David Mundell MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 10 Mar 2025 · Syria · Hansard source

  More

  Russia has obviously been significantly involved in Syria previously. As part of the Minister’s investigations and getting an overview of what has happened, will he look specifically at whether Russia played any role in these events, particularly through social media?

• 13 Feb 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

  More

  I do not know whether the Secretary of State is aware that large swathes of British Airways flights between London and Scotland are automatically cancelled when there are serious weather or technical issues at Heathrow. British Airways says that if the Secretary of State’s officials, the Civil Aviation Authority, Heathrow and airlines worked together, the number of cancellations could be minimised, even in those circumstances, so will she facilitate those discussions?

• 13 Feb 2025 · Cardiovascular Disease: Prevention · Hansard source

  More

  It has been a little unconventional, but we got there in the end. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the prevention of cardiovascular disease.

• 13 Feb 2025 · Cardiovascular Disease: Prevention · Hansard source

  More

  I am sure the Minister will have heard the three points that Mr Shannon raised. On that basis, I will put the Question.

• 13 Feb 2025 · Cardiovascular Disease: Prevention · Hansard source

  More

  You can speak for as long as you want. [ Laughter .]

• 13 Feb 2025 · Cardiovascular Disease: Prevention · Hansard source

  More

  Yes. That is what I was saying, but I felt you were summing in a way that anticipated that we were concluding at 4 pm.

• 13 Feb 2025 · Cardiovascular Disease: Prevention · Hansard source

  More

  That is not technically a point of order, but I am sure the Minister has heard what you have had to say. I am sure he and, indeed, the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Dr Ahmed)—who was here from the start—will have noted all the points that Mr Shannon raised. If the points that Mr Shannon raised at the end—and indeed earlier, in his contribution before the Minister spoke—were unaddressed, I am sure that the Minister will write to him.

• 13 Feb 2025 · Cardiovascular Disease: Prevention · Hansard source

  More

  Mr Shannon, do you wish to make a final contribution?

• 13 Feb 2025 · Cardiovascular Disease: Prevention · Hansard source

  More

  I will make the determination that Mr Shannon’s contribution was an intervention—although an excessively lengthy one, which he will not repeat at the conclusion of the debate.

• 13 Feb 2025 · Cardiovascular Disease: Prevention · Hansard source

  More

  Demonstrating my own multifunctionality, I am now going to chair but not participate in the next debate.

• 13 Feb 2025 · Cardiovascular Disease: Prevention · Hansard source

  More

  Mr Shannon, I remind you that these proceedings go on to 4.30 pm, so there is no need for you to try to speak in a very short period of time.

• 13 Feb 2025 · Cardiovascular Disease: Prevention · Hansard source

  More

  I am sure that the Minister will begin with an apology to me, to Mr Shannon, as the Member in charge, and to all other participants, because it was very clear on the Order Paper that these proceedings would begin at 3 pm.

• 13 Feb 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

  More

  With grateful thanks to the Backbench Business Committee, I am leading a debate in Westminster Hall this afternoon on HIV Testing Week. The all-party parliamentary group on HIV, Aids and sexual health is keen to highlight the week and very much welcomes the test taken by the Prime Minister as part of highlighting that facility. In poorer countries, however, tests and treatment are only available thanks to the resources from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Given the uncertainty of funding from the United States, can the Leader of the House ensure that a statement comes forward about the UK’s approach to the replenishment of the Global Fund? This time around, the UK’s leadership will be vital if the fund is to be sustained.

• 13 Feb 2025 · HIV Testing Week · Hansard source

  More

  I do apologise for the length of my constituency’s name, because otherwise we could have had a longer debate. It has been a good debate with some powerful contributions. I, too, commend the hon. Members for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Kevin McKenna) and for West Ham and Beckton (James Asser) for reflecting on their personal experiences. It is so important that we do so, and both hon. Gentleman show that it is possible to move on, as someone who is HIV-positive, to play a full part in the world and in Parliament. I particularly want to refer to a point made by the hon. Members for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) and for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), which was that this is not just about gay men. There is a stereotype that this is all about gay men. It is not. As we have heard, the statistics show that gay men are among the most prolific in having tests. It is about other communities, and it is about women. That is the message that we have to get across, and that is why opt-out testing is so important. The hon. Member for Cardiff West (Mr Barros-Curtis) raised my pet subject, which is PrEP. It is ridiculous that, during this debate, I could have emailed somebody in India and obtained PrEP, but I could not go up Victoria Street into a pharmacy and do that. As well as making sure that we continue with the testing initiative, let us make PrEP more readily available. Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

