Ben Obese-Jecty MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 20 Mar 2025 · Knife Crime: Children and Young People · Hansard source

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  That is a very valid point. The social media companies themselves know full well that this content is there and could easily create an ability to moderate it. These are billion dollar companies and if they wanted to take down this stuff, they could. It is about willpower. It is part of our responsibility in this House to make sure that that happens. Fear of being stabbed or killed far outweighs any fear of the police. We only need to watch one of the videos I mentioned to see how an endless immersion into this world can cloud people’s judgment. When I asked a Justice Minister whether such videos could be used as evidence to prosecute the Government’s new law of possession of a knife with violent intent, I did not receive an answer, and I am not sure whether the Minister quite understood what I was making reference to. I ask the Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire whether she could address that specific point in her summing up at the end of the debate.

• 20 Mar 2025 · Knife Crime: Children and Young People · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered the matter of knife crime amongst children and young people. First, let me place on the record my gratitude to the Backbench Business Committee for granting this time in the House of Commons Chamber. I also thank all those from both sides of the House who supported my application for a debate on this topic. There are some issues that I believe rise above the Punch and Judy vaudeville that characterises so much of our political debate. I called for this debate because I believe it is a topic that Parliament needs to discuss bravely, honestly, frankly and robustly; I believe it transcends party politics and party lines; and I have been calling for it for several years—since long before I became a Member of Parliament. I wholeheartedly welcome this Government’s pledge to halve instances of knife crime over the next decade. The previous Government sought to tackle knife crime but, sadly, were unable to do so effectively. Although I do not doubt either Governments’ intent and desire to achieve that aim, I am sceptical that this Government will fare much better than the last. For all the hype and the fanfare, this is an issue that repeatedly falls by the wayside, until it is thrust back into the spotlight with the tragic death of yet another child. Put simply, I do not believe that Governments of any hue have shown the mettle required to tackle this with the resources, approach and focus that is required. There are no easy solutions to this issue. The Government’s most recent data shows that of 19,903 offences resulting in a caution or conviction for possession of a knife or offensive weapon, juveniles aged 10 to 17 years old were the offenders in 18% of cases. A community sentence was the most common sentence given to those 10 to 17-year-olds—61% of all knife and offensive weapon offences across that age demographic. Over the past decade, 10 to 17-year-old offenders showed the biggest decrease in average sentence length, with a 25% decrease from 8.1 months in March 2014 to 6.1 months in March 2024. Around 70% of youth offenders were committing their first offence. In the 12 months to March 2024, 57 young people aged under 25 were murdered with a knife or sharp object, 17 of whom were children aged under 16. In 2023, the most recent year for which the data is available, just 6.5% of knife and offensive weapon offences resulted in immediate custody. With a 93% chance of not going to prison, why should anyone carrying a knife fear the law? Before becoming the MP for Huntingdon, I spent a decade working in London and lived in Haringey, north London. At that time, Haringey had the second highest rate of knife crime in London. It is difficult to explain what it is like to live in an area of London where murders and stabbings become so commonplace as to elicit little more than a shrug from local residents; where police tape closing a road or a local park is normalised to the point of merely being an inconvenience; where the murder of a child does not make the national news; and where five children being charged with murder does not make the national news, as with the case of the murder of taxi driver Gabriel Bringye in 2021. This desensitisation is but one part of the problem. Over a three-year period, there were at least a dozen fatal stabbings within a mile of my front door. Several of those victims were children. Half of those arrested in connection with the crime were children, as were the perpetrators too. I remember the murder of 16-year-old Stelios Averkiou. He was stabbed multiple times by his assailant after he resisted his mobile phone being stolen in Lordship recreation ground. I was in the park shortly afterwards and saw the aftermath. I remember for weeks afterwards the handwritten posters on the trees around the park asking for anyone to come forward with information. I remember the murder of 17-year-old Anas Mezenner, fatally stabbed near Turnpike Lane station in another fight over a mobile phone. The 17-year-old boy guilty of the stabbing had dozens of videos of himself on his own phone posing with large blades. While on remand, in a recorded phone call, he had stated: “Just wanted my little chinging to get it, my first little juice on my blade. It’s just gone in my man’s arse...The whole 15 went in down his arse.” Anas died from a fatal stab wound to the buttocks from a knife with a 15cm blade. All five charged with the murder were children. I remember the murder of 17-year-old Ali Baygoren, stabbed in the neck twice outside his home just across the road from the Tottenham Hotspur stadium. His murderer, a 16-year-old boy, was on bail having only nine months previously stabbed a 14-year-old boy in a dispute over a lighter, leaving a knife buried in his chest. That boy survived. There are dozens more. On Tuesday, a 17-year-old boy was stabbed after a mass brawl involving young men armed with machetes erupted in Forest Gate, east London. On Monday afternoon, a 15-year-old boy was stabbed in broad daylight in Turnberry Park in Birmingham. On Saturday, a 15-year-old was stabbed in McDonald’s in Southall, and two 14-year-olds were arrested. Last Friday, in Oxford, a 16-year-old boy was stabbed, and two 13-year-olds and a 12-year-old were arrested. Last Thursday, a 15-year-old boy was stabbed at the Bobby Moore Academy in Stratford. Three boys were arrested. Last week in Yorkshire, a 15-year-old boy was found guilty of the attempted murder of a 14-year-old girl with a samurai sword on a camping trip last November. She suffered 10 wounds, including damage to a lung and her liver. The forensic pathologist’s report said that she was lucky not to have been killed. The court heard claims that he had been offered £20 by a friend to attack her. These are not isolated incidents, but a daily occurrence across the country. These are vicious, feral, deranged attacks that are traumatic for the victims and for those involved, yet they are often little more than a passing headline in a list of other, more newsworthy, tragedies. We are all aware of the role that social media plays in this context and how its algorithms can facilitate a dangerous influence on young users. For children and young people, their world is small, often limited to their school, their friends and people they know in their neighbourhood, but with access to social media that changes. Their world remains small, but the issues within it are amplified—blown out of all proportion. In its 2021 paper, “Knife Crime in the Capital”, Policy Exchange wrote that “the frequency with which young people associated with gangs are confronted with violent videos on social media shifts their perception of normality, desensitising them and increasing the chance that they will react violently. It also reinforces the perceived need to carry weapons for protection.” In the intervening period since that paper was written that same influential factor has rippled outwards to children who, although not associated with any gangs, exist in a very online world where it is all too easy to become seduced by the belief that carrying a knife is a normal and essential aspect of everyday life, that the threat of attack is ever-present, and that carrying a knife is a key component of self-defence. Police forces have even now altered their approach to sharing images of weapons seized during operations, after feedback that this in itself contributes to the process of desensitisation and simultaneously makes young people feel that their local area is unsafe, thus encouraging them to carry a knife themselves. But we need look no further than the social media platforms that we ourselves use: Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok. I use YouTube every day, but scratch the surface and we can find harmful content, such as scoreboard videos outlining who has stabbed or killed whom in localised turf wars for gang supremacy. These scoreboard videos brazenly chase clout, highlighting those involved, outlining who “wetted” someone, who “burst” someone else, who “bussed their case”—got away with it in court—and who therefore remains dangerous and at large. This illustrates that those involved can often enjoy a degree of impunity.

