Emily Darlington MP: speeches

Speeches

• 15 Jun 2026 · Social Media Ban for Under-16s · Hansard source

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  The Secretary of State and I do not necessarily agree on the effectiveness of a ban, but we absolutely agree on companion chatbots. The entire business model of companion chatbots is to keep us and our children online for as long as possible, using grooming language, grooming behaviour and sometimes sexual circumstances to data-mine us and, more importantly, our children. Can the Secretary of State make it clear at the Dispatch Box that we will not tolerate these types of business models exploiting us and our children?

• 11 Jun 2026 · Legacy of Jo Cox · Hansard source

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  It has been an absolute privilege to be in the House today and to listen to everybody’s personal reflections on Jo’s time here and on how they have been impacted. I want to talk about Jo as a friend of mine for years and years. We met in the Labour movement, and we kept finding ourselves in the same meetings—ones that focused on international development, but, most of all, meetings that focused on women. In fact, we became closest and bonded the most when we both became pregnant at the same time. Let me talk about the time when we were all processing having lost the 2010 election. Jo and I have always been people of action, and we have not been shy in coming forward; we both have that very much in common. I had started my own business, and she came barrelling into the office one day and said, “How are we going to organise? We cannot live like this. It is awful.” The solution, as is most often the case, was women. We hatched a plan on how we would revitalise Labour Women’s Network and ensure that Jo took over as chair. I then stood up out of my chair and, at three months’ pregnant, I already had an enormous bump. She said, “You’re pregnant! That is so exciting—so am I. How pregnant are you?” I said, “Three months. How pregnant are you?” She said, “Three months too.” You would not know it. She was this tiny little thing with a perfectly flat belly, and I thought, “That is three months’ pregnant, and I already look like this!” Our plan for Jo to take over as chair of LWN was very successful, and that success continues. What she was committed to bringing back to the Labour movement—what we organised and committed to—was hope. She brought a way of rebuilding our movement after that loss and a way of ensuring that women were at the heart of that. Not long after that, we both gave birth. I looked enormous, like a beached whale, and I gave birth to an 8 lb baby. Jo was tiny throughout, and she gave birth to a 10 lb baby—I do not know where she put that baby in her small little body, but oh my goodness! Still then, we were at meetings and we were determined to breastfeed at party conference, because, frankly, the thing that both our children had in common was that they were veracious eaters—

