Caroline Dinenage MP: speeches

Speeches

• 15 Sept 2026 · Violence against Women and Girls: AI-based Crime · Hansard source

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  As the Minister knows, technology is being used in many different forms to threaten women. A Gosport domestic abuse survivor, Harmony Hayman, is still living in fear of a former partner eight years after leaving the relationship, and he has used an illicit mobile phone from prison to contact her. She is now living in terror of the Government’s decision to release domestic abusers early from prison. Will the Minister look at Harmony’s petition, in which she calls on the Government to look into how domestic abusers are able to perpetuate their abusive behaviour from within prison, and also to review their eligibility for early release?

• 15 Sept 2026 · Civil Service Pension Scheme · Hansard source

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  I wrote to the Cabinet Office in January in response to constituents’ concerns about late payments, dreadful customer service and, in some cases, desperate pleas for pensions to be released. Shortly after, I met Capita representatives; they made assurances that pension arrears would be cleared by the end of April and that overall service levels would be restored by June. Those were hollow words: both targets were missed and everything has got worse. One constituent told me that he had given 43 years of service to the Royal Navy. He retired in October last year and is still waiting for his pension forecast to arrive. That is nearly a whole year. My case workers have been exhaustively responding to constituents who are attempting to access statements and payments. In January, I wrote to the Cabinet Office but we are still waiting for movement on this issue. I suspect that my caseworkers are doing a better job than those hired by the Government, who have somehow seen an increase in the number of complaints. I do not think that bringing the contract in-house will make a difference—

• 15 Sept 2026 · Civil Service Pension Scheme · Hansard source

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  Does my hon. Friend agree that since the Government have got involved in this situation, the backlog has got worse? Does he think that they should prevent Capita taking on any more Government contracts until this is sorted out?

• 15 Sept 2026 · Tourism: Overnight Visitor Levy · Hansard source

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  I must admit that I am really puzzled by the Minister’s statement. The visitor levy is not going to be ringfenced for tourism, so how does he know that it will go to its intended destination? The levy will not be capped. We normally tax things to stop people doing them, not to encourage them to do more of them. What evidence can he offer to demonstrate that this measure will bring growth, as he says? What work have the Government actually done to prepare for this measure? How will they know whether hospitality businesses—let us face it, they are already collapsing in their droves following decisions that the Government have already taken—will survive yet another tax being imposed on them?

• 8 Sept 2026 · Health Bill · Hansard source

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  I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend for the fantastic work that he did as shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, and he is absolutely right. We really need the full response to the Fuller report in order to implement not only changes to mortuaries, but all the other amendments that it recommended. New clause 41 would place a duty on the Human Tissue Authority to establish and maintain a register of every business brought within its oversight, with how that register operates set by regulation, so that for the first time a grieving family could check, before they hand over the body of a loved one, whether the business in front of them is properly overseen. I recognise that the hon. Member for Leeds South West and Morley (Mark Sewards) has tabled new clause 42 on a new, bespoke freestanding regulator. Both new clauses would fix the same issue, and either will do. The key thing is that this is a moment for the Government to seize, not resist. Ministers have already said that, in principle, they agree with what new clause 41 would require of them. Every trade body agrees. Every family who has been failed agrees. Every Member from across the House who signed our letter agrees. It feels like the Government agree, so I ask the Minister to tell the House exactly when a statutory scheme will be brought forward by the Department of Health and Social Care, and to set out the timetable for implementation. None of us is comfortable dwelling on our own mortality, which is exactly why the funeral sector has gone on for so long without proper scrutiny. It is a truism—we hear it all the time—that funerals are for the living; they are for families to say goodbye to their loved ones with dignity. They should be able to grieve without the added horror of questioning whether the body they buried was the right one, or whether the ashes they scattered belonged to the right person. Robert Bush’s sentencing should be the last time that this House has to debate such a gruesome case, but it will not be unless the Government push ahead to close this regulatory black hole.

• 8 Sept 2026 · Health Bill · Hansard source

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  I will speak about new clause 41, which stands in my name. We put enormous, unquestioning trust in those who care for the bodies of our loved ones when they die. However, in this Chamber six months ago, I told a former Health Minister, the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Dr Ahmed), about Elkin and Bell, the Gosport funeral directors who left 46 bodies decaying in an unrefrigerated room. One of them, an elderly gentleman whose family had already paid for his cremation, was left decomposing for 36 days. I said then that the funeral sector was nothing better than a lawless wild west with no mandatory qualifications to practise, no accreditation for professionals, no licensing of businesses, no inspection of premises, and no law to fall back on when things go wrong. It was only persistence and ingenuity on the part of Hampshire constabulary that saw Elkin and Bell brought to justice. The Minister at the time told me that a decision on regulation would come in the Government’s full answer to the Fuller inquiry, and we are still awaiting. Since then, matters have worsened. In July, Robert Bush, a funeral director in Hull, was sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to 67 charges for bodies left decomposing in squalor. Forty-six grieving families had been reunited with the wrong ashes, but the real horror is that these will not be isolated cases. Under the law as it stands today, almost anyone can set themselves up as a funeral director.

