Chris Hinchliff MP: speeches

Speeches

• 13 Apr 2026 · SEND Provision and Reform · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

• 13 Apr 2026 · Social Housing Standards · Hansard source

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  More social housing is essential but, as Members across the House will know, increasingly distant housing associations are often far too quick to put up fees and far too slow to tackle damp, mould and disrepair. What more will the Minister do to ensure that future public funding comes with clear strings attached to require better standards for our constituents?

• 13 Apr 2026 · Social Housing Standards · Hansard source

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  22. What steps he is taking to improve standards for social housing.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Foreign Financial Influence and Interference: UK Politics · Hansard source

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  I welcome this statement. The public must have confidence that political decisions are made in their interests, not those of wealthy donors. Nowhere is that more important than in relation to the housing crisis, where there are also significant concerns that vested interests are seeking to exert significant influence on policy making. Will the Secretary of State meet me to discuss my proposed amendment to the Representation of the People Bill to ban developers from donating to politics and restore trust in our planning system?

• 19 Mar 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  There are widespread concerns that we are way off our national biodiversity targets. Does the Minister agree that there must be no further backward steps on environmental protections, and that we must set clear red lines for nature?

• 17 Mar 2026 · Rural Roads · Hansard source

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  I guessed that others would raise the issue of potholes and poor safety today, so I want to make another point about the state of our rural roads. To put it bluntly, they are filthy. Driving through the countryside should be a reminder of much that is best and beautiful about our nation. Instead, in many places, it has been allowed to become an ever-present reminder of the sorry state of our country. With plastic bags, wrappers, cans, bottles, traffic cones, sandbags, tyres, equipment left over after works are completed and gales carrying all sorts of other detritus, some of our rural roadside verges are starting to look like a vast, strung-out landfill. Frankly, if we cannot even manage to keep our roadsides clean, we are hardly a proper country at all. We cannot expect to instil civic pride in the next generation if this is how we leave the roads running through rural areas. We must invest in cleaning this up.

• 17 Mar 2026 · Child Maintenance Service · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for setting the scene. Would he reflect back to the House that, notwithstanding what he has said, there is a clear pattern of a lack of reliable communication, a failure to enforce payments and what often seems like an inability to keep in line with legislation? Does he recognise that what we are all experiencing on behalf of our constituents is an organisation that does not seem to have basic administrative competence?

• 5 Mar 2026 · Standards in Government · Hansard source

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  4. What steps he is taking to uphold standards in Government.

• 5 Mar 2026 · Standards in Government · Hansard source

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  Over the last 25 years, companies that have donated tens of millions of pounds to political parties have been granted Government contracts worth more than £60 billion. It is pretty obvious to the public that these cosy, influential and lucrative relationships appear to be the precise opposite of high standards in public life. Does the Minister agree that companies donating to political parties should be automatically disqualified from Government contracts?

• 3 Mar 2026 · Environmental Protection and Biodiversity · Hansard source

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  I am very sorry, but I had better make progress at this point. Today, I am calling for clear red lines for nature: no further weakening of environmental protections, no funding cuts to environmental bodies and no more collapsing biodiversity but instead a fully funded nature recovery plan to meet our legally binding targets. There are no more branches left to prune without killing the tree. There can be no more backward steps. Hand wringing will not protect habitats. Lip service will not stop extinction. Let us have a little optimism and idealism instead. We know from projects such as Knepp and trailblazers such as my constituents at Finches Farm in Benington that with decisive action our biodiversity can come booming back again. Across the country, we have a vast, untapped pool of potential crying out for employment and meaningful, healthy work. It is ready to contribute to leaving the world in a better state than we found it, and there is so much work to be done: restoring our meadows, orchards, coppices and temperate rainforests; relaying hedgerows; re-wetting the lost marshes; re-wriggling our rivers; bringing back the species that haunt our islands; saving the curlew and red squirrel; and monitoring, measuring and enforcing our essential environmental protections. There is enough skilled work to deliver a huge boost towards full employment across every region of the country. Like new Labour’s “New Deal for a Lost Generation”, we need a green job guarantee to deliver essential environmental restoration work now and brilliant careers for years to come. Now is the time for the honesty to admit that, for generation after generation, we have spent down and frittered away the vast wealth that was the natural inheritance of these islands. The truth is that the reality of GDP growth has been little more than a heaping up of virtual wealth—a hoarding of digital zeros in the bank accounts of the wealthy, while the real world around all of us suffered. Any further weakening of environmental protections will only push us over the edge into total bankruptcy. We cannot retreat a single step further. We must defend these last red lines for nature for the sake of every generation to come. My plea to the Minister is simply this: defy the lobbyists, side with the public and the planet over profit, and give us our nature back.

