Cat Smith MP: speeches 2026

Speeches

• 14 Sept 2026 · Select Committee Chairs: Period of Leave · Hansard source

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  On behalf of the Procedure Committee, I thank the Leader of the House for bringing forward these motions. I never had any doubt that he would be a radical and reforming Leader of the House, and the motions are evidence of that radical reforming nature that he has always had in him, which I am pleased to see. The Procedure Committee has corresponded frequently with the Modernisation Committee. On 4 March my Committee expressed—the Leader of the House’s Committee published this—its wholehearted support for the acting Select Committee Chair role, and on 25 March we supported the motions for virtual participation. The motions reflect the nature of us being a modern and welcoming workplace where MPs’ participation is supported, regardless of our health status—or, perhaps, parental leave—as such things, which can happen to any one of us, should not bar us from participating and representing our constituents’ views in this place. The measures come from a line of reforms, including proxy voting, which ensure that we are that radical and reforming Parliament that will be welcoming to anyone, regardless of their family set-up. My view is that the priority will always be for members to attend Committees in person. As a Committee Chair, I can speak to how much easier it is to chair a meeting when members are in the room rather than all on screens. Does the Leader of the House foresee us having a thorough and timely review of these schemes in time to assess whether they could be made permanent and whether reforms may need to be made to them at that stage? I welcome the motions and hope that the House will choose to support them.

• 8 Sept 2026 · Retirement Property Management Companies: Regulation · Hansard source

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  I, too, am very much aware of this issue. In my constituency I have a property called Williamson Court, which is run by McCarthy & Stone, and everything that colleagues are saying sounds very familiar. Does the right hon. Gentleman have any sense of the scale of this issue right across the country, because it strikes me that we represent very different parts of the UK?

• 29 Apr 2026 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  6. What steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to help tackle violence against women and girls.

• 29 Apr 2026 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  Survivors of male violence often take a long time to rebuild their lives. I am supporting a constituent at the moment whose perpetrator is about to be released from prison but who is receiving no support from Lancaster city council, her housing provider, to enable her to relocate to another area so that the perpetrator is not released into the same community. What advice can the Minister give me, and my constituent, to support that housing move so that she and her children can feel safe?

• 28 Apr 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I thank the Chancellor for her work to lift the two-child benefit cap, which was cruelly brought in by the Conservative Government. Does she agree that that is not only morally the right thing to do, but economically good news for the 1,690 families in Lancaster and Wyre who will have more money in their pockets to spend in our local economy in Lancashire—unlike the super-rich, who would have just taken it to offshore tax havens?

• 28 Apr 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.

• 28 Apr 2026 · Park Home Owners · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope). Demographically, Lancaster and Wyre has a very similar number of park homes to his constituency, and I have discussed them with him on a number of occasions, which shows the cross-party consensus that what is going on in this industry is nothing short of a scandal. Colleagues may have seen my constituency in the “Panorama” documentary on park homes in 2024, in which Wyre country park featured. I pay tribute to the two brave park residents who spoke out and were interviewed, but that did not come consequence-free. We have talked a lot about bullying and intimidation, and sadly, in August 2025, both their park homes burned down on the same day, in broad daylight, 90 minutes apart from each other. The cause was never found—I will leave that hanging, and I pay tribute to them. There are a great many park home sites that are well run, and probably a lot of park home owners are listening to this and thinking, “Actually, I live somewhere that is pretty good.” But unfortunately, the rogue operators are now giving the entire industry a bad name, which is why we need to take action. I agree entirely with the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) at the beginning of the debate and I congratulate him on securing it. In the limited time that I have, I will take the opportunity to put on record my concerns about one particular site in my constituency, called Havenlyn residential park. I have been approached by dozens of residents and park home owners on that site. The issues of bullying, intimidation and rules being changed without any consultation are alarming. In the past couple of days, I have heard from one of them that the terms and conditions of park residents have now been changed, so that if someone is selling a park home on that site, they cannot sell it to anyone younger than them. Ultimately, that will force many into an impossible situation, because, given the nature of park homes, older people live on these sites and there are issues when they are looking to sell—they might be towards the end of their life, or perhaps the previous owner had died and left it as an inheritance to their children, which, as I have heard, just ends up becoming a burden. In the remaining seconds that I have left, I will ask the Minister these questions. Can he do any more to empower local authorities, which are meant to be regulating and enforcing regulations? Do they need stronger statutory duties or more resources, because at the moment Wyre council does not seem able to protect residents in my constituency?

• 28 Apr 2026 · Select Committees · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to follow a former member of the Procedure Committee. I thank the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) for all that she did in contributing to the work of the Committee, which came to the clear and consensual view that the elections of Select Committee Chairs at the beginning of this Session somewhat resembled a silly season with excessive campaigning. Newer Members of Parliament who may not even have expected to be in the House found it very overwhelming. We were able to take that information and put together a sensible set of rules creating a level playing field for all candidates, while respecting the right of Members to open their office doors without falling over a pile of leaflets, which was one of the problems that were fed back to the Committee last time. I hope that we will be able to make the change in the arrangements for the election of the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee to align it with the election of other Select Committee Chairs, thus showing that it is a Select Committee just like other Select Committees. I thank the Leader of the House for accepting the Committee’s findings in full, and I look forward to supporting them.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Mr Speaker. May I seek your guidance on the rules about how many questions a Member needs to stay in the Chamber for after speaking?

