Anna Dixon MP: speeches

Speeches

• 11 Nov 2025 · Autistic Adults: Employment · Hansard source

  More

  My niece successfully secured a place on a civil service internship. She was then able to go on and train as a work coach and is helping people who face similar challenges with neurodiversity or health conditions to get back into work. Does the hon. Lady agree that it is important that other employers set up these bespoke internship schemes, particularly to give opportunities to young people?

• 11 Nov 2025 · Autistic Adults: Employment · Hansard source

  More

  Does the hon. Gentleman agree that closing the disability gap—indeed, the specific employment gap for people with neurodiversity—will mean opening up opportunities in different ways, so that autistic people do not have to go through interviews and other barriers that a normal application process requires of neurotypical people?

• 5 Nov 2025 · Drug-related Deaths · Hansard source

  More

  I thank my hon. Friend for securing the debate. In the Bradford district, there were 70 drug-related deaths in 2023. I agree with her that we need to take a different approach to tackling the problem, and it must be a public health approach. The UK could learn much from countries like Portugal, which has gone a long way towards adopting such an approach to drugs and drug-related deaths.

• 4 Nov 2025 · Supporting High Streets · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend makes an excellent point about the number of pop-up shops and illegal traders on the high street. I am running a petition about the antisocial use of fireworks; does she agree that more needs to be done to stop their illegal sale in pop-up shops?

• 4 Nov 2025 · Supporting High Streets · Hansard source

  More

  I am very fortunate to represent the beautiful villages across the Shipley constituency, including Baildon, Menston, Burley-in-Wharfedale, Wilsden, Harden, Cullingworth and Eldwick. These communities are thriving because they have village halls; churches, like Wesleys in Baildon; post offices, like the community post office run by volunteers in Wilsden; pubs, like the Malt Shovel in Menston; local Co-operative supermarkets; and many independent cafés and shops. I will focus on the two main towns, Bingley and Shipley. Bingley is a historical market town. It has a thriving arts centre that has recently benefited from upgrades after receiving grassroots arts funding. Bingley’s anchor business is the famous Damart factory, which makes thermal underwear. It hosts community events, and has hosted a fantastic exhibition for Bradford 2025. There are new charitable enterprises, such as the Brick Bank café, and independent shops, such as Luscombe’s, Hedgehog Organics and Eldwick Creamery, as well as cafés such as the Craft House, the Loft and the Lounge. At the heart of the town is Bingley pool, which sadly remains closed due to the devastating cuts that the Tories made, over 14 years, to local councils such as Bradford council, and due to the previous Conservative Government’s false promises of levelling-up funding, which never materialised. By contrast, this Government have committed millions through the pride in place programme, and are rebalancing the amount of money for councils like Bradford. They are giving more power and money to local communities. I am keen for the Minister to say more about how Labour is strengthening the community right to buy, which will make it easier for local communities to take on and run facilities such as Bingley pool. Let me turn to Shipley town centre. While there are some brilliant businesses there, it was really neglected under the Tories; there were vacant shops and many charity shops, banks closed, crime was up, and shoplifters were free to commit crime with no consequences. I congratulate Bradford council on delivering a fantastic upgrade to the market square, and I also congratulate this Labour Government on increasing neighbourhood policing, which led to a summer crackdown on street drinking and new powers to crack down on retail crime. Unlike other areas we have heard about today, we are seeing new pubs opening, such as Reconnection in Shipley, which opened just this weekend under the ownership of Beth and Nathan, who already run a successful pub in Baildon. I hope that the Minister agrees that high streets like Shipley’s are on the up; we have a Labour Government and a Labour council finally working together. There is huge potential in Shipley to increase footfall. It is well connected to Leeds and Bradford by train, and now that this Labour Government are getting the trains back into public ownership, we will see improved services and better affordability. It is vital that we build more housing on brownfield sites, such as the riverside in Saltaire and the old Ian Clough Hall in Baildon, so that more people live near and on our high streets. We should also convert excess commercial, retail and office spaces into much-needed social and affordable homes. I hope the Minister will set out how Homes England funding and planning reforms will unlock those sites, stimulate growth on our high streets, and reverse the situation that we faced under the Tory Government, when so few homes were built. To sum up, places and town centres like those in Bingley and Shipley have huge potential. After 14 years of neglect and decline under the Tories, this Government are supporting our high streets, so that they can thrive once again.

