Anna Sabine MP: speeches

Speeches

• 16 Jun 2026 · Community Hospitals · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) for securing this debate. I will talk largely about Frome community hospital, but a lot of what she has said about test and learn and trial closures applies to Frome as well. I will also talk about the issues that occur when communities are served by organisations in different health authority boundaries and the impact of a lack of communications there. Community hospitals, as we have heard, are the backbone of local healthcare. They keep people closer to home, ease pressure on our general hospitals and allow families to support loved ones through recovery without the burden of long journeys. That is especially so in more rural areas like my constituency, where travel times can be long and public transport is limited. For many of my constituents, Frome community hospital is an important community hub, where people access lifesaving care for themselves and their families. In fact, my husband’s life was saved by a team at Frome hospital earlier this year when he went into anaphylactic shock and was able to get to the urgent care department in Frome much quicker than he could have got to the general hospital in Bath. I put on record my thanks to the nurses who treated him that day. Last summer, Somerset ICB cut the number of beds at Frome hospital as part of a test and learn consultation, the criteria for which seem very unclear to me. I know from visiting the Royal United hospital, our general hospital in Bath, that one of the biggest challenges facing it is getting patients discharged to appropriate community settings. My hon. Friend the Member for South Cotswolds talked about ambulances queueing; as I understand it, one of the main reasons that ambulances queue at our general hospital is because, at the other end of the hospital, patients cannot be discharged to community settings, yet we are cutting beds in those settings. I am therefore unconvinced that those cuts can be justified. I have continued to push for the restoration of the beds at Frome hospital, but I have also spoken to the ICB about the possibility of the hospital becoming one of the community hubs that the Government have rolled out, which I think could be a really good opportunity for semi-rural areas. Across the country, ICBs are taking very different approaches to consulting MPs on the roll-out of these hubs. Some have engaged constructively and early, but in Somerset there was unfortunately no consultation with me at all. Instead, I was given a list of locations that had already been chosen, none of which were located in Frome and East Somerset. I do not believe that that is how engagement with elected representatives is supposed to work, which matters particularly for constituencies like mine. Much of east Somerset sits across different local authority and health boundaries. Many of my constituents’ usual experience of hospital care is at a hospital that until recently was outside of our own ICB area altogether. When that hospital does not have proper joint working arrangements with our ICB, those patients find themselves effectively pushed to the back of the queue, simply because joined-up planning between the two systems is not happening. That is no fault of the patients or of the staff trying to care for them. It is a structural failure that leaves whole communities at a disadvantage because they happen to sit on the wrong side of a line on a map. However, in the Somer valley in my constituency, things are working rather differently. There, the relationship between Bath and North East Somerset council and the ICB appears to be working well, with genuine collaboration shaping local services. It shows what can be achieved when councils, communities and ICBs sit down together as equal partners from the outset. I ask the Minister to ensure that the Department reinforces to ICBs, including Somerset, that consultation with local MPs and councils on community hub proposals is not optional but essential if communities are to be properly heard. My constituents deserve a community hospital that reflects the needs of a growing town and a process that treats them as genuine partners in shaping it. At a time when the Government are closing down Healthwatch, I welcome the Minister’s thoughts on how we can prioritise patients’ voices in health provision.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Women’s Safety in Rural Areas · Hansard source

