Emily Darlington MP: speeches

Speeches

• 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.

• 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!

• 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)

• 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?

• 23 Mar 2026 · Puberty Blockers Clinical Trial · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I want to start with the expression, “Do no harm.” To be clear for the people who have come to speak to me—parents and young people themselves—we are doing them harm by not giving them the treatment they need, with the wait times of six years, and potentially in respect of puberty blockers, where that is agreed with their healthcare professionals. My overarching concern is that the clinical trial was suggested in the Cass review. It was proposed and designed in conjunction with the MHRA, but then the MHRA changed its mind. Why was that? Dr Hilary Cass said: “There are no new research findings and the MHRA hasn’t presented any new evidence. It feels to me like they are responding to political pressure rather than to science.” That is what she said; I was quoting her verbatim. It was her review that the people around this Chamber wanted us to listen to and to make changes in response to, so we have to listen to her in this instance as well. The MHRA should operate without any political interference or fear of legal action, yet the MHRA itself referenced potential legal action in relation to the trial as one of the reasons why it changed its mind. That is a problem. The MHRA is there to make sure that anything from clinical trials to medical technologies and new drugs are dealt with on the basis of science and science alone.

• 23 Mar 2026 · Puberty Blockers Clinical Trial · Hansard source

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  I am not for hounding any particular individual. The only person I have referred to by name is Hilary Cass and she has been on the public record. I have been hounded for my views as well—

• 18 Mar 2026 · Pornography: Regulation · Hansard source

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  2. What recent discussions she has had with the British Board of Film Classification on regulatory parity between online and offline pornography.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Pornography: Regulation · Hansard source

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  Like many colleagues in this House and the other place, I am deeply concerned about the current unacceptable regulatory gap between online and offline pornography, and the public share that concern. The findings of recent research conducted by the BBFC indicate that 64% of pornography users believe that violent pornography contributes to violent sexual behaviour in the real world, and 80% would support new regulation. Does the Minister recognise the clear public demand for online-offline parity, and will he commit himself to introducing legislation to ensure that content that it would be illegal to supply on our high streets is no longer permitted online?

• 10 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill · Hansard source

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  I appreciate that the hon. Member is into storytelling—it may be his next job—but what did he think was going to happen to the courts system when there was a 23% cut under the last Government? It was going to crumble. Does he not agree?

• 10 Mar 2026 · Courts and Tribunals Bill · Hansard source

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  I am trying to understand the hon. Lady’s point. Is she saying that we should now extend jury trial to all trials, or that we should keep the status quo? Is she saying that it is sacrosanct and so should in fact be extended? I am confused.

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

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  If we were to link voting with brain development and maturity, that would mean that men get the right to vote about five years after women. Should we base it on that science?

• 24 Feb 2026 · Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for that commitment. Would he consider setting up a meeting between GDS and those MPs who have expertise in this area, so that we can share our expertise and reassure ourselves that this is going in the right direction and at the speed that is necessary?

• 24 Feb 2026 · Online Harm: Child Protection · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree. Young people, particularly those in the mid-teenage years, understand this issue in a way that sometimes we do not because, quite frankly, our online experience is completely different from theirs. If Members want to test that, they should open an app such as Pinterest and compare what is fed into their Pinterest boards with their child’s Pinterest boards. It is a completely different experience. If Members do not have children, they should ask younger member of staff to open the same app on the different phones, and they will see a completely different world.

• 10 Feb 2026 · Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Again, I welcome the Government amendments and clause 18; they are important to enabling us to share our vulnerabilities in an appropriate way with those people who may be involved. However, some of the aspects of those vulnerabilities that security services—GCHQ, His Majesty’s Government Communications Centre and others—raised with us relate particularly to not only foreign interference, but the potential for interference through technology embedded in our networks. How does the Minister see the measures working within our co-operation with different foreign nations, particularly during these volatile times?

• 10 Feb 2026 · Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I have a few questions for the Minister. I appreciate the clarity that the Bill brings to many of the services in its scope. I would like to understand how the definition of “incidents” will relate to hardware vulnerabilities that are discovered within a company, as we heard from some of the people who gave evidence to the Committee. It is unclear in the Bill. Perhaps it will be further defined in secondary legislation. I want to understand how an incident in which someone discovers a vulnerability in hardware—such as in a system-in-package—is reported, and how that information is then delivered by the regulator to other companies in the sector that may have similar technology, and to the other regulators, which may also want to flag that technology as a particular vulnerability. Is that defined as an “incident” or is it defined somewhere else in the Bill? I am a bit confused and am looking for some clarity.

• 3 Feb 2026 · Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I have a question for Ian Hulme. In your role at the ICO, you are clearly looking at data security. Data is obviously one of the main goals of cyber-attacks. Data issues cut across every sector, and you are looking at a really broad sector of data, from individual identifiers to names, addresses, bank accounts or whatever it might be. This could happen in any sector. How does the Bill give you additional powers to take action, particularly on those co-ordinated through AI or foreign actors, and do you think it is sufficient for what you feel we will be facing in the next five years? Ian Hulme : We need to think about this as essentially two different regimes. The requirements under data protection legislation to report a data breach are well established, and we have teams, systems and processes that manage all that. There are some notable cases that have been in the public domain in recent months where we have levied fines against organisations for data breaches. The first thing to realise is that we are still talking about only quite a small sub-sector—digital service providers, including cloud computing service providers, online marketplaces, search engines and, when they are eventually brought into scope, MSPs. A lot of MSPs will provide services for a lot of data controllers so, as I explained, if you have the resilience and security of information networks, that should help to make data more secure in the future.

• 14 Jan 2026 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q9. If reports are correct, Elon Musk has climbed down today under pressure from this Government. Let’s be clear: stripping women naked without consent in real life or online is abuse. However, we do not know whether to trust what X says today, and this is not just happening on X. Will the Prime Minister join me and men and women across this House and across our nation to say to any app or AI company that we will not tolerate any abuse of men, women or children in this country and that we will act on enforcement?

• 10 Dec 2025 · AI Safety · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

• 27 Oct 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) for her fantastic speech. I recently met some kinship carers who with very little support often take on family members who have suffered terrible trauma and abuse. They do not understand the child’s trauma and they do not understand how best to support them. Does my hon. Friend agree that, in order to get the best results for child victims, we need to think about how we extend support to kinship carers, so that they can support those children who have been through the worst of times?

• 21 Oct 2025 · Mandatory Digital ID · Hansard source

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  Is the hon. Member aware of the Government’s statements that the system would be held internally and use sovereign tech?

• 21 Oct 2025 · Mandatory Digital ID · Hansard source

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  I am happy to go through it. First, it is not about centralising data. Rather, digital ID allows the citizen to access federated data. The data stays in the individual Departments; it does not stay on a card—this is not about a card. Digital ID adds a level of security to Government datasets. There is no travel or location data. There is no access to external providers. It uses sovereign tech that allows citizens to know what the Government hold and who is accessing it. There is no new data that the Government do not already hold, and a single login is actually better for a person to prove who they are with a digital ID.

• 21 Oct 2025 · Mandatory Digital ID · Hansard source

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  It is interesting that my hon. Friend talks about the Estonian experience, as I often hear my constituents’ frustration that they do not know what the Government are doing with their data, and how they even have trouble accessing it. Does my hon. Friend think that a scheme like Estonia’s would help the citizen to be in charge?

• 21 Oct 2025 · Ending Homelessness · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is making a fantastic speech. Does she agree that supporting people from rough sleeping into solo accommodation involves a continuum of support from the charity and public sectors? That creates the system that holds people up and supports them, with trauma-based support at its heart.