign: you are quite simply the best team that any candidate could wish for and you have showed such amazing dedication to our area. I would not be here without you and I will not let you down.

It is a pleasure to contribute to this debate celebrating our Olympic and Paralympic athletes. I grew up in the small but now golden rural village of Withiel, and soon after my election, my former Withiel neighbour, Morgan Bolding, won gold in the men’s eight rowing. I commend Morgan and all our Team GB Olympic and Paralympic athletes for their amazing successes this summer.

I would like to pay tribute to my predecessor, Scott Mann, who supported much-needed transport initiatives, such as better rail connectivity to north Cornish towns. I will continue that work by fighting for much-needed transport infrastructure, because despite North Cornwall’s large size, it does not contain a single mainline rail station, and vital bus routes are routinely cut. I thank Scott for his service and wish him the very best for his future endeavours.

North Cornwall has a great Liberal tradition, so I would also like to pay tribute to my Liberal predecessor, John Pardoe, who is still fondly remembered on many doorsteps for his dedication as North Cornwall’s MP in the 1960s and ’70s. In more recent times, Paul Tyler and Dan Rogerson were fantastic Liberal Democrat representatives who fought tirelessly for our area. I was honoured to receive the support and advice of all three former Members during my election campaign. They have set the bar very high indeed.

Although the election campaign was mostly a positive experience, we did have one crisis moment. Having advertised a meet and greet where cream teas would be sold, the real dangers of AI were brought home to me: a volunteer, producing the event poster using ChatGPT or something similar, had found a photo of a cream tea—but, tragically, it was a dystopian Devon version, with the cream on first and the jam on top. Before anyone had spotted this egregious error, it had been published all over my social media. As a proud Cornishman, it was indeed a shameful moment and we immediately went into crisis mode. Luckily, we survived that unfortunate episode, and I will be sure that I am never again associated with any cream tea that is not jam first.

While preparing for this speech, I read those of my predecessors and noted the tragic resonance they still have today. John Pardoe, back in 1966, described our area as “neglected” and

“exporting a mass of young people.”—[Official Report, 25 April 1966; Vol. 727, c. 423.]

In 1974, Paul Tyler explained:

“The housing shortage is now a major social evil again”,—[Official Report, 12 March 1974; Vol. 870, c. 144.]

and in 2005, Dan Rogerson said:

“North Cornwall has more second homes than council houses”—[Official Report, 18 May 2005; Vol. 434, c. 215.]

As a young person, I felt that I had no choice other than to leave and seek opportunities elsewhere, so I talk from experience when I say that those statements all sadly remain just as true today. Working to bring well-paid, highly skilled jobs to our area will be at the top of my to-do list.

With the new Government’s pledge to build more houses, I will be fighting to make sure that we do not continue to just see more and more executive homes without the appropriate infrastructure, and which are far beyond the reach of local people. I sincerely hope that my future successor does not need to again lament the appalling state of Cornish housing 60 years from now. Everyone in Cornwall must have a safe and secure place to live.

I must admit that since my election, I have been shocked by the number of crises facing our great duchy. My inbox is bursting with cases of children needing urgent treatment in A&E due to tooth infections, with some parents even resorting to using pliers to extract their child’s rotten teeth because they cannot get an NHS dentist. GP appointments continue to be hard to come by, pharmacies are closing and waiting times are among the highest in the country. The major hospitals serving North Cornwall—Treliske, Derriford and North Devon—are crumbling. We cannot delay or review their new buildings any longer, else we risk the south-west’s hospital provision quite literally collapsing.

As well as the crises in our NHS, Cornish schools continue to receive less funding per pupil than schools in other areas of the UK, and the crisis in provision for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities is extremely alarming.

We see raw sewage being dumped into our rivers and world-renowned beaches, such as Polzeath, Harlyn and Widemouth Bay, among many others, on an almost daily basis. The water industry needs urgent reform, so that monopolistic, for-profit water companies are finally forced to invest in infrastructure rather than prioritising only shareholder dividends.

Our fishers and farmers continue to suffer from disastrous trade deals that have left them struggling to compete, and climate change has become the most urgent issue of our time, threatening to submerge towns such as Bude in the coming decades.

Despite these hardships, there is much to be hopeful about. I am deeply inspired by the dedication of our amazing communities, volunteer networks and sports clubs. I will name a few. There is Age Concern in Bodmin, and the amazing new youth centre in Bodmin, KBSK, which provides warm meals, homework clubs and a range of activities for young people. The sea pool in Bude is run by dedicated volunteers to improve the mental wellbeing of local residents. The memory café in Launceston provides respite for carers and those with memory problems. The Grace Project in Wadebridge distributes unwanted clothing to those who need it most, and there are also the community larders and food banks in Camelford, St Columb Major and Padstow.

My constituency is also blessed with many excellent sports clubs, including Wadebridge Camels rugby club, Bodmin Town football club, Launceston All Blacks rugby club and many more. I look forward to visiting the Kilkhampton ladies football club in a few weeks’ time.

It is clear to me that the best way to solve many of the problems and unique challenges that Cornwall faces is for decisions to be taken locally. My constituents, including many who did not vote at all, are fed up with the same broken political system, which, as I explained, seems to achieve very little for us in Cornwall. That is why, in addition to proper voting and fundamental political reform, I will be calling for meaningful devolution of powers, funding and responsibility from Whitehall to a Cornish legislative assembly.

Cornwall’s unique culture, heritage and language were finally recognised in 2014, when the Liberal Democrats ensured that the Cornish were granted national minority status under the European framework convention, just like the Scots, Welsh and Irish. As Liberal Democrats, we are and must continue to be the party for Cornwall. Given the subject of today’s debate, I hope the Minister will work with me to explore how we can see a Cornish team competing at the next Commonwealth games.

I finish with the words of my 15th-century predecessor, Thomas Flamank, who, like me, had previously been a solicitor and grew up in Bodmin. I hope that is where the similarities end, as he was executed soon after. He led the Cornish rebellion of 1497 and famously said:

“Speak the truth, and only then can you be free of your chains.”

Guided by those words, I will always speak truth to power on behalf of North Cornwall. Kernow bys vyken. Cornwall forever.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

It is important to be procedurally correct in the Chamber, and the procedure is: cream first and jam second.

[Kirith Entwistle (Bolton North East) (Lab)]

I associate myself with the comments of colleagues in expressing my immense pride at the achievements of Team GB athletes at the Paris Olympic and Paralympic games this year. Their recent triumphs have sparked joy and, no doubt, inspired many across the UK, and they serve as a powerful reminder of sport’s deep impact on our lives, particularly for the young people in my Bolton North East constituency.

At a time when the youth voice census shows that our young people do not feel like they belong, with only three in 10 saying that they have a local role model, our athletes have never been more important. They serve as living examples of the relentless pursuit of excellence, setting high standards and working tirelessly to achieve them.

Cindy Ngamba, who lives in the heart of Bolton and is here today, made history at the Paris Olympics as the first medal winner for the refugee team. Her journey from seeking refugee status to standing on the Olympic podium is nothing short of extraordinary. I congratulate her once again on her historic achievement.

It was in Bolton that Cindy discovered her passion for boxing. She trained tirelessly at Bolton Lads and Girls Club, juggled multiple jobs to stay afloat and overcame immense challenges, including the constant terrifying threat of deportation. Cindy’s story has had a profound impact on me and the youth of Bolton. Schools across our constituency have invited her to speak, and she has inspired countless young people to pursue their passions, no matter the hurdles they may face. Cindy is one of Bolton’s own, and it is my sincere hope that she will be able to join Team GB for the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028. I will be writing to the Home Secretary to seek clarity on the status of her application.

