Adam Thompson MP: speeches

Speeches

• 12 Feb 2025 · SEND Provision: Derbyshire · Hansard source

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  First, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Linsey Farnsworth) for securing this extremely important debate. Put simply, this is an issue I hear about from constituents every single day, as do all my Derbyshire colleagues. In Erewash, SEND families face an uphill battle. Conservative Derbyshire county council has, as we have been hearing about, consistently failed my constituents, as it has failed constituents across the county, causing anxiety and frustration in making any progress on the education and care of our children. We have heard already this evening about the Ofsted report, which confirms what many families in Derbyshire already knew: that SEND provision is failing at almost every level, if not every level. The issue raised with me repeatedly by my constituents was rightly highlighted in the report: communication between families and the local authority. Emails and phone calls are roundly ignored, meaning that families are not updated. They are left in limbo for months. We heard about the incredible length of time that some families go through to get their EHCP in place. Sometimes it takes years, and that leaves SEND families feeling alone. Indeed, many of my colleagues will be receiving multiple new cases every week. I write to Derbyshire county council multiple times every week to raise these issues. At a SEND drop-in I held in Erewash I was told of the case of a child who needs specialist education, much like we have heard from colleagues this evening. He was offered a place in a school that was ready and able to provide support. All Derbyshire county council had to do was approve the placement. However, the council took three months to respond and by the time it did, the offer had been closed. The child’s current school put in an emergency review, which again had no response from Derbyshire county council, so it then had to go to mediation. Since the response to mediation, there has been no further progress. The child is still not receiving the required education, having only two days of alternative provision a week. The process is complicated, long, unnecessarily drawn out, and incredibly painful for the children and families involved. To make matters worse, that child and their family have had no fewer than nine case officers over the past several years, an incredible lack of consistency that makes communication between the local authority and the family even more difficult. Derbyshire has a crisis, as we have heard from multiple colleagues this evening. SEND families are being let down time and time again. Conservative-run Derbyshire county council is failing our most vulnerable children every single day. While Derbyshire now has a Labour representative in every constituency, it is incredibly disappointing that not one Conservative Member of Parliament has joined us this evening to hear about our plight with Derbyshire county council. I was pleased hear in the Budget that the Government are providing an extra £1 billion towards SEND services. I am also very pleased to hear that the Government will be reviewing SEND services. Evidently these services all over the country, but especially in Derbyshire, need to be reviewed and must be repaired. The Conservatives are responsible for this chaos, but I believe in the power of education to change lives and that all children, regardless of their circumstances, have a fundamental right to an excellent education.

• 5 Feb 2025 · English Devolution and Local Government · Hansard source

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  Special educational needs and disabilities families in Erewash and across Derbyshire have been broadly let down by Conservative-run Derbyshire county council, as was profoundly shown in the recent Ofsted report. While I firmly believe that reorganisation of our local services will improve SEND services, news of the devolution plans has caused families in my area to worry that reorganisation might mean further disruption to services. Can the Secretary of State reassure me and the many SEND families in Erewash that measures will be taken to ensure a smooth handover between the old authorities and the new?

