Caroline Dinenage MP: speeches

Speeches

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

  More

  Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am addressing new clause 13, which provides the strict regulation of life-ending substances and self-administering devices. That means there will be transparency about what substances are used and how they are stored, prescribed and delivered. We owe it to patients, clinicians and the public to ensure that every part of the process is governed by clinical standards and ethical safeguards. For those physically unable to swallow or self-ingest, the new clause ensures that devices to support self-administration can be safely used. Without that, we risk creating a system that excludes some of the very people it is meant to support. While we must regulate the system properly, we must also reject amendments that would undermine or stall the Bill’s delivery. Amendment 19 proposes adding suicide prevention, the Mental Health Act and deprivation of liberty safeguards to the code of practice. As the Minister who put much of that legislation through, those are really important topics for me, but this is not the legislation to address them. Let us keep the code focused on the Bill’s core function of ensuring a safe, consistent and compassionate assisted dying process. Amendment 20 would allow non-adherence to the code to be used in civil or criminal proceedings. That is not appropriate. Guidance is meant to help professionals navigate difficult decisions, not become a legal trap. If clinicians act negligently, existing law already applies. We should not be creating new liabilities for those acting in good faith in very difficult conditions. I also oppose amendments 97 and 27, which would require the MHRA to license drugs specifically for assisted dying and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence to recommend them. That would make the Bill unworkable.

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

  More

  I am not entirely sure that I agree with that. However, I want to talk about the MHRA, which is just not set up to license drugs for ending life. Clinical trials to support such a licence and MHRA requirement would be impossible. However, the substances likely to be used are already tried and tested in other jurisdictions and are MHRA approved for other purposes. New clause 13 already provides us with the strict regulation that we need, without putting prohibitive hurdles along the path to a compassionate and painless death. Amendment 42 would remove the backstop date for implementation, giving the Government indefinite discretion over when or whether to put this law into effect. That cannot be right. If Parliament passes the Bill, there must be a clear and reasonable timeframe for implementation. The four-year backstop already gives Government more than enough time to get this right. Removing it simply invites delay. This is a moment to show that we can be both compassionate and competent, and that we can bring an end to the quiet suffering caused by an unjust status quo and replace it with a system that is safe, fair and accountable. Let us support new clause 13, let us reject amendments that would add red tape or stall the Bill’s progress, and let us show dying people that we are ready to treat them with the dignity and trust that they deserve.

• 10 Jun 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

  More

  First, I thank the Secretary of State for sending our Committee a letter on Friday evening setting out the Government’s intentions for AI and copyright. Reflecting what the Chair of the Liaison Committee, the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), said, both the nature of the letter and the method with which it was received were almost symbolic of how this whole process has been conducted from beginning to end. It was fairly haphazard and chaotic, and it was not entirely clear what the Secretary of State or the Minister intend to happen next, but I am grateful to the Minister for his offer to have a chat to talk us through it. Specifically, the Secretary of State and the Minister set out their amendments to the Bill and a plan to set up this parliamentary working group, and we would like to know a lot more about that. I understand exactly what the Government are trying to do: they are trying to placate peers and bring the Data (Use and Access) Bill to a conclusion, as the Minister says. The problem is that they are still not engaging with the fundamental existential issue, which is the concerns expressed by people across the creative industries. The Government’s amendment would expedite the economic impact assessment of the options in the AI copyright consultation. The Culture, Media and Sport Committee and the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee jointly wrote about that in February. Another amendment would expand the scope of the report to include training outside the UK and enforcement, which obviously should have happened from the start. The amendments are all welcome, but they miss the point of the creative industries’ concern that their work and intellectual property are being exploited wholesale, without permission, without payment and without practical means of recourse and redress. I note that the Minister told the House on 14 May: “I do not think that what is on the amendment paper today would deliver anything now.” —[ Official Report , 14 May 2025; Vol. 767, c. 417.] The Government giving themselves nine months rather than 12 to conclude what we already know—that their favoured consultation option is completely unworkable—is much less likely to deliver quickly the kind of transparency and enforcement for creators than the amendments proposed in the other place. The Secretary of State’s letter also mentions that the Government intend to set up a parliamentary working group to ensure that “Parliament has a voice directly into DSIT throughout this process”. The big fear is that this working group will simply be a channel through which the Government will report back on their own engagement with AI developers and rights holders. The Government instead need to be listening to the concerns of Parliament and industry stakeholders. Maybe then they will realise that this stakeholder engagement exercise between rights holders and AI developers has been tried before, as I said earlier, including in the last Parliament. It was scrutinised at the time by the Committee I chair, and each time things have got nowhere. Talks have collapsed because the status quo suits rogue developers acting in bad faith. They think they have nothing to lose by looting the work and value of our creators and our rights holders. If the Government press on with this working group, we will of course engage and do what we can to support, but let us call it what it is: a distraction technique to divert attention away from the fact that the Government have got themselves into a terrible pickle over this legislation. They started a consultation on AI and copyright when they already had stated a preferred outcome, and they have been cloth-eared to the legitimate concerns of the world-leading creative industries for month after month. They have been virtually dragged kicking and screaming to this position now, where they bring forward a couple of tiny amendments. They have been gaslighting Members of all parties and at both ends of this building who have attempted to draw attention to the situation. They have been somehow pitting our world-leading creative industries against AI, almost presenting them as luddites who are allergic to innovation and technology, when actually these are some of the most groundbreaking and innovative sectors out there. They are using AI every single day to produce world-beating pieces of creative content. The very nature of how the Government have conducted this legislation pits our creative industries against AI, and that is deeply unfair. It is all not good enough. This is simply a thinly veiled attempt to kick the can down the road—and if kicking the can down the road were an Olympic sport, the Minister would have to add “sport” to his portfolio. If he thinks that any of us are fooled by this, or that it will quieten those who want to stand up for our world-leading creative industries and against the existential threat that they face, he has another think coming.

• 22 May 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

  More

  The Leader of the House may be aware that cheerleading is one of the fastest-growing sports in the UK, and that it achieves the remarkable feat of keeping young girls engaged in sport at an age when so many disengage from school sports. She might not know, however, that two of the best cheerleading teams in the country are in Gosport. In fact, both Storm Athletics and Jessie Leigh Dance and Cheer Academy came back from the world summit in Florida early this month with gold medals and first-place trophies. I would love to see many more young people get involved in the sport, which has now been recognised as such by Sport England, but funding to support more disadvantaged youngsters to get involved cannot be applied for yet. Will the Leader of the House lead the cheer for cheerleading as a debate here in Parliament? [ Interruption . ]

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

  More

  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.

• 18 Dec 2024 · Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls · Hansard source

  More

  Ultra-realistic deepfake porn is increasingly being used to target women, and I know the Government agree because they committed to criminalising it in their manifesto. For the sake of victims, intimate image abuse needs to be tackled without delay, so why on earth did the Government not back Baroness Owen’s Bill in the House of Lords to ban it last Friday? The Minister is a great talker; she talks a good game, but for the sake of women, when will she deliver?

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

  More

  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?

• 5 Sept 2024 · Great British Energy Bill · Hansard source

  More

  That is the exact point that I wanted to make; I was very keen for the Secretary of State to take my intervention on that point. The key practical, tangible thing that my constituents want to know is when they will see the £300 saving that he promised them during the general election. That is what really impacts families and households up and down this country. When a Minister comes to sum up the debate, will they restate that commitment to households about a £300 saving?