• 11 Jun 2026 · Legacy of Jo Cox · Hansard source

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  As are mine, and they were only a few days apart. The other thing we did was bring together our two NCT groups and try to radicalise them to the Labour cause—some more successfully than others. We dragged them to LWN fundraisers. We ended up organising many women with their babies and their buggies coming on to the Terrace of the House of Commons. We were determined that these women who we had bonded with so much in our pregnancies—the time, and then the feeding, the burping and the sleepless nights—were going to become part of our revolution. We were both behind-the-scenes women; we liked to work and build up other people. But in the run-up to the 2015 election, we called each other back and forth, asking, “Are we going to do this? Are we going to stand in this election?” We had asked everybody else to stand, because that is what we do, and finally we asked each other and said, “Look, I’ll do it if you do it,” because we were not confident. We were confident in other women; we could see all those qualities in other women, but we were not confident that we were the ones to take that forward. That is such a woman thing to do—we look at others and see all their amazing characteristics and abilities, but we struggle sometimes to see them in ourselves. We made a pledge to each other that we would stand in the 2015 election—she in Batley and Spen, and me in what was Milton Keynes North at the time. We would check in with each other regularly. We were each other’s secret lifeline, in this world in which we had encouraged other women to go where we had never been before. After that election, Jo won and became the MP for Batley and Spen, and I went off to Kenya, because I thought, as you do, “If I can’t make a difference here, I can go and make a difference elsewhere.” We had completely swapped paths: she had spent time in Kenya while I was a special adviser in the Labour Government, and now she was representing our views and ideals here and I had gone off to Kenya to see what I could do. Everywhere I went, people would say, “Oh, you’re from the UK—do you know Jo?” I would proudly say, “Of course I know Jo. She’s my friend. She’s doing an amazing job in the House of Commons.” I fell pregnant again when I was out there—Jo had already had her second child—and one day I got a phone call from a mutual friend of ours who was also in Kenya, and he asked me, “Have you heard the news?” I literally had to sit down because I thought, “I’m going to collapse, and this baby is going to get squished. I need to sit down and take this in.” I just could not believe it. Because so many people in Kenya knew that I had known Jo, I was inundated with messages saying, “What are we going to do?” None of them said, “Isn’t it so sad?” They said, “What are we going to do?” That is so Jo. The high commissioner in Kenya gave us his property for an evening, so the first thing we did was hold a reception event in remembrance and celebration of Jo, simultaneously with the one being held in London. There remains a book of remembrance at the high commission in Kenya of all the people whose lives she touched in Kenya across those many institutions, charities and other places, and some people who just knew about her but had been inspired to come. Not long after that, Brendan reached out to me and to other friends of his and Jo’s in Kenya, saying, “Look, it’s become too much for myself and the kids in the UK, and we can’t get a break because of all the media focus. Can we come out and spend some time with you guys?” I very much understood that our job in that situation was to surround those two amazing children with joy, so we spent a lot of time driving around, singing musicals at the top of our lungs—it is a shared passion between our two families, and her children and my children knew all the words. We brought them to see the tree that the children had planted in Karura forest in memory of Jo. For those who do not know Karura forest, it is the forest that is right in the middle of Nairobi, and that tree stands there today. Now I am in Parliament. I sit on the Government Benches every day and, because of the strangeness of this place, we now look at Jo’s crest every day. She is a constant reminder. I do not know if anybody else is like this, but I have a series of amazing women in my life who have passed and with whom I have conversations, whether it is my grandmother, my mother-in-law or Jo. I think, “What would that conversation be? What would they say?” The conversation I have with Jo is, “How do you raise children and protect them when you are a Member of Parliament?” You try to laugh off your home security and your personal security; you make jokes about them. Sometimes you go to events with them, so you have this guy with these big guns—big muscles—walking along with you. The children ask, “Who’s this?” So you say, “Oh, it’s just a friend of mine.” “Do you know his name?” “No, but he’s a friend of mine, and he’s going to follow us around as we go to an event in the constituency together.” I think, “What would Jo think of where we are today?” We talked a lot about how women of all backgrounds needed to be in this place, because it was the only way we were going to make our politics better. That is something that so many of us have fought to achieve, yet we have brought women to this place and told them, “You need to put up with the crap we are putting up with”—apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker; that was not the best language. It is everything from social media to what we do to protect our children and the fact that we cannot be as open and available as we all want to be. I get criticised all the time for not having my surgeries in the middle of an Asda, and I keep saying, “I can’t. Yes, you need an appointment; you cannot just come in and see me. You cannot just walk into my office, because of my team”—who, again, are a bunch of amazing women. What does that say about our politics? We would all love to be more open and inclusive. We would all love to feel safe to pop up anywhere in our constituency, but we cannot. It goes against everything that Jo and I believed a good MP—a good public servant—should be, and I struggle with it all the time. I think Jo would love Milton Keynes, not just because we are quirky and weird, and she was a bit quirky and weird—we have new technology delivering groceries—but because we are a city that is not afraid to stand up and say that diversity is our strength. Diversity is what makes us the capital of innovation in this country. Diversity is something we celebrate throughout the summer, with festivals for diaspora communities, and everybody is included. We will be doing the MK Great Get Together. It is a picnic where everyone is invited. Bring a blanket; if you can bring food, bring food. If you have enough to bring food for others, bring food to share with others. Share the best cooking from your mum, share the best cooking that you know from your communities, and let us come together and celebrate our amazing city of Milton Keynes. I want to finish with the fact that I knew Jo best as a mum, and I want her to know that while her legacy lives on in so many places, it also lives on in our joint NCT groups that have come together. We continue to have girls’ nights out and girls’ weekends away. The dads have a beer club, but they are not as good at organising themselves. We still have joint birthday parties. We still go away at Whitsun recess to a Eurocamp somewhere. Her voice and her memory are never forgotten in those spaces. Inevitably, as we are sitting there as a bunch of mums drinking wine, her name comes up. Inevitably something triggers it—it could be about anything. She was a brilliant mum, and she did what all brilliant mums do, which is to try to be an example to their children and to be supportive of all the other mums. Faye, Tracey, Karin, Sarah, Hannah and Claire and others from our NCT group asked me to say this on their behalf: her passion brought people together, not just in the country, but as mums. Her sense of community and of cohesion that she expounded is why her death felt even more traumatic. I want to thank her sister and my friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater), for always letting us remember Jo with positivity, not anger, and with a gumption to go. That does not mean we are all going to do a run with my hon. Friend. [ Laughter. ] God knows what your parents fed you for breakfast, but whatever it was, it should be in those free breakfast clubs that we have across the country, because boy are you two amazing. You are supporting us to be the amazing MPs that we can be, and we are all supporting that next generation to say, “This is not what politics is about. This is not what our country is about.” We are better than this, because we are more united and we have more in common than that which divides us.

• 8 Jun 2026 · Water Companies · Hansard source

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  I will raise with the Minister something that I have already raised with her in a letter about the impact of Anglian Water, another failing water company. There was no water on the hottest day of the year for families in Woburn Sands and the Brickhills. That is a disgrace. Around the same time, there was a lack of water pressure, and the fire and rescue service in Milton Keynes had to bring in water to fight a fire. Does the Minister agree that each and every one of these companies has a story of failure, and it is time we held them to account? I urge her to resist calls to allow failing water companies to determine how many homes can be built in this country. Instead, we should make them do the job that they are there for, which is to give water to each and every one of us.

• 21 May 2026 · Women’s Health and Wellbeing: Online Censorship · Hansard source

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  You are absolutely right, Mr Stringer. I apologise.

• 21 May 2026 · Women’s Health and Wellbeing: Online Censorship · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. He makes a really important point. It is so ingrained in us to go first to the internet to search for information. We have agreed ways to make sure health information is proper health information and that we are not getting bad science, but even when using the ticks that are supplied by various platforms, advice is still being shadow-banned. The online world is where women ask questions when they are often too embarrassed to ask elsewhere about period pain, discharge, lactation, or how to use a tampon safely.

