Blair McDougall MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 30 Oct 2025 · Industrial Strategy · Hansard source

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  As I said to the hon. Member for South Antrim (Robin Swann) a moment ago, we have already met with the Northern Ireland Executive on these issues. Skills are an essential part of the industrial strategy because we see, again and again, industries around the country that are desperate to grow, and have the orders, but are unable to create the high-paying jobs that we need. That is an absolute priority for us as we implement the industrial strategy.

• 30 Oct 2025 · Industrial Strategy · Hansard source

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  We are fast approaching the time of year when I have to tell my children that they will have to wait until Christmas to find out what their presents are. The hon. Gentleman knows that he has to wait until the Budget to find out what is in the Budget. He mentioned planning. We have made huge changes to planning rules, which have resulted in a saving of about £272 million in red-tape costs for business, so we are ensuring that that sector, in particular, has the environment it needs to contribute to growth.

• 30 Oct 2025 · Industrial Strategy · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend has been a constant advocate for the energy potential of Pembrokeshire. That is why the industrial strategy supported south-west Wales’s clean energy potential through targeted investment in infrastructure and workforce development. The strategy will build on that using the potential of the port of Milford Haven, floating offshore wind in the Celtic sea and carbon capture technologies. The £800,000 skills pilot that he refers to underpins that clean energy industries sector plan. The National Wealth Fund will also benefit Wales, as it will invest in the sectors he mentions that are prevalent in that area.

• 30 Oct 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. One of my constituents is in a similar case, and it is devastating. For a large business, fraud and economic crime is an inconvenience; for a small business, it can be existential. That is one of the reasons why, this week, we are communicating with small businesses to ensure that they up their cyber-security. I am happy to meet the hon. Gentleman on this issue.

• 30 Oct 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Businesses led by entrepreneurs from ethnic minority backgrounds make a huge contribution to all our constituencies. Indeed, I met two such remarkable business people in Acton a couple of days ago. My hon. Friend is right to mention that finance is a barrier for under-represented groups, including ethnic minorities. Dealing with that is a key part of the small business strategy, and it is why we have put billions more into the British Business Bank. She has led on these issues, and I am of course happy to meet her to discuss the future of the programme that she mentions.

• 30 Oct 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member raises an important point, particularly for small businesses, which rely on those schemes. I pay tribute to the Royal Mail for the speed at which it reacted to those de minimis changes to ensure that businesses were able to continue. We keep working with Royal Mail as well to ensure that that is possible.

• 30 Oct 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  As I said to the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Dame Harriett Baldwin), we are committed to ensuring not just that we work to maintain the post office network, but that we deal with some of those long-standing issues about the viability of the business going forward—issues that the Conservatives had 14 years to fix and did not.

• 30 Oct 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is a dynamic advocate for a dynamic part of the country in the Thames valley. The industrial strategy and its sector plans highlight the strengths in his area, especially in tech and life sciences. Alongside the national package to grow the sector, specific interventions in the south-east include an AI growth zone in Culham, support for the Solent freeport, expanding the British Business Bank’s nations and regions investment fund and major projects backing the Oxford to Cambridge growth corridor. We will keep working with my hon. Friend to unlock the potential across the south-east.

