Caroline Dinenage MP: speeches

Speeches

• 30 Jun 2025 · Defence Procurement: SMEs · Hansard source

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  Our UK defence industry can have few better ambassadors around the world than our Red Arrows. As the Hawk aircraft comes to an end, will the Minister look closely at the British-designed modular aircraft being developed by Aeralis, because it would support SMEs right across our country, including by bringing around 600 jobs to StandardAero in Gosport and about 1,000 to the south Hampshire area? Surely that would be a much better way to support our national SMEs than opting for the Italian-Russian Yak-130 aircraft, which the MOD is rumoured to prefer.

• 25 Jun 2025 · Nuclear-certified Aircraft Procurement · Hansard source

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  I also welcome this announcement, but can we talk about money? We already know that 20% of our defence budget is spent on the nuclear deterrent. It is disproportionately expensive. If we are now extending the nuclear capability with these airdrop weapons, what impact will that have on the budget for the rest of our conventional armed forces?

• 18 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I rise to speak to new clause 121, which is tabled in my name and supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) and, I am very pleased to say, by Members from both sides of this Chamber. It would extend the definition of extreme pornography to include depictions of non-fatal strangulation, known as NFS. NFS was made a criminal offence in 2021 under the last Government, not because we think the Government should necessarily stick their nose into what people want to get up to in the bedroom, but because abusers use non-fatal strangulation without consent, as it leaves little visible injury and makes it hard to prosecute under domestic abuse cases. When a woman dies from strangulation, it is becoming increasingly common to use the defence that it was a sex game gone wrong. Non-fatal strangulation has a life out there in the world of online porn. As we know, the UK is a large porn consumer. In any given month, more than 10 million adults in the UK will access online porn, and the vast majority of them will be chaps. That is up to them—we do not judge—but we know from research that online porn is so widespread that one in 10 children have seen it by the age of nine. Unfortunately, it is the guide that many young people use to learn about sex. That is why I am extremely worried that non-fatal strangulation has been found to be rife on porn sites. Evidence has shown that it is directly influencing the sexual behaviour of young men, who are non-consensually strangling young women during consensual sex. Recent polling has suggested that 17% of 16 to 34-year-olds have been strangled without giving consent during consensual sex. We are not being prudes in calling for this misogynistic act to be banned in online porn. Health experts warn that there is no way to strangle someone without risk, given that blood and airflow may both be restricted. A person can become unconscious within 10 seconds of being choked, and within 17 seconds they can have a seizure due to lack of oxygen. Death can occur within 150 seconds of being rendered unconscious. Almost 20% of the women killed in the UK since 2014 were strangled by an intimate partner. Perpetrators who choke their partners are seven times more likely to kill them. I am sure the Minister will agree that it is alarming to hear reports of young men and boys seeking advice on how they can safely strangle their partner in bed and that girls are expected to accept that kind of behaviour. There was even a report last year, which the Minister may have heard about, of draft personal, social, health and economic education guidance from a Welsh local authority including safe choking during sex for a child sex education class. We need to send a signal that strangling your partner in bed is not safe—it can be a precursor to coercive, abusive behaviour. I know that the Government also want to send that signal, because in February they said, in their response to an independent review commissioned by the previous Government: “The government will take urgent action to ensure pornography platforms, law enforcement and prosecutors are taking all necessary steps to tackle this increasingly prevalent harm.” I therefore urge the Minister to support my new clause 121, which sets out one of the necessary steps referred to in the Government’s response. We need to back this amendment, ban this harmful practice, and send out a very strong message that depictions of non-fatal strangulation in porn normalise something that is not normal and is not safe.

• 2 Jun 2025 · Strategic Defence Review · Hansard source

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  My constituents in Gosport will be keen for the Secretary of State to clarify two points. First, the line on page 105 about reconsidering “training estate needs” will concern many, so will he confirm that the outstanding training establishments at HMS Sultan and HMS Collingwood, which employ so many, will not be under threat? Secondly, when will the promised funds for accommodation come through? The previous Government spent £400 million on upgrading accommodation, which was beginning to filter through, but some 69 service family accommodation units in Gosport are now empty because they are deemed not fit for human habitation, and that is getting worse under his watch.