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  Certainly. That sounds excellent and I will come to lots of nerdy points about design guidance in due course. My constituency of Frome and East Somerset is, by any measure, a beautiful part of England. It is also a place where the challenges I am describing are felt with particular intensity. Inspired by Holly, last autumn I launched a survey to hear directly from women in my constituency about how safe they feel. Their responses were sobering. Women wrote about being followed on dark country lanes that had no street lighting; about waiting for buses on isolated roads with no shelter, no CCTV and no way of summoning help; about giving up running and cycling all together, not because they lacked the inclination but because they simply did not feel safe doing so; and about the constant, exhausting vigilance required just to get home. Coincidentally, earlier this year I was contacted separately by a brilliant urban designer called Natasha, who drew my attention to the fact that the Government have set out an excellent strategy to combat violence against women and girls, and a national planning policy framework, but at the moment the two things make no reference to each other, which is a shocking oversight.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Women’s Safety in Rural Areas · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree with the hon. Member. I will talk about lighting in due course. In her book “Invisible Women”, Caroline Criado-Perez documents how the built environment has historically been designed around a default that is male, and how data on street use, transport planning and public space has been gathered without disaggregating by sex. The result is infrastructure that works reasonably well for men and imposes a hidden cost of time, money, anxiety and constrained freedom on women. That cost is not inevitable. It is a design choice, and it can be designed out. Women are four times more likely to experience sexual assault than men, and more than twice as likely to experience stalking. Many such offences happen not in the home but in public spaces—on paths, at bus stops, in car parks and on the routes between places. They happen disproportionately in spaces that are poorly lit, poorly overlooked and poorly served by transport. The consequences extend far beyond the incidents themselves. Girls’ loss of freedom in public space is directly and measurably linked to poor mental health. Women who feel unsafe curtail their physical activity, social lives and working patterns. Violence against women and girls costs hundreds of lives a year, alongside widespread and serious harm that ripples outwards into health services, the economy and the fabric of communities. To circle back to my opening point, we know what works, but the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government seems determined not to implement it. On 16 December 2025, the Government published the revised national planning policy framework, and just two days later they published their violence against women and girls strategy, rightly declaring VAWG a national emergency and committing to a whole-of-society approach to prevention. Those two documents should have been in conversation with each other, but they were not. The revised NPPF contains no reference whatsoever to women, girls, gendered safety or violence against women in the built environment—not one. Chapter 8, on promoting healthy and safe communities, discusses safety, health and crime, but does so in entirely gender-blind terms, despite overwhelming evidence that safety is not experienced equally by all people in all spaces. A chapter about healthy and safe communities which does not acknowledge that safety is not experienced equally is not, with respect, a chapter about healthy and safe communities. It is a chapter about healthy and safe communities for some people. In January I wrote to both the Minister for Housing and Planning and the Minister for Safeguarding to raise the issue directly. I have yet to receive a substantive response from either of them, but when The Guardian asked MHCLG for comment, the response received was frankly jaw-dropping. MHCLG said: “The NPPF is a planning document. It sets out guidelines for housebuilding and planning in England. The VAWG strategy is about protecting women and girls from violence and misogyny.” The Department said it was “unclear as to why anyone would expect the two things to be combined”. That tells us that, alarmingly, the people responsible for designing our spaces and places apparently do not understand, despite huge bodies of evidence, why planning with women in mind might be relevant or useful. That raises serious concerns not just about the policy position but about the Department’s basic understanding of the relationship between planning and women’s lives. What makes that omission particularly hard to defend is that it was not an accident. The previous Government explicitly raised this issue in the 2022 NPPF consultation, asking whether greater emphasis should be placed on making women and girls feel safe in public places. Responses were received, but nothing changed in the December 2025 revision, under the current Government. I want to be precise about that means: MHCLG was asked whether it should do better on this issue, received evidence it should and chose not to act. That is not an oversight; it is a decision. International best practice in gender-responsive planning is really well established: clear sight lines and natural surveillance; active street frontages that keep eyes on the street; thoughtful lighting design—not simply more but better lights, placed in the right locations; and safe, well-connected public transport routes that do not leave women stranded after dark. Make Space for Girls, the UK campaign that has done forensic and compelling work on how public space is designed for teenagers, has shown that the spaces we build for young people—the parks, play areas and recreational spaces—are overwhelmingly designed with boys in mind. The default is a multi-use games area: a hard, caged, male-dominated space that girls report, in study after study, feeling excluded from and unsafe in. Girls do not lack interest in outdoor space; they lack outdoor spaces that were designed with them in mind. The consequence is that girls retreat indoors earlier, exercise less and lose the freedom of movement that is so fundamental to adolescent development and mental health. This is not a minor amenity issue; it is a public health issue—and it starts with planning. The principles are well established, but without explicit inclusion in national policy, they remain optional. As a result, women’s safety in public space is a postcode lottery—and nowhere is that lottery more consequential than in rural areas where the baseline is already so much lower. The omission also creates a tension with the Government’s international commitments. UK infrastructure policy is explicitly aligned with the UN’s sustainable development goals, including SDG 5.2, on eliminating violence against