• 20 Mar 2025 · Knife Crime: Children and Young People · Hansard source

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  I agree, and I will mention later the interventions to try to get people in a more collegiate and embracing atmosphere. Role models are a valid issue. Sadly, my speech is already long, but I would have loved to cover that in more detail, because it is a huge part of the reason why young men are drawn into this type of violent world. Scoreboard videos are inextricably linked to drill music, which is a genre but also the medium by which various groups-cum-gangs are able to taunt their “opps”—the catalyst for multiple stabbings, often fatal. The line between gang and group is blurred to the point of irrelevance. Meanwhile, the media either does not know or does not care. Inner-city black youths are, consciously or unconsciously, expendable and interchangeable, overrepresented in statistics as both victim and perpetrator. The soft bigotry of low expectations makes black culture ripe for exploitation as a cheap way to appear edgy, irrespective of the upstream impact. Large media corporations, even the BBC, play their part in the creation of this milieu, leaning into it and giving it validation. The cynical valorisation of the most detrimental aspects of urban black culture and the celebration of criminality via musicians is one of the most toxic overarching influences in pushing this issue into the mainstream. Irving Adjei, aka Headie One, went to prison three times as a teenager, including for dealing crack cocaine and heroin. In June 2019, Adjei was arrested for possession of a knife following a stop and search. While on bail, Adjei completed his UK tour, released his album, which reached No. 5 in the UK charts, appeared on Stormzy’s album “Heavy Is the Head”, played Glastonbury and was featured on BBC Radio 1. He was used in an advertising campaign for JD Sports alongside heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua, and fronted an advertising campaign for Adidas that December. That is the same Adidas that ran its “No More Red” knife crime awareness campaign alongside Arsenal FC just a couple of miles down the road shortly after that, but it is also happy to run an advertising campaign with a rapper on bail for possession of a knife. The hypocrisy of brands such as Adidas is off the scale. Less than a month after launching the Adidas promo, Adjei was sentenced to six months for possession of that knife and went to prison for a fourth time. He was released that April. Six months later, his single was No. 2 in the charts, he had praise lavished upon him by The Times , and he has never looked back. How does that convince anyone that there is any penalty whatsoever for carrying a knife? If anything, it has been an asset for someone like him because of the edginess that I referred to. In September 2019, The Guardian published a piece about UK drill rappers OFB, who hail from the same Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham as Irving Adjei. It stated that the drill group OFB is “trying to move the genre beyond the violence for which it has been demonised”. The interview was with two of the three in the group: Bandokay aka Kemani Duggan—the son of Mark Duggan —and Double Lz. It casually mentions that the third, 17-year-old SJ, is “not around today”. Several months later it transpired that SJ, aka Jayden O’Neill-Crichlow, was “not around today” because he was on remand for his part in the murder of Kamali Gabbidon-Lynck seven months previously. O’Neill-Crichlow was one of five young men, four of whom were teenagers, who received lengthy sentences of 20 years-plus after they arrived on Wood Green High Street on a Friday night armed with machetes, a handgun and a shotgun. They shot at Gabbidon-Lynck, missed and hit a packed Nando’s restaurant, and chased him down the street, eventually cornering him in a hair salon where he was shot and brutally hacked to death. For his part in the murder, O’Neill-Crichlow was sentenced to 21 years. I remember this because it happened 300 metres from my home. I challenged the author of the piece about why it was appropriate to write a puff piece about a group who had one member on remand for murder. He cited that it was an editorial decision by The Guardian . Last year, Kemani Duggan was sentenced to five years in prison for possession of a Tokarev pistol and .22 calibre ammunition, with intent to cause fear of violence—the violence for which drill music has been “demonised”. That is precisely the type of irresponsible media valorisation that illustrates my point.