• 28 Apr 2025 · Football Governance Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady is right. English football thrives because the ecosystem runs from the grassroots to the top of the elite. Our job is to ensure that it continues to thrive, and that every aspect of that ecosystem is protected and supported. Some irresponsible club owners continue to play fast and loose with club finances and assets. Far too many clubs have been on the brink of collapse, and that is why the regulator must have a role in protecting English football. However, the regulator will need to bring together all voices in that complex ecosystem for it to work properly. The Culture, Media and Sport Committee, which I chair, is looking forward to our pre-appointment hearing with David Kogan, the preferred candidate, next week. It has been a long journey to get here, as I am sure the Secretary of State appreciates, having scheduled and then postponed hearings more than once, as Ministers have struggled to pick a candidate. The chair of the football regulator will be utterly critical to ensuring that the regulator performs its role well. They will steer the ship. They will set the temperature for football, going forward. They will have to come in on the front foot and broker strong relationships with stakeholders across football to get full buy-in. I have already spoken about some of the nay-sayers and detractors. The chair will need to build faith and demonstrate a good understanding of the dynamic football ecosystem to have the clout that they will need. However, they need to ensure they do not come with a load of industry baggage. It is a really difficult position to be in. At the same time, to be effective, they must demonstrate regulatory experience. Ultimately, the chair will have to demonstrate that they can be objective, fair and, crucially, independent of Government, the leagues and individual football clubs. It is a very difficult job to recruit for. Indeed, UEFA has raised concerns and threatened sanctions over the prospect of Government interference. That is why I am surprised that the Government have proposed a candidate who is so close to the Labour party, and who has donated money to the Chancellor and others. It raises concerns about whether the regulator can truly be seen as independent, given their close ties to members of the Government. I expect that the Committee will want to explore that in detail when we hear from Mr Kogan next week. He will need to demonstrate that he intends the regulator to be operationally 100% independent from political interference. I struggle to see how that will happen, but my mind is open, because the Select Committee’s job is to hold a pre-appointment hearing with this potential regulator. As other hon. Members have mentioned, the former chair of the BBC, clearly a talented, capable and very smart man, was undone by the impression that he gave of lacking independence from Government. Like the BBC, very many people out there are willing this body to fail, and I do not want to see that happen. The worst-case scenario for everybody is if the regulator is undermined in its infancy. Even before the chair is in place, there have been some concerning signs about the Government’s approach to the independent football regulator. We know that many clubs in the premier league in particular have expressed misgivings and in some cases very strong opposition to the regulator. Despite what the Secretary of State has said—she has spoken very strongly on this—there are some lingering doubts. The whole process has been plagued by leaks and delays. Members have seen and heard the rumours that the regulator was poised to be thrown out on to the latest bonfire of quangos even before it had started. When discussing the so-called blockers, it seems telling that the Government chose to single out the Gardens Trust, Sport England and the Theatres Trust, which will no longer be consulted over planning. When considering AI and copyright, the Government seem to be siding with big tech over creative industries. Members will forgive me for beginning to feel like the sectors we represent on the Culture, Media and Sport Committee are not valued by the Secretary of State’s Department. I look forward to hearing next week from the proposed regulator and to seeing the Bill progress through the House. I think the Bill can improve the resilience of clubs and encourage sensible financial decisions. I would like clarity on how the regulator will operate alongside the cost control measures that it will have no oversight of, such as premier league profit and sustainability rules, which we have recently seen clubs such as Chelsea manipulate to their own advantage and which will arguably undermine the regulator. I would be grateful if the Minister came back to me on that. I also want cast-iron assurances that the Bill will prevent the sort of painful, appalling situation that has been experienced by Reading FC with its owner, Dai Yongge. Otherwise, we will all be wasting our time. It is imperative that this Bill safeguards English football, which is central to our communities and to the national fabric of our country. Football is a unifier: it brings people together for the love of the game, from the grassroots to the top of the elite clubs, and it is the envy of the world. All the other countries in the world would love to have our football leagues. We must secure its future for generations to come.

• 27 Feb 2025 · War in Ukraine: Third Anniversary · Hansard source

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  It is almost as if the hon. Member had read what I wrote on my bit of paper. It is miraculous. I want to know her lottery numbers for next week. She is exactly right. My own Ukrainian family —and I call them family, because they are now part of my family—have made lives for themselves in this country, and they have become an asset to our community. In the event of a sustainable peace deal, Ukraine will of course want and need its brightest and best to return to rebuild the country, but so many of them simply do not have anything to go back to, such is the devastation that has been wrought by Russia in destroying 167,000 civilian buildings. UNESCO says that almost 500 cultural sites have also been lost as a result of Russia’s attempt to erase Ukrainian heritage, and so many of the communities that Ukrainians have fled just will not be the same. They will not have anything to go back to, and they will miss the familiar landmarks, meeting places and, most importantly and most sadly, the people they wanted to go back to.