• 4 Feb 2025 · Apprenticeships · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) for securing this debate ahead of National Apprenticeship Week. I am a great advocate of the apprenticeship system. This time last year I was employed at the University of Nottingham, teaching degree-level apprenticeships in electromechanical engineering. Degree-level apprenticeship courses strongly complement a traditional format of degree-level education and powerfully support the Government’s skills agenda. I want to focus specifically on degree-level apprenticeships and their unique offering. The course I helped deliver at Nottingham was a new paradigm in degree delivery. When people picture a degree in mechanical engineering, they could be forgiven for thinking of an aged lecturer—often male and white—delivering a sermon on gear ratios or some such nonsense to a half-empty, oak-panelled lecture hall, with his students often more taken by the declining state of repair of his ochre elbow patches than the content of his lectures. However, that image could not be further from the course that my colleagues and I were delivering last year. In a degree-level apprenticeship, content is commonly provided asynchronously via recordings and digital exercises, in a manner significantly more engaging than otherwise might be possible in a traditionally delivered degree. When I was in my previous employment, I often joked that my role was closer to a professional Youtuber than that of a traditional lecturer, with my days spent recording and editing 15 to 20-minute videos in a bite- sized, easily digestible format. I want more degree-level apprenticeships to be offered to allow more people to access the knowledge and experience those courses offer. I want to see people thrive with a new skills offering, and to reverse the decline in apprenticeships that happened under the previous Government. This Friday, I will visit JTL Training in Sandiacre in my constituency, a training facility which supports career development and business growth and offers apprenticeships and traineeships in building services engineering. I am looking forward to meeting the apprentices on Friday, to talk to them about exactly how we can support their growth, and the growth of our nation.

• 3 Feb 2025 · People with Disabilities and Long-term Health Conditions: Work Support · Hansard source

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  In 2019, my close friend and constituent Jim was at his desk, working as a web developer, when out of the blue he felt a sudden pain. Jim was having a spinal stroke. He has never since been able to walk. The pain medication that Jim must take to manage his condition limits his ability to work, but sometimes he has unpredictable bursts of productivity. However, Jim’s benefit arrangements mean that the work that he could occasionally be able to do might result in sanctions to his benefits. What steps will the Minister take to ensure that Jim can get back into work?

• 3 Feb 2025 · People with Disabilities and Long-term Health Conditions: Work Support · Hansard source

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  23. What steps she is taking to support people with disabilities and long-term health conditions into work.

• 24 Jan 2025 · Prayers · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That the House sit in private. Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 163). A Division was called.

• 24 Jan 2025 · Climate and Nature Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Lady give way?

• 24 Jan 2025 · Climate and Nature Bill · Hansard source

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  We have heard extensively about the importance of cross-party consensus, and I believe we have been having a fantastic discussion to that end. Does the hon. Member agree that in the name of cross-party consensus we should be working together and not just party political grandstanding in favour of the Green party?

• 24 Jan 2025 · Climate and Nature Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Lady give way?

• 24 Jan 2025 · Climate and Nature Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Lady give way?

• 17 Jan 2025 · Absent Voting (Elections in Scotland and Wales) Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank my neighbour and dear friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Linsey Farnsworth). I certainly agree with her and commend the school in Langley Mill. I was her predecessor as the Labour candidate in Amber Valley in 2019, and I know the fantastic work the school is doing. I am a great proponent of visiting schools. I went to two last week: Ladywood primary school in Kirk Hallam, and Saint John Houghton Catholic voluntary academy, which I know my hon. Friend attended as a pupil many years ago. I am a fan of school visits, and as a trained former teacher, I find it one of the most enjoyable parts of my job. I know that many right hon. and hon. Members are similarly strong advocates. I was talking about the importance of better education in school, breaking down the barriers to opportunity and ensuring that all our pupils get access to the knowledge they require to engage fully in our political system. I remember the few short hours when I was a pupil at Llanishen high school in north Cardiff when the headteacher, Mr Robert Smyth, came in and taught my class about politics. He was given just four or six hours over the five years of my time in state education. It is disappointing that we have such a small amount of politics education available to pupils in state schools. I have long been a great advocate of expanding the time given to that. It is one of the things I greatly enjoy doing as a Member of Parliament—joining as many schools as possible to impart to pupils the knowledge that I have gained in this place and through my experiences.