• 20 Mar 2025 · Crown Prosecution Service: Ensuring Effective Functioning of the Courts · Hansard source

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  6. What steps she is taking with the Crown Prosecution Service to help ensure the effective functioning of the courts.

• 20 Mar 2025 · Crown Prosecution Service: Ensuring Effective Functioning of the Courts · Hansard source

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  The effective functioning of the courts relies on sound and sensible sentencing guidelines. In just 12 days, such guidelines will no longer exist and a two-tier sentencing system will come into force on the Solicitor General’s watch. This is the fourth time that the issue has been raised by the Opposition; I hope we will have more luck in securing a direct answer from the Solicitor General. Does she agree with the Justice Secretary that the guidelines will bring in a two-tier sentencing system, and can she confirm once and for all what is being done to stop those sentencing guidelines from coming into force?

• 19 Mar 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  I appreciate the hon. Member referring to pension credit uptake. If all the people who are eligible to take up pension credit do so, how much will it cost the Government?

• 19 Mar 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  At what point would the uptake of pension credit eliminate the savings from cancelling the winter fuel payment? At what number would the uptake overtake that payment?

• 18 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  In response to a written question to me last week, the Minister confirmed that no nationally significant infrastructure projects have been consented to that will use greater than 50% best and most versatile agricultural land. In my constituency, the East Park Energy solar farm is close to 75%, but the overarching national policy statement for energy states at paragraph 5.11.34: “The Secretary of State should ensure that applicants do not site their scheme on the best and most versatile agricultural land without justification.” Can the Minister confirm whether nearly 1,500 acres of best and most versatile land is too much good-quality agricultural land to sacrifice?

• 18 Mar 2025 · Welfare Reform · Hansard source

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  Given the announced changes to the personal independence payment, what assessment has the Secretary of State made of the potential impact on injured service personnel claiming the personal independence payment as an interim measure while their compensation claims are processed prior to the awarding of the armed forces independence payment, and will the armed forces independence payment also be within the scope of these changes?

• 13 Mar 2025 · Victory in Europe and Japan: 80th Anniversaries · Hansard source

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  As a veteran myself—albeit of a much later conflict—I welcome the commitment to commemorate the 80th anniversary of VE Day and VJ Day. In my constituency, we had both RAF Bomber Command’s Pathfinder force and the US air force’s 303rd Bomb Group, which flew the first US mission over Nazi-occupied Europe in 1942. The US air force is still at RAF Molesworth today. My question is about the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. In November, the Veterans Minister confirmed to me in a written answer that the CWGC’s budget for financial year 2025-26 would not be known until the MOD’s budget had been confirmed after the spending review. There are concerns about the increased level of activity this year, not only due to VE Day and VJ Day celebrations but the CWGC’s work in expanding the Loos cemeteries—the world war one war graves—in northern France. The French are building a new hospital and a canal, and are anticipating exhuming more British soldiers there who will need to be buried, so those cemeteries will need to be expanded. Could the Minister make representations for the CWGC’s budget to be uplifted for next year, so that we can ensure that work is done?