women and girls, and SDG 11.7, on safe and inclusive public spaces explicitly for women and girls. The NPPF discusses the safety and design quality of green space at length, but does not mention either of those commitments. A further tension is emerging that I do not think has received sufficient attention—the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) alluded to it. Nature recovery and biodiversity policies are rightly being pursued with increasing ambition, with green corridors, rewilded verges and, in some cases, reduced lighting to support wildlife. Those are good objectives, but in some instances they are pursued without adequate consideration of what they mean for women’s safety. A dark, overgrown footpath may be an excellent habitat, but it may also be a route that women no longer feel able to use. We should not have to choose between environmental policy and women’s safety. Without gender-responsive planning guidance, that tension will not be managed; it will simply produce worse outcomes by default. The NPPF is not a neutral document; it is a statement of priorities, and right now it does not include women’s safety among them.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Women’s Safety in Rural Areas · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. We need an infrastructure-first approach that also has women and girls’ safety in mind. I hope with all sincerity that the MHCLG’s official view is not the one that was set out by whoever gave that comment to T he Guardian . I hope the Labour Government aspire not just to match but to exceed the standards of the previous Government when it comes to the safety and wellbeing of women. I also hope the Minister will commit today to taking steps towards putting VAWG at the heart of the NPPF. That would have a genuinely transformative effect on women’s lives in the UK. Along with a series of experts in urban design and planning, I am calling on the Government to commission an independent review—a serious, systematic review of violence against women and girls and the built environment. It must be a review with teeth that establishes an authoritative evidence base, that examines the structural gaps between the VAWG strategy and planning policy, and that produces recommendations that require developers and planners to treat women’s safety as a fundamental component of design, not an optional extra. I am sure the Minister will be pleased that all this is included in a second letter that I will send to him today. Alongside that, I urge the Government to take the following specific steps without delay: to amend the NPPF to explicitly require the consideration of women and girls’ safety, particularly in chapters 8 and 12, so that local authorities have a clear national mandate to act; to update the national design guide and national model design code to include substantive guidance on designing for women’s safety, drawing on the international best practice that already exists and is well evidenced; to require major developments to demonstrate how they contribute to SDGs 5.2 and 11.7—commitments the Government have already made on the world stage; and to introduce gender impact assessments for large-scale developments as a standard part of the planning process. I also urge the Government to look seriously at gender budgeting as a tool for local authorities when they design streets, parks and public spaces. Gender budgeting does not mean ringfencing money for women; it means asking at the point of allocation, “Who benefits from this spending? Is the distribution equitable?” Vienna, Helsinki and Seoul have all used gender budgeting in the design of public space to reveal and correct the systemic underfunding of spaces that women and girls actually use. It is a practical, evidence-based mechanism, and it is entirely compatible with the fiscal constraints that local authorities are operating under. We should be using it here. Finally, I hope the Minister will ensure that MHCLG is formally integrated into cross-Government delivery of the VAWG strategy. A whole-of-society approach that excludes the Department responsible for shaping the physical environment is not, in any meaningful sense, a whole-of-society approach—it is a strategy with a very large hole in it. The Government’s ambition to halve violence against women and girls within a decade is genuinely welcome, but ambition without structural delivery mechanisms will not achieve it. Right now, the NPPF—the primary lever for shaping how this country is built—contains nothing that would materially help to deliver it. That gap must be addressed if the strategy is to be credible. The women who responded to my survey in Frome and East Somerset were not asking for the extraordinary. They were not asking for anything that other countries have not already delivered. They were asking to walk home safely, to go for a run, to catch a bus without calculating the risk, and to move through their own communities with the same unconsidered freedom that most men take entirely for granted. This is not a radical demand; it is a basic one, and the tools to deliver it in planning policy, design guidance and cross-Government strategy are well within our grasp. I urge the Minister to act. The evidence is there, the need is clear, and the gap in policy is glaring and, as I have shown today, entirely without justification. Let us work together to close it.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Women’s Safety in Rural Areas · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered the impact of planning on women’s safety in rural areas. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. I secured this debate because I think the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has made an oversight; I hope it is a genuine oversight and that MHCLG is willing to rectify it. I am genuinely delighted that the Minister for Housing and Planning is here to respond, as I have been trying to contact him about this issue for some time, with no reply from his Department. I am confident that when he hears about the issues at first hand, he will be keen to act. I want to start by paying tribute to my constituent Holly, who was the catalyst for this whole discussion. Holly lives in a village in my constituency and was flashed not once but three times by the same man while out walking in the countryside. When Holly came to see me, it was in a spirit of outrage that this had happened to her, and with a determination that we should do something about it. UN Women UK has found that 71% of women have experienced sexual harassment in public spaces. Most of them never report it—not because it did not happen but because they believe nothing will be done. That alone should give us pause. When the House has debates about women’s safety and place, we often talk about the same issues—quite rightly—that women face when they are out and about. Do they take the longer, well-lit route? Do they run before dawn, or wait until it is light? Do they walk home, or pay for a taxi they cannot afford? Do they have a phone signal if something goes wrong?