• 27 Feb 2025 · War in Ukraine: Third Anniversary · Hansard source

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  I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) for calling this debate. I was very pleased to support his application to the Backbench Business Committee. Before I start the speech that I have written, I want to say something about the Ukrainian people. No one, least of all Vladimir Putin when he launched his illegal invasion three years ago, understood what they were taking on with the Ukrainian people. With their spirit, ingenuity and incredible ability to innovate and make the most of every single asset at their disposal, they have faced up to a new form of warfare. At the same time, they have faced not only the old school of tanks, trenches and almost hand-to-hand combat but the high tech of drones, digital and modern equipment. It shows beyond doubt—a cautionary tale for others who may be thinking of invading a sovereign nation—how far people will go and how hard they will fight for their friends, neighbours and families, and how desperately they will defend their homeland, independence, language and identity. We should all take a moment to reflect on that, and we should pay tribute to them for their incredible bravery. I also pay tribute to the British people, who have reacted to this dreadful situation with so much warmth, and of course to the Government. Our Government and the Opposition were united, and we acted very swiftly in the first days of the unprovoked and illegal invasion. Prime Minister Johnson led from the front in his defence of Ukraine, and of the Ukrainians’ right to sovereignty and independence. He set the pace for other European countries to follow, and he had the backing of the British people, who care about this. We care about this in my area of Gosport because we have skin in the game. It is an area with a very proud history of serving our armed forces, particularly the Royal Navy. It was so typical of the generosity of spirit of Gosport people that so many Ukrainians made Gosport their home. I must declare an interest, because one of those homes was, and still is, mine. I saw the Russian tanks rolling into Donbas and towards Kyiv, and I could not stand by and do nothing, so my husband and I joined the Homes for Ukraine scheme. I have never spoken publicly about that before. Gosport welcomed over 300 Ukrainians to our area, and a few weeks after we signed up to the Homes for Ukraine scheme, my family and I were boosted by two women. They are still with us, and I now refer to them as my Ukrainian wife and my Ukrainian daughter. They and many others have been in the UK for almost three years.

• 27 Feb 2025 · War in Ukraine: Third Anniversary · Hansard source

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  Yes, that is very welcome. A lot of people from the Ukrainian community want certainty about what to expect and about the security of the world around them. To follow on from an earlier comment, we hear a lot about planning for the war, but I want to know a little more about the Government’s planning for the peace and working towards a day when many Ukrainians will be able to return to their home country. What about those here under the scheme who have made homes, relationships and jobs here and are contributing to the economies and communities in which they live? Will they be able to stay indefinitely? People are beginning to ask that question, and as much as we understand that Ukraine will want its brightest and best back, there are some who simply do not have anything to go back to. To conclude, contrary to the messaging coming out of the Munich security conference, there are values that we all share as European countries, which we must now pay to defend. However, we must not just use words; we must show action and we must show solidarity. I suppose I want to give the Minister, who I know cares about this very deeply, the opportunity to affirm the Government’s commitment that, as the geopolitical weathers change, our dedication as a nation—and as a Government and an Opposition—to Ukraine, its incredible and indefatigable people, and their democratically elected President, will never waver.

• 27 Feb 2025 · Gaza: BBC Coverage · Hansard source

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  The BBC has definitely got questions to answer here, not just on the dealings over this film but on the wider concerns about the representation and reporting of the Gaza conflict. As the Secretary of State said, Hamas are a proscribed terrorist organisation yet they are referred to as such in just 7.7% of instances of reporting by the BBC. It took four days after broadcast for this programme to be taken off iPlayer, and at that point the BBC said there had to be further due diligence with the production company. It is not the first time that the BBC has had issues with its due diligence, but in subject matters as sensitive and incendiary as this, language matters, and treating issues like this with detail, sensitivity and impartiality matters especially. The BBC board is meeting today. How confident is the Secretary of State that the board is providing the necessary challenge to executives to maintain that due diligence and to maintain the trust in the organisation?