• 25 Mar 2026 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  I would like to thank the Prime Minister for the £47 million that this Government have given to Lancashire county council to repair potholes. However, my constituents still feel like they need a moon buggy to navigate the streets of Lancashire, so would he agree that the Reform councillors of Lancashire county council are clearly wired to the moon if they think they are making effective use of this £47 million?

• 25 Mar 2026 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 25 March.

• 16 Mar 2026 · Heating Oil Support · Hansard source

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  On behalf of my constituents, I thank the Minister for his speedy response to the situation, which I know from my inbox has been very welcome to those using heating oil, but can he reassure us that the correspondence from Government to Lancashire county council will make it clear that those on LPG will also be eligible for the fund?

• 5 Mar 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Lancashire county council’s consultation on the closure of care homes and adult day centres is now closed, and the decision lies with the Reform-led council. Adult day centres in my constituency, such as Vale View, are at a real risk of closure. May I ask for a debate in Government time about the value that day care centres offer both the users and the families who support them?

• 2 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill · Hansard source

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  On that point, will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

• 2 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. His APPG sounds very interesting. I am sure that those on the Front Bench heard those points, and I agree with them. In my remaining time, I want to address the need to protect our democracy from foreign interference. In cleaning up politics, we need to address specific weaknesses identified. There is a very good blog by Professor Alan Renwick at the University College London constitution unit, which I would love to quote from, but my time is quite limited. He highlights that while the Bill introduces stricter eligibility criteria for company donors, there are still huge gaps regarding cryptocurrency and the potential for illicit funds to bypass traditional checks. We should be bold enough to start talking about a donation cap, too. There is no plausible argument against introducing caps on political donations to prevent a small number of wealthy people from exerting disproportionate influence. The changes made in the last piece of legislation that went through this House on electoral law have left a huge vulnerability. That legislation abolished the 15-year rule we used to have, whereby citizens who had lived outside the UK for 15 years or longer lost the right to vote and to donate to UK politics. When that rule was abolished, there was no way for elections officers in councils up and down the country to verify that people claiming to have lived at an address in another constituency in 1976 actually did so, because those records were not kept past 15 years, as of course there was no point. Now, there are permissible donors to the UK electoral system who claim to have lived in the UK, and we have no way of proving whether they did. That is a huge vulnerability, and I urge those on the Front Bench to look again at that, and at closing that potential back door that we have left open to foreign money interfering in UK politics. We are an outlier in having this rule; in the Republic of Ireland, for instance, those who leave the country lose the right to vote after one year. I would like to finish by saying that many colleagues have made the case for proportional representation, and this Bill would have been a great opportunity to set up a commission to look at all the different options that would be available to make sure that people feel that their vote counts, and that there is no such thing as a wasted vote.

• 2 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill · Hansard source

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  Those of us who are in this Chamber on a Thursday morning know that we sometimes have questions to the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission then, and I say that because in the last Parliament, as an Opposition MP, I was a spokesperson for that Committee. It is the only time in the parliamentary week when Members pose questions to an opposition Member to answer. That is an important point, because it highlights the fact that the Electoral Commission is not answerable to Government, of any colour; rather, it is answerable to Parliament, because it is a regulator like no other. It regulates politics, and it therefore holds a very special status. I also served in the last Parliament on the Elections Bill Committee, and I saw there what happens when political parties use legislation for political advantage. I am really pleased to be able to say that the Bill before us contains many of the important democratic principles that I have been speaking about for the last 11 years in this House, and I am excited to vote for it on Second Reading this evening. Among the Bill’s measures is the expansion of voting rights to 16 and 17-year-olds. We have heard some quite bizarre things said about that so far this evening, some of which were really quite remarkable. The Bill also includes bank cards among the forms of ID that can be used to access voting. For those who were not in the last Parliament to see the Elections Bill go through and become the Elections Act 2022, let me say that time and again, Conservative Ministers told us at the Dispatch Box that if people need ID to collect a parcel at the post office, they should need ID to vote at a polling station; but if we want to collect a parcel at a post office, we can use a bank card for that, so this is completely in line with the arguments made for the introduction of ID, and I would expect the official Opposition to support expanding the relevant ID to include bank cards. It is important that we come together on upholding confidence in democracy, because confidence in democracy is not very high in this country right now. That is why it is so important that expanding the franchise to include 16 and 17-year-olds goes hand in hand with working with our colleagues in education to ensure that those young citizens are equipped to vote, and have the necessary support. Already, young citizens in Wales and Scotland have the right to vote, and bringing English and Northern Irish citizens into line makes logical sense.