Alice Macdonald MP: speeches

Speeches

• 22 Jan 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Last week I visited the YMCA centre on Aylsham Road in Norwich, which is doing incredibly work to address youth homelessness. Will the Leader of the House join me in celebrating 170 years of YMCA Norfolk this year, and make time for a debate on how best to support vulnerable young people to access safe, secure and affordable housing?

• 16 Dec 2025 · Planning Reform · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Minister’s commitment to tackling the housing crisis that we inherited. I have had many emails from people in Norwich about the need to build much-needed homes but also to protect our natural environment. As he probably knows, Norfolk is home to 10% of England’s chalk streams. He has touched on this, but can he provide reassurances to my constituents, and outline how this new policy will protect vital nature spots, like chalk streams?

• 15 Dec 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls Strategy · Hansard source

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  Male violence against women and girls touches every corner of our country and every constituency. In my area, Broadland district council has done great work, including getting gold accreditation on housing and developing a women’s safety strategy. I welcome the funding already announced for local authorities, but can my hon. Friend assure us that local authorities on the frontline with grassroots organisations will get the support they need?

• 2 Sept 2025 · Pension Schemes Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q My question is related to that. Aviva, in your written evidence, you spoke quite a lot about the value for money framework. Could you expand on what you think the benefits and challenges are? You also referred to the Australian regulator’s model, in terms of learning. You have already covered a bit of it, but if there anything you could add on what we could learn from that model about incentivising investments in the right areas, that would be great. Dale Critchley: What we have heard from Australia is that the thing to avoid is regulator-defined targets, which will probably lead to herding, and can lead to schemes avoiding certain investments. For example, in Australia, property includes social housing and commercial property, but there is one benchmark for everything. So pension schemes do not invest in social housing, because they cannot achieve the benchmark through investing in social housing, as the benchmark is common across all property. Those are things to watch out for. The other piece is that if you have set benchmarks, people will look to achieve the benchmark and not exceed it—they do not want to be the white chicken among all the brown chickens. Those are the things to avoid, in terms of the value for money benchmarks.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I want to pick up on the monitoring point. For example, say a consumer feels that they have had to pay a little more for a flight that is more environmentally friendly; how soon would you be able to quantify whether that mechanism had had an effect? In a year’s time, would you be able to say that it has meant that the carbon has been decreased by x amount? Jonathon Counsell: Definitely. All SAF has to be independently assessed for its life cycle emission savings. Before we purchased it, we have to prove that, and as I said, get an independent authority to test the life cycle emissions. We will be able to declare publicly, of any SAF that we use, the independent assessment of its life cycle savings. Lahiru Ranasinghe: If you look at the mechanics of how it works for meeting the mandate, there is a minimum threshold that we set when buying compliant fuel. In this case, compliant fuel is kerosene: fossil-based kerosene blended with SAF. When we pay for the supply, we get the product transfer documents, which have the sustainability criteria associated with that specific batch of SAF. At that point we can very accurately calculate the emissions saving. In terms of planning, we have to set a range, because there is some variation depending on the pathway and the SAF provided. Building on what my colleagues here have said, there is an opportunity for the UK both in home-grown production and up and down the value chain in the development and export of the technology and the financing and trading of SAF in the longer term. We have what is seen as a gold standard for sustainability criteria, especially going to 2G SAF and the conversion of waste into usable fuels, which addresses multiple issues at the same time and is something that we can export to the rest of the world.