Helen Hayes MP: speeches

Speeches

• 2 Jul 2026 · Historical Forced Adoption · Hansard source

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  The evidence that the Education Committee heard from mothers and adult adoptees was utterly devastating. I thank Diana Defries, Ann Lloyd Keen, Sally Ells and Debbie Iromlou for courageously reliving their trauma so that we could shine a light on the extent of the injustice they suffered and the urgent need for a meaningful response. They should not have had to work so hard for so long just to be heard and to have their experiences recognised. I also thank the academics who gave evidence, and especially Professor Gordon Harold and Dr Michael Lambert, whose painstaking and rigorous research helped to prove what mothers and adult adoptees have long known: that the state was culpable for the wrongs they suffered by presiding over, funding and facilitating a system that dehumanised unmarried pregnant women and their babies, and inflicted horrific cruelty upon them. I thank the Prime Minister for this apology today. It is long overdue and much needed. I thank him for the breadth of the apology and for the Government’s work with survivors to get to this point. Women whose babies were forcibly adopted and who endured cruelty and humiliation in mother and baby homes and in the NHS should know today that the shame of this period in our history rests on the Government and on the religious and community and healthcare organisations who presided over, facilitated and sustained the system; it is not, and never was, theirs to carry. This apology is a watershed, but it must be only the beginning of putting right the disgraceful wrongs of this shameful period of our history. May I ask the Prime Minister to set out how progress on delivering the support he has announced will be monitored and how survivors will continue to be involved in it? Will he ensure that as the Government progress this work, information on how to access that support will be made widely available? So many families have a story, and there are so many stories that are still untold with so many still feeling ashamed to speak about this period in their lives and its lifelong impact. They must no longer feel ashamed; they must feel that they can come forward and access the help and support they need.

• 22 Jun 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I know that Members across this House will have been sickened and devastated to hear reports of the abuse suffered by baby Preston Davey prior to his murder at the hands of his adoptive parents, in whose home he should have been safe. It is of concern that Preston was seen by several different professionals in the weeks and months before his murder. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 legislates for stronger safeguarding arrangements, including the introduction of multi-agency child protection teams in every local authority area. In the light of the serious safeguarding failings in Preston’s case and in other recent cases of children who should have been safe in the care of the state, will the Secretary of State set out the expected timetable for implementing these reforms? How quickly can we expect to see stronger safeguarding practice consistently nationwide?

• 15 Jun 2026 · Tenant and Resident Management Organisations: Regulation · Hansard source

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  Residents on the Loughborough estate in my constituency have suffered years of appalling service from their resident management organisation, the Loughborough Estate Management Board. It has a failing repair service; dangerous chemicals were being stored in the community centre; there were allegations of threats and harassment; and more than £350,000 of its funding was spent on overseas trips and gifts. Eighteen months ago, residents voted overwhelmingly in favour of not renewing the board’s mandate, yet it is still operating, and there appears to be no straightforward mechanism that the local council can use to close down this failing organisation. Will the Minister work with me to bring this scandalous situation to an end, and to ensure that the Loughborough estate’s residents receive the housing services that they pay for and deserve?

• 4 Jun 2026 · Children’s Social Care: Enduring Relationships Strategy · Hansard source

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  I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Minister on his commitment to making a difference for children in the care system and for care leavers. It is a shocking reality that our care system has, over a long period of time, become so far removed from putting the essential needs of children and young people for secure, loving relationships at the heart of everything it does. May I acknowledge the magnitude of the shift that the Minister has announced today? We do not often have moments like this in the House—we should have them more often. Having spoken to many, many care leavers over a long period of time, I know the difference that what the Minister has announced today has the potential to make for them. I welcome the fact that many of his commitments are consistent with recommendations from the Education Committee in our report. May I ask the Minister for further detail on two areas? First, can he give an assurance that, as he works to deliver this transformation of the care system and support for care-experienced people, he will retain a focus on restoring the early intervention and family support that prevents children from entering the care system in the first place? Secondly, with the focus on regional care co-operatives, may I press him on their geography? They cover quite large geographies, and it is possible for a child to be placed in a regional care co-operative and still be placed a long way from home. In delivering on the detail of regional care co-operatives, will he give his attention to that issue and pay attention to the distance that children will need to travel within them?