Following the Paris Olympics, we have seen a 260% spike in demand for sports across the UK and in our community. The success of Team GB has had a real and visible impact. When Ben Sandilands set a new world record in the T20 1,500 metres, more people laced up their trainers for Queen’s Park junior park run. When Sky Brown battled back from injury to win skateboarding bronze, we saw more spirited matches and greater attendance at Bolton Lads and Girls Club.

It is in these local settings that young people see the benefits of fitness at first hand and build a real passion for staying active. They join local teams, represent their schools or communities, and even participate in local tournaments, where all the talent Bolton has to offer is on show.

Sport is more than competition, it is a force that inspires the values we hold dear—a genuine love for staying active, perseverance through adversity and the relentless pursuit of excellence. It is also an amazing force for community creation, something that brings us together and gives us a sense of belonging. These are not just athletic virtues; they are life lessons that resonate across the UK, especially in Bolton North East.

When someone joins a club, they join a passionate group of people who are committed to seeing them succeed. Whether they are representing a school like Sharples secondary school, a professional team like the mighty Bolton Wanderers or a larger sporting community like Bolton Indian sports club, they have a network, a family and a support system.

I believe that clubs are a key part of tackling loneliness in our local areas. Research by Better, the social enterprise charity, has found that running in the open air is as effective as socialising with friends and family in reducing feelings of loneliness. More than two thirds of young people taking part in the Youth Sport Trust’s “Active in Mind” programme report that it helps them to cope better with their mental health. I truly believe that this Labour Government can continue that inspiration for young people, so that we see more incredible athletes like Cindy come out of amazing places like Bolton North East.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

We are all in awe of Cindy. That was a very powerful speech.

[Bobby Dean (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

I have enjoyed this debate, the maiden speeches and hearing about all the local successes that added up to our national success at this year’s Olympic and Paralympic games. We might be a small island, but we punch above our weight.

My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon East (Natasha Irons) talked about the Paralympic coverage on Channel 4, which was fantastic, but others have mentioned how sport is increasingly going behind paywalls, which will limit people’s opportunity to be inspired. We need to make sure that the crown jewels of British sport, both domestic and international competitions, remain free to air as much as possible, even if only for a single fixture each season or the biggest fixture in that sport. We need to make sure that all sports are available on free-to-air, and we need to make sure that we do not push too many behind paywalls.

Grassroots investment is important to making sport, in all of its diversity, available and inclusive for all potential players. I am lucky enough to still play football on Saturdays. At the age of 34, I can find a standard that fits me, but others are not able to find a suitable standard. My wife is looking to play football but she does not have many options; she would have to play at highly competitive level or not at all. Inclusivity in women’s football does not seem to be happening in the right way at the moment.

There have been concerns about access to different sports by people from different backgrounds. There has been a worrying trend towards people from privileged backgrounds, who may have been educated at private schools, ending up as our elite athletes. Quite a high proportion of our competitors this year were from such backgrounds. We need to ensure a diversity of people, from all walks of life, get into sport so that everybody has the opportunity to make it at an elite level.

Finally, I pay tribute to an athlete who has done more for disability sports than most: I congratulate six-time paralympic gold medallist and constituency local hero David Weir on his inspiring career. I wish him a very happy retirement from international sport, as his last race was at the Paris games. David’s journey began in Wallington—more precisely, on the Roundshaw estate, in my area—and he first represented Sutton in wheelchair athletics at the London youth games. His talent quickly became evident as he won the junior event at the prestigious London marathon.

David’s path has not always been easy. At his first Paralympics in Atlanta in 1996, he remembers feeling disheartened by the meagre turnout of spectators for his sport, only being able to spot five or so people in the crowd that day. In 2002, David won his first London marathon. He reflected on that moment, sharing that he had no sponsorship deals or media coverage, and was left feeling overlooked and undervalued. Fast forward to the London 2012 Paralympics. As he did his victory gold medal lap around the track, he looked up at a roaring stadium full of thousands of supporters, highlighting not only his personal journey but the evolving landscape of disability sports.

Despite these achievements, David has been candid about the challenges that still exist. He continues to advocate for greater visibility and support for Paralympic athletes, noting that the gap between the perception of the Paralympics and the Olympics remains significant. In the community of Carshalton and Wallington, we are taking important steps. The David Weir leisure centre in St Helier offers inclusive cycling lessons for individuals of all abilities, fostering an environment where everyone can participate. Sutton and Epsom rugby club is to host an international visually impaired rugby tournament on the weekend of 23 November.

However, we cannot ignore the broader challenges that remain. Data from the Activity Alliance reveals that disabled adults are twice as likely to be physically inactive, compared with their non-disabled peers. Statistics show that many disabled individuals face barriers to spectating sports because of inaccessible venues and prevailing attitudes. That data shows we must ensure the legacy of Team GB includes a commitment to encouraging investment and support for disability sports. It is vital that we ensure everyone, regardless of ability, has the opportunity to engage in sports and physical activity. I know that David will continue to be a champion for this cause and I hope I can support the expansion of disability sports in my own small way in this House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call Andrew Cooper to make his maiden speech.

Football Index Collapse

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (in the Chair)]

Due to the huge interest in the debate, the Minister’s time will be reduced to five minutes; the Opposition spokespersons’ time will be reduced to three minutes; and Back Benchers will have two minutes. My apologies, but that is the only way I can get you all in.

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ghani, however brutal the time limit may be. I congratulate the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) on securing this important debate and setting out the case so clearly—I will not do so again, given the time limits. I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and let people know that I worked for Bet365 for 15 years before I came to this place. I have long experience of the Gambling Commission, and while I was in that role, it was frequently behind the curve and asleep at the wheel, which is one of the accusations levied at them regarding Football Index. In a period during which the gambling landscape was incredibly innovative, too many firms went bust with ante-post liabilities, too many punters lost money, and there was too little redress for people. Sadly, that is again the case today.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (in the Chair)]

Order. Mr Bell, because some people have left the room, we have now increased the time limit to three minutes for you.

[Aaron Bell]

That is incredibly kind, Ms Ghani. Thank you very much.

This is a particularly egregious case. Five constituents have written to me about it; I will not name them, because I do not have their permission to do so, but a number of them have lost thousands of pounds. In this case, the Gambling Commission failed to identify the key features of the product, which then changed while Football Index was running it, and the Gambling Commission did not seem to notice. Andrew Rhodes, who I believe is a good man—I will come to that in a bit—said in his response that the Gambling Commission does not believe it licensed a Ponzi scheme. That may not be the case, but he also said,

“BetIndex was not recruiting enough customers to compensate for depleting its financial position”—

as it did by increasing the dividends—

“and ultimately collapsed as a result.”

If such a company is not recruiting enough customers to pay out the ones it already has, that looks like a Ponzi scheme to me.

It is clear that the ultimate blame lies with the operator. We have already heard a call for the directors be held to account, which I absolutely support, but we must be better at protecting people, as a Government and as a state. As I said, I have five constituents involved. I support what the hon. Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) said about people wanting restitution and justice as well as compensation.

I am also very concerned that these people are vulnerable in other ways now. Football Index is finished, but there are other online products out there that, in my opinion, share some of the same characteristics. They are attractive to young men, in particular, because they look like get-rich-quick schemes. I am thinking of the crypto space and the various coins that are designed to be pumped and dumped. If people get in at the right moment they can make a profit, but if they get in too late they might lose their life savings.

Similarly, there is this ridiculous craze for non-fungible tokens, which, to their eternal shame, many football clubs and sports stars have endorsed. This is completely deplorable. I do not think those are regulated at all. Perhaps we can do something about that through the Online Safety Bill. I know that the Gambling Minister is busy with the Online Safety Bill Committee today, and I welcome his substitute, the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston), who used to be my Whip.

This situation mostly affects young men. I believe we owe them a duty of care. My five constituents—all young men—believed, because they saw the kitemark, that the Gambling Commission understood, and almost endorsed, the product. Obviously it did not. If we license these sorts of products, then we ought to be standing behind them. We are not standing behind them now, as they are struggling to get any sort of compensation at all, although there is obviously an administration process going on.