• 21 May 2026 · Women’s Health and Wellbeing: Online Censorship · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered the matter of the censorship of women’s health and wellbeing content online. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I want to flag at the beginning of this debate that I will be using a selection of words that big tech deems too sexual for its platforms. I hope everyone in this room can hold their composure and not get too flustered when I mention “sexual” terms such as vaginal atrophy and pelvic prolapse. To reassure the Chair, the precedent has already been set in the House for most of these terms. “Vagina” was first used in the House in 1961; “labia minora” in 1983; “orgasm” in 1974; “clitoris” in 1971; and “vulva” goes all the way back to the 1880s. I must make a point about the historical use of the word “orgasm”. My team had a really interesting time searching Hansard for this debate. As they trawled through it, they found really interesting examples of “orgasm” being used, which I find quite entertaining. In 1978 the former Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch spoke passionately in favour of the creation of the Defence Select Committee, saying: “I am firmly convinced that to discuss defence in the House in the traditional way is merely to give everyone the chance of an emotional orgasm.” —[ Official Report , 3 April 1978; Vol. 947, c. 144.] In 1982 the former Member for Grimsby spoke against the horrors of what would happen if cable television became the norm, warning that “We shall finish up with wall-to-wall orgasm” and “constant pornography”. —[ Official Report , 2 December 1982; Vol. 33, c. 471.] With the country totally fed up with politics, I find it refreshing to remember that we in this House have the ability to discuss with passion what most of the country would find very dull. For millions of women and girls today, social media is where they learn about things like menopause, endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, fibroids, vaginismus, dysmenorrhoea, bacterial vaginosis—are we all managing to control ourselves hearing these terms?—and countless other aspects of women’s health. If social media had been prevalent when I was desperately trying to figure out why my periods hurt more than giving birth, I am sure I would have been able to advocate for myself with my GP and receive my adenomyosis diagnosis far earlier than I did.

• 21 May 2026 · Women’s Health and Wellbeing: Online Censorship · Hansard source

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  I thank everyone who joined us for the debate. As the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer) said, it is one that we needed to have because so many people do not know about this issue. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Dr Ahmed) for reaffirming that this Government recognise medical misogyny. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Paul Davies) for reminding us about health advice. We both participated in a debate about endometriosis and adenomyosis not too long ago. In that debate, I said that periods can be uncomfortable but should not be painful, and Members from across the House came up to me afterwards to ask, “Is that true?” Yes, it is true. Periods should not be painful. That shows how we all lack advice on women’s health. My hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) talked about her children creating embarrassing situations, which I recognise, too. My daughter had a conversation with her friend at the school gates, alongside many other mums and school- children, about her favourite word. She declared, very proudly, that “vulva” was her favourite word. She had learned it at school as appropriate. She knew the difference and told me proudly that I must not misuse “vagina” for “vulva”. That raises an important point about child abuse, which is a little outside the scope of this debate, but not entirely, because we have to use the correct terms. Police find it extremely frustrating, and it does not meet legal thresholds, when children say, “He touched my cookie,” or, “He touched my ginny.” They need the child to say the right word in order to proceed, and it is another angle in this debate that we must not forget. Using the correct medical terminology allows us to crack down on paedophiles and groomers. My hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett), whose embarrassment threshold is even lower than mine, which is hard, talked about important post-birth advice and how shadow-banning is particularly problematic because it is deniable. What it says to women, doctors, gynaecologists and femtech entrepreneurs is, “You are just creating content that is not interesting. That is why it does not do well.” Actually, they are creating content that is being deliberately suppressed. I appreciate what the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett), said about the difference between this and adult content, violent misogyny and racist language. All of that is allowed, yet these terms are not. It shows the power that these platforms have: they say that they cannot suppress these words, but they can. Terms like “rape” or horrible terms that are racist, antisemitic or anti-Islam could be in the same position as women’s health terms, yet they choose for them not to be. I loved her mention of blue liquid. We all remember the blue liquid, and we all remember being surprised, if we were told beforehand, when it was not blue liquid. I imagine that many men were quite surprised, when they got married or entered a relationship, to find that it was not blue. And we certainly were not all out rollerblading. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge, asked an important question: should Government dictate what platforms publish? He is right, and the OSA does not say that women’s health information cannot be published. Where I have a bit of an issue with his argument is that, although he is right that it is a commercial decision, it is also a commercial decision that allows the platforms to continue to push pornography, violent material and misogynistic material. If they want to make money off people in this country, we need to make sure they are not doing damage to this country.