• 13 Feb 2025 · HIV Testing Week · Hansard source

  More

  I beg to move, That this House has considered HIV Testing Week. It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate during National HIV Testing Week in England. Each year, the campaign funded by the Department of Health and Social Care, and delivered by the Terrence Higgins Trust as part of the national HIV prevention programme in England, brings us together to raise awareness of HIV and to promote regular HIV testing, in particular among the groups most affected by HIV. It is always the way that Parliament works that this debate coincides with a debate on LGBT+ History Month, although the two subjects are so linked. Over the Christmas recess, I was reading Alan Hollinghurst’s book “The Line of Beauty”, which brings home the fact that, at that time in the 1980s, a test was potentially a death sentence. People dreaded going for one, because of the result it might bring and the impact on their life and the lives of their family and those close to them. We have moved on to be able to say with 100% certainty that, if someone gets a positive result from an HIV test —which people can do in their own home—treatment means they can have a normal life expectancy and cannot pass the virus on. That remarkable fact is what makes this a generation that can end new HIV cases across this country. I encourage everyone in the Chamber, across Parliament or watching these proceedings to take part in the current campaign and to order a free HIV test. I was particularly pleased to see the Prime Minister take a test and demonstrate how straightforward and lacking in process it is. Many people still think a test might involve needles and health service professionals, but a test can be taken at home with an easy-to-access kit.