• 3 Mar 2026 · Environmental Protection and Biodiversity · Hansard source

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  I completely agree with my hon. Friend. As I was saying, the ecosystem services—including water, food, clean air and critical resources—are all at risk. Even our soils, the very substance of growth, have lost around half their organic carbon, threatening the sustainability of our agriculture and our ability to keep our citizens fed. More than that, however, the collapse of England’s biodiversity is a threat to our culture, national identity and one of the essential components of happiness. As iconic species continue to disappear from these islands, I wonder how many of us in this room will see a swallow or mayfly to herald summer this year?

• 3 Mar 2026 · Environmental Protection and Biodiversity · Hansard source

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  I completely agree with my hon. Friend about the importance of protecting our curlews, and the curlew action plan is a hugely important step, which the Government should be looking at. I also wonder how long it will be before the screaming sky falls silent, as each year, fewer swifts return to grace the air above our towns and villages. Even our English language is losing its power, as the colours of the countryside are allowed to run dry. How could Brontë have conjured Heathcliff to love Cathy without the wild of the Yorkshire moors? How could Tolkien have fathered an entire fantasy genre without a shire worth fighting for? What hope is there for a future Vaughan Williams with so few larks left to ascend? Worse still, what stories will we have left to enchant the next generation of children with when the Hundred Acre Wood has been declared a blocker, Ratty and Mole have been evicted from their river home by decades of effluent, and—this is probably only a matter of time—someone tries to redefine Watership Down as grey belt? All in all, the scale of the nature crisis is difficult to overstate, and any move to lower standards risks turning that crisis into a catastrophe. Yet, despite all this, we still get senior politicians declaring war on what little remains of our wildlife, with repeated suggestions that even this dire baseline is somehow too high. We continue to hear the unevidenced claim that Britain is held back not by a broken economic model but by bats and newts, and that profiteering developers would build genuinely affordable homes for all if only the last remnants of the natural world were less burdensome. Liz Truss may be gone, but the spirit and lazy rhetoric of deregulatory Trussonomics bulldozers inexorably onwards with a planning and infrastructure Bill that sought to allow developers to pay cash to trash nature, despite having no meaningful evidence to substantiate the claim that environmental protections slow down infrastructure. Then, after we managed to head off the worst of that, we have had the wholesale rejection of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee’s recommendations on species protections, as well as a nuclear regulatory review based on fundamentally flawed evidence that inflates the costs of environmental protections and downplays ecological risks. I would welcome the Minister taking this opportunity to distance the Government from that particular exercise in scapegoating nature for developer incompetence. Each additional deregulation and attack on environmental protections is a blow to the very root of what it means to be English. It is a truly bleak vision for our country to suggest that the only way to secure investment, build infrastructure or deliver homes is to rip up our environmental protections. Such measures are not only bad policy but directly contradictory to the manifesto we were elected on and deeply unpopular. Only 14% of British people think politicians are aligned with their values on nature, and three quarters of young people actually want more of the UK countryside protected.

• 3 Mar 2026 · Environmental Protection and Biodiversity · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered environmental protections and biodiversity trends. It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Roger. Unfortunately for everyone involved, this will be one of my longer speeches, so I had better not take too many interventions. Let me also say at the outset that this speech is intended first and foremost to support and encourage the Minister in the task ahead of her. She has one of the most important jobs for the whole Government and for the future of the country. On that upbeat note, I turn to the litany of despair that constitutes a brief review of biodiversity trends in this country. Not a single one of England’s rivers is in good overall health. The same is true of our sea floor. Just 7% of our woodland is in good condition. Half of England’s hedgerows, which now should be bursting into bud and sprays of blossom, have been ripped up and grubbed out. Eighty-five per cent of our heathland is gone, as are 95% of our chalk downland meadows—the European equivalent of tropical rainforests. Our traditional orchards have declined by 81%, and 85% of England’s salt marshes have also been lost. It is little wonder that one in six species in these islands is at risk of extinction. The scale of the wealth that we have squandered in pursuit of vapid notions of progress is staggering. It is more than just depressing; it is an existential threat to our way of life. The Government’s recent national security report on biodiversity loss confirmed that the collapse of nature is putting at risk the ecosystem services on which our society depends.