• 21 May 2026 · Women’s Health and Wellbeing: Online Censorship · Hansard source

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  I completely agree with my hon. Friend. I met some survivors of vulval cancer this morning. Even though they included a former midwife, a health advocate and other people who were well-informed, they told me about their struggle they experienced when advocating for themselves and to be taken seriously by their GP. They knew something was wrong with their vulvas, but they could not get through to their GP. Luckily, they all did; they are all doing well and have responded to their cancer treatment, but they might have been able to advocate effectively sooner had they been able to access more information than they found online. There are more women out there in exactly the same situation. Words such as “tampon” are being suppressed by big tech platforms. “Shadow-banning” is the term for when users can still technically post but their visibility is secretly throttled. Their posts stop appearing in feeds, their reach collapses, their engagement disappears and their followers cannot find them. In the examples I have seen, the user is never clearly informed about it. That is censorship without accountability, which is harming education, charities and businesses, reinforcing stigma and, in some cases, putting women’s lives at risk. We need to call that what it is: algorithmic sexism. Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has removed or restricted dozens of accounts belonging to abortion providers, women’s health campaigners and reproductive health organisations across the world. These takedowns began last October and have affected more than 50 organisations globally, some of which support tens of thousands of women. Repro Uncensored, a non-governmental organisation that tracks digital censorship focused on gender, health and justice, documented 210 instances of account removal and severe restriction this year, compared with 81 last year. That is not random moderation, it is escalation. The Sex Talk Arabic, a UK-based Arabic-language sexual health platform, says it receives warnings from Meta almost weekly. The organisation’s former director, Fatma Ibrahim, said that Meta repeatedly informed it that posts about sexuality, reproductive health and sex education would not be recommended to others because they supposedly violated the platform’s rules. Then the warnings escalated, and Meta began to simply remove its posts. Examining Meta’s community guidelines allows us to understand why these organisations are so alarmed. Meta says that it allows nudity for “educational”, “medical” and “awareness-raising content”, but that is clearly not what is happening in practice. Under its policies relating to “adult sexual activity”, which it supposedly bans outright, Meta includes “menstruation” alongside “dismemberment”, “cannibalism” and “bestiality”. Something that every woman does monthly—an involuntary biological process connected to the menstrual cycle that is experienced by billions of women—is grouped alongside acts of violence and abuse. What does that tell women about their bodies and how they are being understood by these systems? This morning, I met representatives of the Eve Appeal, the UK’s leading gynaecological cancer charity, who handed me a letter that they wrote to Meta after attempts to reach it by other avenues failed. They told me that they are extremely concerned about the suppression of some of their content. Last month, The Eve Appeal shared a medically accurate illustration of vulval anatomy on Instagram. It was not pornography or explicit material, but a labelled, educational diagram intended to help people understand their vulva, recognise changes in their cervix and identify symptoms of vulval cancer. The post had a Patient Information Forum tick, the gold standard for health information content. The Eve Appeal has posted the same content three or four times over the last five years, but last month, Instagram removed the post for alleged “nudity or sexual activity”. The Eve Appeal’s account received a warning and its appeal was rejected. Eventually, the post was reinstated, but it was hidden under a “sensitive content” screen, warning users that the image “may be upsetting”. I have seen the image, and it is literally a line drawing. The Eve Appeal received no explanation, and the sensitive content warning has stifled engagement on its post. One of the Eve Appeal advocates, Zoe, told me, “When I was diagnosed with vulva cancer, I was clueless. Why? Because I was taught the whole thing was a vagina. The use of pictures with labels of anatomy and names would have been a great help. Penis, prostate, balls, breasts, ovaries, cervix and womb are not taboo, however vulva and vagina, the two rarest of the gynaecological cancers, are being censored and dismissed.” The Eve Appeal’s educational posts are designed to save lives. Hiding women’s anatomy behind “sensitive content” warnings does not protect women; it silences them. Such policies can even put lives at risk. My right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), who could not make it here today, has been raising awareness of another extraordinary case involving Thames Valley Air Ambulance. The charity launched a campaign highlighting that one in three women suffering cardiac arrest do not receive CPR before emergency crews arrive. Why? Because bystanders are often hesitant to touch women’s chests, remove bras, expose nipples or remove clothing in an emergency. Thames Valley Air Ambulance created an educational content video using a female CPR mannequin to demonstrate how to apply defibrillator pads correctly. Facebook removed the post and Instagram temporarily deleted it. The reason? The female mannequin breached community standards. Again, after appeal the content was restored with a blurred sensitivity warning. The charity responded: “If we can’t even share an image of an educational use manikin online without it being deemed ‘inappropriate’, how are we expected to normalise removing a real person’s bra to…save their life?” As you can imagine, similar content with a male mannequin is never removed or shadow-banned. Education campaigns like those save lives, yet the algorithms of big tech treat them as indecent. While charities are struggling to share lifesaving information, women’s health businesses are also being throttled. The global femtech market is projected to exceed $97 billion by 2030. It should be one of the great growth sectors of the future; instead, female-led health businesses are facing relentless moderation barriers. Bodyform’s Vagina Uncensored campaign was censored 22 times in one month across Meta, TikTok, Instagram and X. One advert containing the words “menstrual cycle” and showing a sanitary towel with blood was rejected by Meta unless it carried an 18-plus warning. To remind people, periods start much younger than 18 years old and the questions start even earlier than that. Apparently, period products are considered inappropriate for under-18s despite the fact that the vast majority of girls begin menstruating well before that age. Sixty-four per cent. of women’s health businesses have lost revenue because of those restrictions. Some businesses report losses of half a million pounds a year. One company said their app downloads collapsed from 250 per week to just 50. Another said years of content creation vanished overnight. Smaller femtech start-ups are the hardest hit. Hanx, a women’s sexual wellness company, said nine out of 10 of its adverts were rejected in the early days, and even now 34% of all its adverts are rejected. Meanwhile, treatments for erectile dysfunction are explicitly permitted under Meta’s advertising rules; women’s libido products are not. Tommy’s, the pregnancy and baby charity, had a video flagged as inappropriate because it included the word vagina. The video featured a researcher studying the vaginal microbiome to better understand infections linked to premature birth and miscarriage. Again, educational, evidence-based medical information was treated as inappropriate content. Ordinary women are seeing this happen every day. Influencer Charlotte Emily has more than 90,000 Instagram followers—something I think every politician in this room would like. She said that posts about periods, body image, menopause and women’s health perform dramatically worse than her fashion or lifestyle content. She said that simply using the word “period” instead of euphemisms like “Aunt Flo” reduces visibility. Think about the message that sends to young girls online: that medically accurate language about their own body is unacceptable and that they should hide behind euphemisms and embarrassment. This is not accidental. Words connected to women’s healthcare are treated as suspect content when they should be treated as healthcare education. That is the same prejudice that women have faced for centuries, simply translated into code. Victorian doctors dismissed women’s suffering as hysteria; today’s algorithms suppress the words that women search when they need to find out whether what is happening to their body is normal. The technology has changed, but the sexism has not. This censorship has consequences far beyond embarrassment or inconvenience. When trusted information is hidden, misinformation flourishes. The Government have now acknowledged that poor-quality online health information harms women’s outcomes—I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Dr Ahmed) for his work on that—particularly around reproductive health, contraception, miscarriage, menstruation, menopause and infertility. I am glad to see us acknowledging that, but tackling misinformation means nothing if accurate information is suppressed in the first place. If charities are hidden, educators are shadow-banned, doctors are down-ranked and medically approved content about the uterus, cervix, vulva and vagina is blurred, conspiracy theorists and grifters fill the vacuum and women suffer. I am coming to the end of my speech, but I want to mention that Essity surveyed about 4,000 adults and found that two thirds look online for health advice, while half rely on social media for health and wellbeing information. Among young people, that number is even higher. Overwhelmingly, the public reject this censorship. Nearly eight out of 10 adults said that words such as “vagina”, “period”, “boobs” and “menopause” should not be restricted when used educationally. The public understand what platforms apparently do not: women’s anatomy is not obscene, women’s health is not inappropriate and education is not pornography. So what must happen now? First, big tech companies must stop hiding behind opaque moderation systems. They must explain how their algorithms operate, why women’s health content is disproportionately targeted and how appeals are reviewed. Secondly, the Government must stop allowing this issue to fall between policy silos. This is simultaneously a health issue, a women’s equality issue, an online safety issue and a digital regulation issue. It requires co-ordinated action between departments, regulators and the affected organisations. Thirdly, platforms should work directly with clinicians, educators and trusted charities to establish verified pathways for evidence-based health content. Finally, we need a cultural shift. Women and girls deserve to talk openly about periods, menopause, infertility, miscarriage, sex, orgasms, puberty and breastfeeding and every other aspect of their health without shame. They deserve medically accurate information without censorship. Ultimately, this debate is not only about algorithms. It is about power: who gets heard, who gets visibility, whose bodies are treated as acceptable and whose health is considered legitimate. Right now, the message that many women receive online is this: “Your body is inappropriate. Your anatomy is shameful. Your health is controversial.” It is also about autonomy. If we can make informed choices, we have autonomy, but until big tech changes course, women will continue to pay the price in lost education, lost opportunity, lost trust and, in some cases, lost lives. The technology companies have the money and they have the ability; what they lack is the will. It is about time they found it.