• 17 Jan 2025 · Absent Voting (Elections in Scotland and Wales) Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Tracy Gilbert) for bringing forward this wonderful Bill. It is important to say that this Bill is fundamentally about making it easier to vote in Scotland and Wales. It would improve the situation for residents in those areas by allowing them to vote by post and proxy in a way that they would not necessarily be able to at the moment. I grew up in south Wales, so this issue is close to my heart. I was consistently impressed when I was growing up by the work of the Electoral Commission, or as it would rightly be known in Wales, Y Comisiwn Etholiadol. I must declare that I had a special closeness to the Electoral Commission, because during the noughties my mother was the leader of the Wales office, so the fact that I had great respect for its work is maybe a little close to home. In the 2000s, the commission had a great advert on television, and it stuck with me. Maybe I was paying a little more attention to adverts put out by the Electoral Commission than many of my teenage colleagues at the time, but this wonderful advert had a series of vignettes of cartoon characters, with two guys going about their daily life and talking about various issues they were coming up against. One of the guys was saying, “You should make sure you vote, man,” and the other one kept saying, “I don’t do politics, me.” They would go into, say, a supermarket, and the guy who says he doesn’t do politics says, “The price of milk’s too high.” The next scene is in a pub, and he says, “The price of beer is too high.” The whole message of this advert was that politics is in everything. It is really important that we, as politicians, drive that message home always. We should be doing everything in our power to expand and improve access to politics. That is why the Bill is really important. Those adverts—and there were many put out by the Electoral Commission at the time—were focused on making sure that people had access to voting and were going out and voting. I was not so lucky as to get the vote at 16 in Wales—I was too old for that—but when I got the opportunity to vote for the first time aged 19, I remember getting multiple phone calls from my mum shortly before saying, “You make darn sure you sign up for a postal vote in advance,” because I was at university and had to make sure I was signed up. I am a big proponent of making sure that young people have access to voting and that we do everything we can to encourage them to vote. We should support all young people to vote more easily, and the measures in the Bill are really important in that work. We need to be removing the barriers.

• 17 Jan 2025 · Absent Voting (Elections in Scotland and Wales) Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention and, of course, I completely agree with everything she says. I firmly believe that education, skills development and all the aspects we have just been discussing should be core to all of our policies. Indeed, my previous role prior to coming to this place was as an educator at the University of Nottingham, where I taught degree-level apprenticeships in electromechanical engineering. I am a great advocate of the apprenticeship system, and I am very pleased by the Government’s commentary over the past few months about expanding skills provision across the board. As I have said repeatedly throughout this speech, it is really important that we advocate for these points as much as possible. I am sure that colleagues across the House will be au fait with the comments we often receive on the doorstep. Like many colleagues, I will be out knocking doors tomorrow morning and tomorrow afternoon, and very often people say how difficult they find it to access our political system. Many areas such as mine have multiple tiers of government: councils, local government, mayors and MPs. We are talking about devolution at the moment and maybe reorganising some of those systems, and I think there is an opportunity to simplify them.

• 17 Jan 2025 · Absent Voting (Elections in Scotland and Wales) Bill · Hansard source

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  Of course, I completely agree with everything my hon. Friend just said. I am sure that many Members—probably all right hon. and hon. Members—agree that the polling clerks and all the attendants on election day are a vital part of our democracy, and they have our thanks for their work, year in, year out, in all elections. As I was saying, I am a great fan of doing everything we can as a Government and as Parliament to improve access to elections and to remove barriers. Digital measures of the sort in the Bill are a really important part of that. We have heard Members on both sides of the House talk about the importance of breaking down the barriers in the way of those who are digitally illiterate and giving everyone access to a way of signing up for postal and proxy votes online. I also advocate for more education in schools.

• 17 Jan 2025 · Absent Voting (Elections in Scotland and Wales) Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, and I agree. It is important that when these difficult scenarios arise, we are able to account for them and have systems in place to deal with them. To conclude, we have had a really interesting discussion today. The points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith are very valuable and will allow a whole group of extra people to access our electoral system, which is complex. The Bill will allow us to simplify it, homogenise systems between England, Wales and Scotland, and generally improve things for voters across the country.

• 17 Jan 2025 · New Homes (Solar Generation) Bill · Hansard source

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  I just want to advise the right hon. Member that several products of the type he is referencing are available on the market at the moment.