• 3 Mar 2026 · Environmental Protection and Biodiversity · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for her support for the red lines campaign. She is absolutely right about what makes life worth living. Investing in our country, strengthening standards and restoring our natural world will do far more to improve the lives of ordinary people than a short-sighted race to the bottom. That is the Labour tradition: action to correct market failure, not dogmatic deregulation. There is a nature-loving majority in this country, including the millions of members of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, wildlife trusts, national trusts and so many more. Our Labour Government should be working alongside those groups, not squaring up to them. At the end of the day, there is a lot more of them than there are developer lobbyists. Let us stop this endless cycle of skirmishes. It does not have to be like this. Enough is enough.

• 25 Feb 2026 · Student Loan Repayment Plans · Hansard source

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  As a plan 2 graduate myself, before the Minister proceeds will he put on the record an acceptance that, with the misstep on the tuition fee repayment level, the cat is out of the bag? We need to deal with it in this Parliament. I urge him to reject the tedious, time-wasting suggestions from the Lib Dems and get on and deal with it with Labour values.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Local Transport: Planning Developments · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under you in the Chair, Sir Desmond. I am afraid I have been lured into making some side comments before getting into the meat of my speech. This is in relation to the point about aggregate supply and meeting the housing needs of young people. It is really important that we bring some facts to that debate, and the reality is that from 2013 to 2023 the housing stock in this country expanded more rapidly than our population did. It is not an issue of aggregate supply, and focusing on that will never meet the needs of younger people in this country. The relationship between new housing and local transport, cuts to the core of why we need to end the developer-led, profit-motivated approach to planning in this nation. Despite warm words in national guidelines, right across the country the relentless reality of most new estates is more traffic, more toxic air pollution and more space given to car parking than to children for play. The reality is inadequate public transport, distant services, non-existent local employment opportunities and more noise, congestion and pollution blighting our lives. Few things shape the basic, day-to-day experience of life in the UK in 2026 more than the disconnect between transport policy on paper and actual development around our towns and villages. When we came to power, Labour promised change, but this experience will not begin to improve until we address one of the most harmful phrases in national planning policy: the presumption in favour of sustainable development. Few policies are more baleful or more egregiously misnamed. It may be called sustainable development, but in fact it does exactly the reverse of what it says on the tin. This legacy policy puts power overwhelmingly in the hands of developers, overruling the aspirations of local councils and trampling on the concerns of communities. It is responsible for the proliferation of bolt-on estates on the edge of towns and villages, with no realistic prospect that most people living there will be able to access the services and facilities that we all need in our daily lives, other than by driving—locking in car dependency from the get-go. The presumption in favour of sustainable development allows the construction of developments designed to exist as commuter dormitories, rather than creating real communities with work, leisure and culture all within walking distance. It is the precise opposite of the idealism of the garden city principles originally put into action in Letchworth. By clearing the way for speculative, unsustainable developments, the presumption currently ensures that much of what is built in this country is defined by what is easy and profitable for developers, rather than what is good for people and planet. Above all, car-dependent developments like these squeeze the space for genuine society. Community connections will always struggle to thrive if the public realm is dominated by parked cars and traffic. We need to put local authorities back in the driving seat, with the powers to design and deliver developments that genuinely deliver affordable homes in well planned and cohesive communities, with all the opportunities necessary for happy and fulfilling lives. Above all, to ensure that development comes with healthy and positive local transport connections, we must—the Environmental Audit Committee, on which I serve, called for this—amend the definition of “presumption in favour of sustainable development” in the national planning policy framework in order to strengthen the safeguards against environmentally unsustainable, unplanned and speculative development.

• 12 Feb 2026 · Social Rented Housing Sector · Hansard source

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  As the chair of the recently formed all-party parliamentary group for council and social housing, I welcome the report’s conclusion about the importance of boosting the supply of social housing to meet the huge demand for new, high-quality, genuinely affordable homes and to replace older, lower-standard homes that are long past their lifespan. It is a daunting task, but we know that it can be done: the great reforming post-war Labour Government built more than 800,000 council houses between 1946 and 1951. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need bold policies now to match the scale of that achievement?