• 21 May 2026 · Women’s Health and Wellbeing: Online Censorship · Hansard source

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  Yes, they would be. I am trying to say that the OSA does not limit this, but it does limit some of the other material. It is important that there is a place for the Government to say what platforms should or should not be able to publish, but they should not micromanage. I agree on that. It should not be like the Lord Chamberlain saying, “Here are the words that you are allowed to use”, or, “The Queen does not approve of those phrases”, but we should be clear that we limit free speech where it has a real, negative impact on individuals or on society, and that we are protecting people because of their age, gender or other protected characteristics. The shadow Minister raised an important discussion about publishers, plurality and biases that are already in the system. The systems are designed by men and the content, for the most part, focuses on men—not completely, but the algorithms are traditionally designed by men and therefore feed what they think men want, or not even what they want, but what will keep them on the platform the longest. That is their business model. I appreciate the Minister reiterating the Government’s position that we believe that women should have access to accurate medical information. There are two sides to that: making sure that we suppress inaccurate medical information; and making sure that we have the mechanisms to show what is medically accurate with a tick. We should then make sure that that is the material that people see. I appreciate what you said about appeal mechanisms, but it is difficult to appeal against shadow-banning, so we need to talk further about that. Again, that is about transparency on algorithms, which you were talking about, and about our dialogue with social media platforms. We need to ask them, what is more damaging? Is it the sexualised content, the misogynistic content or the health advice? We need to have that serious discussion with them. We also need to think much wider than the four big social media companies. That is not always where people go for such advice. We have heard of experiences on LinkedIn and many other platforms that show that this is a widespread issue. Finally, you are absolutely right about media literacy, so that we know what is good health content and what is based on rubbish science. That is part of how we get through this. [ Interruption. ] I thank everyone for attending.