I am sure that everyone here will have constituents who have suffered as mine have. We owe it to them to get to the bottom of this and give them some restitution. I will yield my final 20 seconds.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (in the Chair)]

Beautifully done, Mr Bell.

--- Later in debate ---

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

I have a number of constituents in North Ayrshire and Arran who have lost significant sums of money as a result of the collapse of Football Index. Football Index customers were not properly protected, as we have heard today. We know that the Gambling Commission ignored warnings about the business model of the platform, and that the Financial Conduct Authority identified areas for improvement for the company.

The whole shameful episode underlines exactly why we urgently need gambling reform. Gambling must be better regulated. The Gambling Commission, which failed Football Index customers, must be more effective. Customers must have confidence that they will have better protection in future. It is very disappointing that there seems to be no route for redress for those who have suffered significant losses following the collapse of Football Index. In total, about £90 million was lost.

That platform was approved and its licence authorised by the Gambling Commission. The Gambling Commission failed to carry out due diligence, and consumers have paid very heavily for that failure. How is that fair? Why should unsuspecting customers pay for that failure? Clearly, the Gambling Commission’s conduct and competence was not what it needed to be, and its regulation and effectiveness of enforcement was not fit for purpose. One of the many lessons to learn from that is that we must have a gambling ombudsman, to ensure that consumers have a clear avenue for redress.

Those who were caught up in the Football Index scandal and lost a lot of money have been failed at every turn by the very regulation that is supposed to protect them. I urge the Minister to put that right and to not fail them again by turning his back on them. I urge him to compensate the victims and ensure a full review of the Gambling Act 2005, informed by the independent report on the regulation of Football Index. This cannot be allowed to happen again. The whole gambling industry, as well as consumers, will benefit if there is legislation and protection in which everyone can have confidence.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (in the Chair)]

Before I call Ben Lake, I want to say that, because everyone’s contributions have been remarkably in time and so powerful, the Opposition Front-Bench spokesperson will have four minutes and the Minister will have eight. I have no doubt that he will take many interventions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nigel Huddleston]

With regard to compensation, as I have said, there are procedures that we cannot move from. It is also very clear that we strongly sympathise—everybody strongly sympathises. As a constituency MP, I also have constituents who have been impacted by the collapse and who have lost money. We have heard today anger and frustration about the genuine hardship—both financial and, of course, mental—caused by the collapse. However, we do not think it would be appropriate for the Government to use public funds to cover losses to individuals resulting from the collapse of a gambling company. Consumers staking money on gambling is not the same as their placing money into other things, such as savings products. Furthermore, the Gambling Commission does not have any statutory powers that would enable it to offer redress for losses suffered as the result of a gambling operator collapsing.

I know that I need to leave time for the hon. Member for Blaydon to respond to the debate, so I will briefly refer to a couple of other points that hon. Members have made. On the Insolvency Service investigation, BetIndex entered into administration on 26 March 2021 and administrators are required to report to the Insolvency Service on company directors’ conduct. Following information received from the administrators and the Gambling Commission, the Insolvency Service has confirmed that it is investigating the conduct of BetIndex’s directors.

The hon. Member for Blaydon asked for a meeting with the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South. I will pass that request on, rather than make a promise on his behalf, but I am sure that he will receive that request with respect. I will also ask him to respond to a couple of other items that she asked about. Please be in no doubt of the seriousness with which the Government take all the matters that have been highlighted today, and the gambling review will indeed be announced in the coming weeks.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (in the Chair)]

Ms Twist, you have about a minute in which to wind up.

Telecommunications (Security) Bill

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 8th November 2021 Commons Chamber

Secondly, on the position of the Five Eyes partners, those of us who have seen up close in Government just how hard the National Cyber Security Centre and the agencies work with our Five Eyes partners all know that the position that both Select Committees have come to is the right one, not only because it gilds the lily but because it acknowledges that our agencies do not look solely to the Five Eyes and that they look around the world in a way that is enviable, deep and broad. That gives us the benefit of huge expertise across the piece. In the case of both these amendments, at the risk of sounding as though I am still taking the role of a Minister, I do not believe that either of them is required. This is because I have faith in this place and in our agencies. I hope that the Bill will bolster our national security, and that it will do so without the benefit of these amendments.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

I rise to speak in favour of Lords amendment 5, which was championed in the other place by my Friend, Lord Alton and which focuses on the Five Eyes partnership. The Minister said that the amendment was unnecessary, but I would argue that if she were to accept it, it would provide a safety net. Last year, the Government were forced into committing to removing Huawei equipment from the UK’s 5G network, which followed on from a ban by the US and Australian Governments. We had even found ourselves in a situation in which one of our closest allies publicly threatened to stop intelligence sharing with us for the first time in our 75-year partnership. I would argue that this amendment would ensure that we did not find ourselves in a similar place again.

Let me give the House an example. Despite being blacklisted by our closest ally for its ongoing links to the ongoing genocide in the Xinjiang, and a Chinese intelligence law which means that the company can not only harvest data but provide data back to the Chinese state, the surveillance company Hikvision continues to be embedded in councils, hospitals and city infrastructure up and down this country. Earlier this year, I led a Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee report, “Uyghur forced labour in Xinjiang and UK value chains”, which also looked at data harvesting. I was deeply unimpressed with Hikvision’s response, and I want to put on record that I thoroughly support the Foreign Affairs Committee’s recent recommendation that the Government should forbid Hikvision from operating in the UK. My Select Committee continues its work on Xinjiang, and I look forward to meeting TikTok in the near future.

The amendment would provide a fantastic safety net to ensure that we do not find ourselves in a difficult relationship with our Five Eyes partners again. Why would we want to risk that? I urge the Minister to recognise the motivation behind the amendment, which would enable trust and deepen our intelligence sharing alliances with our closest partners as well as ensuring security at home. I also urge the Minister, if she has the time, to read the “Uyghur forced labour in Xinjiang and UK value chains” report, and in particular to focus on article 7 of China’s national intelligence law, which states that any company that is registered in China has to provide data to the Chinese Communist party on demand, and also to deny to any other state that it is doing so.

[Julia Lopez]

With the leave of the House, I close this debate by thanking hon. Members for their contributions to the debate and for making a number of extremely important points about national security. I am keen to address those not only now, in this legislation, but in the future, through horizon scanning for some of the challenges that are coming up.

I appreciate that some of the trust in the system has been undermined by the Huawei situation, and I am sympathetic to concerns raised about reporting, diversification and resilience. My hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) is absolutely right that this legislation is just one part of a wider security framework. The development of 5G and full-fibre networks brings new security challenges, which we must be prepared for.

This legislation sets up a strong regime for handling and removing high-risk vendors from our public networks, but it is just the start. Specific security measures will be set out in secondary legislation; there will be a lot of work to do in the next stage as we draw up that legislation, and we will be publishing a code of practice explaining the technical guidance that providers can follow to comply with legal duties.

The final secondary legislation and code will be agreed through public consultation, which I hope will provide another opportunity for hon. Members who have concerns in this area to provide adequate scrutiny. I am alive to some of those concerns, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) has outlined, MPs and Peers have had multiple chances to scrutinise and feed back on our diversification strategy, and we will continue to report on developments.

Legacy of Jo Cox

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

I was not sure if I was going to be speaking today, Madam Deputy Speaker, which is why I am not dressed appropriately, so forgive me for my attire—I would have worn far more appropriate trousers—but I felt that I just had to contribute.

The hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) gave a splendid speech. I am incredibly anxious that she wants us all to get fit. She will realise that in this place fitness, whether physical or mental, is not promoted in any way whatsoever. I must put on record that she is already doing wonderful work. She has already reached out to me and asked what support she can provide all Members in this House in helping Afghan men, women and children to be extracted out of Afghanistan. She is already considering what she can do within the capacity and the power that she has to support the most marginalised.