• 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 congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) on securing this vital debate. When he introduced the online safety White Paper in 2019, it was because we could not rely on big tech to regulate what was hosted on their platforms; it simply wasn’t working. Under the previous Government, we saw the tragic death of Molly Russell in 2017 and the complete failure of tech firms to adequately police illegal content on their sites, let alone the lawful but awful content that was being fed to our children from dawn till dusk. Here we are, six years later, to discuss how the Online Safety Act is being implemented. In the meantime, virtually every Minister who has held the baton for this issue, including myself for a couple of years, has used this piece of legislation as almost a silver bullet for every harm that is encountered in the online world. I have often said that if ever there was a piece of legislation for which the phrase, “We mustn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” was invented, it is this one. We now need to hit the ground running and ensure that the legislation is implemented fast and effectively, in line with the sentiment that gave rise to it, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam suggested. Every day that Ofcom does not enforce its age assurance requirements for porn providers and illegal harms codes is a day that young children across the country are at serious risk of having their childhood stolen. The Online Safety Act was a complicated and groundbreaking piece of legislation. No other Government in the world at the time had attempted to regulate the internet so effectively. I was pleased that when the Bill came back from the House of Lords, it was not just the size of the platforms that was taken into account when deciding the category of service, but the level of risk they represented, which is also really important. It is important to recognise that other countries and the EU have legislated while we have refined, and now we need to act. I am glad that since the Act was passed in October 2023, Ofcom has worked at pace to bring forward codes on areas such as children’s safety duties, illegal harms and age assurance, which will have a massive and tangible impact. Ofcom intends to consult on further proposals to strengthen the codes this spring, and it is really important that that focuses on the issues we are seeing, such as hash-matching for terrorist and intimate image abuse content. That is particularly important considering the emergence of deepfakes as the new front in the war against women and girls—99% of pornographic images and deepfakes are of women. In the light of this increasingly agile, polarising and inventive online world, I am concerned by reports in the media that the Government have decided to put the drive to keep protections up to date with tech developments on ice. There are reports in The Telegraph that Elon Musk is pushing for the Act to be watered down as part of a bargain to avoid trade tariffs. We are all looking for reassurance that, after so many years of work on this legislation by so many people, the Government will not water down or somehow filter its protections. The Government have acknowledged that there has been an increase in suicides among young people, with suicide-related internet use found in 26% of deaths in under-20s. They made a manifesto commitment to build on this Act, and they must not row back on that. We cannot give up the fight to make the digital world a more pleasant and user-friendly place. We must never forget that if internet companies were doing what they say they are to implement their own terms and conditions, this legislation would not even be necessary, and the Government need to hold them to account.

• 27 Jan 2025 · Creative Industries · Hansard source

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  I am delighted to have the opportunity to talk about our world-leading creative industries. I listened very carefully to everything the Minister said, and there was a lot of it. I love his undoubted passion for these sectors, and I love the understanding he has for them and the really strong rhetoric he puts into his support for them. I just hope and pray that it is contagious, and that he has the energy to ensure that it delivers a real, meaningful and robust commitment from the Government that turns into action on behalf of these sectors. There is so much we can be proud of. In the past couple of weeks we have seen Oscar nominations for Felicity Jones, Cynthia Erivo, Ralph Fiennes and everyone’s favourite, “Wallace and Gromit”. I am sure the Minister was not impervious to the brat summer that we all went through last year, reflected in Charli XCX’s five Brit award nominations. This year, we will have the inaugural South by Southwest London event and the World Design Congress, which will be taking place here for the first time in more than 50 years. Our creative industries are remarkable and they have an immense soft power value. I welcome the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office working together to increase the UK’s influence abroad. As ever, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee is a trailblazer, working with the Foreign Affairs Committee and the International Development Committee last year to look at the BBC World Service and its future. Ministers can expect to see the results very soon. The launch of the Soft Power Council, as a collaboration between DCMS and the FCDO, has been welcomed by the creative industries. I say welcomed, but I should say tentatively welcomed. Alongside warm words, the sector also needs to see the Government walk the walk if they are really to harness the global super power of our creative industries, whether by cutting red tape, establishing bilateral cultural agreements that enable our creatives to tour the world, or looking at how we pitch Government intervention to ensure the world continues to invest here. With that in mind, I am concerned that the breadth of the creative industries is under-represented on the council. Fashion, design, video games and, apart from music, most of the performing arts are missing, despite their immense popularity and international influence. I wonder whether the Minister could look at that.

• 20 Jan 2025 · Planning Reform · Hansard source

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  In Gosport we are facing a massive increase in our housing numbers, and planners are putting in applications to build across the very last green spaces, in the strategic gap between Gosport and Fareham, which already has air quality issues and overstretched local infrastructure. We do have an abundance of disused military sites, however, so what priority is the Minister giving to encourage development on brownfield sites rather than eating up the last remaining green fields in areas such as Gosport, which are already overdeveloped?

• 18 Nov 2024 · Improving Service Life: Personnel and Families · Hansard source

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  The Royal Fleet Auxiliary is often overlooked, yet it is vital to the sustainability and success of our Royal Navy. Often its pay and conditions do not keep track with either the armed forces or the civil service. What can the Secretary of State say to members of the RFA to reassure them that they are valued?