• 12 Feb 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  The disgraceful scandals of recent days have left what little remains of faith in our democracy hanging by a thread. One of the lessons has to be that, while inherited privilege is no basis for a second Chamber, neither is self-interested patronage by political leaders. Does the Leader of the House agree that we must end the rotten system of peerages being granted to individuals, despite sickening behaviour, simply because they are rich and powerful, or to give jobs to the boys? Will he convey to his Cabinet colleagues the urgent need for legislation to reform the House of Lords from top to bottom, sweeping away these abuses and ridding us of all these politically partisan appointees?

• 11 Feb 2026 · Woodland Creation · Hansard source

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  It is an honour to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. The state of England’s woodland paints a clear picture of national decline. The elms are gone, the ash is dying and even the English oak is at risk from the existential threat of climate change. We have far less woodland cover than many of our European neighbours and what woodland we have is in poor condition: just 7% of it is in good health. Many of our oldest trees—living legends that have been part of our landscapes for generations and that can each be home to thousands of species—are still at risk. A lack of diversity in size and species, and a lack of open, sunlit glades for young trees to grow in, has left our ecosystems fragile and degraded. That does profound harm to the wildlife that our voters love. Iconic species such as hazel dormice and our beloved red squirrels are disappearing into the pages of the history books and the number of woodland birds has fallen by 37% over the past 50 years. It must be said that although the wealth generated from tearing down woodland for shipbuilding, agriculture and construction was tightly privatised by a small, wealthy few, the consequences of the nature crisis are and will be felt by all. We are on track to miss nearly all our targets for nature recovery. We have already lost half our biodiversity and one in six species are teetering on the brink of extinction. Those are not abstract targets that we can shrug off but missed opportunities to save species whose haunting absence would impoverish the lives of every generation to come. Unchecked, such decline will have disastrous consequences. Nature is not only the essential foundation for our economy but a source of joy to millions of people, and an irreplaceable ingredient of our national identity and culture. The Joint Intelligence Committee has warned that nature decline creates “cascading risks” to our food security and national security. To be frank, wringing our hands about nature’s decline in these debates while signing up to an economic model that treats nature as something to exploit, or destroys if it is in the way, will no longer cut it. The depoliticised niceties and doublespeak have to go. We need to have the honesty to call out leadership that treats nature as an obstacle to progress, rather than a measure of it. Every politician loves ancient woodland until it is home to one of the world’s rarest bat species and is threatened by the latest grandiose project dreamt up in Whitehall. At that point it immediately becomes a blocker and a convenient scapegoat for the insane cost overruns of our model of outsourced and subcontracted infrastructure delivery, which so often rips off the public purse. We would not destroy historic cathedrals or royal palaces in this way, but, only a few years ago, we proved once again that even one of the best-loved trees in the country—every bit a work of art in its own right—can be destroyed in the pursuit of higher GDP. If we fail to do better, the public will not forgive either this Government or our political class more widely. There are two tasks ahead for reversing the national decline of our woodlands. First, we must take a bold approach to woodland creation—on which subject much has already been usefully said today. I pay tribute to the Woodland Trust for its leadership in driving the northern forest, which will reach across Hull into Liverpool and surge into our cities. That is how we grasp an opportunity not just to rescue ecosystems, but to enrich communities, foster happier, healthier lives and reconnect ordinary people with what is collectively our greatest national inheritance. As the Labour Government rightly focuses on building an economy with secure, highly skilled and meaningful work for all, here is an enormous opportunity. Essential woodland management—coppicing, pollarding, thinning, restocking and the rest—will require a new generation of tree surgeons and forestry workers, potentially offering brilliant careers right across the country. However, even the Woodland Trust or my hon. Friend the Minister—talented though they are—cannot recreate ancient woodland, nor restore other irreplaceable habitats or species once they are lost to extinction. Therefore, as we pursue woodland creation, we must also defend the protections we already have. The Woodland Trust has long argued that loopholes in the national planning policy framework leave ancient woodland vulnerable to damage and deterioration from development. We should be strengthening those protections alongside an ambitious programme of nature recovery. Instead, the nature sector has been left fighting endless battles with the Government simply to stop things getting worse. That is why I led more than 60 MPs and peers alongside major nature charities, including the Woodland Trust, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the Wildlife Trusts, in opposing proposals to weaken the habitat regulations recommended in the nuclear regulatory review. We must be clear: if someone cares about our woodlands and woodland creation, they cannot advocate for repealing our most important nature protections. Planting trees while weakening the habitats regulations is like planting flowers at one end of a field, while a bulldozer rips it up at the other. We need a joined-up approach that protects what we have and restores what we have lost. That is why I am calling for red lines for nature. I hope that colleagues will join me in supporting this campaign in the coming months.

