Charlotte Nichols MP: speeches

Speeches

• 26 Jun 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  This is Armed Forces Week, and as we celebrate the contribution of our armed forces, we must do more to support those who serve our country. Too many of our veterans return home with post-traumatic stress disorder, for which there are few treatment options. Since December 2023, the Home Office has been sitting on a response to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs report on barriers to research on schedule 1 substances, including MDMA and psilocybin, which are used in other jurisdictions such as Australia to treat PTSD. Can the Leader of the House please find out where this response is, and arrange for a debate in Government time on novel treatments for mental health conditions?

• 22 May 2025 · Independent Sentencing Review · Hansard source

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  With the National Police Chiefs’ Council having declared violence against women and girls a national emergency, it is right that we explore radical methods to bring down the scale of offending in our communities. We know that most sexual offending is not about sex at all, but about power. However, for the subset of convicts whose offending is driven by sexual compulsion, chemical castration could be an option. Is there estimate data on how many future offences that could prevent? By definition, it would only be for those who have already offended. As I am not aware of a method of permanent chemical castration, is there capacity in the Probation Service to monitor ongoing compliance with treatment?

• 3 Apr 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  In 2018, Warrington borough council applied for and was successful with a proposal for a new 56-place special free school for pupils with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder, whose needs cannot be met by our current provisions. The free school is part of an expansion plan to address that issue, and the implications of dither and delay from the Department for Education have exacerbated the funding challenges that the local authority and our schools face when sending pupils to out-of-borough independent placements, which cost circa £8.5 million from the high needs budget in 2024. May we have a debate in Government time about the process for opening new schools, and ensuring that pupils with special educational needs and disabilities, and their families, can have their needs met in their own boroughs?

• 27 Mar 2025 · Prevention of Drug Deaths · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing this crucial debate. The statistics are harrowing, as other Members have said, but how have we got here? A decade-long disinvestment in drug treatment services, approaches more fit for scoring political points than actually solving a problem, a complete disregard for the expert guidance provided by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, and an utter lack of expediency. Given those factors, it is little wonder that we have ended up in this position. My work as the unremunerated chair of the Centre for Evidence Based Drug Policy has shown me that there are practical measures that can make a real difference. Diamorphine-assisted therapy, or DAT, has a robust evidence base for helping people who have not responded to other treatment modalities reduce their illicit drug use. A DAT clinic in Middlesbrough demonstrated extraordinary outcomes: a 97% attendance rate, an 80% reduction in street heroin use, and a drastic drop in criminal activity—from 541 offences before treatment to just three in the same period following treatment. Those outcomes translated into an estimated £2.1 million saving across the health and criminal justice sectors, in addition to the lives saved. Tragically, the clinic was closed due to fragmented, unsustainable funding—yet another example of short-term thinking undermining long-term gains. The enhanced drug treatment service in Glasgow, which offers a similar model, has estimated that its services have resulted in a 50% to 70% reduction in health service costs. We are not alone in calling for these changes. A 2023 report by the Home Affairs Committee made it clear that harm reduction must play a far greater role in UK drugs policy. Its recommendations offer a pragmatic road map, and the Government must act on them if they are serious about reducing drug-related deaths. Most of the interventions require only minor amendments to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, which, after more than 50 years, appears increasingly unfit for purpose. Currently, the 1971 Act blocks the establishment of safer drug consumption facilities and overdose prevention centres, and the distribution of vital harm-reduction paraphernalia by qualified drug treatment services. That includes safer inhalation pipes, which remain illegal under section 9A, even though corner shops can legally sell dangerous, poor-quality pipes with no health oversight, under the guise of ornaments. A pilot is currently taking place in parts of England, with police support, and shows promising early results, including reductions in high-risk practices and increased awareness of the harms associated with drugs and how to reduce them. There are a number of services in my constituency that I am very proud of, but, to save the House’s time, I will not detail them. One of those is Change Grow Live, and I give massive credit to its work. When stigma shapes policy, we see punitive laws, fragmented services and inevitably soaring mortality rates. When compassion and evidence shape policy, we see reduced deaths, safer communities, diminished profits for criminal organisations and better returns on public investment. This is not just a moral imperative, but a public health necessity.