• 13 Mar 2025 · Farming · Hansard source

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  Our farmers find themselves in an increasingly precarious position. Politically, we see a drip-drip of punishing legislation eroding our agricultural sector. The family farms tax has seen regular protests here in Westminster and those farmers do not come here to pledge their fealty, much as the Government would like them to. I note that the hon. Member for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan) mentioned how unprofitable farming is. I do not know how he hopes they will be able to square the inheritance tax issue with an unprofitable business. We have recently seen the announcement of the suspension of the sustainable farming incentive with only 30 minutes’ notice and of new compulsory purchase powers that will see yet more farmland concreted over. Dozens and dozens of solar farms are in the pipeline, which will all be easily forced through as nationally significant infrastructure projects because of a laughably low qualifying threshold that is now nearly 20 years old. The future of farming under this Government looks bleak. Diversification appears to be one of the few options available to farmers, and innovation is another. I visited Vantage in Great Staughton in my constituency to discuss how advances in agricultural technology can have a positive impact on farming techniques, particularly as farms face manpower shortages, fewer resources and increasingly fewer available experienced farm workers. Will Mumford, a fifth-generation local farmer and the managing director, took the time last year to meet me and talk me through some of the local challenges faced by farmers and to highlight the opportunities presented by developments in agricultural technology. That gave me an opportunity to see a demonstration of Will’s robot tractor, the AgXeed AgBot 5.115T2—not a particularly snappy name, I grant you, and surely a missed opportunity to call it “RoboCrop”. The AgXeed tractor is a remotely controlled robot tractor that ploughs a pre-programmed route. It is smaller than a conventional tractor and does not look recognisably like one, but there are multiple benefits to using such technology. Being remotely piloted, the tractor does not require a driver or, therefore, a cockpit, which makes it significantly lighter. The benefit of that is a smaller footprint and therefore reduced soil compaction, which in turn improves drainage and reduces flooding. A further benefit is how the tractor can be used day or night without the need for a human operator. At busy times of the year, it allows work to continue when resources are stretched. Many of our generational farmers increasingly see older family members unable to work the hours they once did, and automation within the industry can benefit those small family farms by reducing the need for reliance on additional farm workers, given the struggle to guarantee that resource. RoboCrop is a clever and impressive piece of farm machinery, and though not commonly seen at present, it is now used in my constituency. That is just one example of forward-thinking sustainable technology that is making a difference for farmers like Will. We need the Government to take action to ensure that British farms can utilise groundbreaking technology like that to secure the future of British farms. I want to see our farms, food security and rural way of life protected. I want to see the future of farming being able to display the innovation that has led the world in sustainable practices. For farms to succeed, we need farmers. Collectively, we must support and protect our vital farming sector.

• 13 Mar 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Last week, it was announced that £600,000 of funding had been secured to resurface Huntingdon High Street, improving not only the look and feel of the high street but its accessibility. I wholeheartedly support that proposal, and it is great to see more steps being taken to make it attractive to new businesses. The funding was secured by Huntingdon’s BID—business improvement district—team, Paul Sweeney and Mags Clark, who have been doing fantastic work to improve Huntingdon and make it a vibrant and thriving town centre. I have worked closely with Paul, and his ongoing efforts to encourage local people back into town have been instrumental in its regeneration. Could the Leader of the House make time in the schedule to debate how we can regenerate our high streets?

• 11 Mar 2025 · Knife Crime: Victims · Hansard source

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  I welcome the steps that the Government are taking to address knife crime, and anything that can be done to reduce the number of young people who are drawn into this type of violence. How will the new offence of possessing a knife with violent intent differ from existing legislation relating to possession of an article with a blade or point, or possession of an offensive weapon? How far will the law go when it comes to proving intent? Will it refer only to the posture of the individual when arrested—for example, they may have been caught in the act of a machete-style fight—or will it have regard to other factors, such as someone appearing in a scoreboard video on social media?

• 11 Mar 2025 · Knife Crime: Victims · Hansard source

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  indicated dissent .

• 10 Mar 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  rose—

• 10 Mar 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Lady mentioned 13,000 neighbourhood police, but 3,000 of those will be new warranted officers; I believe that 3,000 will be operational police officers brought back from other places. When will police forces find out what their share of those police officers will be? How will the 3,000 officers currently in other roles be reassigned, given that operational matters are the responsibility of chief constables, not the Home Secretary?

• 10 Mar 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  rose—

• 10 Mar 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  Knife crime is a grave issue, and I welcome any measures that can help to reduce it. I have a debate next Thursday on knife crime, and I hope to see good representation from all parts of the House in debating how we can reduce the number of children and young people involved in knife crime, whether as victim or perpetrator. The question I would like to ask is about knife sales online. Some 52% of fatal stabbings involve a kitchen knife, and only 3.6% involve a zombie knife. I appreciate that measures are in place to reduce the ability of people to obtain kitchen knives online, but everybody has a drawer full of knives at home. How can we take measures to reduce that?

• 6 Mar 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Last week, I attended the Thrive youth café held at All Saints church in Huntingdon. The café runs on Mondays and Fridays after school. Richard and Ruth, who run the space, said that it provides a safe space and a listening ear, as well as pool, table tennis and a PlayStation. Crucially, it provides opportunities for young people to access support from local youth workers. Funding for the Thrive youth café is precarious, with grants allowing the project to exist only in six-monthly cycles, and it desperately needs longer-term funding guarantees. Will the Leader of the House make time in the schedule to celebrate the value that such provision brings to teenagers and young people? And can I invite her to the youth café to try one of its now infamous Oreo milkshakes?