• 20 May 2026 · Artificial Intelligence · Hansard source

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  One of the best ways to make sure that any AI developed contributes to innovation and growth is to set very high standards. We are lucky to have the British Standards Institute—the oldest standards institute in the world—and I am very lucky that it is based in Milton Keynes. Will the Minister join me in wishing it a huge happy birthday in this momentous year for it? What kind of engagement has he had with it on its work to set reassuringly high standards for AI’s development?

• 13 May 2026 · Debate on the Address · Hansard source

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  First, I pay tribute to the King for coming to the other place and making a speech. He addressed us not with the wit and humour with which he addressed the Americans, but with the seriousness that was needed today. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) for her impassioned speech and perseverance. She is admired and respected by anybody who has suffered any kind of hardship and abuse, and she shows how far one can go. She boasted that Bradford was the youngest city, but I would like to point out that Milton Keynes is the newest city. We had a speech from my hon. Friend the Member for—where was he from again? Oh yes, my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince); I should remember that, as he mentioned it 35 times—I counted. He made claims about his new town, and my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Kevin Bonavia) claimed that he represented the first new town, but I remind everyone that Milton Keynes is the most successful new town. I will not go through every Bill, but I will pick out some that will make a difference to people in my constituency. The European partnership Bill is so important. As we all know, and as the public in Milton Keynes know, especially if they are running a small or medium-sized business, the Brexit campaign was not clear on how leaving would impact people—that is me using parliamentary language. The biggest thing that we could do to support small and medium-sized businesses in the UK is ensure that they had full access to all European customers, and to the whole trading area, and work with their European counterparts and trade partners to build growth here. We have already heard from Members about some of the impacts of Brexit. If the Conservative party is serious about growing the economy and supporting small businesses, as it says it is, I am sure that we can count on the Opposition’s full support in getting closer to Europe to make that happen. On the clean water Bill, Milton Keynes has both a river and a canal; some Members may remember that the previous MP decided to demonstrate how clean the river was—or was not—by taking his shirt off in a photoshoot. The water is not clean—

• 13 May 2026 · Debate on the Address · Hansard source

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  I believe that in Milton Keynes, Reform was forecast to win 26 seats, but after the hon. Member’s visit, that went number went down to nine. Does that not prove that the more people get to see of him and his party, the less they want them?

• 13 May 2026 · Debate on the Address · Hansard source

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  It is a bit weird, but he was from the hon. Member’s party!

• 13 May 2026 · Debate on the Address · Hansard source

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  The clean water Bill is about taking on vested interests. It is about not just cleaning up the waterways but taking on those water companies that have absolutely taken us for mugs. I would remind any Member who still puts a picture of Margaret Thatcher up on their office wall that the reason we are in this position with water companies is because of her legacy. We want to end leasehold for good. That is hugely important in a city such as Milton Keynes, where many people own their property. We are that new town—that promise that someone can move in and own a flat or property—but we must go further and ensure an end to leasehold, because those who buy freehold houses should not continue to pay a service charge, many years into the future. This is a huge problem in Glebe Farm, where six different developers are charging six different service charges to freeholders. That must end. We also need the social housing renewal Bill. Social housing was part of my cabinet portfolio when I was the Labour deputy leader of Milton Keynes city council. We were able to build new council homes to high, green standards, with air source heat pumps and solar panels, further bringing down energy bills for our council tenants. We also had a social housing decarbonisation fund that supported over 2,000 tenants in bringing down their bills through insulation and new windows.

• 13 May 2026 · Debate on the Address · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member makes a good point, and I agree with him. In Milton Keynes, we did not privatise our social housing stock; we had 12,000 in the housing revenue account. The reality is that the reforms done under the Conservatives during the 1980s destroyed council housing stock across the country. The wall that has been put between the housing revenue account and the council’s account means that authorities cannot invest in building new housing to reduce their use of temporary accommodation. Things like that need to go. We also need to ensure that victims of domestic abuse are not the ones evicted from their homes with their children. It is the perpetrators who need to leave. For the first time we are bringing forward legislation that will make sure that that happens. Stability for children and victims needs to be at the absolute forefront of our minds. Rather than move them around the country to protect them, we need to intervene to get the perpetrator away and to protect them from the perpetrator. We are banning conversion practices. It should have been done before, but it is finally going to be done under this Government. The removal of peerages Bill is so important, too. People will also know my views on the digital access to services Bill, which will be vital in order to modernise our public services. I want to talk about security, which is the theme that runs through the King’s Speech. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) that when we talk about security, we need to talk about domestic, defence and development, because they all go hand in hand. We need to see the tackling state threats Bill in the light of the horrible events that we have seen against our Jewish communities in recent weeks, and in the context of our democracy. That is why we need to do more to protect democracy through the Representation of the People Bill, which is coming back in this Session. The most personal form of power that any of us hold is the power to freely choose who we vote for. That power is fundamental to democracy, but today it is under threat from foreign states that want to cause us chaos, tech bros who do not share our values, and opportunists looking to make money from division. They are not taking away our right to vote, but they are distorting the national conversation and undermining genuine voices. Deepfakes stop us being able to trust what is real. Bot armies spread disinformation. Algorithms that prioritise engagement over truth amplify all of that, and foreign actors exploit it. This is a make-or-break moment for the security of this country’s democracy. We cannot shy away from what is at stake. Democracy does not require agreement, but it does require us all to live in a shared reality. Every Member of this House has seen misinformation, disinformation, bot activity or deep fakes in action—in fact, many of us have been victims of it. If we do not act, we are putting our democracy in the hands of tech bros in other countries who do not share our values—in fact, some have even called for riots on our streets—and who cannot be trusted with Britain’s future. The Representation of the People Act 1983 was not designed for a world of deepfakes of politicians, micro-targeting, political advertising, and algorithms with agendas. I am thrilled that this Government are reforming it, and I will be re-tabling my seven amendments to the Bill on Report. I want to see clear laws that recognise and define digital manipulation as a serious offence against our democracy. I want increased powers for the Electoral Commission to demand back-end, real-time access to social media platforms when manipulation is suspected. I want mandatory labelling of AI-generated content and a political advertisement repository so that voters can separate what is real and what is not, and see where political content comes from, who is funding it and what they are saying in different parts of the country to different voters. I want to see a critical incident protocol, independent of Government, which can be triggered in response to a significant risk to the integrity or security of our elections. I know this is controversial, but elections do not just happen for six weeks every five years now, so our election laws should also apply all year round. The six-week campaign is a thing of the past—we cannot keep regulating for a world that does not exist. Anything that people see relating to our democracy, whether it is a year out from an election or two weeks out from an election, should meet our electoral standards. This is not about limiting debate or controlling outcomes; it is about safeguarding the conditions in which each and every person makes their choice. It is the only way our democracy survives. I am pleased that we are pursuing a serious agenda—an agenda that is about our security and the security of the everyday lives of our constituents. In Milton Keynes, the 35 Bills in this King’s Speech, on top of the 50 that we passed in the last Session, are making a real difference to everyone.

