Anna Sabine MP: speeches

Speeches

• 8 Sept 2026 · Health Bill · Hansard source

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  I will speak to new clauses 116 and 117, which I have tabled. Clover Carkeet, from my constituency, is a delightful seven-year-old girl who has suffered from intractable epilepsy since she was 12 weeks old. Clover’s seizures could be controlled only by huge doses of steroids, leaving her very unwell, until her parents secured a private prescription for medical cannabis, reducing her seizures by 95%. Medical cannabis is legal and can be bought privately under NHS supervision, but it is not routinely available on the NHS. As a result, families are faced with an impossible choice: fund thousands of pounds a month to pay privately, or watch their child suffer while relying on the treatments available through the NHS. Why are parents being made to make that choice? Colleagues across the House, including the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), have long campaigned on the issue and support new clause 116, which calls on the Secretary of State to assess the availability of medical cannabis on the NHS for children. I hope the Government will support this new clause too.

• 8 Sept 2026 · Online Safety · Hansard source

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  When the last Prime Minister gave tech giants three months to voluntarily implement technology that would prevent children from taking and sharing nude images, the Lib Dems were clear that we should not rely on the good will of companies that have repeatedly put profit before children’s safety, and I am pleased to see today that the Government agree with us. The need for action cannot be clearer. In 2024, 91% of online child sexual abuse reports involved self-generated content from children online, and last year there was an 8% rise in child sexual abuse image offences across the UK. These are not just statistics; they are real children being exploited online. This is a serious problem that urgently demands serious legislation. That is why the Lib Dems welcome today’s announcement of primary legislation that will require device-level and app-level protections for children online. However, this House has heard the phrase “as soon as possible” many times before. I hear what the Secretary of State is saying about a timetable for legislation, but what she said earlier slightly hinted that what the tech giants were doing might affect the progress of the legislation, so I seek reassurance that legislation will be ploughing forward regardless of what those companies are doing. The Lib Dems are supportive of legislation to protect children from abuse online, but protection cannot come at the expense of privacy. Any legislation that is brought in must be accompanied by guarantees that technology will be highly effective and preserve privacy. Can the Secretary of State confirm that that will be the case? Too often, the Government have left tech companies to mark their own homework. I am glad that today they have decided enough is enough, but this announcement could have been made three months ago. If we truly want to protect our children, we need a Government who act before harm is done, not a Government who wait until it is too late. I hope that will be the case going forward, as the Secretary of State has intimated.

• 3 Sept 2026 · Sporting Events Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  Trying to speak in Parliament after developing vocal cord paralysis feels like a major sporting event. Let us see how I get on. In the last 15 years, we have seen four separate acts of Parliament passed to deliver four separate events. Each of those Bills essentially repeated the same core provisions from scratch through bespoke legislation. This Bill is therefore a welcome change that will make it easier for the Government to deliver major events. But, for the Lib Dems, there are a few areas where we think the Bill could be taken further. First, on the scope of the Bill, I am glad that the Government accepted a Liberal Democrat amendment in the other place so that the legislation now applies to world-famous domestic events that happen every year in the UK, but that was not the only area where the Bill’s scope did not go far enough. The Bill is also limited by applying only to sporting events. Major sporting events bring in hundreds of millions of pounds to the economy, but the music industry is in a different ballpark. In 2024, music contributed a record £8 billion to the UK’s economy, and last year 24.7 million music tourists attended live events. The reality is that music and cultural events are large international events. They face the same issues the sporting events do, but they are not covered by the Bill. Simply, the problems that the Bill aims to address do not stop with sports. Let us look at Eurovision 2023: a major international event that saw organisers having to improvise ticketing and trading arrangements locally rather than relying on a national framework that would have provided a clear and easy solution to the problems that arise from organising large events. If the Bill’s framework is good enough for sport, why cannot the Government extend it to other music and cultural events? I hugely welcome the fact that the Bill takes action on the outrageous ticket sales practices that we have seen in recent years, and I understand that the Government promise further ticket touting reforms later—but when the harm is happening now, and we have the legislative architecture available, why are we delaying action? How many people across this House, how many of our constituents, must pay extortionate prices to see their favourite artists and bands before the Government decide that change needs to happen? It is not only ticket prices that are blocking fans from watching their favourite sports teams, however. For a long time, public service broadcasters pioneered free-to-air coverage, but sporting events that have always been free-to-air are increasingly being locked behind a paywall. Just a few months ago we saw the implications of that, with fans locked out of watching the champions league final. The Lib Dems support free-to-air sports on all occasions, and especially when events such as those provided for in this Bill are paid for by the public. Currently, the Bill makes no promises that public money means public access to sports on TV. My colleagues in the other place tabled an amendment to make free-to-air coverage a condition of financial assistance through this Bill, and I intend to push for that again. One final area that I will be pushing on in Committee is grassroots support. Big events should never hollow out local businesses or grassroots sports and culture. The Lib Dems therefore seek clarification from the Government that commercial deals under the frameworks of this Bill will treat small and medium-sized enterprises fairly and ensure that grassroots organisations see a tangible benefit from large sporting events in the UK. For the Lib Dems, this Bill is not simply about making international events easier to host; it is an opportunity to make them more accessible, more affordable and more enjoyable for the very people who make British sporting and other culture what it is. That is what I will be pushing for as this Bill passes through this House.

• 3 Sept 2026 · Frontier Artificial Intelligence · Hansard source

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  Frontier AI is supercharging misinformation online, but we still cannot get to grips with harms much closer to home. There are campaigners in the Public Gallery today, including Tulisa Contostavlos, who was the target of a fabricated story following an undercover tabloid sting, and is proof of the damage that an unregulated press can do. Such examples are why the Lib Dems want the full implementation of Leveson 1 and the commissioning of Leveson 2. Will the Secretary of State meet me and Tulisa to discuss finally getting proper regulation of the press?