Alistair Strathern MP: speeches 2026

Speeches

• 27 Jan 2026 · Digital Exploitation of Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  The recent horrific stories about Grok and other AI-enabled abuse have highlighted a trend with which far too many women are very familiar. The online world, for all its benefits, has also brought new opportunities for them to experience exactly the same degrading abuse that they are all too familiar with in day-to-day life. There are three really important lessons for us all to take from the Grok case. First, given the platform's consistent inability to act on its own before being pushed, we need to continue to be proactive in taking on tech firms. Secondly, the fact that we were able to deliver such fantastic action so quickly teaches us that when tools can be delivered robustly and with confidence, change is possible. Thanks to the brave testimony of many women, many of whom knew that in speaking up they would be making themselves targets for abuse, we were able to drive robust action from Ofcom and get X to back down. Thirdly, if we are to continue to keep pace with developing risk factors, we need to find quicker ways to legislate. The Online Safety Act 2023, for all its strengths, took far too long. We have to get comfortable with more principles-based legislation or secondary legislation options to ensure finally that we can do far better to keep women and children safe online. Across Government, we need to make sure that our own services cannot be used to enable people to perpetuate abuse. I have been working with one woman who, having escaped domestic abuse and relocated to my constituency, now finds herself unable to reject a simple planning application because, in doing so, the local authority requires her to be comfortable publishing her full name and address online. This important democratic right cannot be denied to women fleeing domestic abuse, of all people. I welcome the chance to talk further with the Minister, after this debate, about what wider work we can do across Government to put this right and to ensure that none of our services, online or offline, are enabling women to be anything other than safe in their homes and thriving in their lives.

• 27 Jan 2026 · Medical Training (Prioritisation) Bill · Hansard source

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  I wonder if the Secretary of State shares my residents’ utter disbelief that the last Government created a system where thousands of UK medical graduates, educated at the cost of billions to the UK taxpayer, were suddenly forced to compete with overseas students, pushing many abroad for their careers and losing a big talent pool that should be powering our NHS and getting it back on its feet.

• 27 Jan 2026 · Commonhold and Leasehold Reform · Hansard source

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  This is an historic day for leaseholders, many of whom were let down by a lack of action from the previous Government, which left them on the hook for exploitative levels of ground rent. One 90-year-old constituent of mine was hit with a 9,000% increase in his ground rent—that cannot be right. I am really glad that the Minister has shown such leadership to ensure that we put that right today. I know he agree that we need to go further on unadopted estates, too, so will he meet me to ensure that we bring those protections forward as swiftly and effectively as possible?

• 14 Jan 2026 · Offshore Wind · Hansard source

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  I thank the Energy Secretary for the leadership he has shown with this record-breaking step forward for renewable power, which underlines our commitment to delivering the clean, secure energy our country is crying out for. It is important to note that the scale of energy secured—at a 40% lower cost than new gas—was only possible because of reforms to the auction market design. We did not tolerate the mechanisms that failed under the previous Government; we innovated to deliver better value. Will the Energy Secretary ensure that we do not rest on our laurels, but continue to innovate in auction design to ensure that we get the best possible value for money and the biggest possible capacity outcomes from future auctions, too?