• 6 Mar 2025 · East Park Energy Solar Farm · Hansard source

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  Further to my online petition of residents in Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire that has received 1,100 signatures, I present this petition from constituents of Huntingdon and north Bedfordshire who will be impacted by the proposed East Park Energy solar farm. The proposal announced by Brockwell Storage and Solar to build a solar farm, known as East Park Energy, which will, at 1,900 acres, be bigger than Gatwick airport, has caused great concern among residents in the parishes of Hail Weston, Great Staughton, Little Staughton, Keysoe and Pertenhall. The development has been designated a nationally significant infrastructure project and is being built on farmland, 75% of which is graded as best and most versatile land—grade 2 and grade 3a. The proposed solar farm stands to have a significant impact on local life, as 700,000 photovoltaic panels are installed on 250,000 pile-driven metal posts. The site has even been built on top of a Roman town that has been identified but not excavated. Local residents feel that their voice in opposition to the scale of the project being foisted upon them has not been heard, and that the Government are unprepared to listen to them. The petition states: “The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to not approve the East Park Energy proposal and to take immediate action to remove its Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project status.” Following is the full text of the petition: [ The petition of residents of Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire, Declares that the announced proposal by Brockwell Storage and Solar to build a 1,900-acre solar farm, known as East Park Energy, has caused great concern amongst residents of Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire, who are deeply worries as to the scale of the development, and that the development has been classified as a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project, which has raised additional concerns about its impact on residents; further declares that the proposed site would result in the loss and permanent damage of Grade 2 and 3a agricultural land, removing it from food production; and notes that an online petition on this matter received 1,067 signatures. The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to not approve the East Park Energy proposal and to take immediate action to remove its Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project status. And the petitioners remain, etc. ] [P003050]