• 29 Jan 2026 · River Habitats: Protection and Restoration · Hansard source

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  I am afraid the Minister has slightly walked into this. Previously in this Chamber, I extended an invitation to her to come and visit RevIvel in my constituency. That is a campaign to restore the Ivel chalk stream. It has a pilot project looking at taking the Chalk Streams First approach, which would potentially restore that aquifer, and not just help the Ivel but see the return of chalk streams that have completely ceased to flow. It would be really exciting to talk to my hon. Friend about that and some of the challenges that people are experiencing with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs water restoration fund. I just put that back on her agenda.

• 29 Jan 2026 · River Habitats: Protection and Restoration · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Butler. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Lloyd Hatton) on his well-made speech opening the debate. The state of our rivers is a near-perfect metaphor for how badly we have got our priorities wrong as a society. Through a combination of carelessness, greed and wilful neglect, we have managed to poison and exhaust one of the essential elements of life. Not a single one of England’s rivers, which quite literally shape our country, is in good overall health. All of them are polluted with toxic chemicals. Clean waterways teeming with life—places that can refresh body, mind and soul—should be the absolute right of every English citizen. As it stands, we have squandered the vast natural wealth of our rivers and streams. In doing so, we have robbed the future generations of our nation of the best part of their inheritance. Restoring our rivers and streams is, above all, a question of changing what we mean by growth. Experiencing the glories of nature is one of the joys that make life worth living. That is what we should be focusing our efforts on—not on abstract GDP figures that mean next to nothing to anyone outside the imagination of the Office for Budget Responsibility. Instead of more chemicals, more concrete, more consumption, we will do far more to improve the wellbeing of all of our citizens from every background by returning to them the burst of mayflies at the start of summer, the chance “To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping”, as Rupert Brooke once did, without worrying what filth we might be swallowing; or even just the chance to mess about in boats in the streams that once flowed fully, but now have been choked to a pitiful dribble. A more potent symbol of national decline would be hard to invent. All the polling shows that the public are overwhelmingly in favour of decisive action to restore nature in this country. The inspirational efforts of groups across North East Hertfordshire such as RevIvel, the Friends of the Rib and Quin, and the River Beane Restoration Association prove the grassroots passion for seeing our rivers and especially our chalk streams restored. My party, the Labour party, should know this deep in its heart. Since the first inception of our movement, the demand of politics by the people for the people has always been to protect the natural world and to open it up to all so that ordinary working-class citizens can enjoy it, too. When politicians constantly attack the very nature that our voters love and the Office for Environmental Protection has to investigate the Government for their utter failure to deliver the statutory targets for rivers to be in good condition by next year—set out in laws that we politicians passed—it is little surprise that faith in politics is so miserably low. When we make promises to restore nature, we must never again fail to honour our words with action. If that means the Treasury has to adapt its plans, so be it. I will be explicit on this point. I know some people believe that putting more and more power in the hands of profiteering developers will somehow magically resolve stagnant productivity, but our model of speculative house building, combined with the legal obligation for water companies to supply water to new developments, is increasingly incompatible with healthy rivers in many parts of the country. There are environmental limits on the amount of water we can use without wrecking our freshwater systems, but currently we are just pretending that they do not exist. The over-abstraction from the aquifers that feed our precious chalk streams is a clear case in point. In a country as wet as ours, it should take a true organising genius to produce water shortages, yet a combination of planning, deregulation and a profit-motivated private market has contrived to do just that. It is time for a “chalk streams first” approach that protects them from over-abstraction and for long overdue recognition that genuine, sustainable development means accepting that environmental boundaries cannot be compromised. The truth is, if we measure economic success by the genuine improvement of our constituents’ lives and by the provision of good, meaningful work for all, the restoration of our rivers is in fact a huge opportunity. My plea to the Minister today is simple: go back to colleagues in the Treasury and tell them about the missing half of the clean jobs revolution. Tell them about the huge expansion in the number of ecologists and conservation experts we need to monitor the health of our rivers and advise our local authorities and hard-working farmers. Tell them about the thousands of skilled jobs needed to re-wiggle our rivers, and tell them to create and maintain riparian buffers such as carr woodland and floodplain meadows around all our waterways. Tell them about the jobs and vast increases in natural capital that could be created across every part of the country by restoring the small waters like ponds and headwater streams, and integrating those crucial areas at the top of river systems into the water framework directive. And tell them about the national mobilisation needed to prevent the next river pollution scandal from the highway run-off filling our rivers with a nightmarish cocktail of microplastics, heavy metals and herbicides. There are thousands of unpermitted and in many cases barely monitored highway outfalls across the country that must be urgently investigated, maintained and upgraded if we are genuinely to improve the health of our rivers. Collectively, those are tasks that would not just upskill and employ thousands of people, but would immeasurably enrich our nation by restoring our streams and rivers as the crown jewels of England’s countryside that they always ought to have been.

