Anneliese Midgley MP: speeches

Speeches

• 22 Apr 2026 · Pension Schemes · Hansard source

  More

  I welcome the Minister’s statement, especially the news of the termination of the Royal Mail pension scheme contract to Capita. As he knows, Capita’s management of the civil service pension scheme has been an absolute shambles. I have constituents who cannot meet their mortgage payments, are having to defer their retirements and are not receiving the compensation they deserve. This is one in a very long list of failures, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) outlined. Can the Minister explain why we keep awarding contracts to Capita, how it represents value for money for the taxpayer and how we are meeting our manifesto commitment of the biggest wave of insourcing in a generation?

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

  More

  Capita’s management of the civil service pension scheme—the latest in a string of failures—is a total disaster. My constituents are dealing with errors and delays, and are struggling to make ends meet, yet we are rewarding Capita by handing it another multimillion-pound contract. Can we have a debate about preventing repeated awards to failing contractors, and upholding Labour’s manifesto commitment to the biggest insourcing programme in a generation?

• 2 Mar 2026 · National Year of Reading: Phonics · Hansard source

  More

  As the Secretary of State said, 2026 is the National Year of Reading. This week, I am reading “Ghost Town” by Jeff Young. Reading changed my life, and in fact I read a book a week. In Knowsley, one in four children fail their key stage 1 phonics standards, so will the Minister tell me how the National Year of Reading will help kids in my constituency improve their reading and discover the same love of a good book that I have?

• 4 Feb 2026 · Civil Service Pension Scheme: Administration · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. As so many colleagues have said, at the heart of this debate are people who have worked as public servants, many of them for decades. Everything that I am getting in my mailbox relates to hard-working people who have tried to do the right thing—it is just not fair, is it? I have constituents who are afraid of losing their homes because they cannot pay their mortgages, their credit card bills, or their electricity and gas bills. But herein lies a bigger issue, I think. It is on stuff like this that the public have lost faith in us, because it is not the first time that something like this has happened. There needs to be accountability. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster Central (Sally Jameson) said, Capita has a record of incompetence and crisis under its belt, including on public service pensions, so why was it awarded this contract? What advice was given to Tory Ministers, and by which officials, when the contract was awarded? What commitments has Capita given this Government about resources to clear the backlog, and what firm timelines has it given for that? Crucially, what will be the consequences if it does not hit those targets? Will it just get away with it, with a fine, a slap on the wrist or maybe a newspaper story? If this is not already failure, what constitutes failure? As I said at the start, at the heart of this situation are people’s lives. If the Government do not get to grips with it, we will be back here again, as my right hon. Friend said, and I can foresee an ITV series starring Toby Jones in a few years’ time. I thank the Government for the sticking plaster in the form of loans for those who need them most, but the taxpayer is once again stepping in because of failure, incompetence and maladministration. I urge the Cabinet Office to do the right thing and make sure that everything is done for people who have worked hard all their lives so that they get their pensions paid.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Q I have two questions for the whole panel. To start with, thank you so much for everything that you have done. There is no doubt about it; we would not be here in this room today with the Bill where it is without your work. We heard in an earlier evidence session from Pete Weatherby KC, the director of Hillsborough Law Now, who talked about command responsibility. He said that without the amendment, a lot of the duties in the Bill are reduced to something that looks good, but is rather ineffective. He also talked about application to the intelligence services. Do you agree with what Pete Weatherby said to us today? Owing to the shortness of time, I will ask my second question as well: what do you think the Bill Committee needs to hear from you today? Charlotte Hennessy: We completely support what Pete said earlier and the amendments that he has suggested. We are in full agreement with all the information that has been included in the Bill. Going forward, we need to acknowledge that Hillsborough is our story, but there are many, many others. We also need to acknowledge that the Hillsborough Law Now campaign group is made up of so many other examples of miscarriages of justice. They will have submitted their own evidence to you, so I will not name them all today, but we need to ensure that there is change going forward. We cannot keep allowing the same situations to repeat. Not to be disrespectful, but ultimately we also need to acknowledge that the current laws that are in place failed to secure prosecutions against those that were responsible. David Duckenfield told that one lie while he stood over people who were scrambling for their lives. He got away with that because the Crown Prosecution failed to secure a criminal case against him. He was offered sympathy while family members had to sit and watch. He was allowed to place files so that he did not have to look at the family members that were sat in the public gallery. We could sit and talk about examples all day. Norman Bettison was in this building. He briefed people about what happened at Hillsborough. He was allowed to do that. He was then made chief constable of Merseyside and then he was knighted. He was complicit in the cover-up. We have to change it. It has to stop. Margaret Aspinall: I have to thank Maria Eagle—if you don’t mind, Maria. I always remember, a good few years ago, Maria having the power—the guts—to stand up in Parliament and say that it was “black propaganda” with Bettison. She was absolutely spot on. When I look back over the years and think about what Charlotte was saying earlier, Mr Duckenfield—I call him Mr Duckenfield out of respect to all of you; otherwise I would not—walked away scot-free. He went missing for a couple of hours and not one person knew where he was. He could not remember where he had been; he could not remember where he was. He must have been the bloody Invisible Man because, good God, there’s no way. I think the police were scared to say exactly where he was. They were all scared; they were all covering up for each other. To me, that is an absolute, utter, utter disgrace of a system in this country. I know we can’t bring judges up, but there is a few of them should be brought up. When we were at the private prosecution, where a judge could turn round and tell Mr Duckenfield, “Don’t worry, Mr Duckenfield, you won’t get a custodial sentence,” we knew then we had no chance—no chance. He directed the jury twice, because they came in and asked a question. For him to turn round and say, “What message are you sending out to the emergency services if you come back with guilty?”, what does that tell all of you? It tells you we had no chance whatsoever. We were up against a system that was corrupt from the very top to the bottom. I feel sometimes we are on trial yet again for what happened at Hillsborough, because we are sitting here like this. I feel I am trying to ask all of you to do the right thing. I have asked the Prime Minister. He made that promise; he made a phone call to me that he would do the right thing. As Charlotte said, we thank him for that. He has made that promise; he will have to fulfil that promise. He has also promised it would not be watered down. For Hillsborough families—and for the likes of Ian as well, who was at that game and who knows what we have all gone through and what the survivors went through—we are here to change a system that should have been changed decades ago. When you look at all the cover-ups that have gone on—I can name them all, but I won’t, because I am sure you all know—it is a disgrace that we are sitting here now, 36 years on, trying to change the system. I am asking all of you, please don’t let anybody else go through what we have gone through. Please, I ask you all: do the right thing.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and I absolutely agree with him about the work that my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East has done on this for over a decade. This Bill brings changes that tip the scale in favour of working people and, taken together with the rest of the new deal for working people, it amounts to the greatest uplift in workers’ rights in our generation. That is down to the friends that I have just mentioned here today. It is their legacy and it is one that will change the lives of millions of working-class people for the better. I know that the Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade, my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Kate Dearden), will do a great job of completing the process. This is personal for me, because it was my dad’s secure, well-paid, unionised job on the production line in Ford’s Halewood plant that gave me a better life than my mum and dad had. It lifted us out of poverty and provided us with enough money and stability for a decent home, and enough to live a life of dignity on. Everyone should have that, and that is why I will fight for work where people can flourish and thrive and for jobs to take pride in that can provide a good life. No way would I be here in this place, representing the place where I was born and raised, if it was not for my dad’s job. The Tories, backed by the Lib Dems in the other place, are trying to water down the Bill. They are aided and abetted by Reform, who are never in this place to debate this and have consistently voted against the Bill. Some of the Lords amendments would rip out the heart of the Bill. I am going to speak briefly to amendments 23 and 106 to 120, which would delay protections from unfair dismissal until a worker had been in their job for six months. This would mean that a worker could be dismissed at whim, for no reason. How is this okay? How is it defensible? A day one right not to be unfairly dismissed is good for workers and good for businesses. My hon. Friend the Member for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery) spoke about the research from the IPPR and the TUC, which found that 73% of employers supported giving employees protection from unfair dismissal from day one of employment. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith), dismissed the TUC’s research from the Dispatch Box, but it represents 5 million workers and everyone else at work. Are they not stakeholders who should be listened to as well? We know that good employers up and down the country already live up to the standards that we are setting out in this Bill. Today, we need to stop these attempts to water down the Employment Rights Bill, deliver the protections from unfair dismissal that our constituents voted for and make sure we deliver the new deal for working people in full.