• 4 Nov 2025 · Regional Economic Growth: Pension Funds · Hansard source

  More

  Many of my constituents have assets in the West Yorkshire Pension Fund, which manages more than £19 million. I am concerned, however, that some of the fund’s investments are concentrated in sectors that cause harm, such as the fossil fuel industry. Does the Minister agree that the West Yorkshire Pension Fund could invest in socially valuable activities, such as the regeneration of the town centre in Shipley and social homes?

• 4 Nov 2025 · Regional Economic Growth: Pension Funds · Hansard source

  More

  4. What steps she is taking with pension providers to help increase regional economic growth.

• 3 Nov 2025 · Drone Procurement · Hansard source

  More

  I am very proud that the Government have supported Ukraine through the provision of drones. I recently visited Radio Design, a company in Saltaire in my constituency that is at the cutting edge of radio frequency, which is essential for fighting the rapidly developing threat from drones. Can the Minister assure me that procurement processes are agile enough to allow innovative smaller businesses with specialist technologies in radio frequency, such as Radio Design, to access new defence contracts in order to help us deliver on the strategic defence review?

• 30 Oct 2025 · Property Service Charges · Hansard source

  More

  Will my hon. Friend give way?

• 30 Oct 2025 · Property Service Charges · Hansard source

  More

  I commend my hon. Friend for explaining the problems so clearly, problems that are shared by my elderly residents in Aire Valley Court and Sutton Court in Bingley. They too have seen above-inflation rises in service charges and a lack of transparency about accounts, with no evidence to justify them. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is now time that we bring in licensing and stronger regulation of managing agents such as FirstPort?

• 30 Oct 2025 · Ageing and End-of-life Care · Hansard source

  More

  I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing this debate, and I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Member’s Financial Interests. I am an officer of the all-party groups on carers, and on housing and care for older people, and I was formerly chief executive of the Centre for Ageing Better. As ageing is a subject close to my heart, I decided to check out my latest personal life expectancy projection according to the Office for National Statistics life expectancy calculator, and it turned out that I have a one in four chance of living to 95. Many people would think, “Oh, how fantastic!” Yes, we all want to live longer, but not everybody will enjoy that same life expectancy. We know that there is a significant gap—about 19 years—in life expectancy between the most and the least deprived. That gap is reflected across the country, as well as in my own constituency, between Wharfedale and Windhill and Wrose. Despite the tech bros trying to defy ageing and death through all sorts of techniques, in reality we are mortal and we will all face death at some point. More of us will die at older ages because of increased life expectancy. To be honest with hon. Members, death is a boom industry, and if they have not already invested in a funeral director, that might be something to look at. The post-war baby boomers are now in their 60s, 70s and heading into their 80s, so more of us will be dying in the coming decades. Society needs to change in a number of ways to respond to our ageing society. Departments across Government are looking at related issues, including working for longer, which is a matter for the Department for Work and Pensions, and ensuring that we build new homes that are accessible. I will be speaking to the Minister for Housing and Planning, who summed up in the previous debate, about bringing in new regulations to make homes more accessible. In addition, we need to reform end-of-life care. By 2050, it is projected that an additional 147,000 people will die per year, bringing the total to 745,000 per year. As the hon. Member for Strangford said, the people who miss out on end of life care are more likely to be older, from black and minority ethnic communities, from lower socioeconomic communities or to have a non-cancer diagnosis. There is a lot to do to close the gap in access to palliative and end-of-life care, particularly for older people. An example of really good practice in Bradford is the REACT model—the Responsive Emergency Assessment and Community Team model. If you have not already visited, Madam Deputy Speaker, you may wish to do so. It is a partnership between the Marie Curie hospice and Bradford Royal infirmary. A palliative care doctor is embedded in A&E, so when people who are at the end of life are hitting the accident and emergency department, they get an intervention, assessment and referral back to a proactive multidisciplinary community-based team. The results are staggering in reducing the number of hospital bed days that people at end of life experience. As we have heard, most people do not want to die in hospital. I commend the shift that this Government are looking to make from hospital to community, which I hope is as true around end-of-life care as around other services. However, there is a huge lack of consistency between integrated care boards in how and what they commission. There is much to do to support better care in the community, including providing better support to GPs, particularly those with a specialist interest in end-of-life care; having district nurses working more closely with primary care teams and embedded within the new neighbourhood health teams; more examples of hospice at home and multidisciplinary community teams; more training for care home managers and staff; and the innovative use of unused hospital wards to provide hospice services in hospital, where appropriate. As has been mentioned, we must ensure that there is a 24/7 hotline for patients and, importantly, for their carers, so that when they find themselves in crisis at home, they can get access to the advice that they need. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has said they should have had access to such advice since 2011, but according to Marie Curie, only one in three areas has such a 24/7 hotline. While there are examples of good practice, there is much to do. It is good news that more of us are living longer, but society has to adapt. I am pleased that we are doing things as a Government—we have a pensions commission and the Casey review looking at social care—but I say to the Minister: now is the time to have a national strategy for palliative and end-of-life care. We are an ageing society and we need that, along with reform of continuing healthcare. In his response, I hope he will set out how we ensure that everybody dies well in old age and has a good death.