• 26 Jan 2026 · Key Stage 1 Curriculum · Hansard source

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  It is an honour to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Barker. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) on her excellent speech—although the “productive struggle” she referred to sounded rather like a slogan from my trade union days. I wholeheartedly support the petition, and I thank all the campaigners behind it for ensuring that we are debating this important subject today. I have heard from so many parents across North East Hertfordshire that over-formal academic approaches do not suit their children. Our whole society is missing out on the vast untapped potential of children who are never going to thrive in a sedentary environment. The valorisation of that model, and the expectation that all children can be measured against it, teaches many from the youngest age that learning is a struggle to be resented, not an exploration to be enjoyed. Politicians so often speak about the importance of education equipping children with skills that businesses require, but frankly I think it is a lot more important that five, six and seven-year-old kids are happy and healthy. Fortunately, we do not need to choose between an education that is fun and inclusive, and one that equips pupils with essential knowledge and skills, as has been so powerfully proven by Unplugged Tots, which is run by my brilliant constituent Hannah. Unplugged Tots supports children to be the problem solvers, inventors, engineers, scientists and technologists of tomorrow by equipping them with the skills they will need through accessible, fun, engaging activities that are screen-free. Hannah is proving that we can teach children as young as two and half the foundational skills and critical-thinking abilities for coding through play—and without any screen whatsoever. It is a genuinely inspiring model that I hope the Minister will look at closely, and that could benefit schools across the country. I will give the final word to Hannah, who says: “Today’s children are tomorrow’s future and equipping them for this rapidly changing future is essential. If we want to build capable citizens for tomorrow, we must take play in Key Stage 1 seriously…Play supports the whole child, providing an equitable starting point for all children, regardless of background. When play is integral to the curriculum, we raise standards by nurturing confident learners prepared for a rapidly changing world equipped with a lifelong love of learning.”

• 22 Jan 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Liberal Democrat-run Hertfordshire county council has been looking at closing several village schools in my constituency, with a decision due soon on Albury primary school. I will not ask the Leader of the House to comment on a particular cases, but from speaking to parents and local communities, it is absolutely clear that these schools not only provide a fantastic education, but are right at the heart of rural life. Can we have a debate on the importance of village schools and what more we can do nationally to support them?

• 22 Jan 2026 · Energy Costs · Hansard source

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  There are two particularly important conclusions in the Select Committee’s inquiry: first, that reducing energy costs for everyone should be the top priority; and secondly, that there is no shortage of money in the wider energy system. Does the Chair of the Select Committee agree with me that GB Energy is an important part of the answer? We need publicly owned generation that is about not producing electricity for maximum profit but producing electricity that can be sold at lower prices and drive down costs across the market.

• 21 Jan 2026 · Dementia Support: Hampshire · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member is making a powerful speech about an incredibly important subject. It affects my constituency, too, where we have 1,500 people living with dementia. On top of that, as she was referring to, around a third of the people currently living with dementia do not have a diagnosis and, staggeringly, the NHS does not have a target to tackle that. Will she join me in urging the Minister to meet with Alzheimer’s Research UK to discuss its call for a national 18-week target from when people are referred by their GP for assessment to when they receive diagnosis and a treatment plan?