• 18 May 2026 · Backing Business to Create Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  I welcome many of the measures in the Gracious Speech, including legislation to strengthen our relationship with the European Union. Brexit has been the unmitigated disaster that the evidence always suggested it would be, and it is the Government’s responsibility both to act in the national interest by seeking to build closer alliances with the EU, and to continue to work to build a national consensus that it is in the UK’s economic, security and cultural interests to do so. We are focused on economic growth in this debate, and economic growth depends on a strong and sustainable education system at every level. The Education Committee’s recent report on higher education funding makes it clear that universities—anchor institutions in local and regional economies—face unprecedented financial pressure, with a real risk of insolvency and no clear plan for managing it. If we are serious about economic growth, we must be serious about the financial sustainability of the institutions that underpin it. In addition to taking the measures in the Gracious Speech, I urge the Government to take with the utmost seriousness my Committee’s recommendations on the steps needed to stabilise our university sector. I will focus the remainder of my remarks on the proposed “education for all” Bill. This legislation sits at the centre of the Government’s support for children with special educational needs and disabilities. Too many families still have to fight to secure the right help for their children. Too many children wait months, sometimes years, for essential support. Too many teachers and school leaders are being asked to meet growing and complex needs in a system stretched beyond capacity. I welcome the Government’s acknowledgement that that cannot continue, and the aim of making generational reform that will raise standards and build a more inclusive education system. The emphasis on early intervention, support close to home and collaboration across education, health and care reflects many of the recommendations made by my Committee. The move towards earlier identification of need is right and necessary. National inclusion standards could help to address the deeply entrenched postcode lottery that families face, and provide a baseline for accountability. Investment in workforce training and multidisciplinary support through initiatives such as Experts at Hand shows understanding that inclusion relies on professional expertise, as well as good intentions. However, there are legitimate concerns about capacity in the SEND system and the resources needed to deliver effective and impactful reforms. Parents and carers have expressed significant anxiety about some of the proposals in the Government’s draft reforms, which could both reduce access to existing backstop accountabilities and risk exacerbating friction between parents and carers and schools. If the “education for all” Bill is to succeed, it must be matched by the resources and workforce planning needed to turn its vision into reality, and it must be based on the lived experience of children and families and the professionals who work with them. Any reform of education, health and care plans must strengthen, not weaken, the ability of families to secure the support that their children need, and to hold the system to account when it fails. Everyone wants a system that works better and delivers more effectively for children, but no system is perfect, or can be perfect. Parents need to know that, should things go wrong, the system can be held to account through robust and independent mechanisms, underpinned by legislation. For that reason, I strongly encourage the Government to provide space for continued and meaningful engagement at each stage of reform, and to consider publishing the Bill in draft form for pre-legislative scrutiny by the Education Committee. That would allow for the testing of ideas, the identification of unintended consequences, and improvements that would give the Bill the best possible start. We have a rare opportunity to make lasting change, and to build a system that delivers on the principle of inclusion in practice, provides timely and appropriate support for every child who needs it, empowers professionals and supports local services, rather than overwhelming them. With careful design, proper resourcing and true partnership with those on the frontline, the “education for all” Bill could mark a turning point for a system that is too often characterised by struggle and exhaustion, turning it into one defined by trust, consistency and opportunity. That is a goal that we all should share, and it is by working together that we can achieve it.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Knife Crime · Hansard source

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  I welcome the publication of this strategy, and I pay tribute to the Minister for her strong commitment over many years to this area of policy and the depth of her thinking on it. In my constituency, we have seen far too many horrific tragedies. Out of those tragedies, however, has come some truly exceptional work in response from the community and from our grassroots youth-led organisations, in providing services that support young people. Those services provide positive opportunities for young people, help the community to come to terms with the trauma they have experienced and set young people back on a positive track. However, those organisations tell me that they struggle to access long-term sustainable funding. What is the Minister doing as part of this strategy to ensure that our youth organisations can keep the lights on and do their important work as part of the infrastructure of services that we need to tackle this problem?

