Bridget Phillipson MP: speeches

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Speeches

5 Feb 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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This month we celebrate LGBT History Month. LGBT individuals have shaped Britain’s history and continue to contribute greatly to our society. We are also celebrating Race Equality Week. We are committed to raising everyone’s living standards by putting more money into people’s pockets through measures such as ethnicity pay gap reporting. These initiatives demonstrate our commitment to fostering a more equal and inclusive society in which everyone’s dignity and rights are respected.
5 Feb 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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The hon. Lady raises an important issue. We need to ensure there is diversity in representation at all levels in sport. I am happy to look further into the issues she has raised.
5 Feb 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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I agree with my hon. Friend about the importance of the issue she identifies. I will ensure that the relevant Minister picks up on the point and ensures that electoral administrators are aware of their responsibilities.
5 Feb 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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The previous Government’s scope was narrow. We are taking action to give all providers the assurances that they need that single-sex spaces can be provided. I have met representatives from the EHRC to discuss that point and I have written to the EHRC about it. I will take no lectures from the Conservatives on single-sex spaces, when the use of mixed-sex hospital wards increased on their watch.
5 Feb 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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We continue to keep these matters under review. We are looking carefully at the Law Commission’s report into marriage published in 2022 and we will respond in due course.
5 Feb 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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We remain steadfast in our support for all LGBT people. It is essential that they are safe, included and protected from discrimination.
5 Feb 2025 · SEND Provision · Hansard source
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My hon. Friend mentions a vital area. There is an important role for youth services as part of this, but we also need to do much more around safeguarding. The provisions in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill on multi-agency child protection measures and much more besides, and the additional investment that we are putting into the system around children’s social care, will make a real difference in tackling the unacceptable exploitation that sadly blights the lives of too many children across our country.
5 Feb 2025 · SEND Provision · Hansard source
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This Government’s ambition is that all children with special educational needs receive the right support to succeed, where possible, in mainstream schools. To further support that vision, in December I announced £740 million of high-needs capital for 2025-26. The Department is working closely with experts on reforms and has recently appointed a strategic adviser for SEND, who will play a key role in engaging with practitioners, children and families as we consider the next steps in SEND reform.
5 Feb 2025 · SEND Provision · Hansard source
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I recognise the hon. Gentleman’s interest in this area, and the interest of Members from right across the House in the urgent need to reform the SEND system. However, I gently observe that we inherited the funding mechanism from the previous Government, and that the last Conservative Education Secretary said that the SEND system they have left behind is “lose, lose, lose”. We are determined to fix it, to build up parents’ confidence, and to make sure that all children get the education and support that they need.
27 Jan 2025 · Early Learning Goals · Hansard source
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My hon. Friend is right to raise that issue on behalf of his constituents. I would be more than happy to meet him to discuss it further. We are working rapidly through the whole free schools pipeline to ensure that we are creating places where they are required—that includes specialist provision—and that there is a strong case and good value for the taxpayer.
27 Jan 2025 · Early Learning Goals · Hansard source
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Children growing up in our country deserve the best start in life—nothing less. Through our plan for change, Labour will get a record share of children school-ready. We will make that a reality through opening new school-based nurseries, rolling out childcare, earlier intervention, speech and language support, help for parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities, and wider SEND reform. That is rightly ambitious, and we are determined to deliver it.
27 Jan 2025 · Artificial Intelligence: Research and Development · Hansard source
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The Labour Government are at the forefront of change and, as I said to the Bett conference last week, we are determined to ensure that “AI will be a positive, radical, modernising force for good in the lives of working people.” The Department for Education is a member of the AI working group collaborating across Government to share thinking and expertise as we develop future policy.
27 Jan 2025 · Artificial Intelligence: Research and Development · Hansard source
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I appreciate the hon. Lady’s interest in this area. She will know that the proposed exascale supercomputer is one programme that the Government are considering. We are currently assessing the best way to take this forward. The previous programme was announced under the last Government, for which full funding was not allocated. We are committed to developing a strategy setting out a 10-year plan for our country’s needs. That plan will be published in the coming months alongside the spending review, but I will ensure that officials in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology pick up her concern and that she receives a full response.