• 12 Nov 2024 · Tackling Image-based Abuse · Hansard source

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  It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I thank the hon. Member for Bolton North East (Kirith Entwistle) for tabling such an important debate, and she made some really powerful points. I declare an interest: being very elderly, at one stage I was the Minister for Women and Equalities, and I was responsible for bringing forward the Revenge Porn Helpline. When that legislation came through, I was hopeful that that vital resource would be something temporary, and that one day it would be abolished because we did not need it any more. In actual fact, quite the opposite is true: it is busier than ever. As the hon. Member for Bolton North East said, it is catching some terrible perpetrators of the most horrific online abuse. I was also the Minister for Digital and Culture who held the baton for a couple of years on the Online Safety Act 2023. I hope that legislation will offer more protection for the victims of this humiliating crime, which, as we know, disproportionately affects women. But technology moves so fast. I am concerned that, despite the protections in the Act and the Revenge Porn Helpline, the emergence of deepfakes in particular has opened up a new front in the war on women—I say that because 99% of pornographic images and deepfakes are of women. Literally tens of millions of deepfake images are being produced every year, most of them sexual, as the hon. Member for Bolton North East said. The fact that the use of nudification apps and the creation of ultra-realistic deepfake porn for private use is still legal, and worse, becoming more popular, is a war on women’s autonomy. It is a war on our dignity, and a war on our identity. The creation of these unpleasant sexual or nude deepfakes serves to push us out of those spaces and to undermine and silence us, both online and offline. We must do everything we can to stand against it. I am sure the Minister agrees that we owe a debt to my noble Friend Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge for her work to legislate in this area. She encountered some hate of her own when she was appointed to the other place—she was too young and too female—but her very presence there indicates exactly why we need young women in both Houses to stand up against these injustices and bring them to the fore. I hope the Minister will do everything in her power to see my noble Friend’s fantastic Bill become law.

• 11 Nov 2024 · Defence: 2.5% GDP Spending Commitment · Hansard source

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  In 2023, I asked the Secretary of State’s colleague, the right hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson), who is now the Education Secretary, how Labour’s plans for VAT on school fees would impact the continuity of education allowance for forces families. I was told that I “need not be concerned about what we are discussing today.” —[ Official Report , 11 January 2023; Vol. 725, c. 570.] It is two years on and VAT on school fees goes live in January, but details of the rates of continuity of education allowance still have not been articulated to the forces families in my constituency. As the proud MP for a military constituency, I can tell the Secretary of State that I am concerned and my constituents are concerned. What is the plan to better communicate with them?

• 6 Nov 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  You will know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that the Gosport constituency is a community built around a shared history of service in and for our armed forces. Thirteen per cent of my constituents are veterans. Those are good, hard-working people who have served our country and asked for little in return, but they are not wealthy people. They are disproportionately impacted by the Budget, which delivers the opposite of the growth we were promised: it delivers taxes and cuts that will leave my constituents disproportionately poorer. It started with the baffling decision to cut winter fuel payments. Many of my constituents exist just outside the pension credit threshold and are hanging on by their fingertips. The Government’s own data suggests that 13,000 of them will lose that lifeline through the cold winter months. Age UK says that it will be 5,000 more than that, which will be 91% of pensioners in Gosport. I have real concern for the health of older people in Gosport during these winter months. That concern extends to the future of some of our most important businesses: the care homes and nurseries who do such vital work and employ so many of our constituents. At this stage, I must direct the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Those organisations are seriously impacted by the triple whammy of minimum wage increases, employer national insurance threshold decreases and contribution increases. Hopscotch nursery in my constituency told me that the £25 billion tax increase will impact businesses that employ a high number of low-wage workers. It estimates that the changes will add almost £1 million in costs to their businesses. That cannot be alleviated by productivity increases or headcount reductions, because childcare ratios are set by the Government. The services to which we entrust our most precious and loved family members rely on face-to-face care and human interaction, so the extra costs facing childcare and adult social care services will be borne by their customers—working parents and the vulnerable elderly—and by employees through lower wage growth.

• 30 Jul 2024 · Support for Ukraine · Hansard source

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  Of course I welcome the Secretary of State’s and the Government’s commitment to supporting Ukraine, and the provision of military and humanitarian aid is important, but sadly it will not be enough to secure long-term peace. Will he reassure me that if and when the Ukrainians seek peace talks, the UK will stand by them, and support them absolutely in their efforts to bring this wasteful and terrible war to a conclusion?

• 30 Jul 2024 · Support for Ukraine · Hansard source

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  17. What steps he is taking to support Ukraine.

• 25 Jul 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  On behalf of the 12% of people in my constituency who have served in the armed forces, I ask the Cabinet Secretary to explain why he is not joined by a veterans Minister on the Front Bench this morning.