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

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  Accountability is one of the areas that our Committee highlighted in our report last year, which I will speak about in a moment. Last year we published our inquiry report “Solving the SEND crisis”. The report was based on 900 pieces of written evidence, seven oral evidence sessions, and visits to Ontario in Canada and to schools and colleges implementing innovative good practice in England. In 95 detailed recommendations, our report called for comprehensive change to the SEND system, with a focus on early identification of need, making mainstream schools inclusive for the children with SEND who are already in them, increasing the accountability of the SEND system, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake) rightly suggests, for schools, local authorities and, importantly, for the NHS, and involving parents and carers in every decision about the support that their children receive. To date, we have received from the Government only an interim response to our recommendations, so we look forward to receiving their full response in due course. However, we are encouraged that the Government’s SEND reform proposals reflect several of my Committee’s recommendations. It is very welcome that the Government have committed additional resources to SEND support and will effectively be running two parallel systems for a number of years to avoid sharp cliff edges between the old system and the new one. That is the right way to deliver significant reform. I know that the decision to write off 90% of local authority SEND debts also comes as a huge relief. It is the right approach to prioritise early identification of need, to be seeking to make mainstream schools fully inclusive for the children who are already in them, and to be expanding the availability of provision in the state sector for children who need a place at a specialist school.

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

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  I congratulate the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) on securing this important debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allocating the time for it. The support for children with special educational needs and disabilities is an area in which my Committee has taken an intense interest. It is the single biggest challenge in our education system, with far-reaching consequences. The current system is failing children, families and the professionals who work with them, right across our country. It is causing deep distress, sometimes even trauma, for children and their families. The implications of the failing system for local authority finances are profound, and many professionals are put in the invidious position of being unable to deliver the education and support that children and young people require because of impossible constraints on resources and ever-increasing need. The outcomes for children with SEND are unacceptably poor. I am afraid that I simply do not recognise the description given by the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon that this is a system that is broadly working. A system that relies on parents having to battle every step of the way and having to go to tribunals to seek redress is an exclusionary and inequitable system. We need to be absolutely clear that it is failing and that the reform that is necessary to get it to work is comprehensive and far-reaching. It is vital that the failures in the current system are addressed. It is vital on its own terms, because no child should feel that there is no place for them in our education system, that their needs are not understood or, even worse, as we have heard from some of our witnesses, that they are the problem. No parent should have to battle at every single stage of their child’s education to get the support they need. It is also vital if we want to improve outcomes in our education system, and if we want to unleash the talent and creativity of every single young person, for the benefit of our society and our economy.

• 13 Apr 2026 · Southport Inquiry · Hansard source

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  All of our thoughts today are with the families of Alice, Bebe and Elsie. They have already suffered the most horrific loss, and to have confirmation today from Sir Adrian Fulford that their loss was preventable is utterly unbearable. Sir Adrian’s report highlights the failure of the multi-agency safeguarding hub, which was exactly the place where joint responsibility between different agencies should have been held, and he also said that children’s services were not well equipped to manage a risk presented by a young person, as distinct from risks to a young person. Can I therefore ask the Home Secretary what plans she has to work with the Department for Education and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to ensure that, as a matter of urgency, every professional working with high-risk young people knows exactly what to do when they are fearful that a young person is a risk to others, and is accountable for taking that action?

• 26 Mar 2026 · Road Safety · Hansard source

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  The Tulse Hill gyratory in my constituency is very dangerous. We see frequent accidents, near misses and, tragically, lives lost. We urgently need to see the transformation of the gyratory to make it safe for all road users, yet we are struggling because the availability of Transport for London funding for major junction improvements depends on there being substantial new development in the vicinity of the junction, which is not the case at Tulse Hill. Will the Minister meet me to discuss how the Government, Transport for London, Lambeth council and the local campaign group “Transform Tulse Hill” can achieve our important goal of making the Tulse Hill gyratory safe for all?