• 24 Mar 2026 · Women’s Safety in Rural Areas · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for his constructive response. It always seems to me that the Government are blessed with many feisty and brilliant female politicians trying to make sure that VAWG is rightly pushed up the political agenda. Given that we live in an environment that historically has been largely designed by and for men, I feel quite strongly that if we can manage to get a mention of the safety and wellbeing of women and girls into the NPPF it will genuinely make a difference to the way in which local authorities and other bodies treat planning, and consider it as a group. There is often a joke that it feels as if a little more attention is paid to bats’ wellbeing than to women and girls’ wellbeing. I would love for that to change. I thank everyone who has taken part in the debate, and I thank the Minister for his comments. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the impact of planning on women’s safety in rural areas.

• 12 Mar 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  For decades, local people in Frome have used Packsaddle fields as a valued space for walking, recreation and nature. Plans to build housing on the site were refused twice last year, because of the harm it would cause to the communities who use the land. Despite that, and the fact that it has no live planning application, LiveWest is now taking legal action relating to access to the fields and has forced Somerset council to fence off the area, which simply denies local people the many benefits of being able to enjoy the outdoors. Will the Leader of the House urge the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to consider whether it can be reasonable for land to be fenced off in that way and help me to organise a meeting with the relevant Minister to discuss it?

• 24 Feb 2026 · Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I will come to another example of the way in which such sexism is embedded. I recently wrote to both the Minister for Housing and Planning and the Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls to ask why the recent draft national planning policy framework made no mention of the safety of women and girls, as that document sets out how we design and build the spaces and places in which we live. The response from the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government was jaw-dropping. It said: “The NPPF is a planning document. It sets out guidelines for housebuilding and planning in England. The VAWG strategy is about protecting women and girls from violence and misogyny. It is unclear as to why anyone would expect the two things to be combined.” If it is unclear to the Department responsible for planning that violence and women and girls should be considered in its work, we have a structural problem. That is where structural sexism becomes inseparable from power. It matters who makes the decisions. In this country, a remarkably small circle of people—disproportionately male and drawn disproportionately from the same networks—still make the most consequential choices.

• 27 Jan 2026 · Women’s Safety: Walking, Wheeling, Cycling and Running · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for giving way. It may be that she is coming on to this issue but, while everything she is saying on active travel is fantastic and I recognise the point about the manual for streets, does she recognise that if the overarching framework, the national planning policy framework, does not pay regard to women’s and girls’ safety, it is much harder to enact those subsets such as active travel?

• 27 Jan 2026 · Women’s Safety: Walking, Wheeling, Cycling and Running · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine. I thank the hon. Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) for securing this important debate. I am passionate about women’s safety, especially in semi-rural areas such as Frome and East Somerset. This is not an abstract policy discussion. As has been discussed, it is about the constant calculations that women make every day: “Do I take the longer, better-lit route? Do I run before dawn, or wait until daylight? Do I walk home, or pay for a taxi that I cannot really afford?” These decisions are so ingrained that many women barely register them any more. But this should not be accepted—it is not normal. No one should have to limit their freedom of movement because they feel unsafe. Last year, I met a constituent called Holly who had been the victim of repeated incidents of flashing when she was out walking in her village in Somerset. As a result of talking to Holly, I launched a survey in my constituency to hear directly from women about safety in rural areas. With nights getting darker, I wanted to understand how safe women feel when getting to work, socialising or simply going about their daily lives. The responses were sobering. Women spoke about being followed on dark country lanes with no street lighting, waiting for buses on isolated roads with no shelter or CCTV, giving up running and cycling altogether because it simply did not feel safe, and above all, the constant vigilance required just to get home. Rural areas face particular challenges. Public transport is limited and street lighting is sparse or non-existent. Communities are spread out and mobile signal is often unreliable. The scale of the problem is clear: UN Women UK found that 71% of women have experienced sexual harassment in public spaces, yet most never report it because they believe nothing will be done. The Government are right to call violence against women and girls a national emergency. I know that members of the Government are committed to this issue, but there is currently a glaring gap between Government Departments on planning policy. Just days before publishing the new strategy on violence against women and girls, the Government also published a revised national planning policy framework, with no reference to women, girls or gendered safety. That omission matters. The places we build determine whether women feel safe walking home, waiting for a bus or going for a run. Planning policy is one of the most powerful tools we have to prevent harm before it occurs. A place cannot credibly be described as “healthy” if half the population feel unable to use it safely after dark. We know what works: good lighting, clear sightlines, active streets, safe transport routes, and design that considers how women experience public space. Without explicit national policy, women’s safety becomes a postcode lottery. I put it to the Minister that if we truly believe in a whole-society approach to ending violence against women and girls, women’s safety must be designed into our streets, paths, transport networks and public spaces, not just bolted on as an afterthought. Will the Minister talk to colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and the Home Office about the importance of this joined-up thinking? Women are not asking for the impossible; they are asking for the freedom to move through their communities safely. Let us commit to making that a reality.