• 21 Oct 2025 · Draft Companies (Directors' Report) (Payment Reporting) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the draft Companies (Directors’ Report) (Payment Reporting) Regulations 2025. It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. It is also a pleasure, as the new Minister for small business, that this is the first statutory instrument that I am speaking on, as someone who ran a small business and suffered from late payments at times. Small businesses are the backbone of our economy, employing millions of people and enriching our lives, yet we know that the scourge of late payments has been holding them back. Late payments are estimated to cost the economy almost £11 billion per year and to lead to 14,000 businesses closures annually. That is an average of 38 businesses every single day. This cannot go on. That is why this Government has already taken action to improve payment practices. In December 2024 we launched a new Fair Payment Code and introduced secondary legislation requiring construction businesses to publish reports on their retention payment practices. In July we launched a public consultation considering additional legislative measures to hold businesses to account on payment performance. The consultation considers measures that go even further than today’s statutory instrument, and will be the most significant legislation to tackle late payments in over 25 years. It will give the UK the strongest legal framework on late payments in the G7. These measures will include removing flexibility around maximum payment times, which disproportionately impact small businesses, and introducing mandatory interest on late business- to-business payments. Our consultation closes on 23 October—Thursday this week—and we intend to take forward primary legislation as soon as parliamentary time allows. Today we are making a down payment on those wider legislative reforms. We are going to build upon the existing payment transparency regulations for large companies by introducing payment data headlines into directors’ reports. Large companies are already under a duty to report biannually on their payment practices and performance. These draft regulations will require large companies to disclose payment reporting data within directors’ reports required under the Companies Act 2006, further increasing the transparency of payment performance to their boards, stakeholders and auditors. Businesses that are already adhering to current payment regulations will not be significantly affected, as it is data large firms are already required to collect and publish through Gov.uk. The Government want to shift the focus from small businesses wasting hours of their time chasing late payments, and instead put the onus on the boards and stakeholders of large businesses to ensure they are paying their suppliers fairly. I will now outline the key elements of this statutory instrument. These regulations amend schedule 7 to the Large and Medium-sized Companies and Groups (Accounts and Reports) Regulations 2008 and introduce the requirement for large businesses to report information about their payment practices within their directors’ reports. The payment data headlines will include statements on payment practices, average time to pay, and the percentage and sum of payments made before 30 days, between 31 and 60 days, and after 60 days. They will also include the sum and proportion of payments that were not paid within the agreed payment period. This data will publicly illustrate a company’s approach to payment. It is only a small ask for large businesses, but will help with continuous improvement of payment times. The Government are committed to ensuring that this legislation continues to work and this instrument will be subject to a review within five years. I hope hon. Members on the Committee will see the benefits that these draft regulations provide and agree with the introduction of this affirmative statutory instrument.

• 21 Oct 2025 · Draft Companies (Directors' Report) (Payment Reporting) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  I am grateful for the support across the House on these regulations. It is clear from hon. Members’ constructive comments that we all agree that this is a serious problem that we need to tackle. To respond to some of the specific questions, the hon. Member for Grantham and Bourne made a powerful case with his statistics about the impact of late payments on the economy. In terms of the burden on business, we think it will be a very small one, in return for potentially a bigger prize—I think it is 133 million hours spent across the economy chasing late payments. To his point on consistency, there is some overlap between the data that people already have to report and the data that we are suggesting be put into the annual reports through these regulations. On the question about the powers of the Small Business Commissioner, part of the consultation we are currently running is on proposals to give the commissioner more powers to investigate and resolve late payment cases. With these regulations as part of the wider package of measures, we will be delivering the biggest reform to late payment regulations in 25 years; as I say, this measure is very much a down payment on what is coming. I urge hon. Members present to look at the proposals and to take part in the late payments consultation over the next couple of days. These regulations are just the first step, but they are potentially the start of making a huge difference to what is a huge problem for small businesses. I commend the regulations to the Committee. Question put and agreed to.