27 Jan 2025 · Child Safeguarding · Hansard source
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The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is the single biggest piece of child protection legislation in a generation. It will stop more children falling through the cracks through landmarks reforms—no more empty words but real action to keep children safe. It is a shame that the Conservative Opposition have played silly games on this subject.
27 Jan 2025 · Child Safeguarding · Hansard source
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Parents who choose to home educate their children are within their rights to do so. Those who provide a safe, loving environment and a good standard of education have nothing to be concerned about in the legislation. We are concerned about the growing number of children of whom we simply have no visibility. The Bill will ensure that where there are serious concerns about child protection and safeguarding, such as where a section 47 investigation is under way, the local authority must consent to home education. I am staggered that the hon. Gentleman finds those straightforward measures to keep children safe such an outrage. They are about protecting children.
27 Jan 2025 · Child Safeguarding · Hansard source
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Opposition Members might not like it, but that is what the Leader of the Opposition said. The Conservatives had 14 years to stop vulnerable children falling through the cracks. Now is the time for action—no more empty words or lessons learned. Labour has brought forward the single biggest piece of child protection legislation in a generation, but the Conservatives refuse to back it. To label the measures a distraction is a new low. I encourage the shadow Secretary of State to distance herself from those shocking remarks.
27 Jan 2025 · Free Speech · Hansard source
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I have had the privilege of visiting hundreds of schools across our country, and I can tell Members that children in the schools I visit are usually never backward in coming forward with their opinions; I would hope that is the case in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, too. Of course, schools have a duty to promote fundamental British values and are subject to long-standing legal duties that prohibit them from promoting partisan political views.
27 Jan 2025 · Free Speech · Hansard source
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It was a Labour Government who first enshrined freedom of expression in law, and Labour is to this day committed to freedom of speech and academic freedom. That is why we are pressing ahead with a robust, rigorous and workable Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, and taking common-sense decisions in the national interest.
27 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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My hon. Friend brings real expertise to this matter from her experience in education. We are reviewing the relationship, sex and health education guidance to ensure that schools are able to teach what children need to know in the modern world. Our school staff have a crucial role to play in tackling this issue as well.
27 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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Yet again we hear about the urgent need to reform our SEND system. We are determined to turn it around. We will work with everyone across the House and anyone with an interest in this area, including parents, teachers and staff, because we need to get this right.
27 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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That brilliant initiative shows what a champion my hon. Friend is for his constituents, and I will consider his request seriously. I would certainly be happy to visit his constituency soon and to work with him—perhaps also on how his local schools might be able to join the UK-Ukraine school partnerships programme, which is based on the power of reading.
27 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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There was an awful lot in that but very little about how we deliver higher standards for our children, and that is what the Bill is all about. The only people in hock to vested interests are the Conservatives—more interested in defending school uniform racketeers and the private schools lobby than investing in our state schools.
27 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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Today marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. As the years slip away, our duty to remember only strengthens. I have had the privilege in recent months of listening to the powerful and deeply moving testimony of Holocaust survivors in person, including Renee Salt and Mala Tribich. It is vital that the world hears their voices—hears what happened to them and their families, and what happened to 6 million Jewish men, women and children during the Holocaust. That is especially important giving the shocking rise in antisemitic abuse that we have seen since 7 October. The Government could not feel more strongly about this, which is why we have confirmed that the Holocaust will be a compulsory topic in all schools following the completion of our curriculum and assessment review.
27 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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I recognise the challenging context that many schools experience after 14 years under the Conservatives. At the Budget, notwithstanding the severe challenges that we face, the Chancellor prioritised key education areas, including making sure that we could deliver on that 5.5% pay award for teachers that the last Government refused to back.
27 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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There is no reason that schools should need to make any kind of change. Of course, headteachers make practical decisions about how they feel they should run their schools. We are cutting the cost to parents and putting more money back in their pockets, unlike the Conservative party, which seems to oppose practical, straightforward measures to cut the cost of school uniform.

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