• 28 Apr 2026 · Referral of Prime Minister to Committee of Privileges · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I understand that when an MP visits another MP’s constituency, the custom and practice is that they should give that MP due notice. The Leader of the Opposition came to my constituency but did not inform me that she would be there. I seek your advice on how best to resolve this. [ Official Report , 28 April 2026; Vol. 784, c. 870.] (Correction)

• 28 Apr 2026 · Select Committees · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Following my earlier point of order, I received an email from Conservative party headquarters. It contained a picture of an email that the Conservatives say that they sent to me ahead of the Leader of the Opposition’s visit to my constituency. Although I have never seen that email, and we have seen no evidence of it in my inbox, I feel that I should give them the benefit of the doubt about it having been sent. I have suggested that the Conservative party uses parliamentary email addresses in future to ensure that emails get to the correct people at the correct time. [ Official Report , 28 April 2026; Vol. 784, c. 838.]

• 23 Apr 2026 · UK Biobank Data · Hansard source

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  Health datasets of the size that UK Biobank has are incredibly important, because they allow us to find answers to the huge health challenges that many of us face, whether that is pain, as the Minister referred to, dementia or heart conditions. My concern is that this breach will make people think twice before donating their data. That could have a huge impact on our ability to treat conditions right across the world, but particularly here in the UK. The scientific community has always worked across borders and collaborated, whether that is with Europe, Canada, the US or even China. Given that it is only through these datasets that we can make medical breakthroughs, can the Minister reassure people who are thinking about participating that the protections that he, UK Biobank and other platforms of this kind are putting in place will absolutely protect people in the future?

• 23 Apr 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Mr Speaker, you and I agree that all women and girls should be safe on this estate, whether they are MPs, staff or visitors. We have been working together to ensure that we become the first White Ribbon-accredited Parliament in the world. What progress is being made to ensure that that accreditation is in place for this House by the next International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, so that we can all celebrate that this is a safe place for every woman and girl who chooses to work or visit here?

• 20 Apr 2026 · Security Vetting · Hansard source

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  I want to take a moment to focus on the young women who were exploited, abused and raped by Jeffrey Epstein and his friends. For years they were trafficked for rape, with no one to turn to, and for years people did not believe them. The idea that Mandelson would call Epstein’s conviction “wrongful” is disgusting, and I cannot imagine how it felt for the survivors to hear that. The Prime Minister was right to sack him. Will he take this opportunity to say again to those young women that this House believes them and the Government stand by them, and is he confident that no person with financial or personal links to sex traffickers will receive developed vetting status in future?