• 11 Sept 2025 · Consumer Affairs · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve in my first debate as a Minister under your chairship, Dame Siobhain. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) on securing this debate. I would have felt cheated had the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) not been at my first outing as a Minister. He mentioned that perhaps this work was different from the work that we had done together previously on human rights. I think there is a lot of overlap, because on human rights we are asking for people to be treated with dignity and to be treated fairly under the law, and I think it is the same with consumer protection. What there is also in common is that when those rights are not respected, that causes enormous anger, so I think there is considerable overlap. This has been a fantastic debate, with many different issues raised. I will refer to as many of them as possible. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier). I had hoped, as a matter of professional pride, to get through the whole debate without the ministerial get-out of “I will write to you about that”, but she asked me to write to her, so I thank her for saving me. The hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Dame Harriett Baldwin) and my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch made similar points about ensuring that innovation is balanced with consumer protection. I am quite encouraged, in my first few days in this job, by the approach of the leadership of the CMA as a watchdog. It is very clear that it will bare its teeth at the most egregious abuses of consumers, but where having a lighter touch and some guidance would be better, it is doing that, so that the innovation that was mentioned is not lost. I am looking forward to working on the licensing review—particularly because it means I get invited to a night out in Hackney. We will add that to the diary pile in the office. My hon. Friend gave the example of Meta and asked about acting quickly online. I think the CMA now has the online interface orders, which allow it to quickly ask companies to change or to take down content. We are looking forward to seeing how that operates in practice. My hon. Friend and a couple of other Members mentioned algorithms and AI. I am really interested in how AI functions here. There was a case in Atlantic City in which there was some suggestion that algorithms were being used to fix hotel prices and operate a cartel, but human beings were involved in that decision making. One of the interesting questions is how we regulate things when AI might be making decisions to breach consumer law, without a human being involved in that. To come to some of the issues mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington, it will come as a shock, in a debate talking about the size of Mars bars, that I am no stranger to the confectionery aisle. [Laughter.] In case Hansard did not pick that up, everyone cried, “No!” there. My ire, when a Back Bencher, was actually directed towards the changing size and shape of Easter eggs from last year to this year. My hon. Friend was right to mention the changes to the price marking order that are coming in in April and which will require consistency in unit pricing, so that people, when making consumer decisions, are able to compare different goods. We are also putting in place more clarity for consumers on multi-buys and things like that, but we need to keep an eye on this. I know that my hon. Friend will continue to monitor it, and that he will make that case very strongly in years to come. In relation to his point about a consumer champion, I think that my ministerial colleague who will be primarily responsible for consumer affairs will hope to feel that that is their role, but I will take the suggestion to the Department. Many Members spoke about concerns around variable pricing models, such as dynamic and algorithmic pricing, and a broader sense of a lack of transparency in pricing. It is a frontier for regulation—things move very quickly—but we do believe that it is our job to ensure that consumers have protection so that they can easily and accurately compare prices. As the shadow Minister for business, the hon. Member for West Worcestershire, rightly said, pricing flexibility, when used responsibly, can be good for consumers and business. It can manage demand, improve access and support innovation. We all love a bargain; we all love the January sales. We like discounts for different groups, but against that evolving backdrop, the Government are actively engaging with regulators, industry and our watchdogs. The CMA’s dynamic pricing project is a recent example of that work. We will strengthen the law where necessary to uphold transparency, as evidenced by the recently implemented ban on drip pricing, which my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington referred to as a particular bugbear, to ensure that the price presented at the start of the shopping process is the price that consumers pay at the checkout. The principle that underlines that, and that underpins consumer law, is that consumers must know the price that they will pay, and can make an informed decision about whether that price is right for them. Where that is not the case, the Government and our watchdogs will look to take action. Dynamic and algorithmic pricing have been spoken about, and they are a growing concern for many Members’ constituents. We know that changing prices in response to demand is an essential part of any market economy, but it needs to be done responsibly and within consumer law. It should not be the case that businesses use technology to rapidly change prices in a way that misleads customers or is otherwise unfair, resulting in them overpaying. That would be wrong in any circumstances, but particularly when so many of our constituents are struggling to make ends meet. Let me be clear: when consumers are misled or pressured into paying a higher price, that is unlawful. The law, including the recently introduced Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, requires that businesses provide clear, up-front pricing so that consumers understand what they are paying for. Additionally, consumers must be able to evaluate that information in the absence of undue pressure. Aggressive tactics and pressure selling are illegal. When price fluidity or instability puts customers in an unfair position—for example, as we mentioned, in ticketing, when consumers feel that they have to immediately accept a high price for fear of it going even higher—that is unacceptable. The CMA is acting when businesses fail to comply with those laws. For example, last year, it took enforcement action against Wowcher, which agreed to change its selling practices after concerns were raised about its use of a countdown timer to pressurise customers, among other marketing claims. Before moving on to Oasis, I should declare an interest, which is that in the late-1990s fight between Oasis and Blur, I was very much Team Blur, so that may inform my attitude towards these matters. The CMA is seeking to make changes to the way that Ticketmaster labels tickets and provides pricing information to fans, in response to concerns about last year’s Oasis sale. Obviously, that investigation has yet to conclude. We will continue to work with the watchdog to ensure that pricing practices are transparent and proportionate, and that consumers have the right safeguards. The CMA recently examined the use of dynamic pricing across different sectors of the economy, and its report sets out all sorts of conditions that may make dynamic pricing problematic, and the information that businesses should provide to consumers when it is in operation.