• 13 Feb 2025 · HIV Testing Week · Hansard source

  More

  I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady, who is one of my co-chairs on the all-party group on HIV, AIDS and sexual health. She has done so much to promote this issue, particularly among difficult-to-reach groups in the black and minority ethnic community and among women, and I commend her for that. I agree absolutely: taking a test, as I have done many times, is a routine matter that, in essence, involves merely pricking a finger and delivering a small amount of blood. That can be returned anonymously, and the result comes back without anyone else being involved. Were any issues to arise from the test, the person would know that proactive and supportive contact would generally be made with them. Normalising HIV testing is crucial if we are to find the 5,000 people across the UK living with undiagnosed HIV. Central to that is opt-out testing in emergency departments. I am proud that with parliamentary colleagues on the all-party parliamentary group, and with the help of Sir Elton John and the amazing campaigning of HIV charities, we won the case for a £20 million investment in opt-out testing in England in 2021 and for a further £20 million for expansion to 47 more A&Es in 2023. Since its routine introduction in 2022, opt-out testing has been an incredible success in normalising HIV testing in the health sector. Across 34 emergency departments over just two years, nearly 2 million HIV tests have taken place. In its first 18 months in London, Brighton, Blackpool and Manchester, more than 900 people were newly diagnosed with HIV or were found, where they had been lost to HIV care. A further 3,000 were found to have hepatitis B or hepatitis C. This approach also relieves pressure on the health service. Data from Croydon university hospital found that when it first started opt-out testing, the average hospital stay for a newly diagnosed HIV patient was almost 35 days. Within two years, the average stay was just 2.4 days. I am proud that the last Government were the first to fund opt-out testing. I am also pleased that in November the Prime Minister announced further funding to extend the testing intervention period. That will bring to 89 the number of hospitals funded to routinely test for HIV anyone who has their blood taken in the emergency department. As a Scottish MP, I want to be able to tell hon. Members how we are leading the way in addressing the HIV epidemic in Scotland, but unfortunately that is not quite the case. There are good news stories. Early action to make pre-exposure prophylaxis—PrEP—freely available on the NHS has helped to drive down new transmission of HIV in Scotland. Year round, everyone in Scotland has access to free at-home HIV testing, which is made available through the Terrence Higgins Trust testing service and funded by the Scottish Government. In 2023, a landmark campaign delivered by the Terrence Higgins Trust addressed the stigma that we all know surrounds an HIV diagnosis. It is astonishing that that campaign was the first of its kind since the tombstone adverts four decades ago. I hope that that important work to combat HIV stigma continues in Scotland and across the rest of the UK; it cannot be a one-off. However, for all this success, the reality is that progress towards achieving the historic feat of ending new HIV cases in Scotland by 2030 is now at risk. I have mentioned the resounding success of emergency department opt-out testing in England, and the role that that will play in helping to get the NHS in England back on track towards reaching zero new HIV cases by 2030. The clear evidence is that opt-out testing works, yet Scotland is still to adopt the same universal approach to HIV testing. As it stands, no area designated as high prevalence, such as Glasgow and Edinburgh, is benefiting from the opt-out testing programme. I have again written to Scotland’s Health Minister, Neil Gray, to ask that that be reconsidered. An estimated 500 people are living with undiagnosed HIV in Scotland, and a growing population of people are living with diagnosed HIV but are no longer accessing vital treatment and care. If we are to succeed in getting to our 2030 goal across the UK, we must reach each and every one of those people. Every day that emergency department opt-out HIV testing is not on offer, opportunities to find and support people living with HIV are being missed. Although Scotland is clearly not within the Minister’s remit, I hope that she, the public health Minister and the Health Secretary will use opportunities to raise this issue with the Scottish Government and to highlight their own successes. As she may know, the Scottish Government are keen to highlight what they perceive to be health failures in England. This is a great opportunity to highlight a health success and to call the Scottish Government out on their own approach. That also applies to HIV testing week. For this week to be most effective, it should apply across the United Kingdom, so that we can benefit from the positive publicity that came from the Prime Minister’s test. That is not available to people in Scotland, because HIV testing week is not happening there this week, despite my calls last year for it to be extended to Scotland. There is a testing week in Wales, but it is not as co-ordinated on a UK basis as we would want to see. Such co-ordination would allow everyone to benefit from promotional campaigns such as the excellent one in Parliament this week, which the Terrence Higgins Trust facilitated for Members of the House. I very much recognise the work of Terrence Higgins Trust Scotland and Waverley Care, which I had the great pleasure of visiting at its premises in Edinburgh recently. They are doing a great job, but when we have National HIV Testing Week, it needs to be across the whole United Kingdom. Testing is the only way we know to find a person’s HIV status, and that is why the current campaign, testing week and interventions such as opt-out testing are so integral to our HIV response. We are now five years away from 2030, and in no part of the UK are we on track to achieve our goal of ending new cases of HIV. Getting there will require cross-party working, and we have always worked cross party on the all-party parliamentary group, which has the highest number of members of any APPG in this Parliament and has been around for over 30 years. Many Members across Parliament work tirelessly in that group to ensure that we reach the 2030 goal, and I am sure the Minister will tell us more in her response about what is being done to achieve that. I know that this is not directly within her remit, but it would be remiss of me not to mention testing in other countries. We have heard about HIV testing week here in the UK, but poorer countries rely on the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and particularly the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which it funds along with the US to deliver testing and treatments. We know that the future of US funding is, at best, uncertain. This country has always been at the forefront of the Global Fund, and leadership on this year’s replenishment is important. I was pleased to hear what the Prime Minister had to say yesterday about Gavi and vaccinations, and I hope he will be able at some point to give a similar commitment on the Global Fund. I hope all Members would agree that it would be quite wrong if we were to achieve the target in the UK, but just left poorer countries and the rest of the world to get on with it and, in fact, go backwards as a result. I make that call in relation to the wider issue. I encourage anyone to take a test. It is very straightforward and easy, it will help to identify those we do not know about and it will help us to achieve that 2030 goal.

• 13 Feb 2025 · Ukraine · Hansard source

  More

  I am sure the Minister will acknowledge, as I do, the huge effort of the Ukrainian diaspora in the UK, of which a large proportion is in Scotland, particularly in and around my constituency. Given the huge efforts they have made, does she agree that we must not convey the idea in the coming weeks that we have in any way let them or their countrymen down?