• 30 Oct 2025 · Ageing and End-of-life Care · Hansard source

  More

  As the hon. Member rightly says, ICBs are under a legal duty to commission palliative care services. Does he not recognise that the problems we are having, not just with hospice care but with the lack of availability of palliative and end-of-life care, often come down to poor commissioning—ICBs failing to commission in line with that statutory guidance—and the confusion that arises between charitable donations and that which should be commissioned by the NHS?

• 21 Oct 2025 · Sentencing Bill · Hansard source

  More

  The right hon. Gentleman is making a passionate and principled speech about punishment, but we are dealing here with practicalities. The Public Accounts Committee, of which I am a member, has looked at the prison estate capacity. There was a pledge under the previous Government for 20,000 additional prison places; just 6,518 of those were actually built. If the right hon. Gentleman were to pursue this line of saying that everybody needs to have a punishment without rehabilitation, I do not understand where, in practical terms, he is going to put people.

• 21 Oct 2025 · Sentencing Bill · Hansard source

  More

  No, I have not just walked in. This is the third speech I have listened to.

• 21 Oct 2025 · Sentencing Bill · Hansard source

  More

  A lot of drug users are repeat offenders, as my hon. Friend was saying about those with a gambling addiction. Does she agree that a shift to community provision might enable people to get the rehabilitation they need for their addiction, whether it be drugs, alcohol or gambling?

• 21 Oct 2025 · Sentencing Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I welcome my right hon. Friend’s clarification that charities would still be able to provide these placements. I have a fantastic charity in my constituency, upCYCLE, which teaches bike maintenance skills to help rehabilitate people. Currently, that is done in prisons, but when there are more community sentences, that sort of charity will want to give people skills and meaningful work in the community. I just want to clarify that this is not about excluding charities.

• 21 Oct 2025 · Sentencing Bill · Hansard source

  More

  Referring to my earlier comments, the data show that one in four prisoners are drug users and have a drug and alcohol problem, and they constitute many of the reoffenders. Given that data, does the right hon. Member not agree with me that we should be rehabilitating and medically treating those addictions, so that they are not caught up in the criminal justice system?

• 21 Oct 2025 · Sentencing Bill · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend is making a very strong argument, drawing parallels between gambling addiction and drug and alcohol abuse. Earlier this year, as a member of the Public Accounts Committee, I questioned Government officials about the endemic use of drugs in prisons. The Carol Black report looked at this back in 2020—