• 11 Sept 2025 · Consumer Affairs · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend makes his point powerfully. The argument that the Government sometimes hear from business is that it is about the cost of the property. He is shaking his head, and I will try to transmit the shaking of his head throughout the system on his behalf. He makes an important point. I reiterate my thanks for all the contributions to the debate, and congratulate my hon. Friend on securing it. I assure him that we will not be complacent on this issue. Using the DMCC Act and the CMA’s recent work on pricing, we are working to take tangible steps to ensure that pricing practices are fair and transparent, and that businesses across the economy are held accountable. Where specific markets require more targeted interventions, the Government have been willing to do so. We have seen that recently with the regulation of buy now, pay later arrangements and ensuring that customers continue to pay fair prices for energy. Our work will not stop there. We are always testing the case for going further, working in partnership with regulators and enforcers to ensure that consumers are adequately protected as pricing practices evolve. I thank hon. Members for their contributions to the debate.

• 11 Sept 2025 · Consumer Affairs · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend makes a really good point. He referenced the comments made by the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Dame Harriett Baldwin) on the impact on venues, big or small. It is important to say that there are ways of doing this that are advantageous to everyone. An example that was mentioned to me is Radiohead’s practices in selling their tickets to make sure there was not widespread industrial buying and reselling. There are ways of doing this. The Government really welcome the CMA’s guidance on dynamic pricing, and it has been clear that it will continue to actively review those practices and will tell us if it feels there is a need for changes in the regulatory environment and the law in future. Another issue that has been raised is personal pricing, where technology is increasingly enabling online businesses to use personal data to set different prices and tailor them to different groups of people. It is not against the law, as with dynamic pricing, to change prices for different groups in a free market; that is part of the functioning of the market. As with dynamic pricing, it can offer consumers benefits, such as tailored deals based on regular purchases, but we know that customers worry about their data being used in more targeted and less transparent ways to set personalised prices that are higher than those they would otherwise see. The watchword on this is transparency, in accordance with consumer law. It is an evolving issue, and the Government will keep a close eye on developments on this frontier. We will, of course, look to the watchdog to act on any suggestions that consumers are being disadvantaged. I want to turn to the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington on the pricing of food and essential goods and services. Other Members made these points too. The difference between the smaller high street supermarkets and the hypermarket is one that I feel very personally. I grew up in a household without a car, so we had to go to the local shop, where there was much less choice and fewer bargains. It is not an easy issue to solve, but it is one that I feel particularly personally. It is really important in those situations that there is transparency and fairness in pricing. Our role in Government is to protect consumers and ensure minimum standards, including on pricing. Sector regulators build on the framework that we set by introducing targeted regulations to support consumers in their sectors, particularly in essential services such as energy, financial services and telecoms, where affordability challenges are most pronounced for our constituents at the moment.

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

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  The SNP-led Glasgow city council is proposing to introduce a car tax on East Renfrewshire motorists, so that every time my constituents enter Glasgow city, they would have to pay a fee. Could she make time for a debate on the enormous levels of waste by the SNP Government on things like Barlinnie Prison, which is 10 times over budget, or the ferries that went nowhere, so that we can tell the SNP to stop wasting our money and get out of the pockets of East Renfrewshire motorists?

• 2 Sept 2025 · Georgia: Democracy · Hansard source

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  5. What diplomatic steps he is taking to help protect democracy in Georgia.