• 8 Sept 2026 · Health Bill · Hansard source

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  I genuinely could not agree more. This is not at attack on the profession. The vast majority of funeral directors do their job with extraordinary skill, great care and huge professional integrity. It is precisely because of the trust that grieving families place in them every single day that we cannot allow a rogue minority to drag the reputation of the whole sector through the mud. In a written statement on 1 September, the Government said they intended that proposals for regulation would be forthcoming, but they set out no timetable, and detailed plans were promised only “in due course”. Families have already waited years and cannot be expected to wait indefinitely. New clause 41 would require the Secretary of State, within six months of the Bill passing, to extend the remit of the Human Tissue Authority beyond hospital mortuaries, which it currently covers, to funeral directors, private mortuaries, direct cremation services and any other organisation that transports or holds the bodies of the deceased.

• 8 Sept 2026 · Online Safety · Hansard source

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  I also warmly welcome this announcement. The sheer number of young people whose lives have been impacted by this issue is a damning indictment of a collective failure to keep children safe. Let us not forget that major tech companies have the capability to implement device-level controls but have chosen not to do so. As far as I am concerned, it is simply unforgivable that those companies innovate quickly on new products, yet so slowly on children’s safety. Given Ofcom’s sluggish implementation of the Online Safety Act 2023, can the Secretary of State explain to me how compliance with this policy will be monitored, and what sanctions will be available to address non-compliance?

• 7 Sept 2026 · Local Government Reorganisation · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the Secretary of State for her statement, but I have to confess to being a bit more confused now than I was when I walked into the room. When it comes to Hampshire, is this a pause or a cancellation? When will we know whether this titanic waste of council taxpayers’ money will re-emerge? The Government’s top-down reorganisation plans have cost councils across Hampshire so much time and money, at a point when finances are already stretched to breaking point. Has she calculated the cost? Will local authorities be reimbursed for the time and money already spent? When will we know what is in the plan?

• 7 Sept 2026 · Dover and Portsmouth: Protests · Hansard source

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  Yesterday afternoon, MPs across the Solent region were scrambling for reliable information with complete radio silence from the Home Office. As a result, we were not in a position to calm fear and tension. We still know very little about this extraordinary mega-dinghy turning up on our shores. This is not just west a little bit from Dover; this is halfway down the south coast. Will criminal gangs launch more small boats in the direction of Hampshire? Will the Minister share that intelligence with coastal MPs? Where was the intelligence on this incident? Can she also answer claims that the police were not properly resourced? More than 140 officers were dragged away from our communities and from communities as far away as London to police and deal with this incident. Can she please assure us that such incidents will be dealt with better in the future and that she will be doing everything to ensure that it does not happen again?