I am not sure what more I can add in reference to Jo that has not already been said so far, because I agree with everything, but I think that two things should be put on the record. Perhaps they have not been mentioned because these two skillsets are normally promoted by the men in the House, not the women. Jo was a natural born leader. She had the ability to deal with the smallest problem in her constituency and also, on the same day, to deal with the biggest problem on the international stage. That is incredibly rare for a person to be able to do, but she could do it. Jo did not mind who she worked with if she could achieve her endgame, which was always giving a voice to the voiceless and ensuring that those who are overlooked are represented in this place and internationally as well.

The other thing we do not talk about often when it comes to women is how clever they are, but Jo was just intelligent—she really was. She could speak on so many issues that mattered so much. Her voice would have been so relevant over the past two months in this place. She was just clever, on the local stuff, the transport stuff, the potholes stuff, the foodbank stuff, the international stuff, the terrorism stuff, the humanitarian stuff—issues around China, Russia and the middle east. She just knew so much. Quite often it is very difficult as a woman to come across as clever and also to ensure that people will still work with you, and Jo had the skill to do that.

Jo and I had a few difficult run-ins. We often did media together. I was obviously on the other side of the TV screen or next to the presenter, but we always came off in a positive way, had a hug and talked about what we were going to work on next. Just as my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) has done so much tremendous work on Afghanistan—I believe that Jo would have been proud—we worked together on the genocide amendment to the Trade Bill, and no doubt she would have been one of the strongest voices on that too.

Jo had a huge impact on both sides of the House. Although she is gone, she will never, never be forgotten. On the rare occasions when Jo has pulled us all together it is important to note that it just takes one strong individual to achieve so much in a short period of time. I hope that we can remember that as we deal with far more difficult issues going forward. I want to put on record my thanks. Her family must be and should always remain incredibly proud.

Events Research Programme

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Huddleston]

The hon. Lady is correct in highlighting the difference between professional and non-professional choirs. In accordance with performing arts guidance, non-professional groups of up to six people can now sing indoors. They can also perform or rehearse in groups of up to 30 outdoors, or in multiple groups of 30 outdoors, provided that the groups are kept separate. Those limits do not apply to commercial activities. We all know from our mail bags that this is an area of importance to our constituents, and we want to get choirs up and running again in all formats as soon as possible.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

I fear there is a two-tier system when it comes to data. The data tends to exist for football, motor racing, tennis and horse racing, yet there is no data to support outdoor events in my constituency. The Black Deer festival takes place in Eridge park. It is a music event. It is completely covid-safe, with track and trace and a covid manager in an outdoor area, yet it had to cancel, which has knocked our local economy and is undermining local jobs. What advice and support can the Minister give to Gill, who has unfortunately had to cancel the Black Deer festival, which was hoping to host around 10,000 people in an arena fit for 40,000?

[Nigel Huddleston]

I was very sorry to hear that the Black Deer festival has been unable to take place this year. I know that is enormously disappointing to many of my hon. Friend’s constituents and indeed to her, because I have spoken to her about this. She has lobbied very effectively on behalf of the festival and all the stakeholders, including Gill, who has also been in contact with the Department. I am afraid we have not been able to make every event, including many incredibly worthy events, ERP events, even in phase 3. But I must say to my hon. Friend that it is not true they are all sporting events; a wide variety of events—indoor, outdoor events, music events, business events and so on—are all part of the events research programme, because we want to get learnings across multiple sectors.

World Press Freedom Day

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Westminster Hall

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (in the Chair)]

I remind hon. Members that there have been some changes to normal practice in order to support the new hybrid arrangements. Members participating physically and virtually must arrive for the start of Westminster Hall debates and are expected to remain for the entire debate. I also remind Members participating virtually that they are visible at all times, both to each other and to us in the Boothroyd Room. If Members attending virtually have any technical problems, they should email the Westminster Hall Clerks at their email address, which is [e-mail]. Members attending physically should clean their spaces before they use them and as they leave the room. I also remind Members who are here with me physically that Mr Speaker has stated that masks should be worn in Westminster Hall debates, unless the Member is contributing.

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered World Press Freedom Day 2021.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ghani. World Press Freedom Day, which falls on 3 May, is a reminder to Governments of the need to respect their commitment to press freedom; a day of reflection among media professionals about issues of press freedom and professional ethics; and a day of support for media workers who are targets for the restraint or abolition of press freedom. It is also a day of remembrance for those journalists who lost their lives in the pursuit of a story.

I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for having granted time for this debate today, which has been the first opportunity to hold it since the start of the new parliamentary Session. I also declare my interest as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on media freedom, which is supported by Reporters Without Borders.

This debate comes in the wake of last Sunday’s hijacking of a civilian aircraft by the Belarusian Government in order to kidnap the journalist Roman Protasevich, an outspoken critic of President Lukashenko’s illegitimate and oppressive regime. This is one of the most audacious attacks on press freedom we have seen, but it is just another example of the increasingly brazen way in which Governments seek to oppress legitimate journalism with increasing impunity.

In 2018, we saw the murder of Jamal Khashoggi by agents of the Saudi Arabian Government in the grounds of their own consulate in Istanbul. In 2017, Daphne Caruana Galizia, a campaigning journalist who investigated corruption and organised crime and delved into visa-for-sale schemes, energy deals and Caribbean offshore companies set up for Maltese politicians, was assassinated by a car bomb planted by a professional hitman.

According to Reporters Without Borders, 50 journalists were killed around the world last year, and a further 13 have already been killed in 2021. These include Sadida Sadat and Shahnaz Roufi in Afghanistan, who worked for Enikass TV’s dubbing service and were gunned down in an alley in Jalalabad as they were walking home at around 4.30 pm. Their colleague Mursal Waheedi was shot in the rickshaw she had taken to go home. All three women were aged 20 or 21. Furthermore, in 2020, 387 journalists and media workers were held in detention: 117 of those were in China, and 34 were in the next highest country, Saudi Arabia. In the Philippines, in the five years since President Rodrigo Duterte came to power, 16 journalists have been killed in connection with their work, the latest of whom was beaten to death in May 2020.

Media freedom is being threatened not just by violent physical attack, but by the use of dubious legal procedures to intimidate or close down journalists. In the Philippines, Maria Ressa, a journalist and the chief executive of the digital news service Rappler, has been under repeated legal attack since the election of Duterte. Rappler has tirelessly investigated human rights violations and the country’s increasingly authoritarian Government, and Ressa, whom I am proud to serve alongside on the Real Facebook Oversight Board, currently faces 10 open charges against her, relating to nine separate cases. Some of those have been brought retrospectively through new laws created since the alleged offences occurred.

In this country, too, our legal system is being used to intimidate legitimate journalism through lawfare—the misuse of legal systems and principles against an opponent by seeking to damage or delegitimise them, wasting their time and money—and what is known as SLAPP, a strategic lawsuit against public participation. Such actions are intended to censor, intimidate and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of legal defence until they abandon their criticism of the opponent. The initiator of such a lawsuit does not usually expect to win, but to wear down the defendant until they succumb to fear, intimidation and mounting legal costs or exhaustion, and cease their otherwise legitimate criticism. A current example is the journalist Catherine Belton, author of “Putin’s People”, which was published last year by HarperCollins, who is facing lawsuits, along with her publisher, filed in London by four Russian businessmen, including Roman Abramovich.

Mr Abramovich has also recently forced apologies from British newspapers—The Times and The Daily Mail—for stating that he gave a yacht, Le Grand Bleu, to Eugene Shvidler, a Russian-American oil billionaire, despite the fact that Mr Shvidler had stated this himself in English court proceedings on 14 November, 2011, during the hearing of the Berezovsky v. Abramovich case. I also understand that in 2019, Mr Abramovich’s lawyers were also successful in preventing the broadcast of a BBC “Panorama” investigation. It is interesting that Mr Abramovich, who is not a resident of the UK, has not visited the country since 2018 and has not been granted a new UK visa, can nevertheless retain the services of the London law firm Harbottle & Lewis and has full access to the English courts.