• 2 Sept 2025 · Georgia: Democracy · Hansard source

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  May I join you, Mr Speaker, in congratulating the Minister on his nuptials? I thank him for the lead he has taken on Georgia. He will know, because he has recently been in Georgia, that over the summer the situation has dramatically worsened: opposition leaders have been jailed, young democracy activists have been given life-changing prison sentences, and the civil society organisations that are trying to protect democracy have been threatened with prosecution. The complaint of the democracy activists I used to work with is that all of this brutality is happening while the regime’s money is washed through business associates in London. Will the Minister target the people who are responsible for this brutality and hold them accountable?

• 22 Jul 2025 · Crown Immunity (Prisons) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision to remove Crown immunity as it applies to prisons for the purposes of health and safety legislation. Katie Allen lived in Clarkston in East Renfrewshire. She had a loving family and a very happy childhood. She was bright and did well at school. She took herself off to Malawi to volunteer, and she returned from Africa determined to help people. Instead of studying geology at university, as she had intended, she switched to study human geography, because she decided and realised that it was people whom she cared about and not rocks. She was excited about the future. She had moved into her own flat. She was full of life. She was beautiful and she was loved. She was found hanging in a cell at 5.50 in the morning on 4 June 2018 at His Majesty’s Prison and Young Offender Institution, Polmont. The problem of prison deaths is UK-wide, but these losses are a particular problem in Scotland, and the loss of young people in prisons is felt especially. Research in April by the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research found that our prison death rates are akin to those in Azerbaijan. An earlier study by the Council of Europe found Scotland’s prison suicide rate was more than two-and-a half-times higher than the average and about double that of England and Wales. I begin with Katie’s story because focusing on her case helps makes sense of why this problem is so alarming, so acute, and so avoidable. In 2017, after a night out, Katie drove home after drinking, clipped the kerb, and lost control of her car. She had not realised it, but she had hit and injured a pedestrian. She had no previous convictions. Her victim asked for her not to be given a custodial sentence, but she was jailed for 16 months anyway. If anyone deserved a second chance after a stupid, youthful mistake, it was Katie. That second chance was taken away because of failings by the Scottish Prison Service. We cannot mention Katie without also mentioning William Brown, whom my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Martin Rhodes) represents. William also died from suicide in Polmont. The fatal accident inquiry into the loss of both those precious young people found their deaths to be preventable. Thanks to the sheriff’s findings, the failings of the prison service in these cases are now well documented, detailed and damning. One thing out of the 400-page report, with its many findings and recommendations, especially sticks in my mind. When we look into prison suicides, we learn an awful new vocabulary. We come across terms such as “ligature anchor”. For William, the ligature anchor was a bunk bed that the inquiry found could have been removed and, worse, had been used previously for suicides in the prison. In the case of Katie, the ligature anchor was a simple doorstop high up on the wall of her cell. A doorstop that would have cost a few pounds to replace—a small cost for saving a young life, but it was not believed to be worth it. Years after both deaths, nobody in the prison or the prison service had thought to remove the doorstops, or to replace them with safer, sloping alternatives. The bunk beds had not been removed. The fatal accident inquiry into the deaths found that internal reviews carried out after both deaths had not even mentioned the possibility of removing fixtures in cells that could have been used again for further suicides. For me, nothing signifies the institutional lack of care more than these failings for which somebody, somewhere should have been held legally responsible. Before a fatal accident inquiry, there is an investigation. The police and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service concluded at first that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute. The families of Katie and William challenged that conclusion, and eventually