• 9 Jan 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  I am glad that we are discussing this most important issue today. The National Police Chiefs’ Council rightly stated last year: “Violence against women and girls is a national emergency.” Action must be taken against our societal epidemic of violence, including sexual violence, against women and girls, and I am glad that the Government are committed to halving it in a decade. I will do my part to ensure that promise is delivered. We rightly talk a lot—although not nearly enough—in this place about victims. They must be at the heart of our work. Society has reached a place where most of us can accept the fact that we will all know victims of domestic or sexual violence. How could we not, with the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s statistics showing that approximately one in 12 women will be a victim in any given year, and as many as one in three over the course of a lifetime? Violence against women and girls is endemic in our country. It happens all around us and is committed by people—mainly men—whom we all know, and often trust and love. Societally, that is the aspect with which we have failed to grapple. Even though we accept that we know victims, far fewer people can accept that they know perpetrators. Instead, the 3,000 offences that happen each day, which leave behind psychological wreckage, seem to be rhetorically and conceptually driven by some sort of mysterious, passive, abstract force. It may be tempting to imagine that predators and perpetrators are unusual and could be identified if only we ditched our politically correct attitudes. However, that ignores the majority of abuse that takes place. Worse, it leads to a complacency that makes women and girls more vulnerable. It is easier, psychologically and societally, to hold to the idea that sexual violence is a rare thing, perpetrated by monsters that we can spot a mile off. Finding any excuse to delegitimise those who come forward—for example, by victim blaming, or by having preconceived ideas about how a “real” victim would behave—is key to upholding that. We see excuses made constantly for such behaviour, including in this place, and often by people who claim to be feminist or Christian, but who do not demonstrate any of the values that they claim to hold when it comes to having to confront the behaviour of someone in their circle. It is easier to immediately accept the abuser’s wholesale narrative and deflect, minimise, deny, defend or rubbish the victim’s credibility than to accept that someone we know is not only capable of that type of violence, but has perpetrated it. That tendency is at its most egregious when there is an institutional failure of reckoning, but all institutions are made up of individuals who share in and perpetuate that culpability. Even in the vanishingly rare cases in which someone is successfully convicted for domestic or sexual violence, we need only look at the comments online about how they had been “hard done by” or were “such a nice neighbour” and “couldn’t possibly have done it”. We all know that the vast majority of cases will never even make it that far, so what then? Let us be clear. According to the National Police Chiefs’ Council, “1 in 20 people are estimated to be perpetrators of VAWG per year”. Many of those will be repeat perpetrators. We will all know at least one of them. They hide in plain sight. They may very well be the last person we expect to be a perpetrator, and they know exactly what they are doing. Failure to acknowledge that means forcing victims to carry the shame that belongs to their abusers. We cannot say that we support victims coming forward if we cannot reconcile the fact that everyone here and everyone watching will know perpetrators of that form of violence. If we are to turn the tide, we need better education. We need more honest discussions of women’s safety and men’s roles. We need cultural change to identify and call out abusive behaviour. We need structures that believe women and girls and take misconduct seriously. We need investment in mental health and victim support services far above that currently on offer, including in the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, and support from independent sexual violence advisers and independent domestic violence advisers. We also need a justice system that works, that can deliver timely justice and in which women can have faith that they will not be further traumatised, as happens all too often, when seeking justice. Fundamentally, we all—in this place and right across society—need the courage to be more honest with ourselves about what we collectively look away from because it is too difficult. If we are ever going to hold perpetrators accountable and create and sustain a culture where women’s and girls’ safety is the norm, not the exception, that is where we need to begin.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity · Hansard source

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  I thank the Lord Chancellor for her statement, and for the leadership she has shown in trying to turn around a Department that, by any metric, was failing. I thank her for the transparent and considered approach that she has taken in reaching some of the difficult decisions she has had to make since taking office. While I accept the inevitability of the early release scheme, what conversations has she had with ministerial colleagues on improving victim support for those who have seen perpetrators return to the community earlier than they were perhaps mentally prepared for, so as to reduce harm as far as possible?

• 24 Jul 2024 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  In a week when the National Police Chiefs’ Council declared violence against women and girls a national emergency, Sky News has today published appalling accounts of sexual harassment and violence against women paramedics. Can the Prime Minister please update the House on progress towards the mission board to finally tackle this scourge in our society?