Data protection legislation is also being routinely abused to make multiple requests against investigative journalists and corporate research and intelligence companies, for any information that they hold on any individual or organisation. In Australia, the Protection of Public Participation Act 2008 seeks to

“protect public participation, and discourage certain civil proceedings that a reasonable person would consider interfere with engagement in public participation.”

In the USA, high-profile public figures are also limited in their access to the courts to pursue such cases. It is time we looked at whether such reforms are required in the UK, and also to review the GDPR legislation to prevent it from being used to intimidate those engaged in legitimate investigations acting in the public interest.

We also have to consider the commercial pressures faced by the news industry today, which pose perhaps one of the greatest threats to the freedom of the press. In 2019, the Cairncross review, commissioned by the Government, highlighted that the sales of both national and locally printed papers have plunged. They fell by roughly half between 2007 and 2017, and are still dropping. In addition, print advertising revenues, which used to carry much of the cost of producing news, have fallen even faster, declining in that decade by 69%. To cut costs there have been mergers, as well as heavy cuts in staffing numbers of frontline journalists in the UK, and in that period those numbers have dropped from 23,000 to 17,000, and the numbers are still falling.

These pressures came to light recently in Australia, where an investigation by its competition authority has highlighted that for every $100 of online advertising spend, $53 goes to Google, $28 to Facebook, and $19 to everybody else. This creates enormous pressure on other organisations, particularly news companies and publishers that have in the past relied on advertising revenue to pay their journalists and investigations. The decline in ad revenue for publishers is a direct challenge to the news industry itself, which has already led to the closures of a great number of publications, and many of those that have survived have had to make significant cuts and reductions.

In order to preserve the future of public interest journalism, the Australian Government presented the news media bargaining code to oblige companies such as Facebook and Google to enter into commercial arrangements with the news industry to ensure fair renumeration for their content. It was only because they legislated to require this, and to give a regulator the power to mediate and set the term of renumeration if no deal was done, that Google and Facebook eventually did move. We have to consider what the role of journalism is in the digital age, where people increasingly use the internet as their primary source of news and information. The most recent Ofcom “Media Nations” survey, published last summer, showed that around 35% of people now regularly get their news from Facebook.

News media and the freedom of the press face a constant assault every day. Direct challenges are issued, through social media, against “the mainstream media”, which is used as a derogatory term, seeking to persuade the public that they should not believe the so-called mainstream media on anything they write, whether critical or praiseworthy, and putting people in a position where they simply do not know what they should believe anymore. In the world of social media, where algorithms of engagement drive content through those platforms, often it is the misleading or the downright lies and conspiracy theories that gain a bigger audience, are more interesting and are actively promoted by those platforms. When Parliament considers the online safety Bill later this year—it is currently in draft form—we must take into account the impact of harmful disinformation, spread through and sometimes amplified by social media, which is undermining news and, through that, democracy itself.

We need to protect journalism and the freedom of the press if we are to remain an open and democratic society. We need to recognise that those values are increasingly under attack from authoritarian Governments around the world who actively and deliberately target journalists, sometimes physically, sometimes emotionally, sometimes economically, but always with intent to suppress their necessary work. We need to ensure that our modern media landscape, driven by social media platforms and their engagement, still works to provide fair remuneration for journalists creating content, because if journalists cannot be paid for what they do, few will do it. The people who will win in that situation will be those who fear legitimate investigation and questioning.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind) [V]]

I compliment the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) for securing the debate and on the way in which he introduced the subject. It is absolutely crucial and essential to all our lives that we think seriously about what press freedom actually means. In any free society, the right to know, the right to speak and the right to assemble are important and precious, and indeed are encapsulated in the 1948 universal declaration of human rights.

In considering press freedom, we should also look at media ownership and control, and the concentration of media ownership into a small number of global companies that impose news values on their outlets, which are not necessarily very open and which are often not interested in many of the poorest parts of the world but only in celebrity and the goings on in the wealthiest parts of the world. It is important that we recognise the importance of the right to know, and therefore the importance of diversity of ownership and diversity of access to the media.

As the hon. Gentleman quite correctly pointed out, many people now get most of their information from online sources, through social media and associated outlets. Many people simply do not buy newspapers and do not access newspaper websites or anything else. They rely completely on news that they believe they select themselves from various websites around the world, but they are often unaware of the complex, complicated and very efficient algorithms used to drive people in certain directions on certain stories and news issues.

We must look not only at the freedom of journalists and the importance of independent ownership of all media outlets, but at making social media accessible to everyone. Social media companies have shown themselves to be very happy to operate with authoritarian and oppressive regimes and close down access altogether to certain individuals. For example, in the middle of their strike action in Delhi, Indian farmers suddenly found that they had no access whatsoever to social media, which was a crucial outlet for them. Social media is restricted in a number of countries, and Google and others are quite happy to do deals with national Governments in order to restrict access to information. These things have to be looked at seriously and carefully. We need international agreement on this, which I will come on to in a moment.

I have in front of me the “White Paper on Global Journalism”, produced by the International Federation of Journalists, of which I am a member, in the sense that I am a member of the National Union of Journalists in Britain. This report makes for chilling reading. Since 1990, as the hon. Gentleman has pointed out, 2,650 journalists have been killed around the world. Those are the ones we know of—there may well be more. A good friend of mine, Anabel Hernández, a Mexican journalist, launched a book called “The Sorrows of Mexico” with Lydia Cacho and others at the Edinburgh international book festival three years ago. I was there. She described what she had gone through in preparing the book and in writing about the power of drug cartels, corrupt police forces and the role of the military. She described the threats made to her:

“Ever since, I have lived with 24 hour protection, if you can call that living.”

The threat never goes away. On 21 December 2014, a dozen men, armed with AK47 rifles and handguns, closed off the street where Hernández lived, and started asking her neighbours in which house the journalist lived. They deactivated the security cameras in the immediate area, including those installed in her house. She was lucky that day, because she was not at home; she was away. That is the kind of life that she and other very brave journalists live in Mexico, in Colombia, in Egypt and in other countries where journalists are consistently under threat.

We mourn those who have been killed, but there are many others in jail and the threat of jailing journalists is a form of censorship. Many of the world’s Governments know that by consistently threatening journalists, they will either tone down their reporting or simply not report what is going on where corruption, drug cartels and so on are involved. There is a kind of league table of journalists who are in prison. Globally, there are 235 of them in prison—those are the ones we know of —including 67 in Turkey, 21 in Egypt and 20 in China. They are all people who have been imprisoned because they were trying to report the truth.

The hon. Gentleman quite rightly pointed out what happened to Roman Protasevich. Obviously, it is appalling that the plane was effectively hijacked and he was taken to Belarus because he had been writing stories that were critical of its regime. Obviously, action should be taken. I am a member of the Council of Europe and my fellow members and I will make our views very well known at subsequent meetings. Unfortunately, Belarus is not a member of the Council of Europe; it is the only European country that is not a member.

Our complaints and objections about the way in which Roman Protasevich is being treated would be far more credible if the London Stock Exchange was not at the same time hosting financial servicing arrangements and opportunities to raise cash for the Belarussian Government. If we are serious about press freedom and freedoms in general, we must think very carefully about what financial institutions and others are doing.

The terrible events in Gaza and the west bank over the last few weeks and the loss of life of people both in Israel and in Palestine are obviously shocking and appalling. It is also very clear that the bombing was very effectively and efficiently targeted in Gaza. Two towers were taken out completely; they were demolished by targeted bombing. They included the offices of al-Jazeera and a number of other journalistic outlets in the region, so they could no longer effectively report what was happening in Gaza. Some brave journalists managed to use satellite phones and so on to keep in communication, but they were reporting while under fire from Israel that was quite clearly targeting those places where journalists were trying to report the reality of what is going on. And Yousef Abu Hussein, a young journalist, was killed during that whole process.