the authorities said that, yes, there was enough evidence to charge the Scottish Prison Service with breaches of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. However, there was no prosecution. Why? Because of Crown immunity. The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act places duties on state-run prisons, but Crown immunity means that they cannot be prosecuted for breaching those duties. If the two people had died in a privately run prison, there would have been a prosecution. In theory, individual prison officers can be prosecuted, but in practice they rarely are when their employer is not also prosecuted. Indeed, the reason those prosecutions do not happen is that it is argued that individual shortcomings happen in the context of systematic failures. In theory, the prison services can also be prosecuted under corporate manslaughter legislation, but in practice they are not because the systematic failings are often judged to take place at the prison level, rather than at the senior management level of the overall service. Those at the bottom pass legal responsibility upwards; those at the top pass it back. Even with the support of the dogged campaigners at the charity Inquest, which focuses on state-related deaths, nobody is found legally responsible. The best that the families of the lost can hope for in such circumstances is a censure by the Health and Safety Executive, but even that toothless sanction is almost never used—in a decade, only one prison has received a censure. We have been here before. Three decades ago, Crown immunity was removed from the NHS and it has had an impact. To take one grimly comparable case, the Essex partnership university NHS foundation trust was fined £1.5 million for allowing suicides after failing to manage the risks caused by ligature points on its estate. Our prisons are responsible for many more such deaths, but they are untouchable because of Crown immunity, and an untouchable service remains unaccountable. Institutional impunity removes the incentives for institutional change—institutional change that is needed at the local Scottish level and the UK level. Locally, a review of mental health at Polmont warned that it needed a suicide prevention strategy, but instead it opted for another review—a review that was never finished. In Scotland, the Human Rights Commission has warned that recommendations agreed decades ago have still not been implemented across the Scottish Prison Service. Just last week, the inspector of prisons for the whole UK issued an urgent indication warning about conditions at Pentonville and a failure to address repeated concerns following recent suicides. Without legal consequences, prisons across the country appear to be incapable of learning lessons or making changes. Every day of immunity brings the risk of more avoidable deaths. The Scottish Prison Service and the Government in Edinburgh have called for Crown immunity to be removed, but they need us in this place to do it. I want to be very clear: this campaign should not be used as an excuse for inaction now. These places should not have to wait to be prosecuted to fulfil their responsibility to protect lives, but if those running our prisons will not act—and they have not done so—they should lose their protection from legal consequence. In conclusion, I remember a friend of mine who lost a child saying how a parent grieves twice for such a loss: once for the young person known and loved, and a second time for the life that they would have gone on to live. For Katie’s family, the knowledge that she wanted to live a life devoted to helping and serving others invites them to imagine all the change that she would have made as she grew into adulthood. Instead of a life that would have changed the world, we in this place are left with the tragic responsibility of making sure that it is her death that changes things. Katie’s extraordinary mother, Linda, told me that she said of her experience in Malawi in Africa: “you know mum, prayers are great, but what people really need is practical help.” Katie’s family, William’s family and the others who have lost dear loved ones due to these institutional failings do not need our prayers, our sympathies or our condolences. They need action. They need us to provide the accountability that will avoid future tragedies and change the culture that allows these deaths. That is why it is time to end Crown immunity in prisons in Scotland and across the UK. I urge Members to support my Bill. Question put and agreed to. Ordered, That Blair McDougall and Martin Rhodes present the Bill. Blair McDougall accordingly presented the Bill. B ill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 12 September , and to be printed (Bill 294 ).