• 5 Mar 2025 · Professional Cycling: Free-to-air Coverage · Hansard source

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  I wholeheartedly agree. I will come on to it in a little more detail later, but I think the hon. Member is absolutely right that it is a tragedy that at the same time as we have been awarded the Tour de France, the biggest race in the cycling calendar, in 2027, the easiest place to be able to see that will be in person, rather than on television. Bradley Wiggins’s Olympic gold medal inspired a generation, alongside his victory in the Tour de France that year—a British first. The following season the torch passed to Chris Froome as he went on to win four times in the next five years. His run of victories was followed by that of Geraint Thomas, another multiple Olympic gold medallist. From 2012 to 2018, three British riders won the Tour de France six times in seven races. The following season, another British rider, Tao Geoghegan Hart, took the pink jersey, winning the general classification in the Giro d’Italia. Geoghegan Hart grew up watching the Tour de France on ITV. It is cited as one of the inspirations that brought him into the sport. On news of the Warner Bros Discovery announcement, Geoghegan Hart publicly stated that “the sport going behind such a large paywall is a huge problem” and that it is now time “perhaps to question the monopoly held over” the sport’s UK coverage. ITV is not blameless in this endeavour. Last year, ITV4 chose not to renew its broadcast rights, opening the door to Warner Bros Discovery. The reassuring tones of Gary Imlach and the encyclopaedic knowledge of Ned Boulting would no longer be staples of cycling fans’ summers. The organic growth in cycling that has accompanied this untrammelled success has been revolutionary, but the cycling boom that formed part of the London 2012 legacy is now in danger of being dropped by the peloton. The Tour de Yorkshire capitalised upon the success of the 2014 Grand Départ, but it became another casualty of the covid-19 pandemic. The 2020 race was postponed by organiser Amaury Sport Organisation in March of that year and after two years of attempts to revive the race, it has never returned, with ASO citing escalating financial challenges and uncertainties. The Tour of Britain, our very own multi-stage race, lacks the global recognition of the Tour de France, but last year’s men’s and women’s races generated over £30 million for local economies in the towns and cities that the race passed through. However, the future of that race is still uncertain. Last year, it was run by British Cycling after its former organiser, SweetSpot, had its race licence withdrawn because they had failed to pay the fee for it. Subsequently, SweetSpot went into liquidation. Last year also saw the demise of our last two remaining continental-tier teams, Saint Piran and Trinity Racing; last autumn, both announced that they were folding. As recently as 2021, the UK had five men’s continental teams in Trinity Racing, Saint Piran, Ribble Weldtite, Canyon DHB Sungod and SwiftCarbon Pro Cycling, but now none of them remain. In addition, RideLondon has been cancelled this year. The event was part of the London 2012 legacy, with its first iteration in 2013, and it had been run every year since. The event’s chief organiser, Hugh Brasher, has said that over the past decade it had: “inspired more than 300,000 people to get back on a bike or cycle more and also raised more than £85 million for charity”. Those are phenomenal numbers for a cycling event. However, the strategic pause of RideLondon in 2025 raises concerns that it, too, may not return in 2026 or beyond. Even British Cycling’s membership numbers have steadily dropped, after a fivefold increase from 30,000 to 150,000 in the decade between 2010 and the pandemic. The last year has seen the demise of major British races, race organisers and domestic teams. Since 2008, the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award has been won by cyclists more times than by participants in any other sport. Nevertheless, last year’s BBC SPOTY event all but announced the end of British cycling’s golden era with Mark Cavendish’s lifetime achievement award after his incredible 11th-hour achievement of eclipsing Eddy Merckx’s Tour de France stage win record, and tributes were paid to both Bradley Wiggins and to Chris Hoy, following his diagnosis of terminal prostate cancer. In many ways, the demise of live free-to-air cycling TV coverage is a metaphor for the crisis that has befallen professional cycling in the UK. My own deeply mediocre recent career in racing cyclo-cross was born from watching Mathieu van der Poel take on Wout van Aert and latterly Tom Pidcock. If I had not watched obscure Belgian Superprestige races and finally decided to get stuck in myself, I would not have joined British Cycling, bought myself a bike from eBay—n+1, I don’t make the rules—found my local grassroots race series and dragged myself off for an hour of the hardest, most heart-pumping physical activity that I have ever participated in. I mean that literally, because men of my age are not meant to hit 200 beats per minute. Mathieu van der Poel I was not, but it was fun to pretend that I could be. I would never have taken up cyclo-cross if I had not had access to watching the sport. Cycling is so much more than just a sport. It has changed lives and saved lives, and given people both purpose and freedom. It is one of our greatest sporting success stories, but, like all things, its continuing success depends upon the next generation being willing to pick up the torch. To do that, children need to be inspired and parents need to be enthused. Although the next generation of cyclists to emerge are already in the pipeline, there are limited options available to them domestically, and now they will almost certainly need to go abroad in order to take the next step in progressing their career. Cycling is not football, where we are never more than a stone’s throw from a pub to watch a game in. We see mainstream sports all the time. Even just a glimpse on a news bulletin can be enough, but cycling rarely gets a look in. A British cyclist reaching the pinnacle of their sport and winning the coveted world championship rainbow jersey barely registers in the world of sports coverage. If a British tennis player so much as gets a bye into the second round of a Grand Slam tournament, they carry the hopes of a nation. In an increasingly fractured media landscape, one in which even our national broadcaster struggles for relevance, linear TV finds itself staring into the abyss of obsolescence, and sports coverage is all but the preserve of those who can afford it. The inclusivity that sport offers appears to be at odds with the options available to consume it. Cycling is not a wealthy sport. The careers of professional cyclists are hard and precarious; only those who achieve superstar status will make their fortune. For many, it is a journeyman sport, and for many more it is a career too hard to sustain. To be popular, a sport must be visible; to be visible, a sport must have a television presence. The Government would never allow the FIFA world cup, the Olympics or Wimbledon to be put behind a paywall. With an estimated 12 million spectators attending the race each year, the Tour de France is easily the most attended sporting event in the world. Will the Government consider how it can inspire a new generation of Froomes and Cavendishes to take up the mantle and consider what they are doing to restore a sporting jewel, in which we have enjoyed such recent success, to the masses, lest its absence from our screens causes the sport to wither on the vine? Not so long ago, Britain had a golden age of cycling that made us unassailably the best in the world. Olympics, world championships, Tours de France—they were ours for the taking, and other countries could only look on in envy at the Union Jack-clad winning machine that British cycling had become. Now, the slow puncture of managed decline has reached the point where even the visibility of the sport will be limited to slightly overweight, middle-aged men like me, who pootle around on a Sunday morning in their Lycra, inspiring very few. I ask the Minister what can the Government do, and what they are doing, to arrest that slide and put British cycling—with a small c—on the right trajectory and stop the sport from fading into obscurity? What support can they give to the grassroots, and what help can they give to the struggling professional scene? What guarantees can they offer that the Tour of Britain and the world championships across all disciplines will not disappear behind the TNT paywall as well? What will they do to use professional cycling as a catalyst and inspiration to get the next generation out onto two wheels and matching their existing commitment to active travel schemes? I finish with a shameless plug for my constituency of Huntingdon. If anybody from British Cycling happens to be watching this or reading it in Hansard , Huntingdon is a beautiful part of Cambridgeshire with endless rolling countryside that would look fantastic in the helicopter B-roll they use in the Tour de France. With the race returning to the UK with the Grand Départ in 2027, we have a ring road that sets up perfectly for a spectacular sprint finish. For many that may present the best opportunity to actually see the race.

