Esther McVey MP: speeches 2026

Speeches

• 26 Mar 2026 · Prison Officers: Mandatory Body Armour · Hansard source

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  I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate, and the hon. Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson), who instigated it and who does so much in this area. I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) for securing the debate, and you, Mr Betts, for chairing it. Styal prison, in my constituency of Tatton, is a closed female prison and young offenders institution with approximately 450 prisoners. Violence levels there have increased significantly: 189 assaults on staff and 167 assaults between prisoners were reported in the 12 months to March 2025. That, in itself, tells us that greater protection must be afforded to prison staff. In one horrific incident, a prison officer in Styal, Chloe Armstrong, was left with a tennis ball-sized lump in the back of her head, a swollen face and black eyes after she was repeatedly kicked and punched for just delivering a prisoner’s lunch. What a horrific attack as a thank you for a lunch. Nationally, violence against prison staff is up. Assaults against prison staff have almost trebled in the last decade. In the 12 months to March 2025, there were more than 10,500 assaults on staff, a record high: 26% involved improvised weapons, while the rest involved blunt force or liquids such as hot oil or boiling water. It should come as no surprise that the rate of prison officers leaving each year is more than 13%—a very turnover rate that no doubt leads to understaffed facilities and further exacerbates the safety risks to both staff and prisoners. The reality is that life as a prison officer, even at the best of times, is extremely challenging. They must confront and contain unthinkable situations almost daily. To do the job, they must possess a level of bravery that most of us simply do not have. But to do the job without proper protective gear is beyond belief. If staff do not feel safe at work, it will be hard to attract and retain new employees. We know from a recent survey of officers by the POA, the largest union of prison workers, that officers want extra protection. Who wouldn’t? Some 74% want to be issued with slash and bite-proof vests. Yes, the Government have made body armour mandatory for officers working with the most dangerous offenders, and the news last year that 10,000 more officers in high-security facilities would get stab vests and tasers was greatly welcome, but the Minister should not be surprised that with the increase in violence against staff, I and other Members would like to see the Government go further. Protective equipment and clothing should be provided irrespective of the category of prison. Sadly, violence can happen in all types of prison. Figures from the Ministry of Justice and His Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons consistently show that local prisons, which are mostly category B rather than A—the high-security ones—have extremely high numbers of assaults. Although the lower categories of C and D have less violence, the risk can still be considerable, and it is rising. I will end by quoting the retired prison officer Claire Lewis, who was mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East. She was brutally stabbed in the back while on duty—an entirely preventable incident that left her with life-changing injuries. Claire said: “Protective clothing is not a luxury—it’s a basic necessity. It can mean the difference between an officer walking out of their shift or being carried out. Prison officers deserve to feel safe.” I have just read—this must really be a slap in the face for prison officers—that killers and terrorists have just got £1 million in compensation, plus legal fees, for being segregated alone in a prison, which was viewed as unlawful and in breach of their human rights. Surely money cannot be spent on violent criminals for their human rights when we are not looking after the human rights of our officers, who are there to protect and look after those prisoners, and who do such a good job for us in society.

• 26 Mar 2026 · Lucy Letby Case: Conduct of Cheshire Police · Hansard source

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  Notwithstanding the points that my right hon. Friend is making, would he accept that the investigation included a range of independent, nationally recognised medical experts, including consultants and senior academics across a whole host of disciplines; and, knowing as I do that he is an enthusiastic advocate of our judicial system, that the Lucy Letby case was the longest-running murder trial in British criminal history, with a jury that considered the evidence for more than 100 hours? Lucy Letby appealed to the Court of Appeal but was refused. There was a retrial and a further appeal to the Court of Appeal, which was refused. Would he not accept the robustness of that process?

• 25 Mar 2026 · Voluntary Groups and Community Centres · Hansard source

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  Order. I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called. We will come to the Front Bench spokespeople just before 10.30 am.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Voluntary Groups and Community Centres · Hansard source

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  If Members will allow me, I would like to congratulate my local rugby club, Lymm rugby club, which last week got the King’s award for voluntary service. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered Government support for voluntary groups and community centres.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Middle East: Economic Update · Hansard source

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  The sad truth is that the Chancellor weakened the UK economy with her tax-busting Budgets and jobs tax, and that has been exposed by this middle east crisis. The Energy Secretary’s actions are making things worse: he has just refused to maximise drilling in the North sea and issue new licences, which would provide much-needed energy security and affordability. Will she now see sense and overrule the Energy Secretary’s decisions?

• 24 Mar 2026 · Middle East Conflict: Energy Security · Hansard source

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  Given the recent jump in the price of oil, would it not be good for the UK economy, jobs and the Government’s tax receipts to maximise drilling for North sea oil, as Norway does, rather than phasing it out and closing those sites down because of this Government’s, and in particular the Secretary of State’s, left-wing dogma?