• 24 Jun 2025 · China Audit · Hansard source

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  As chair of the all-party parliamentary groups on Uyghurs and on Hong Kong, I have lost count of the number of responses I have had from Ministers that have referred to today’s audit. I hope the Foreign Secretary will forgive me if I take today as the start of a conversation, rather than the last word on these matters. He has again used his three Cs mantra: competing and co-operating with China, and challenging it when needed. I wonder if he understands that many Hongkongers, Uyghurs and others who are fighting for freedom from or within the People’s Republic of China worry that the order of that is deliberate, and that the “challenging” part is a lower priority. What reassurance can he give to those groups that commercial interests will not trump the responsibility to protect freedoms and security, particularly of British Hongkongers? Can he confirm that the threats identified in the audit, and the national security challenge, will be fed into the decision making on whether to allow the embassy?

• 24 Jun 2025 · Chagos Archipelago: Sovereignty · Hansard source

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  When the Foreign Affairs Committee was in Washington recently, we raised the Diego Garcia deal with the Administration. They could not have been more enthusiastic for this deal, because they recognise that it secures our strategic interests in the area. Does the Minister agree that it is perhaps time for Conservative Members to stop playing politics with national defence?

• 23 Jun 2025 · Middle East · Hansard source

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  I associate myself with the Foreign Secretary’s condemnation of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but we need to match that condemnation with accountability. Here in the UK, Jewish communities in particular are deeply concerned about what lies ahead. Last week, the Iranian ambassador acknowledged before the Foreign Affairs Committee that MI5 had identified 22 threats on British soil that had been organised by the Iranian regime. What is the Foreign Secretary’s message to Jewish communities, who are in a state of high alert at the moment, wondering what will happen?

• 19 Jun 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  The town of Barrhead in my constituency is full of extraordinary young people, which is why my Scottish Parliament colleague Paul O’Kane and I have reinstated the Barrhead Young Citizen of the Year award. However, after years of Tory and SNP neglect, Barrhead is also blighted by youth-led antisocial behaviour. Will the Leader of the House make time to debate that issue, so that we can put pressure on the SNP Government in Edinburgh to give the hard-pressed police in Barrhead the resources they need to tackle this problem, and so that those young people are not left behind and Barrhead is not left paying the price?

• 18 Jun 2025 · Political Prisoners · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend makes an important point about making the case to China. Does he agree with me that this is about more than just Jimmy Lai, because the rights that Jimmy Lai was exercising when he was arrested were guaranteed under the joint declaration, and that brings into question whether China is a reliable partner on all sorts of other international agreements, too?

• 13 Jun 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  I rise to speak in support of amendment 15, which is tabled in my name. I will minimise my comments to maximise the time available to other hon. Members. Owing to the widespread unease among NHS practitioners and the growing number of concerned voices about the Bill’s shortcomings, if it is passed by the House—I still hope that it will not be—it is likely that assisted deaths will take place away from the public sector. Indeed, the Bill does not prevent assisted deaths from being outsourced to private companies, and there is no definition of what “reasonable remuneration” means in return for helping to end someone’s life. My amendment seeks to ensure that providers publish annually the number of people to whom they have provided those services, the costs of doing so, and the revenues received in return. Many hon. Members will be guided by their religion when they vote on these issues. Although I deeply respect that, I am not a person of faith. If there is a booming baritone voice appealing to my conscience, it is not that of God, but that of Nye Bevan, who was concerned about the commodification of care. In his time, the worry was about the role of the market in extending life. Today, my concern is about the potential role of the market in ending it. Throughout the Bill’s passage, we have discussed different kinds of coercion by individuals on the lives of people whose protection is entrusted to us. As a Labour MP, I do not think that we can have this debate without addressing the economic coercion experienced by the vulnerable in our society. As someone who has sat beside a bed and prayed for mercy, I genuinely understand the attraction of arguments around freedom of choice, but arguing for that as a fundamental principle in isolation, without also acknowledging the economic, social and cultural context in which people make such choices, is not a Labour approach to the issue.

• 13 Jun 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  I will come to that point shortly. We have a duty to ask whether the poorest and most vulnerable will be coerced into choosing assisted dying over palliative care because of economic disadvantage. Will they be exploited by those with a financial interest in their choosing to end their life? Will their death become a commodity? If we are really going to pass legislation that allows someone’s death to become a matter of business, we must have full transparency on those financial motivations, and my amendment 15 would require that. If we are really going to pass legislation that allows someone’s death to become a matter of business, we must have full transparency on those financial motivations, and my amendment 15 would require that. Carers in the private sector are not bad people any more than people working directly in the NHS, but private healthcare operates in a context. The evidence that profit influences the moral choices made in the care and treatment that is already provided in this country is overwhelming; this is not a hypothetical concern. For example, a systematic review published by The BMJ found that private equity ownership of healthcare is associated with lower standards of care. Around the wonderful miracle of IVF there is an industry profiting from people’s desperation as they start life rather than end it. Already, at the end of life—this relates to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Opher)—choice in palliative care is limited by economic status, with the wealthy more likely to die a good death than the poor. My amendment seeks to address the fundamental question of whether free choice really is free by bringing into daylight the financial motivations of those involved in individuals’ decisions.

• 13 Jun 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member makes an important point that we have to consider. We must recognise that, as he says, people’s choices are limited by the unfair distribution of wealth, the injustices that disabled people face throughout their life, or the attitudes of the powerful in society towards those who are less fortunate.