• 10 Feb 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

  More

  The Eskdalemuir seismic array in my constituency monitors compliance with the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty. At the moment, there is a restriction on wind farm development in the vicinity of the array, but wind farm developers are lobbying hard to have those restrictions relaxed. Can Ministers give a guarantee that they will not be relaxed if there is any suggestion that that would interfere with the array’s effectiveness?

• 10 Feb 2025 · Inheritance Tax Relief: Farms · Hansard source

  More

  It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. Having participated in the previous debate on the subject in the main Chamber, I welcome the different tone from Government Back Benchers. They will get much further with their constituents by reflecting their concerns than by reading out Whips’ points in these debates. One issue that I want to highlight, because it goes against some suggestions that have been made in relation to so-called land banking, is that when agricultural land is currently sold in my constituency, it is acquired by private equity firms that want to go down the route of industrial tree planting or solar farm production. If we require farms to be sold to meet inheritance tax demands, they will not be sold to new family farmers or new entrants; they will be sold to private equity firms that want not to produce food on our land, but to maximise tax benefits such as carbon offset and other environmental tax benefits. In addition, they do not employ anyone within the constituency—there is no ongoing employment. Farming does not just produce food and create generational and environmental benefits; it is at the heart of the economy. I have seen that directly: to counter the 2001 foot and mouth outbreak in my constituency, virtually every hoofed animal was destroyed. When farming closed down, the economy closed down. Everybody in the constituency lost out. People were not in the shops, were not buying cars and were not using other businesses. Farming is not just about all the things we have heard about today; it is right at the heart of the economy.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Inheritance Tax Relief: Farms · Hansard source

  More

  I absolutely agree. Labour MPs have listened to their constituents—that is being reflected back to us today—and now we need the Minister to listen to Labour MPs. The other point that I want to get on the record is the point made by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), the Chairman of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, about the specific issue of tenanted farming holdings in Scotland. For tenanted farmers to raise the funds required, they would have to give up their whole holding. They might not even be able to. That has clearly not been thought through as part of this exercise. What people outside want is a debate that changes policy. They want a debate that shows that the Government are listening, have heard what they have to say and will do something about it. I hope that that will be evident in the Minister’s contribution at the end.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Inheritance Tax Relief: Farms · Hansard source

  More

  What will be unacceptable is if the Minister stands up at the end of this debate and gives the same response that he has given in previous debates, having heard the points that his own colleagues have put forward about how damaging and ill thought through this policy proposal has been. I am looking for a change in tone not just from Government Back Benchers, but from the Minister.

• 6 Feb 2025 · Coalfield Communities · Hansard source

  More

  I commend the hon. Member on securing this debate. I agree 100% with the hon. Member for Neath and Swansea East (Carolyn Harris). I have many constituents who are in exactly the same position, although the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) did not mention Scotland, which has a proud mining tradition. Communities in my constituency, such as Sanquhar, Kirkconnel, Kelloholm, Coalburn and the Douglas valley, have often felt very overlooked. Does the hon. Member agree that often in these communities, people are still forward-looking, wanting to make those communities turn around and be regenerated? They have not given up on them, and the Government—in London and in Edinburgh—should not either.

• 6 Feb 2025 · Coalfield Communities · Hansard source

  More

  rose —

• 6 Feb 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

  More

  May I echo the call from the hon. Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson) for a Government response to the Hughes report on the use of sodium valproate? My constituent Charlie Bethune has been not only an incredible carer for his daughter Autumn but a doughty campaigner on this issue, which he is raising today in the Scottish Parliament. He believes that because the harm caused by sodium valproate was diagnosed across the United Kingdom, there should be a United Kingdom response to those who have suffered, and he fears that there may be a different response in Scotland. When the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care makes a statement, will he seek to co-ordinate with the devolved Administration, so that we have a unified response?

• 6 Feb 2025 · Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories · Hansard source

  More

  What practical support are the Government giving to Egypt now that the Rafah crossing has reopened for medical emergencies? When that happened previously, it put enormous pressure on the Egyptian health service and caused some civil unrest in Egypt. As the right hon. Lady knows, Egypt is also under pressure on its southern border due to the conflict in Sudan. Does she agree that support for Egypt at this critical time is very important?