• 3 Mar 2026 · Spring Forecast · Hansard source

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  Does the Chancellor now accept that there is a correlation between increasing national insurance contributions on employers and higher unemployment, or does she still believe that those two things are not connected in any way?

• 2 Mar 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Alderley Edge school for girls, in my constituency, has just announced its closure, blaming increased costs, such as national insurance costs, and, most significantly, VAT on school fees. Given that the Secretary of State is responsible for its closure, what will she do to help minimise the disruption to pupils who are now being forced to change school against their wishes, and to look for places in schools in the Cheshire East area that either no longer exist or are full?

• 24 Feb 2026 · Food Labelling (Halal and Kosher Meat) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to introduce compulsory labelling of halal and kosher meat and products containing halal and kosher meat; and for connected purposes. This is a Bill about animal welfare, transparency in meat production and consumer choice. It does not seek to ban halal or kosher meat. It seeks to ensure that it is clearly labelled. It is important that consumers have such information so that they can make an informed choice about what they are buying. Currently consumers do not have that information, and many are purchasing and consuming halal and kosher meat without their knowledge and agreement. The unique process of halal and kosher meat requires the animal to have its throat slit. In the case of halal meat, the animal is often stunned before it is killed—although it might not be—and for the shechita killing for kosher meat, there is no pre-stunning. This lack of stunning causes the animal to experience severe pain. An individual concerned about animal welfare would want to know if the animal has been stunned prior to slaughter. Likewise, there are many religious groups who want to know what they are consuming too and whether the meat has been blessed by another religion. In all those cases clear labelling is essential to make an informed choice. Currently, the legislation that regulates animal slaughter is set out in assimilated EU regulation 1099/2009 on the protection of animals at the time of killing, as well as in the Welfare of Animals at the Time of Killing (England) Regulations 2015. Under these laws, animals must be stunned before they are killed, but exemptions exist for killing without stunning in accordance with specific religious rites. Added to that, there are currently no requirements for such meat to be labelled. What was once an exemption to the accepted stunning process of animals has become a growing part of the UK’s meat market. The Government’s own figures show that of the 1.035 billion animals processed in English and Welsh slaughterhouses in 2024, an estimated 214.6 million were slaughtered to produce halal meat. The analysis shows that the proportion of meat supplied by non-stun slaughter is about four times greater than the proportion of Muslims and Jews in the UK. Although Government guidance is clear that meat that results from non-stun slaughter “must be intended for consumption by Jews or Muslims”, production is clearly going way beyond that, so much so that the UK now exports halal meat. Between 2018 and 2019, there was an almost 700% increase in the volume of sheep meat exported to the United Arab Emirates, all of which is required to be halal. Clearly, without compulsory labelling of non-stunned meat, slaughterhouses have gone down the route of producing more of it. In effect, a two-tier system has been created, whereby some slaughterhouses comply with stunning laws and others do not, citing the religious exemption, though without ever intending to focus their sale on that market. Unfortunately, a driver of the market for non-stunned meat is the fact that a step of the process is removed, meaning that production of non-stunned meat is cheaper. Supermarkets and food outlets can purchase that cheaper meat without ever declaring it to the customer, which is not what was intended by the legislation. We have seen many examples of this over the last 15 years; Britain’s biggest retailers—such as Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Marks & Spencer and Asda—have sold halal or kosher meat without informing the consumer, as have Domino’s, Pizza Hut and KFC. Non-stunned produce is being used by 17 local councils in schools, the majority of which are not Islamic faith schools, without parents or children having the first idea about it. It is also being served in hospitals and local councils. In December, Labour put forward its much-vaunted animal welfare strategy, a document lauded for its aim of “preventing animals suffering unnecessarily”, which included the banning of boiling live lobsters, banning the use of carbon dioxide to stun pigs, and steps to ensure the more humane slaughter of farmed fish. I was surprised and alarmed to see no mention of the more humane slaughter of animals and the labelling of halal and kosher meat. There was a clear opportunity to call for the labelling of halal and kosher meat, but it was missed. Nowhere in Labour’s 12,500-word animal welfare strategy was it mentioned. We often hear in the House that the UK holds the status of a world leader in animal welfare, but such a glaring gap shows that this country can no longer make such a claim. Food and You 2, which is a biannual official statistic survey commissioned by the Food Standards Agency, found that the most common spontaneously expressed food concern in 2024 was “food production method”. In August 2022, almost 99% of respondents to the Government’s call for evidence on labelling for animal welfare said that method-of-slaughter labelling should be introduced. In research from the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, 92% of halal consumers state that clear halal certification is important, so is it not time we updated our regulations and demanded that our meat was clearly and fully labelled, so that we know what we are buying and eating? Surely that is what consumer choice is all about, and I would wager that the overwhelming majority of animal lovers in the UK expect the House of Commons to support this Bill today. This Bill will give all consumers assurance that they know how their meat was produced. I urge all Members of the House to support this measure. Question put and agreed to. Ordered, That Esther McVey, Sir Roger Gale, Alberto Costa, Dame Karen Bradley, Sir Edward Leigh, Graham Stringer, Rupert Lowe, Sammy Wilson, Jim Allister, Lee Anderson and Sarah Pochin present the Bill. Esther McVey accordingly presented the Bill. Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 10 July, and to be printed (Bill 386).