• 3 Sept 2026 · Sporting Events Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Droitwich and Evesham (Nigel Huddleston) in welcoming our hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Rebecca Paul) to her role—I know that she will be excellent. I also want to pay tribute to him as her predecessor. He was an exceptional Minister and shadow Secretary of State. He has always been an exceptional champion for the sectors that DCMS represents, and I know that he will be a formidable and quite terrifying Back Bencher as well, so it was a pleasure to hear from him. At the risk of universal agreement breaking out from all corners of the room, I too widely support the Bill. Sport is one of our country’s greatest strengths and most successful worldwide exports. Major sporting occasions represent such a huge source of national pride and inspiration, as the Secretary of State said. They are a massive driver of tourism, investment and jobs, and when they are done correctly, their legacy can have tentacles that go on forever. We are world class at delivering them. We know that British athletes and sportsmen are representing us on the world stage with the most phenomenal success. I was exceptionally proud of the UK deaf athletes who claimed 12 medals, including five gold, at the Tokyo 2025 Deaflympics, despite the fact that they received no public funding. They are elite athletes who make our country very proud. I say this as a gentle reminder to the Minister, given that sports is the theme today, to look again at their eligibility for UK Sport funding. Our strength is reflected not only in our participation and elite performance, but in our ability to host and showcase some of the world’s most significant sporting events. This small island gave the world some of our best-loved sports—from football to cricket, lawn tennis to boxing, rugby to snooker. We may not always lead the world as we did in those halcyon days of the 1700s, when the small village of Hambledon in Hampshire, known as the cradle of cricket, took on the rest of the world and won, but iconic British fixtures, from the premier league to Wimbledon, the British grand prix to the grand national, are globally synonymous with their sports. They bring people to our shores, generate economic growth, inspire participation and project the United Kingdom’s reputation around the world. That reputation is under pressure. The gap in soft power between the UK and our competitor nations is closing. Brand Finance has said that the UK has recorded a “sharper-than-average” drop in soft power, and the British Council says that the lead that western nations, including the UK, hold over our competitors is “narrowing”. That is why—I gently say to the Front Bench—it is disappointing that the Government’s action on soft power has failed to keep pace with their rhetoric. I really welcomed the creation of the UK Soft Power Council, but it cannot even claim to be a talking shop when it has met only four times in the last 18 months and the Culture Secretary, whom I admire enormously and who chairs it, has attended only twice. It needs to put together a coherent strategy, and if it did, major events would play a significant role. Our DCMS Committee will shortly report back on our recent inquiry into major events. The UK’s events sector is an engine for so much growth, but it has received limited attention from the Government until now. They could be doing so much more to unleash its potential and ease some of its constraints, so this Bill is a good place to start to redress that balance. In particular, given that when done well the ratio of investment to return on these kinds of things is so high, it makes sense for the Government to do all they can to attract opportunities to hold all kinds of major events, particularly sporting events. The Sport and Recreation Alliance told our Committee, as part of our inquiry: “Dedicated major events legislation would strengthen the UK’s global position as a key destination for major sporting events”, so I really support the principle of the Bill. Bespoke legislation for individual events creates uncertainty and is unwieldly and impractical. The framework introduced by this new legislation is welcomed by everybody—organisers, rights holders, sponsors and hosts. Our noble colleagues in the other place made such important improvements by widening the legislation to include other substantial annual events. To be honest, that is something our Committee would have introduced, had it not already been done—I suppose we should not be at all surprised that amendments proposed by the Paralympic medallist Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson have won that race. As she said, legislation in this area does not come along often, so we must take advantage of the opportunity. When Parliament has the chance to establish the framework, we should ensure that it is robust enough to support not only the next tournament but the ecosystem that exists all year. The benefits of the Bill in its amended form—creating offences on ticket touting, ambush marketing, and unauthorised trading and association—will be felt not just by the one-off totemic events, but by the stalwarts. That is why I am so grateful to the Secretary of State for her signal today that the Government do not intend to remove the amendments made in the House of Lords. Throughout our Committee’s inquiry, the evidence we received underlined a few wider concerns. The major events sector does not always feel recognised as a strategic national asset. Particularly organisers outside the world of sport often feel excluded from national planning and policymaking. The flower shows, cultural festivals, music festivals and military tattoos attract tourists, create jobs and bring people together, yet many witnesses told us that they do not feel recognised in the same way as their sporting counterparts. Across the board, the events sector is asking for better co-ordination and the removal of barriers that prevent it from reaching its economic potential. Witness after witness called for better cross-Government working, clearer points of contact, streamlined approvals and a more coherent long-term strategy. I appreciate that the Bill aims to make the United Kingdom more competitive in winning bids to host international sporting events, but it does not do much to alleviate the concerns that we have heard from other event organisers across the country about things such as the weight of bureaucracy, the cost of policing and the integration of events with transport plans, to name just a few. During the passage of the Bill in the other place, I was grateful to hear that the Government have promised a major events strategy, which we welcome. We hope that the Government will lean heavily on the conclusions and recommendations in our Committee’s report when it is published. I want to say one final thing about the contribution of business events. They really should not be forgotten. Conferences, exhibitions and trade fairs generate huge economic value for the UK and bring in massive inward investment. More than a million conferences and business meetings take place in the UK every year, generating £33.6 billion for the UK economy. Given its firepower, it is almost laughable that there is not an industrial strategy for the sector alone. The business events sector means business. We will shortly be releasing a stand-alone report on the topic, which I hope the Government are minded to take note of. In conclusion, this Bill is a welcome step. It has the potential to strengthen the UK’s ability to compete for and host major sporting events. It provides a more consistent framework and reflects the importance of sport to our economies, communities and international standing, but it needs to be the starting point of the conversation. For those reasons, I support the Bill’s objectives, welcome the improvements made in the other place and encourage the Government to see it as the beginning of a wider and more ambitious vision for the future.

• 3 Sept 2026 · Access to Sport: Poorer Families · Hansard source

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  I know that the Minister cares deeply about increasing sporting participation, so she must be as disappointed as I am that the Government’s rhetoric just does not match the facts. School sport funding has been cut; business rates rises mean that clubs and facilities are raising their participation fees, some by as much as 85%, making them less accessible for the poorest; local authorities are shutting their facilities; and the UK ranks near the bottom of EU expenditure on sport and physical activity. The Government say that this is important, but how can we believe them when existing facilities are shutting faster than they can invest in new ones?

• 6 Jul 2026 · Operation Valour · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Minister for Veterans and People to his new role. He will be interested to know that my Gosport constituency has the highest proportion of veterans in the country. A lot of them are saying that Operation Valour has good intentions when it comes to improving visibility and triaging access to care services, but it does not invest in services like housing and healthcare. The new Conservative administration that has just taken over Gosport borough council has inherited a 541-strong waiting list for council houses, and the NHS waiting list for treatment has gone up by 17,000 across Hampshire, this year alone. What will stop Op Valour being more than just window-dressing? How will it invest in the services that our veterans rely on?