• 14 Oct 2025 · Points of Order · Hansard source

  More

  On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Over the summer, I was the subject of two online death threats, which the police are investigating. These were posted in response to a video published by the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore). The video accused me of not telling the truth on a very sensitive subject: the horrific abuse of children by grooming gangs. If the hon. Member had made those remarks in Parliament, they would have been deemed unparliamentary. As well as the death threats, that video elicited a torrent of misogynistic, racist and offensive comments, which remain online. As Members of this House, it is incumbent on us to do all we can to prevent the escalation of abuse. The actions of the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley were at best irresponsible, and at worst inflammatory. I call on him to apologise, to withdraw the video, and to commit to refrain from personal attacks against me and other elected officials in future. Online abuse has a psychological impact on all of us who are subject to it—on our staff, our families and our friends. It has a chilling effect on democracy, stifling debate, putting good people off standing for election and creating a climate of hate. Therefore, I also hope that the Committee on Standards will review the code of conduct, to ensure that the same standards expected of Members in this place are upheld in their words and behaviours outside this place, particularly online.

• 14 Oct 2025 · Energy Infrastructure Applications: Land Use Changes · Hansard source

  More

  I thank the Minister for that answer. In my constituency, several planning applications are pending, and one has already been granted in the villages of Wilsden and Cullingworth for battery storage and onshore wind in the wider area. Can the Minister explain how constituents with clean energy infrastructure in their area can benefit from both cheaper bills and community funding?

• 14 Oct 2025 · Mental Health Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

  More

  Will my hon. Friend give way?

• 14 Oct 2025 · Mental Health Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

  More

  I am no expert on mental health law, but I do have decades of experience in the health and care sector, and my sister is a psychiatrist. I know that the decision to detain someone with severe mental illness is never taken lightly, and that psychiatrists must weigh up a range of factors and information to come to a final decision. I tabled amendments 43, 44 and 45 and new clause 34 after a number of conversations with the Royal College of Psychiatrists, which has expressed concern about the wording used in the detention criteria. Taken together, the purpose of my amendments is to ensure that the detention criteria are aligned with good clinical practice. It is important that they are reflected in the primary legislation, rather than simply relying on a code of practice. They would remove from the detention criteria mention of the terms “likelihood” or “may be caused” to allow psychiatrists to make a straightforward, holistic assessment of individual risk in the context of significant mental disorder. The risk is that “likelihood” suggests that it is possible for clinicians to predict serious harms such as violence or suicide when it is not possible to do so, while the idea of causation neglects the fact that complex background conditions can be the genesis of a harm. There is a risk, too, that the language may lead to preventive detention—more detention, not less. It is always easier with hindsight, when unexpected harms have happened, to oversimplify causation and ask, “Why was this person not detained?

• 13 Oct 2025 · New Housing Developments: Infrastructure · Hansard source

  More

  New housing developments agreed under the previous Government have been built on the green belt around villages in the Shipley constituency, such as Burley in Wharfedale, Wilsden, Denholme and Cullingworth, often without the vital investment in infrastructure such as GP practices, schools and other council services. Will the Minister reassure my constituents that as we build the much-needed affordable and social homes, we will prioritise brownfield and ensure adequate investment in the community?

• 21 Jul 2025 · Independent Water Commission · Hansard source

  More

  I was pleased to see today’s report. I believe it has a picture of the Bingley five rise locks in my constituency on the front cover, so I thank the Minister for that. The creaking and leaking water infrastructure, the current drought restrictions and the dumping of sewage in our rivers, including the Aire and the Wharfe, are evidence of a failing industry and of the failures of previous Tory Water Ministers, one of whom is sitting on the Opposition Front Bench. I welcome today’s report and also give credit to campaign groups like the Ilkley Clean River Group and the people’s water commission. It is right that the Secretary of State has said that he will abolish Ofwat and strengthen oversight and regulation, but Yorkshire Water has a labyrinth of holding companies that have built up debt, taken out dividends and interest payments, put up customer bills and failed to invest in upgrades. Does the Secretary of State agree that it is time for radical action, not only to merge the regulators but to restructure failing companies like Yorkshire Water?

• 17 Jul 2025 · Freedom of Religion or Belief: UK Foreign Policy · Hansard source

  More

  Earlier this week, I spoke to Aid to the Church in Need, particularly about the situation for Christians in Syria. Hon. Members are obviously well aware of the recent suicide bombing of the St Elias Orthodox church in Damascus, and Christian communities are still facing persecution, including with destructive fires. Does the hon. Member agree that the situation is grave in many parts of the world, including Syria?