• 17 Jan 2025 · New Homes (Solar Generation) Bill · Hansard source

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  I must say that I declare my support for those projects wherever they come up. Indeed, I will touch on some of them in a moment. I was recently asked by the media whether I would be happy to have pylons outside my house, to which I responded with a photograph of a pylon taken from a window in my house. I have long felt that despite the great benefits solar farms bring, they have often been too difficult to bring forward. The UK has around 15 GW of solar energy generation capacity. In Germany, meanwhile, solar capacity grew by 14 GW in 2023 alone. It is clear that the UK’s current planning regime and approach to building infrastructure constrains growth and sees us lag behind similar nations. If we want Britain to be a clean energy superpower, as I do, and leading the green energy revolution rather than just following it, we must tear down the barriers to growth and unlock our potential. In my constituency, my Labour colleagues on Erewash borough council have, in their own small, local way, helped to be part of the change that we need. Since taking control of the council in 2023, they have approved several solar farms, while the previous Conservative administration always blocked them, and I am very proud of my colleagues for doing so. I was also very proud to tell the now Energy Secretary that information when he visited Erewash this time last year. The progression of these vital infrastructure projects, which are pivotal to the future of our country, must be driven by a national strategy and not held up by bureaucracy. As I have said, the Bill’s proposals are laudable. The drive to green energy generation along with this Government’s ambition to make Britain a clean energy superpower could be, to this decade and to those to come, what the race for space was in the 1950s and 1960s—countries engaged in a great contest of scientific innovation and progress. There is nothing that I, as a former research scientist, could welcome more than the Government pursuing science, innovation and technology as a matter of not only core policy, but national pride. This Government are committed to greatly expanding our provision of solar energy generation and have acknowledged many times the significant part that rooftop solar has to play in that expansion. I hope that supporters of this Bill are assured by the Government’s genuine commitment on this front. The climate crisis and the housing crisis are both profound issues, worthy of the descriptor “crisis” and in need of immediate action. I know that many right hon. and hon. Members share the Government’s commitment to act here, as I most certainly do.

• 17 Jan 2025 · New Homes (Solar Generation) Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson) for introducing the Bill. I think it is laudable, and its heart is very much in the right place. We should think of the climate crisis in all matters of policy and in how we might contribute to the Government’s goal of making Britain a clean energy superpower. The Government, guided by the excellent work of the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, are already making great strides in combating the climate crisis, putting green energy at the heart of the country’s future and supporting green industrial growth wherever we can. The Government have established Great British Energy, which means that we will need new green infrastructure sooner rather than later. When it comes specifically to solar energy, I was very pleased that, within just days of taking office, the Government approved three major, long-stalled, large solar farms in Lincolnshire and East Anglia, capable of generating 1.5 GW, or enough to power 500,000 homes. That was a clear statement of intent, and one that we can all be very proud of. At the same time, the Secretary of State pledged a rooftop revolution, making it easier for newly built homes to come with solar panels from the off and to install solar panels on existing homes. A third of our solar generation capacity already comes from rooftop solar, it is an important part of the energy generation mix and I know that the Government fully believe in rooftop solar, as I do.

• 17 Jan 2025 · New Homes (Solar Generation) Bill · Hansard source

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  I completely agree. It is not about one solution versus another, but a diverse, broad array of solutions, all feeding into a grand, greener future.

• 17 Jan 2025 · New Homes (Solar Generation) Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for her intervention, and I will cover some of those points shortly. I broadly agree with the sentiment of what she said. The Bill’s aims, in promoting the installation of solar panels on all new homes, feed into the Government’s overall intent, and I am pleased about that. I note, however, that it is undeniable that solar farms, especially the larger ones, are much more efficient than rooftop solar for a whole spectrum of reasons. Rooftop solar panels are constrained by the size, orientation and structural limitations of individual buildings, while solar farms are optimised for maximum energy generation. The difference in output can be as high as 30%. Economies of scale mean that the cost to install, maintain and centralise the supportive infrastructure notably reduces the ratio of cost per unit of energy generated by solar farms. That is not to say that I do not support rooftop solar, because I very much do, but solar farms are a highly scalable, cost-effective means through which to achieve the green energy transition.