• 12 Jan 2026 · Call for General Election · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. It is now just over two years since I was first elected to represent the community I live in. There is really no greater privilege than getting to be here and stand up for our constituents’ concerns, particularly at a time when the stakes feel so high. In that spirit, I want to start by thanking everyone who engaged with the petition and brought the debate to the House of Commons today. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury) pointed out, petitions are an incredibly valuable way of ensuring that the public can continue setting the agenda in this place. Although I am sure I might disagree with some of the signatories on a great many things about politics and policy, fundamentally we probably share a concern that, for a long time and under successive parties, people have begun to worry that politicians have not always done a good enough job of serving them and their priorities, and have not shown themselves to be sufficiently capable of delivering the change they are looking to see. Not a single Member in this House should feel comfortable with the trend we have been seeing, over decades, in public attitudes to politicians as a force for good and disillusionment with politics generally. The general election of over 18 months ago was not the first general election campaign I took part in. It was not even the first election in which I stood to be an MP, given that I had the opportunity a little bit earlier thanks to Nadine Dorries standing down during the previous Parliament. It was probably the one where the stakes felt highest and where the urgency of people’s concerns about the challenges they were facing across our communities and their growing disillusionment about politicians’ ability to affect them felt most acute. I spoke to constituents whose health had deteriorated far too poorly because of a long wait to see the NHS; to families who were fighting to access affordable childcare or the right support for their child at school under a broken settlement, both at early years and in education; and to people whose lives had been narrowed far too much by cost of living and growing interest rate pressures. Those pressures were not down to any failings of their own; it was not about a lack of hard work on their part, but about successive failures of the previous Government to drive down the cost of things that really impacted their lives. It got to the point where, even on the very basics—whether that was secure borders or the ability to keep the roads in a fit state—my constituents were losing faith in the ability of politics to deliver on the things that touched their lives. None of us should be comfortable with that and, as the party now in government, we must feel the responsibility of putting it right particularly acutely. It is right that, at moments such as this, both the public and Opposition parties represented in the Chamber today have the chance to hold us to account for how we have dealt with the many challenges we inherited. There is no getting away from the scale of some of the challenges that we have had to grapple with. The NHS, which was already on its knees, was looking at cutting appointments further just at the time they needed to be put back up, as was revealed to the Health Secretary just weeks into office. Our prisons were about to spill over; that fact was known to the previous Government but not revealed to the public at the last general election, if we are talking about transparency going into elections. The public finances were in an even tighter space than had been shared previously, as validated by the feedback from the Office for Budget Responsibility. Those are all incredibly difficult circumstances to inherit. They make me very angry, and it makes the public understandably frustrated to hear about them, and I hear that frustration. I do not want to spend my time talking about challenges; I want to spend my time talking about solutions. If we are serious about putting right so many of the failings we inherited as a Government, we have to start by being frank with the public about the mess we inherited, and face up to the big and difficult choices needed to put right many of the challenges that the previous Government ducked for far too long—right up to calling the general election. Only the last Prime Minister will know why he chose to go the country early, but I do not think that anyone in this room can credibly claim that it was because he believed that things were only going to get better in his remaining time in office. That is a damning indictment of the trajectory of the country that we inherited. Faced with all of that, we have had to start doing things that go beyond what we originally intended in our last manifesto. That is not an easy thing to have to do as a politician, but it is the right and brave thing to do when the circumstances dictate big and difficult choices to step up and meet the needs of those moments. We could not shy away from the fact that, if we were not going to find ways to invest billions more into the NHS, a situation that was already too difficult for too many of my constituents was only going to get worse. We needed to invest in the things that were starting to show people right across my constituency that the state was not working, whether that meant putting more money into special educational needs and disabilities provision, investing to fix crumbling schools or offering a record settlement for repairing roads. We have started to fix, thread by thread, the fabric of the broken Britain that we inherited. Hopefully, between now and the next general election, we can start to demonstrate to people that politics can be a force for good yet again. I am incredibly proud of many individual things that we have delivered over the last year. We invested in my local hospital to create new and expanded GP surgery places, meaning that we can deliver more appointments and deliver some of the fastest falls in waiting lists across the country. In my area, I know that we are making a real difference to the people who have already been seen. We are investing in extra nursery provision and free breakfast provision, and making sure that we invest in the expanded SEND places that my community needs. Families’ lives have already been touched for the better by the changes that this Government have introduced, from the record investment that we are putting into fixing some of our broken roads, to the greater devolved transport powers over buses that we have given to Hertfordshire county council. Too many constituents have had issues with transport, public transport and driving for too long now. We are starting to invest in things that will show them over time that politics can be a force for good for their priorities again. I do not want to pretend for one second that any of those choices or individual changes have touched the lives of everyone in my constituency yet. They will not have completely delivered the scale of change that we need to show by the next general election, but they are down payments on the promise we made at the last election and on the causes that I, on behalf of my constituents, will continue to campaign on every day that I am lucky enough to serve in this place. I do not know when the next general election might be, but I am pretty confident that it is unlikely to be this year. Although I cannot promise that I agree with the petitioners on that urgent ask, I can promise them that, along with all my colleagues, I will work to tackle not only those individual issues but the wider cause of disillusionment that caused them to sign this petition every day that I am lucky enough to serve here. I will not get everything right, and I am sure that I alone will make plenty more mistakes, however many years I have left in this place, but I will always look to deliver on the intent of restoring faith in politics and the public services that my constituents rely on, and show them that this Labour Government will deliver the change that they voted for and take decisions every day that will make a tangible difference to their lives over the years to come. Together, we can start to turn the tide on the managed decline and broken political settlement that we have tolerated for far too long in this country.

• 12 Jan 2026 · Call for General Election · Hansard source

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  If I heard the hon. Gentleman right, he criticised us for the £280 tax burden that basic rate taxpayers face because of the threshold freeze that is in effect this year. He knows, of course, that that threshold freeze was in his Government’s manifesto going into the general election and part of their last Budget settlement. Did he criticise it at the time?

• 6 Jan 2026 · Therapeutic Play and Children’s Healthcare · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey) not just for securing the debate, but for continuing to live up to his true legend status by being so generous with interventions and speaking time. Therapeutic play can all too often be seen as a nice-to-have in children’s healthcare, rather than as a fundamental part of doing paediatric care well. I had the privilege recently of joining fantastic play therapists such as Christina at my local hospital and seeing the transformative impact that therapeutic play, done well, can have on outcomes for young people. I spoke to young people who had had trauma eased that could easily have lasted far longer than the condition they were being treated for; to parents who, at some of the most difficult and traumatic moments of their child’s early life, were still able to find moments of joy and solace in the smiles they saw in the play area working with those fantastic therapists; and to wider health professionals who were able to deliver far more effective and often more cost-effective care because of the fantastic collaborative work they had with the therapeutic play provision team who are well embedded into the Lister hospital. Those parents and families are really lucky. Working with Starlight, I know many other families across the country have got to be equally lucky, but far too often families face a postcode lottery in provision. It is fantastic to see the toolkit coming into effect. We now need to make it a reality for every family and every child with healthcare needs right across the country.

• 6 Jan 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I am delighted that we are investing in more rooftop solar. GB Energy supports the deployment of rooftop solar on schools and hospitals in my constituency, and the Government are taking up my proposal that it be a requirement to have it on all new housing, but how can we make sure that we are not missing out on the opportunity to use other rooftops, from those on car parks to those on commercial warehouses?

• 5 Jan 2026 · Hate Crime · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Government’s commitment to tackling misogyny, but I am sure that Ministers will be as disgusted as I am by reports over recent weeks of users of the social media platform X being able to create sexualised images of women, including children, through its AI tool, Grok. What conversations are Ministers having across Government to ensure that we clamp down on that vile practice, which should simply not be tolerated on social media sites?