• 16 Sept 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

  More

  I thank the Deputy Prime Minister for his announcement on the Hillsborough law. For decades, the families have carried the weight of injustice, and Governments have failed to act. Today, the Hillsborough law will be laid before this House, but it must not be another false start. Will the Deputy Prime Minister promise me that this Bill will be the Hillsborough law, and that it will emerge stronger and not weaker from Parliament and, finally, deliver justice for the 97?

• 4 Sept 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

  More

  A book by investigative journalist Nick Davies is out today. It reveals the true scale of the deletion of millions of emails and evidence essential to Parliament, the police and the courts in uncovering the truth about phone hacking by Rupert Murdoch employees. Might we have a debate on the reality of two-tier justice—cover-up, corruption and contempt of law—in which oligarchs place themselves above scrutiny?

• 3 Sept 2025 · Duty of Candour for Public Authorities and Legal Representation for Bereaved Families · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Hobhouse. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne) for securing this debate. The day of 15 April 1989 will never leave us. On that day, fans went to the match and never came home. They were not “lost”. They were unlawfully killed: authorities protecting themselves; decades of denial, distortion and lies; that Sun front page ; a cover-up; the systematic failure of the state; and still not one successful prosecution. Charlotte Hennessy is a constituent of my right hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Sir Mark Tami), who, as Government Deputy Chief Whip, cannot tell her story. Charlotte was six when her dad, Jimmy Hennessy, died. Jimmy was a plasterer, a man of morals, and a mod—he looked good. She was told that he died of traumatic asphyxiation, but in 2012 she learnt the truth: her dad was found alive on that pitch. Jimmy was carried to the gym, where he was meant to receive medical help, but he was declared dead. He was not; he was still alive when he was zipped into a body bag—he vomited inside it. Jimmy did not die in the crush; he died of his own vomit while zipped inside a body bag. Charlotte told me that a Hillsborough law with a duty of candour is imperative. The Government must now match the courage of the families and campaigners who have fought for this. Will they be bold enough to lay the Hillsborough law? Hillsborough was not a one-off. Again and again, the state has failed those who need its protection most. Last year, the Prime Minister promised to deliver a Hillsborough law, but the Government’s own target to introduce the Bill by 15 April this year has been missed. Families have waited too long and there have been too many broken promises. I ask the Minister: when will the Hillsborough law come before Parliament? When it does, will it give justice to the 97? Will it be worthy of their memory? Will it be strong enough to protect every victim of state failure?