In this debate I hope that we can reflect on the bravery of journalists around the world—those who seek to speak truth to power and who try to tell us the truth about what is happening around the world. We all love newspapers; we all love news and information. However, we need to make sure that those who collect and gather that information—irritating as they often are to politicians; that is the world in which we live—are a crucial part of any democratic society.

The work done by the International Federation of Journalists and others in trying to get global agreement on the protection of journalists is very important. It is also important that the United Nations Human Rights Council continues its work on protecting journalists, and that we have an effective protection mechanism for journalists all around the world. Too many have died, too many are in prison and too many are frightened to report the news they ought to be reporting, because they are scared of what will happen to them if they do so.

We should not be complacent about our own society, either, because often in Parliament we have this sense of complacency that bad things—

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (in the Chair)]

May I ask the right hon. Member for Islington North to bring his speech to a conclusion, please? Thank you.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I apologise, Ms Ghani. I was not aware that there was a time limit. I will briefly say this. In our complacency, let us not forget brave people who have blown the whistle on the truth around the world. I think of Julian Assange and the work he has done in exposing what has happened around the world in preparation for war and other things. In some countries, he would be called a hero for being a whistleblower; here, he is called something very different. We should think of what news values and freedom of speech values are actually all about. Thank you for the opportunity to speak, Ms Ghani.

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[Kenny MacAskill (East Lothian) (Alba)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ghani. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) for securing this debate. It is appropriate that we celebrate World Press Freedom Day, because press freedom is fundamental to our democracy. It is a basic right. We all know that knowledge is power and that, equally, its absence endangers us. Press freedom allows us to expose totalitarianism, often in the face of danger, as other Members have said.

I was privileged to know James Pringle, who returned to my old constituency to vote in the Scottish referendum back in 2014. He regaled me with tales about, first, having served in the Dominican coup and then having been the first western journalist into Cambodia under Pol Pot, after the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge. I pay tribute to his courage.

Press freedom is vital to democracy. I remember reading Professor Henry Milner’s book, “Civic Literacy”. It is a study of what motivates turnout in elections. A critical factor is not whether it is as easy to vote as to buy a tin of beans in a supermarket; what matters in particular is understanding, and a quality media is fundamental to that. If people do not understand the issues, they will not participate and vote. That factor is normally shown in this country in turnouts being higher in referendums, when there is a clear understanding of the issues, than in wider elections, where turnout can be significantly lower.

As other Members have said, there are obviously ongoing issues—in Saudi Arabia and Belarus, and indeed closer to home, with Julian Assange. I sympathise and agree with the points made by others across the political divide that these people require protection.

I listened with interest to the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe, who was correct to point out the changes that have happened in the media. I have been writing for the Scottish media for several years now. The decline is significant. There are actions we have to take to address that and to protect the valuable newspapers that are undermined by other platforms. We should also remember that in many instances now, social media is just as important as the mainstream media.

We have looked in this country at what happened in the Arab spring. It was not the mainstream media that was the outlet letting people know, both within the countries that were part of the Arab spring, and in the wider world. It was not the papers, held by the regimes. It was social media bloggers and just people tweeting, or writing on their Facebook pages or whatever else. The hon. Gentleman was right to warn about dangerous disinformation and the challenges that we face as a society to protect our democracy. Equally, we also have to remember that it is important that we support that.

That brings me to my own situation within my own jurisdiction of Scotland. It is many years since I first studied law. I have had 20 years practising as a lawyer and seven and a half years as Justice Secretary. I never thought I would face a situation where I was condemnatory of actions that have been happening against the press in my own country.

Since the days of learning about the Gordon Airs case, HM Advocate v. Airs, I always assumed that those who were seeking to put forward information that was appropriate and fair would be protected. Yet in Scotland, in the fallout from the Alex Salmond affair, we have seen Mark Hirst, a journalist, prosecuted. The case, in which he was supported by the NUJ, was rightly rejected by the presiding sheriff in the borders. We have seen Craig Murray, a blogger and former British senior civil servant, now facing a prison sentence of eight months. That is not only shocking, but drives a coach and horses through a position brought in by the Scottish Government that there be a presumption against a sentence of imprisonment for less than a year. Their absence of criticism and their failure to comment has been quite shocking.

It is not simply cases brought by the Crown. It is the cases that have been pursued by the police, where people so much as tweeting anything that might be seen as possibly identifying a witness have faced a knock on the door from the police. That is fundamentally damaging to Scottish democracy. It is not what I expect and it has not come about by happenchance. It has been deliberate. It has been targeted. It is being driven by the Crown Office. If we are to have a free press, there has to be free reporting. That has to apply to bloggers as much as it applies to the mainstream press.

That people have been charged in Scottish courts and have faced possible terms of imprisonment for simply doing exactly the same as the mainstream press has done but not faced prosecution is simply unacceptable. There is also a reason that I am required to raise it here: it is that the position of the Lord Advocate of Scotland is no longer tenable. There has to be a separation of powers of having one individual who is both a legal adviser to the Scottish Government and also the head of the prosecution service in Scotland. That is no longer appropriate and I am disappointed that the First Minister did not seek to make it faster. It is something that has to come back to this Chamber because as a result of the Scotland Act 1998, the Lord Advocate is enshrined in statute by this Parliament. Action must be taken here as well as in Holyrood.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (in the Chair)]

I must remind Members not to comment on any live cases.

Telecommunications (Security) Bill

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Tuesday 25th May 2021 Commons Chamber

Although that it now the case, we are but stepping tentatively in the direction of understanding these issues. I think the Trade Minister in the other place said that this Government were still determined to pursue deeper bilateral trade with China, while sanctions against many of our parliamentarians—myself included, but there are others here now—are in place. We kind of put that to one side and think that we can go ahead with trying to make these deeper relations with China, notwithstanding the fact that we also recognise that it is a remarkable threat. I simply do not understand how we square those two things and get on with it. [Interruption.] Does my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) wish to intervene?

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

No, but I will never waste an opportunity, as it is obviously a joy to intervene on my right hon. Friend, who was asking how much deeper our relationship can go with a country that has sanctioned parliamentarians in this House for basically raising human rights abuses and security concerns.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I am getting so used to just doing what I am told by my hon. Friend when it is necessary that she only has to look in this direction and I give way to her—my apologies.

What I was really trying to get to the bottom of is that I do not think that this is feasible any longer. The Bill illustrates the dichotomy that lies at the heart of the Government’s position. We are trying constantly to talk about these trade relationships, but at the same time we recognise that the country that we are discussing them with is a totalitarian state that is guilty of what many, including myself, believe is a genocide of a whole ethnic group—more than one ethnic group. It is a state that is intolerant, that is suppressing democracy and free speech in Hong Kong, that is threatening Taiwan and India, and that has said that it is in possession of the South China sea. I could go on with that list. We can recognise the compilation of all those things and that there is a security risk, and yet at the same time in the other place we are told, “Don’t worry. We are still trying to do trade deals.”

It is quite interesting that we have reopened an economic and financial dialogue under a JETCO—a joint economic and trade committee—which was originally paused because of the imposition of the national security law in Hong Kong. The discussions have now restarted, although we did not hear much fanfare. We sort of discovered that they had restarted, but there was no announcement from the Dispatch Box that we were restarting them. There are no dates involved, but the discussions are restarting, despite the sanctions against individuals and so on, and despite our sanctions against Chinese officials—although I still wish that we could do more.

I note also that the European Union was heading in the same direction with its agreement, only now, because of the sanctions on its MEPs and so on, it has decided that it is not going to do that. I simply raise the question: if we think that this country and this Government —the Chinese Communist party, the Government of China—are such a potential threat, should we really be trying to reopen those doors, despite the sanctions that we have in place, the sanctions that they have put in place, and the very clear threat that they now pose to our security?