• 5 Mar 2025 · Professional Cycling: Free-to-air Coverage · Hansard source

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  I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Member’s sentiments. Cycling is one of those sports that people almost fall into by accident. Everybody had a bike when they were growing up; everyone learns how to ride a bike. I think that the inspiration for riding that bike and, potentially, taking that further and wanting to ape some of the successes that we see in the Olympics every four years comes from having that on TV, in front of people. When the move for the Tour de France to Warner Bros Discovery was announced last October, it was described in The Guardian headline as a “blow to free-to-air sport coverage”. At the time, it was to be shown exclusively on Eurosport, but as of Friday, Eurosport itself no longer exists. Cycling coverage will now sit under the sporting umbrella of TNT Sports, also owned by Warner Bros Discovery. The price of a subscription to TNT Sports is £31 a month; Eurosport, when it was not included in an existing package, cost only £7 a month, so there is a more than 400% increase to watch a sport that has limited crossover with other sports in TNT’s portfolio. The Tour de France has been available free to air on British television for as long as I can remember. This summer, ITV4 will broadcast the race for the 25th successive and final time. Before that, Channel 4 had broadcast the race since I was a child. Indeed, I remember vividly the 1994 Tour de France, when it came to this country for the fourth and fifth stages of the race—the first time since an anti-climactic stage on the Plympton bypass in 1974. In 1994, I was enormously excited to get a glimpse of the great Miguel Induráin in his Banesto kit. It was also the tour debut of Chris Boardman, who had worn the yellow jersey after winning the opening stage time trial. Such were the crowds and the reception that Boardman was quoted as saying: “I’ll never forget this day as long as I live.” ITV4 was the free-to-air stalwart. Having covered Le Tour for 25 years—coupled with Channel 4’s coverage before that—ITV4 has been almost singlehandedly responsible for inspiring a generation of young cyclists. Scott Young, senior vice president at Warner Bros Discovery Sports Europe, has stated that providing free-to-air live cycling “is not on our road map…People can choose to make their decision as to how they want to engage with us in the short term.” That short term means a 400% price hike for paid coverage of professional cycling and the complete disappearance of live, free-to-air coverage. Young has stated that there are no concerns in Warner Bros Discovery that putting the sport behind a paywall will stunt the growth of the sport’s support, but the European Broadcasting Union’s 2024 report, “The Economic Impact of The Sports Activities of Public Service Media”, clearly states that free-to-air coverage can also encourage participation in sport at grassroots level. For many, terrestrial coverage of the Tour de France has been their only entry point to a sport that is, fundamentally, extremely niche. The cycling calendar is awash with famous races—from the grand tours of the Giro d’Italia and La Vuelta to the classics such as Paris-Roubaix and Milan-San Remo. Iconic though these races are, they have failed to penetrate our national consciousness, despite British winners in recent years. The Tour de France is more than just a famous cycling race. It is the gateway to a sport that is otherwise comparatively inaccessible and is now made even more so by the decision to remove live, free-to-air coverage from our television screens.

• 5 Mar 2025 · Professional Cycling: Free-to-air Coverage · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered the potential merits of free-to-air coverage of professional cycling. It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan, and I am grateful for the opportunity to open the debate. Growing up, many of us had a sporting hero: a star striker, a gold medal winner or a record-breaking athlete. My sporting hero was Jason McRoy. Most will almost certainly have never heard of him. He was arguably Britain’s first mountain bike superstar. In the early 1990s, when the sport was in its infancy, Jason was a trailblazer. I followed his progress as closely as I could through the media available at the time. It being the 1990s, that was mostly dog-eared copies of Mountain Biking UK which I lugged back and forth to school, reading each month’s copy to destruction, and occasionally via coverage on Eurosport. Jason finally got his break in 1993, as big companies started throwing money at the fledgling sport. The biggest race in the calendar, aside from the world championships, was the Reebok Eliminator, a one-off head-to-head race on the famous Kamikaze course at Mammoth Mountain in California. Having secured entry after his mum persuaded the organisers, Jason—in his iconic black and white Hardisty Cycles kit, from a local bike shop in Newcastle—took on the top US factory race teams. Jason gave it his all, making it to the final against US favourite Myles Rockwell and narrowly losing. However, he had put his name on the sport’s international map. A professional contract with Specialised USA followed the next season and Britain had its first fully fledged superstar rider. We will sadly never know how Jason’s career would have panned out. On 24 August 1995, his Harley-Davidson collided with a lorry at Woodhead Pass on the A628 in Derbyshire. Jason’s father Jim took the call announcing his death at 1.50 am. Without Jason, there might never have been the double Olympic gold medal and world championship-winning Tom Pidcock, and no world championship wins for Gee Atherton, Steve Peat, Danny Hart, Reece Wilson or Charlie Hatton—no Rachel Atherton, Tracy Moseley or Manon Carpenter. Those are not household names, however. Their sporting successes are often difficult to witness as it is. Often the only place to watch those races was on Eurosport but last Friday it was consigned to the history books. Eurosport’s demise is a hammer blow for coverage of cycling in the UK. Owned by Warner Bros Discovery, the inevitable demise of Eurosport was hidden in plain sight. First their cycling-specific GCN+ app was closed, citing a desire to offer more content on fewer platforms. GCN+ provided almost unlimited access to the global cycling calendar. No race was too obscure. Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, check; Scheldeprijs, check; Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne, check. Cycling bores like me had never had it so good. Parallel to the slow demise of Eurosport, and almost unnoticed to many outside of the cycling media bubble, Warner Bros Discovery had hoovered up the exclusive British broadcast rights to the Tour de France from 2026. That is comfortably the blue-ribbon event of the global cycling calendar and possibly the only race that everybody has heard of.

• 3 Mar 2025 · Ukraine · Hansard source

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  I, too, thank the Prime Minister for his support to President Zelensky yesterday, following the circus that was his meeting with President Trump and Vice-President Vance in the Oval Office. Following the Prime Minister’s discussions with President Trump last Thursday, can the Prime Minister provide assurance regarding the ongoing presence in this country of the US Air Forces in Europe at current levels and give reassurance that the US’s half-a-billion-pound Defence Infrastructure Organisation investment in the European infrastructure consolidation project’s new joint intelligence analysis complex at RAF Molesworth —also the home of the NATO Intelligence Fusion Centre —will not be put in jeopardy, given the change in European posture of the new US Administration?