• 15 Jan 2025 · Non-Domestic Rating (Multipliers and Private Schools) Bill · Hansard source

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  If I am incorrect, I stand corrected. My understanding from speaking to the experts is that the proportion has remained broadly consistent, but my apologies if that is incorrect. I thank the right hon. Member for his intervention. The Committee stage reaffirmed what many of us on the Government Benches already knew, which is that this Bill represents a common-sense modification of our tax policy that will support local small businesses. The Bill represents a core pillar of this Government’s goal to rebalance the scales away from large online giants in favour of local independents and towards the 94% of children educated in the state sector. I know that traders and families in Ilkeston, Long Eaton and the surrounding villages in my constituency will broadly benefit from these measures, and I am proud to support this Bill through its remaining stages unamended.

• 15 Jan 2025 · Non-Domestic Rating (Multipliers and Private Schools) Bill · Hansard source

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  I refer to Hansard for the discussions we had in Committee, but that did not come through in the evidence we heard. However, I respect the fact that the hon. Member has made that point, and I thank her for doing so. As we heard from the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Vikki Slade), another sector to benefit significantly from these measures is our local pubs. The fine folk frequenting the Sawley Junction in Long Eaton or the Bulls Head in Breaston in my constituency can rest easy that their locals are in safe hands. More generally, the measures we are bringing forward will reduce the tax burden on the hospitality sector, which is considered by many to be overtaxed. I am very glad that the Government have been able to offer something positive to the sector, which has been broadly forgotten for many years. Some of the Bill’s opponents have suggested that the removal of charitable relief from non-domestic rates for private schools will have a negative impact on the parents of privately educated children, so I was strongly heartened to hear from one of our experts during the scrutiny process in Committee. Professor Francis Greene, professor of work and education economics at the University College London institute of education, noted that this Bill will have a “marginal” effect on the education sector, and that the policy was fair and would generally not have a great deal of impact on the proportion of children in private schools, which has remained broadly constant over the past 20 years, despite a cash-terms doubling in fees.

• 15 Jan 2025 · Non-Domestic Rating (Multipliers and Private Schools) Bill · Hansard source

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  I am grateful for the opportunity to speak again on this Bill, having been part of the scrutiny process in Committee. The Committee heard representations from a wide variety of experts in related fields, and I was heartened by the news that many experts felt that this Bill would have a positive impact on 98% of the retail stores that make up our communities. In particular, small convenience stores such as the local Co-op or the great British corner shop will see great benefits to their capacity to support staffing, security and other operational functions. Our incredible independent shopkeepers, such as those who populate the high streets of Ilkeston and Long Eaton in my constituency, will have more funds to take on additional staff, improve their security set-ups and gain long-term confidence in their ability to serve our community. These measures represent a simple, common-sense approach to rebalancing the scales in favour of local retailers and away from the online giants, and increasing taxes on the biggest players while relieving the burden on local retailers.

• 15 Jan 2025 · Non-Domestic Rating (Multipliers and Private Schools) Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Member reflect on my comments a few moments ago about how the expert suggested that the Bill would have a marginal, negligible impact on the education sector?

• 15 Jan 2025 · Higher Education Regulatory Approach · Hansard source

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  I thank the Secretary of State for her statement and particularly in regard to the removal of the tort from the existing legislation. That will allow our universities to ensure that funds get spent on students and not on complex legal issues. As the Secretary of State has said repeatedly today, the Government take the need to expose students to a wide range of issues seriously. As a former academic, may I ask my right hon. Friend whether she agrees with me that our universities must remain centres of robust, rigorous debate always?