• 23 Feb 2026 · Labour Together and APCO Worldwide: Cabinet Office Review · Hansard source

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  The steps taken by the former head of Labour Together to smear journalists when they dared to look into the murky finances of this Labour think-tank are nothing short of chilling. No longer head of Labour Together, he is now serving as a Minister in the Cabinet Office, which is the Department currently looking into his actions, so he will be marking his own homework. When is the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office going to be sacked, if he will not do the decent thing and resign?

• 11 Feb 2026 · Police Grant Report · Hansard source

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  On a point of clarification—

• 11 Feb 2026 · Police Grant Report · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

• 11 Feb 2026 · Police Grant Report · Hansard source

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  Is my hon. Friend concerned about not only that but increasing industrial-scale dumping in rural areas and the additional pressures on neighbourhood policing—whether from the increase in illegal immigrants going into hotels and houses of multiple occupancy, or from prisoners being let out of prisons, who neighbourhood police forces have to man-mark because of Labour’s Sentencing Bill?

• 11 Feb 2026 · Police Grant Report · Hansard source

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  I apologise for the fact that I cannot stay until the end of this debate, because I have a debate in Westminster Hall, but I need to ask the Minister a question. She talks about outcomes. Is she as shocked as I am that the Labour Cheshire police and crime commissioner has already spent £200,000 on two listening exercises, and is expected to spend another £400,000 on more listening exercises? The precept is going up by 6.7%, but the police force will have to make redundancies. Does she not agree that the money should go not on vanity projects, but on frontline policing?

• 11 Feb 2026 · Police Grant Report · Hansard source

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  No, I don’t.

• 11 Feb 2026 · Police Grant Report · Hansard source

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  Following on from the Minister’s point, I noticed today that the same Labour police and crime commissioner has put up an advert for a senior public relations officer on £45,000 to £55,000, and there are other vanity projects. Surely that money should be spent on PCSOs and police on the ground, not on the PCC himself.

• 11 Feb 2026 · Police Grant Report · Hansard source

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  Will my right hon. Friend give way before concluding?

• 11 Feb 2026 · Police Grant Report · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

• 11 Feb 2026 · Police Grant Report · Hansard source

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  At a time of great pressure on police budgets, my Cheshire police force is having to make redundancies. Was my right hon. Friend as concerned as I was that the Minister felt that our Labour police and crime commissioner could spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on vanity projects? She accepted it, rather than condemning it, and that money should go to frontline policing.

• 11 Feb 2026 · Police Grant Report · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for giving way; it is most generous of her. My chief constable has raised a point about Labour’s new Sentencing Act 2026, where criminals will not be sentenced for less than 12 months. My chief constable says that their force will now be man-marking criminals on the street, which will cost them approximately £1.6 million a year. Can the Minister explain how she plans to address that issue in costs and man hours?

• 11 Feb 2026 · Police Grant Report · Hansard source

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  indicated dissent.

• 11 Feb 2026 · Rural GPs: Funding · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered GP funding in rural areas. I am pleased to have the opportunity to talk about this important topic. Statistics show that, as of 2024, 17% of England’s population, equating to 9.6 million people, live in rural areas. For these communities, accessing healthcare can be challenging. The challenges are well known: rural GP practices serve elderly and often isolated populations, and are tasked with delivering complex care in large and often sparse geographical areas. The demands have long been accounted for in our funding formula for GPs, the Carr-Hill formula. The model was introduced in 2004 and was designed to ensure that GP funding reflected variations in workload and local population characteristics, including a measure of rurality.

• 11 Feb 2026 · Rural GPs: Funding · Hansard source

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  It is always good to have my hon. Friend—and I do call him my hon. Friend—intervene on me. He makes very good points. It is also important that a local GP chooses, and can see what their local constituents require and what is best for their health outcomes. The move to a new model based on deprivation rather than workload is, at best, an act of ignorance that fails to acknowledge the significant challenges of running GP practices in rural areas; at worst, it represents yet another example of Labour’s assault on rural life. Measuring pressures on GPs solely through the lens of deprivation would ignore the complex, distinct demands faced by rural practices. Rural communities have older populations. In 2019, the House of Lords Rural Economy Select Committee found that the average age in rural areas was almost six years higher than in urban areas, and a quarter of the rural population were over the age of 65.