• 25 Mar 2026 · Public Baths and Lidos · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Efford. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) for securing this fantastic debate about lidos. I am proud that my constituency is home to Brockwell lido in the magnificent setting of Brockwell Park. Brockwell lido is an unheated outdoor swimming pool that opened in 1937, and it is grade II listed. It is a very special place. Crowned Britain’s best outdoor pool by the AA in 2025, it is known locally as Brixton beach. It is a place where generations of children have learned to swim and enjoyed the freedom of a summer by the pool. It is where many local residents enjoy the ritual of year-round swimming and a range of activities, including gym, fitness, yoga, and a truly wonderful programme of inclusive children’s activities run by the brilliant Whippersnappers. Brockwell lido is firmly at the heart of our community, and it has a special place in my life too. I have swum there regularly since 1996. In 2024, after many years of trying to summon the courage, I—pardon the pun—dipped my toe in the water of cold-water swimming, continuing my weekly swim into the autumn months. I very much enjoyed the experience until the Sunday before Christmas, when the water temperature was a balmy 8°. I fainted in the changing room afterwards. I am grateful to the kind women who found me and helped me to recover my pride and dignity, as much as my consciousness; I am now not quite a year-round swimmer at Brockwell lido. Throughout Brockwell lido’s history, however, it has faced precarious times. It was closed for a period in 1990 and opened again after a vigorous campaign by the Brockwell Lido Users group. I pay tribute to BLU, which played such an active role in advocating for lido users and for the protection and maintenance of Brockwell lido. In 2003, when the lido needed major investment to be able to continue, BLU was involved in the choosing of a new operator, Fusion Lifestyle, which secured the investment needed at the time and ran the lido well for the first few years through good collaboration with BLU, Whippersnappers and Lambeth council. In recent years, however, following a change in the leadership of Fusion Lifestyle and some of the challenges faced by the leisure industry as a result of the pandemic, there has been increasing concern about the quality of the facilities and the lack of investment and maintenance at Brockwell lido. Right now, Brockwell lido is facing a new risk, as it is understood that Fusion Lifestyle faces grave financial difficulties and may no longer be in a position to continue to operate the lido. On Sunday, I attended a meeting of more than 200 local residents, who came together with Lambeth councillors and members of the BLU committee to talk about the future of Brockwell lido. Were any confirmation needed as to how loved and valued Brockwell lido is by local residents in our community, that meeting was it. I am pleased that Lambeth council agreed to step in if needed to ensure that Brockwell lido stays open, but the anxiety in recent weeks poses a number of questions about protections for our lidos, and whether sufficient protection is afforded to them given their great value to our communities. We know, for example, that Brockwell lido is a profitable site, but there has been little transparency about, and no ringfencing of, the funding that the lido brings in, such that it is spent on the maintenance and investment that is needed for the lido. The process is under way for designating Brockwell lido an asset of community value, but I wonder whether such a designation should be automatic for facilities that are always going to be assets of community value. There is no guaranteed role for users of our lidos in their governance, despite the fact that the users are so often the custodians of such valuable and important places. Finally, in the event of insolvency or administration, there is no obligation on an operator to co-operate with, or to hand the facility back to, the council so that it can continue to operate for the public benefit. We love Brockwell lido and, as a community, we will work to ensure that it has a sustainable, viable and long-term future, but without doubt, having had this experience, we are learning about possible additional protections. I hope that the Minister will have some response to such concerns.

• 11 Mar 2026 · Royal Mail: Universal Service Obligation · Hansard source

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  My constituents in Dulwich and West Norwood, particularly in the SE22 and SE24 postcodes, have been suffering the consequences of Royal Mail’s failings for years. Residents in SE24 recently had no mail for four weeks. A key problem in holding Royal Mail to account is that it is required to report performance data relating to only the first part of the postcode. That means that the failures of individual delivery offices are disguised in the sub-regional data. Will the Minister raise that issue with Ofcom, and ask it to look again at the reporting requirements on Royal Mail, so that it can be held properly to account?