• 13 Apr 2026 · Statutory Menstrual Leave · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I declare an interest: I have adenomyosis. It took more than 30 years for it to be diagnosed. The average diagnosis time is nine years and four months. For ethnically diverse communities, it is over 11 years. My story is not unusual. From the age of 14, I repeatedly went to the GP saying, “This isn’t normal.” That is like the 47% of sufferers who visited their GP more than 10 times before a diagnosis, while 70% visited more than five times. We all know what they were told: “You’re making a fuss about nothing”, “It’s normal”, and as we just heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh), “All you need is a hot water bottle and some painkillers.” Like so many other young women—80% of them—I was put on the contraceptive pill before any further investigation, and well before I was sexually active. This continued for many years. I once convinced a doctor that the pain was so bad that I should have some kind of exploratory surgery, so they did exploratory surgery looking for endometriosis. They did not look for adenomyosis. After that, I really was told that I was making it up, because they could not find anything. When I gave birth to my first child, I was in labour for 30 hours. A midwife at the other end of the phone kept saying to my husband, “If she’s able to nap, she’s clearly not having contractions.” I could nap during contractions because I had spent more than 30 years having to sleep with adenomyosis. I learned to have a very high pain tolerance. That baby was delivered in A&E because we got to the hospital so late. Even after being able to describe the pain of my periods being worse than the pain of contractions, not least because they were continuous and did not go away and come back like contractions, I was told that I was exaggerating and that it could not possibly be that bad. They told me that there was nothing they could do other than keep me on the contraceptive pill, which seemed to do nothing. It was not until I got to the other end with my reproductive health, when I had to go for several scans for menopause ahead of getting treatment for perimenopause, that the scanner said to me, “Oh, you have adenomyosis. That must be really painful,” as an offhand comment. I was bowled over. I said, “What is that? I’ve never even heard of it.” I had heard of endometriosis, but I had no idea what adenomyosis was. She said, “Oh, it’s similar, but it’s growing in your muscle lining.” I could not believe it; I was shocked that from the beginning to the end of my reproductive years—all those years of pain—I never once got a proper diagnosis. How did that impact my working career? I used to wish my period would start on a weekend, so that I would not have to miss work—I can see some nodding heads. I used to organise my work tasks around my expected period: I would do all the work that took concentration on days I knew would be good days, so that on the bad days I did not have to be productive. I missed about a day of work a month, which used to terrify me at the beginning of my career. I did not feel that I could talk to my bosses about it—I did not have the words to do so—and I had doubts from those doctors telling me that it was not as bad as I thought. I also want to share April’s story. She is only 24 and she has been going through this for the past 10 years. Her periods were so painful that she vomited. It is like that for many of us: doctors would say, “Take a paracetamol,” and I would say, “That’s great, but I can’t keep it down. I will literally vomit it back up.” April had a Mirena intrauterine device fitted for her symptoms, but she wanted to get it removed. I was shocked by this story: she was told that the strings of her IUD had been cut too short to remove without surgery. When April asked why that was the case she was told: “We cut the strings short for our younger patients, because we don’t want their boyfriends to find sex with them uncomfortable.” April had to undergo surgery under general anaesthesia to remove her IUD. She says that, at every stage, “A decision about my own body—my contraception, my ability to access the removal of my IUD—was shaped around the comfort of a hypothetical male partner.” She was single at the time. That is what we are all put through. At no point were any of us told that painful periods are not normal—I am not talking about discomfort; I am talking about pain—even though we know that to be the case. Each and every one of us should know that from the start. This relates to the fact that women’s health information is being shadow-banned online. Over the past year, 95% of women’s health educators were targeted for shadow-banning. That means that people who are trying to get this kind of health information out there are having their posts either blocked or downgraded because of their content. I do not mean to be rude, but that does not seem to happen to posts about erectile dysfunction. Educators are told by big tech that it has been quietly restricting or hiding women’s health content that contains educational terms like “periods”, “menopause”, “vagina” and “endometriosis” under the guise of safety or because those terms are too sexualised. How are we supposed to create an environment in which not only we as women but our bosses, colleagues and partners, who might be male, all understand that painful periods are not normal, and that the pain is real? We are seeing improvements in these areas, and I know that we are all looking forward to the women’s health strategy, which many of us have had long conversations about with the Ministers involved. We hope that it will bring about further real progress, but right now, I have a 15-year-old daughter who has all the same symptoms that I had, with all the same pain. I have told her all my tricks, including the use of irritable bowel syndrome medication to reduce some of the cramping—if people in the Public Gallery do not know about that one, it works really well—but our GP says that she is too young to start having such discussions. She is doing her mock GCSE exams this week. I wish her the best of luck, because she has studied really hard, but she is terrified that she will get her period this week and it will mess up those mock GCSEs. I have given just a few examples; I know that women in the Public Gallery could give many more. We hear the same story over and over, and it all stems from this fallacy that periods are meant to be painful. Painful periods are not normal and we need to repeat that to every woman we know, including every female team member we know and every GP or consultant we know, to make real change happen.

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

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  I welcome the Rycroft review and I very much enjoyed speaking to Philip Rycroft during the process. Beyond crypto and other financial donations, he says we need to tackle deepfakes, bots and disinformation; create a political ad library; and put in place greater investigatory powers for the Electoral Commission and an incident protocol should there be a major election incident. My amendments deal with all those points. Will the Secretary of State undertake to urgently meet me to see how we can take my currently named amendments and make them Government amendments at the Bill’s next stage?

• 24 Mar 2026 · Defence · Hansard source

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  I would like to take the gallant Minister back to his comments about when and why Britain should go to war. It is clear that the Conservatives have forgotten that the Leader of the Opposition made her comments during the offensive action, not the defensive action. Is the Minister concerned that we have a Leader of the Opposition and a leader of the Reform party who, when Donald Trump says, “Jump!”, say, “How high?”

• 24 Mar 2026 · Defence · Hansard source

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  Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the problem with his Government’s drone strategy was that they did not invest in satellites, making us reliant on foreign satellites for full capability, and they did not invest in the radars, as we have, that cover all of Europe and north Africa, thereby making us fully reliant on the US?