• 11 Feb 2026 · Rural GPs: Funding · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member raises another good question, and we can ask the Minister to look into that. The logical conclusion of not having GPs from rural areas take part in this review is that the Government do not want to listen to them. They are intent on rewriting the formula without acknowledging the realities of delivering rural healthcare. A broadbrush measure such as deprivation cannot take into consideration the very close link between the ability to deliver healthcare and the rural or urban settings in which GPs exist. It comes as little surprise. Whether selling off our family farms or introducing a devolution agenda that pits rural against urban areas, time and again the Labour Government have shown that they are not willing to listen to rural areas, but are quick to sell out rural Britain at the first chance. As is typical, Labour’s response to pressure is to level down some areas, which serves only to create additional pressures elsewhere, rather than acting to fix them. The pressure faced by rural healthcare will not disappear soon. The NHS long-term workforce plan, published under the previous Government in 2023, recognised that the increased demand from an ageing population is not uniform in the UK. It estimated that “In 2037, a third of people aged over 85 will be living in rural communities” compared with just a quarter now. The Government must act to address that trend. I have been campaigning for a new medical centre in Knutsford, as was acknowledged before, where doctors desperately need more space and modernised facilities to meet patients’ needs. The current surgeries in Knutsford do not do that; they are all Victorian buildings and are not suitable. I have been pressing for that for a long time. I have met with the Minister—I thank her for that—and I would be grateful for an update on the progress of the practice in Knutsford. GP practices deliver community care and their ability to deliver is reliant on the environment in which they serve the patients. We must have a funding formula that acknowledges the challenges of delivering healthcare in rural areas. I would be grateful if the Minister could answer the following questions. Who is being consulted in the review, and will it include those with first-hand experience of delivering healthcare in rural settings, like my GPs in Tatton? What assurances can be provided that rurality will remain a factor in a new funding formula? Given the specific challenges they face, will the Department commit to publishing an assessment of the impact on rural communities ahead of any change to the funding formula?

• 11 Feb 2026 · Rural GPs: Funding · Hansard source

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  I agree with the hon. Member. I will come on to my surgeries that are indeed in Victorian buildings—spread across four—and need to be brought together and modernised. That is in Knutsford in my constituency. I know that there will be many other places like that across the country. The hon. Member raises a valid and pertinent point. We know that GP services in rural communities are spread across a large geographical area, and many elderly residents in Tatton live alone. Although such independence is cherished, travelling long distances to access healthcare is more difficult. Public transport is often limited or non-existent. Community transport schemes exist in Tatton, but they cannot always accommodate short-notice or urgent medical needs. Often, elderly residents do not drive, so they are left reliant on costly taxis or GP staff taking the time to travel to a patient’s home. That places additional pressures on already stretched services. In Lostock Gralam, despite a population of about 2,800 people, there is no GP practice. That forces patients to make a lengthy journey to Northwich, and without a direct bus service many are left to rely on taxis to make their appointment. For those communities, recruiting and retaining staff becomes more difficult and more expensive. The Rural Services Network reports that 59% of hard-to-recruit GP speciality training posts are located in rural areas. There is less access to specialists and consultants, which makes their services more expensive. Community services and provision are sparser in rural areas, too. Pharmacies, which help to relieve pressure on GPs in urban areas, are not as common in rural areas. When I secured this debate, I was contacted by the Dispensing Doctors’ Association, which provides an essential role in dispensing medicines to patients who live more than 1.6 kilometres from a pharmacy. It delivers to about 10 million patients across England, but is facing increasing challenges due to its reliance on manual delivery. In addition, while urban pharmacies move ahead with digital efficiency, rural pharmacies often struggle to keep pace because broadband coverage is often unreliable, rendering remote consultations near impossible and service delivery more difficult. The benefits of digitisation in healthcare are well understood across this House, but they rely entirely on having the right infrastructure in place. Without connectivity, rural practices are simply unable to access or benefit from Government investment in that area. There are lots of people from rural areas here, and we know how unreliable our broadband infrastructure is. In 2022, the all-party parliamentary group on rural health and care published an inquiry into healthcare in rural areas. It concluded: “Rurality and its infrastructure must be redefined to allow a better understanding of how it impinges on health outcomes”. No progress has been made on achieving that. Removing the rurality measure of GPs’ funding entirely would be a step backwards in understanding how settings impact GPs’ ability to provide healthcare. There is little transparency about who exactly will be consulted in the funding model review. In a written answer to a parliamentary question, the Government confirmed that the review “will draw on a range of evidence and advice from experts,” such as the Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation and the British Medical Association general practitioners committee, but there is little information beyond that. There are GPs in Tatton who are keen to contribute but, as of yet, have not been able to.