I simply say to my hon. Friend the Minister that I was going to move my amendment, which would have said that the Government should immediately declare many of these companies high-risk vendors by the very nature of the security law that exists in China. However, I would also say, in support of what has been said already, that the Government need to use the internal possibilities in our Parliament. We have a Committee that is cleared to the highest level of security in these areas, and it is important that we use that Committee. If the Government get private advice from the Committee about what it thinks is going wrong with their position, I think that will benefit and improve them.

I therefore ask my hon. Friend to take my amendment into consideration and to answer that point, to think seriously about how we can strengthen the Bill further and, if he can, to make the reservations of this place felt to his colleagues in Government. We are deeply concerned about trying to ride two bicycles at the same time: recognising a deep and growing threat to democracy not just here but around the world from the Chinese Communist party, while trying to beg China to do trade deals with us, notwithstanding the fact that it behaves so badly.

--- Later in debate ---

I will end with a point that the shadow Minister made. I very much agree with the notion that Ofcom will face considerable strain. This is about confronting the known hostile nations, but this is a changing world—it is changing ever more rapidly—and new threats and new challenges will emerge. Ofcom will have to be very nimble on its feet to deal with that, and that will require the necessary resources, so we look forward to seeing what the Government’s reply will be on that front. Essentially, this debate has been an example of Parliament changing the mind of a Government. The point that has been made about the Intelligence and Security Committee is absolutely correct. Parliament does have a role to play and I very much hope that the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) and his Committee will have a role to play in future.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

It is an honour to contribute to this measured debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am fearful of lowering the tone, but I have been speaking to the Minister—I congratulate him on the amount of communication he has had with us Back Benchers about our concerns—and when I was thinking about how best I could sum up our dialogue, I recalled that Ronald Reagan once said:

“The…most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.”

I think that, for a Minister, the most terrifying words are: “I’m a Back Bencher and I really am just here to help”. So without our removing the momentum, we really are here to help.

First, I need to put on record my thanks to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) for tabling the amendment, which, unfortunately, was not selected today. I also put on record my support for what my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) has proposed, with the support and expertise that he can bring to the debate and legislation, and I hope that the Minister can reflect on both those opportunities down the line. There is much to welcome in the Bill, but I fear that technology can sometimes move faster than we can legislate in this country. I want to touch on two issues: one is national security and the other is resilience and diversifying our supply chain.

I will start by being very helpful as a Back Bencher. I know that the Minister may have cast his eyes on a report that I recently produced for NATO. I sit on the Science and Technology Committee and I was tasked to put together a report on science and technology threats, looking particularly at east Asia. In the report, there is a puff box that he may want to reflect on; it talks about South Korea and the amount of work that it has done in innovating and developing new technology so that it is truly resilient in its national 5G infrastructure. I believe that 85 cities will have coverage by the end of 2021, and they are not reliant on any external Government to provide them with that service, so I urge him to go away and look at what South Korea is doing and possibly see how we can become more resilient in this country.

I want to raise the subject of resilience and security because I sit on the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee and we have been undertaking a report on links back to Xinjiang. However, companies also gave evidence to us that should cause some concern for the Minister, and with regard to this piece of legislation. This is basically about companies headquartered in China that have access to data we are using or manipulating, and to algorithms we are creating here in the UK.

In particular, I want to reflect on the evidence given to the Select Committee from TikTok. We invited TikTok to come in and give evidence about its algorithms and whether it is distorting them to stop information about Xinjiang and Uyghur being out on the platform. Unfortunately, the more we dug into TikTok, the more complex and concerning it got for us.

TikTok is a media company and a platform. Most kids will have access to it, and most people here may have access to it as well. However, it has a very complex ownership structure, which is why it is important that it is reflected somewhere in the Telecommunications (Security) Bill. It is important because TikTok is a subsidiary of a global parent company, ByteDance Ltd, which is incorporated in the Cayman Islands, but there is a China-based subsidiary of the same global parent company called ByteDance (HK) Ltd.

The reason why this should be of some concern is that when we took evidence from TikTok UK’s branch, we were told that ByteDance could in no way have access to UK data and that the two things were completely separate. However, the problem is that we can legislate in this country for what we want to do to keep our country and our people’s data safe, but when a company we are working with has headquarters in China, it has to abide by completely separate sets of rules and regulations, so we end up in a two-tier system.

Let me just reflect on what a company such as ByteDance has to adhere to. I am talking about China’s National Intelligence Law 2017. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green spoke about article 9, and I want to reflect on article 7. It states, and this has been translated into English so it may not be perfect:

“Any organization or citizen shall, in accordance with the law”—

the Chinese National Intelligence Law 2017—

“support, provide assistance and cooperate in national intelligence work, and guard the secrecy of any national intelligence work they are aware of.”

Fundamentally, companies have to hand over data when they are asked, but when they are asked by another Government—say, our Government—they have to deny that they are doing it. I am concerned about how robust our legislation is today or how robust our legislation will be going forward if companies are abiding by separate sets of intelligence laws based in China.

On a similar theme, let us take a closer look at Hikvision in particular. There was a very good recent report by Reuters, which basically states that half of London councils are using Hikvision, even though Hikvision is banned in the United States. Last week, Italian media reported that Hikvision equipment in the country was “communicating with servers” in China despite being on a supposedly closed network. I am not quite sure what “communicating with servers” means, but for me alarm bells are ringing.

The points I want to land with the Minister are: how robust is the legislation we have in place for today, let alone tomorrow, and how can we ensure that the processes to legislate in this country keep pace with the threats we are facing? I suppose the fundamental point is that China has its own National Intelligence Law, which completely contradicts what we are trying to do here in the UK. Does the Minister have any thoughts about how we can ensure that our security is not undermined by China’s National Intelligence Law? What guarantees can the Government give to constantly look at, review and update this, and also to hold to account the companies we may be anxious about?

We seem to be setting up a two-tier system: one for us in the west with the countries we work with, and a completely separate system for China and the companies it wishes to work with. I fear that, unless we put down a marker, we are going to lose out to a country such as China, and I hope that the Minister can comment on that when he comes to the Dispatch Box at the end of the debate.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate and to follow all the right hon. and hon. Members who have made contributions.

First, new clause 1 is designed to ensure that there is an obligation on Ofcom, in legislation, to report on the adequacy of its resources and assess the adequacy of the measures taken annually by telecommunications providers to comply with their duty to take the necessary security measures. The hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) referred to security, and I will speak briefly about that shortly. It also requires Ofcom to assess future areas of security risk based on its interrogation of network providers’ asset registries. That does seem to me to be standard, but it is essential that there is regulation and control of these providers, on which so many of us—indeed, probably all of us—rely so heavily. The Minister may well believe that this obligation is already included in the Government’s Bill, and if that is the case, perhaps he will confirm that that is the position. If that is the case, I am sure that that will highlighted subsequently.

I have seen, during the privatisation of water services and other public bodies, that private companies have little desire to provide any more information than is legally required. They just give us the basics of what they want us to know. I believe that there is an obligation for Ofcom to actively regulate, and to do this we must provide adequate funding. To make this happen, is it a funding issue or can we legislate to ensure that they tell us all we need to know? I will consider the words of the Minister on this imperative regulatory function.

I want to echo the concerns of the hon. Member for Wealden, who comprehensively addressed the issues that concern us all. She referred to companies that have their headquarters in China and how that impacts on us here in the United Kingdom. Our duty in this House is to our citizens: to the citizens of Strangford, to the citizens of Wealden and to everyone across the whole of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and we probably all seek assurances on these matters. Again I look to the Minister to do that in his summing up.