• 26 Feb 2025 · Online Safety Act: Implementation · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) for securing this timely debate. His wealth of knowledge on this topic is clear, and his voice in pursuing the most effective iteration of the legislation has been constant. The previous Government passed the world-leading Online Safety Act, which places significant new responsibilities and duties on social media platforms and search services to increase child safety online—aims that all Members can agree upon. Platforms will be required to prevent children from accessing harmful and age-inappropriate content, and to provide parents and children with clear and accessible ways to report problems online when they arise. The evidence base showing that social media is adversely impacting our children’s mental health is growing stronger. The Royal Society for Public Health says that about 70% of young people now report that social media increases their feelings of anxiety and depression. It is for those reasons that Conservative Ministers ensured the strongest measures in the Act to protect children. The Act places duties on online platforms to protect children’s safety and put in place measures to mitigate risks. They will also need to proactively tackle the most harmful illegal content and activity. Once in force, the Act will create a new regulatory regime to significantly improve internet safety, particularly for young people. It will address the rise in harmful content online and will give Ofcom new powers to fulfil the role of the independent regulator. Fundamentally, it will ensure services take responsibility for making their products safe for their users. I note that the Government have said that they are prioritising work with Ofcom to get the Act implemented swiftly and effectively to deliver a safer online world, but I recognise the concerns of parents and campaigners who worry that children will continue to be exposed to harmful and age-inappropriate content every day until these regulations come into force. Will the Minister acknowledge those concerns in her remarks? The Act places new duties on certain internet services to protect users from illegal content on their platforms. The purpose of those illegal content duties is to require providers of user-to-user and search services to take more responsibility for protecting UK-based users from illegal content and activity that is facilitated or encountered via their services. In December, Ofcom published its finalised illegal harms codes of practice and risk assessment guidance. The codes of practice describe the measures that services can take to fulfil their illegal content duties, and they recommend that providers of different kinds and with different capacities take different steps proportionate to their size, capacity and level of risk. The codes recommend measures in areas including user support, safety by design, additional protections for children and content moderation or de-indexing. Many of the measures in the draft codes are cross-cutting and will help to address all illegal harms. Certain measures are targeted at specific high-priority harms, including child sexual abuse material, terrorism and fraud. Those include measures on automated tools to detect child sexual abuse material and for establishing routes so that the police and the Financial Conduct Authority can report fraud and scams to online service providers. The included measures will also make it easier for users to report potentially illegal content. Ofcom has also published guidance on how providers should carry out risk assessments for illegal content and activity. Providers now have three months to complete their illegal content risk assessment. Can the Minister update the House on whether the completion of the risk assessments will coincide with the codes of practice coming into force? Another important milestone was the publication of Ofcom’s children’s access assessment guidance last month. Services will have to assess whether their service is likely to be accessed by children and, once the protection of children codes have been finalised by the summer, must put in place the appropriate protections, known as age assurance duties. All services that allow pornography must implement by July at the latest highly effective age assurance to ensure that children are not normally able to access pornographic content. Together, the illegal harms and child safety codes should put in place an important foundation for the protection of users. For example, children will be better protected online with services having to introduce robust age checks to prevent children seeing content such as suicide, self-harm material and pornography, and having to tackle harmful algorithms. Illegal content, including hate speech, terrorist content and content that encourages or facilitates suicide should be taken down as soon as services are aware of it. Women and girls will be better protected from misogyny, harassment and abuse online. The Government have said they are keen for Ofcom to use its enforcement powers as the requirements on services come into effect to make sure that the protections promised by the Act are delivered for users. Samaritans has called on the Government and Ofcom to “fully harness the power of the Online Safety Act to ensure people are protected from dangerous content”. Will the Minister confirm that the Government will fully back Ofcom in its enforcement of the illegal harms and child safety codes? There are concerns that Ofcom appears to be relying on future iterations of the codes to bring in the more robust requirements that would improve safety. Relying on revision of the codes to bring them up to the required standard will likely be a slow process. The requirement to implement initial codes and guidance is significant and is unlikely to allow capacity for revision. Furthermore, the Secretary of State’s ability to stipulate such revisions could hamper that. To that end, it is essential that the first iteration of the codes of practice is robust enough to endure without the need for revision in the short term. Although that might be difficult to achieve in an environment that moves as quickly as the digital space, it must be strived for, lest we end up with legislation that does not hold online platforms to account and does not protect victims of online harms as it should. As legislators, we have a responsibility to ensure that the online world is a safe place for our children. We also have a responsibility to ensure that online platforms take their obligations seriously. I am pleased that the previous Government’s Online Safety Act delivers on both those points. I urge the Minister to ensure that it is fully implemented as soon as possible.