New clause 2 relates to the provision of information to the Intelligence and Security Committee. Does the Minister agree that it is imperative that the appropriate Committees have the right information on security matters? I am a firm believer in the need for information share. It has always been my policy to ensure that those around me in my political life, my social life and my personal life are aware of all the issues that concern them. It is also important that MPs have all the information on board. I am also a firm believer in the chain of command. This may well be due to years of part-time service in uniform; I spent 14 years as a part-time soldier. It is really important that the chain of command is in place. However, there are also times when it is in the interests of the nation that not all is revealed, and there will be a reason for some things being classified as top level only. I understand that; I often ask the police about things that have happened back home, and I say, “Don’t tell me anything I don’t need to know, but if you can tell me, and I can tell others, let me know that.”

Our job as parliamentarians is to scrutinise the Government, to hold Ministers to account and to strive for the good of the nation, and I ask the Minister to clarify why the Government do not feel that new clause 2 is necessary. Does he, for instance, believe that this is already accounted for? If it is, perhaps he could tell us the position on that. I would like to understand the rationale behind withholding information from a regulated Committee and what constitutes high-level information that should be withheld. Again I look to the Minister, as I often do in debates in this House, for a response to satisfy me that new clause 2 is not needed.

My final point relates to amendment 1 to clause 14, which proposes:

“The Secretary of State must, in the process of carrying out reviews and drafting subsequent reports, consult the appropriate ministers from the devolved governments.”

As a Member of Parliament, I have always wished to know what the devolved Administrations are doing. In my case, that relates to the Northern Ireland Assembly. When I saw the amendments and new clauses, I assumed that this provision would have been included as a matter of course. Surely it is a matter of the greatest importance—especially in Northern Ireland, which is fast becoming the capital of Europe’s cyber- security—that the devolved Administrations, and in this case the Northern Ireland Assembly, should have a full understanding of any emerging cases. I say with great respect to everyone else in this Chamber that the cyber sector in Northern Ireland is leaps and bounds ahead of other parts of the United Kingdom. Maybe only the south-east of England can match our level of advancement. We have incredible skills and staff available in Northern Ireland, and the cyber-security sector has grown greatly. So can the Minister reference the mechanism by which this information share can take place without any amendment? Can the Minister confirm that the Northern Ireland Assembly will have a key role to play in this, and tell us how that will work within the legislation before us today?

Covid-19: Restrictions on Gyms and Sport

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) on securing the debate. We are hearing today that we will exit a national lockdown and move to a tiered approach. I am anxious how that will be prescribed. As a member of the Covid Recovery Group, I am pleased that some of our concerns seem to have been met: looking at the 10 pm curfew, opening up outdoor sports, opening up covid-safe gyms, and opening up covid-safe retail.

Covid-19 is a deadly disease—many in this room will have lost family and friends to it—but, just as we want to limit the spread of the infection, we need a long-term strategy for living with the virus that goes beyond Christmas. Our sports and gyms sector needs that certainty.

I will raise four cases with the Minister. First, on gyms, Daniel Sanger, who lives in Uckfield, wrote to me asking how we can justify that a takeaway such as McDonalds, which serves fast food, can be open, whereas he has had to close his business. Of course, he is grateful for the furlough scheme, but people have been limiting their subscriptions and a business like his may have to face further financial damage and lay off people in the future. Of course, the Minister knows that Wealden is stunning, and we have lots of golf courses. Mr Robert Hessey wants to know how he can walk down the street with one of his golfing friends but cannot play golf with them at one of our stunning golf sites in Wealden. Hopefully the Minister can explain that away.

We have a couple of local football clubs, which I want to talk about. They are low-key, local football clubs doing great work for our community. Uckfield, Crowborough and Hailsham football clubs have been put under extreme hardship with the uncertainty of lockdown. Perhaps the Minister will explain how the £550 million that was going to go to local football clubs and associations will be spent in an area such as mine.

I want to move on to the bigger picture. I hope the Minister will answer these questions, which I will try to put in the most constructive way possible. It is not rare that when large organisations face huge risk, the managers, our Ministers, tend to go native—that is, they start to become deal-makers rather than deal-questioners. Deal-makers ask what should and should not stay open, but deal-questioners ask what the real scientific evidence is behind the decisions we are taking.

Given that, I would like the Minister to address three key things. Will he work with us Back Benchers on the evidence that shows us the real impact on people’s livelihoods of every restriction that is put in place? Will he work with the Government to show us the full cost-benefit analysis of every proposed restriction? Those affect not only people’s livelihoods, but their mental and physical health. The lockdowns have been particularly harsh in East Sussex and for my Wealden constituents: we have had a very low infection rate and few beds have been taken up, but people’s livelihoods have been lost.

Finally, I ask the Minister to work with the Government to publish the models that inform the policies that they are taking forward. We, as Back Benchers, should be able to review the data that is made available to Ministers and the Government, so that we can make the best judgment on behalf of our constituents.

The cure of endless lockdowns, which we are prescribing, runs the real risk of being worse than the disease itself. It is time to start removing these restrictions. It is fantastic news that our vaccine is coming down the line. We need to ensure that people can live their lives to the fullest. Every restriction needs evidence. Surely that is the basis of good democracy.

UK Telecommunications

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Tuesday 14th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

I think the hon. Lady knows that we have appropriate export controls in relation to all the things that she mentioned.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend share my concerns after recent coverage of Huawei and security apparatus in the province of Xinjiang, where human rights abuses are taking place against the Uyghur? What strategies or incentives are in place to support domestic telecoms equipment supply capabilities, to ensure that we have home-grown alternatives to Huawei?

[Oliver Dowden]

My hon. Friend is right to raise the appalling human rights abuses against the Uyghur in Xinjiang province. The United Kingdom has led in the condemnation of that, working with other countries. She talked about the importance of diversification, which several Members have raised. I am happy to report regularly to the House—indeed, I appear before the House for DCMS questions every month—and update it on the progress of all these measures.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Thursday 21st December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Tracey Crouch]

That is an excellent idea. I encourage the hon. Gentleman to write to colleagues across the House to explain how he set that up in his constituency and how they can benefit from doing the same.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

Happy Christmas to you, Mr Speaker, and to my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne), who does not seem to have any Christmas spirit.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

Humbug!

[Ms Ghani]

Does the Minister agree that national lottery funding should also be made available to smaller charities? Although they may help fewer people, in my constituency of Wealden there are very few options for vulnerable young and old people. In particular, clued-up.info in Crowborough helps teenagers; Sussex Oakleaf in Hailsham helps people with mental health issues; and the Now! Charity Group provides furniture for unemployed people and those on low income across East Sussex.

[Tracey Crouch]

I join my hon. Friend in congratulating the small charities in her constituency. Small charities provide a huge benefit in their locations. We celebrated the work of small charities on Local Charities Day last Friday, and we will continue to do all we can to support them in the future.

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The Attorney General was asked—

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

1. What plans the Government have to implement the agreement reached by the Council of Europe on prisoner voting in the UK.

[The Attorney General (Jeremy Wright)]

On behalf of the Law Officers may I take this early opportunity to wish all Members and staff of the House a very merry and, of course, lawful Christmas?

I very much welcome the decision by the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers to support our proposals on prisoner voting. We hope to complete implementation of those proposals by the end of next year, and we have agreed to provide an update on progress to the Council of Europe on 1 September.

[Ms Ghani]

I thank the Minister for his response, and I am pleased that an agreement has finally been reached to settle what has been a long-running dispute between ourselves and the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. Will my right hon. and learned Friend confirm to me and my constituents that it remains Government policy that convicted offenders detained in prison should not be allowed to vote, and that the recent agreement will not start us off on a slippery slope?

[The Attorney General]

Yes, and it is important that the Government comply with the judgment of a Court whose jurisdiction we have accepted. As my hon. Friend says, however, it is equally important that we stick to the clear view of this House and those beyond it that convicted prisoners should not vote from their cells, and they will not do so.