• 5 Mar 2026 · World Book Day · Hansard source

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  That is a wonderfully creative way to engage children, not only in reading but in a wider and important area of learning. I pay particular tribute to the schools and public libraries across my constituency of Dulwich and West Norwood; they are going above and beyond this week. I also pay tribute to the wealth of independent bookshops with which my constituency is particularly blessed, including the Paper Cat children’s bookshop, where I recently had the privilege of meeting the Gruffalo in person, and to the brilliant Stepping into Stories children’s literary festival, which goes from strength to strength each year. The core purpose of World Book Day is to promote reading for fun. World Book Day is the UK’s largest reading for pleasure campaign and is run by a charity of the same name. World Book Day is a delivery partner for the National Year of Reading. This year it is encouraging children to “Go All In” for World Book Day. The charity distributes 23.5 million £1 book tokens annually—sent to every UK primary school, plus secondary schools and nurseries on request—which children can exchange for a book from a selection chosen with the input of children and publishers. World Book Day is enormously successful. In 2025, 91% of UK children aged five to eight took part in a World Book Day activity, and 93% of UK adults are aware of the event. A quarter of children on free school meals said that the first book they owned came as a result of the World Book Day £1 book tokens. This is important because reading has such enormous benefits. A child who is read to at ages one to two scores more highly in reading, spelling, grammar and numeracy skills at ages eight to 11. Reading for pleasure at ages 10 to 16 has a substantial positive effect on vocabulary, spelling and maths performance by the age of 16. Children who are read to frequently at age five are over half a school year ahead in reading performance at age 15 compared with those who are read to infrequently or not at all. For children growing up in poverty, being read to daily at age five is significantly associated with a greater chance of avoiding poverty in adulthood. The Education Committee, which I Chair, has heard that reading for pleasure is a “driver of social mobility” and an “anti-poverty strategy”. Reading helps develop children’s vocabulary. Studies have shown that the language used in books is more complex than spoken language, helping children learn more words and get used to more complex sentence structures. Reading has been shown to help develop empathy, especially towards stigmatised groups. Professor Jessie Ricketts, professor of psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London, said that reading allows children to learn about things outside of their own experiences. She said: “When we pick up a book, there may be characters and environments that are not part of our lived experience. That is particularly important for people who are not moving around much and may not have access to those things.” Shared reading in the early years improves emotional closeness between child and caregiver. It lifts the parent’s mood, increases warmth and reduces stress, enabling the sensitive and nurturing interactions that young children need to thrive. Reading also helps children with their cognitive development. Reading with young children helps develop their attention and memory skills, and learning to read helps develop the area of the brain responsible for processing language. Evidence from neuroscience states: “There is clear evidence that learning to read shapes the brain, resulting in the tuning of an area specialising in word processing”. Yet despite this huge range of benefits, the number of children reading for pleasure—choosing of their own volition to read when they have a choice about how to spend their time—is declining. The National Literacy Trust’s annual literacy survey 2025 found that the percentage of children and young people who enjoy reading is at its lowest in 20 years, with just one in three children and young people aged eight to 18 saying that they enjoy reading in their free time. That is a decrease of a third since 2005. Fewer than one in five children and young people aged eight to 18 read something daily in their free time in 2025. The decline is not evenly distributed across all demographics. Girls are significantly more likely to read for pleasure than boys. In 2025, 39% of girls aged eight to 18 said that they enjoy reading, compared with just 26% of boys. Reading for pleasure also declines as children get older. Among children aged five to eight, 63% say that they enjoy reading, declining to 47% of eight to 11-year-olds, 30% of 11 to 14-year-olds and 29% of 14 to 16-year-olds. The situation in England is substantially worse than internationally, with the most recent progress in international reading literacy study in 2021 finding that 29% of English pupils said they “very much like” reading, compared with the international average of 42%. Children’s reading patterns are not established in a vacuum. It is striking that a recent BookTrust survey found that 70% of parents and carers said they face challenges in sharing books with their child. That rises significantly to 75% for those parents on low incomes. It is in that context that the Education Committee is undertaking an inquiry on reading for pleasure. We are exploring why there has been a generational shift in reading for pleasure and what can be done to reverse the trend. We are looking across the sector to assess the role of schools, early years settings, libraries, parents, authors, publishers and more, and we are looking at the different groups of children and families who are least likely to read for pleasure and how they can be supported to read more. So far, the inquiry has received around 180 pieces of written evidence and has held two oral evidence sessions during which we have heard from academics, charities and experts. I would like to put on record my thanks to children and their teachers from Mulberry Canon Barnett primary school, who came into Parliament today to talk to the Committee about their experiences of reading. The evidence we have received cites a number of possible reasons for the decline in reading for pleasure. Barriers to children’s reading for pleasure include an increase in recreational screen use. Onyinye Iwu, a children’s author and secondary school art teacher, said that her pupils told her, “we have TikTok. What’s the point?” As she continued, “You’ve got TikTok, you’ve got Netflix, you’ve got the film coming out, so why would you read the book?” We also heard that the focus on reading proficiency and an overcrowded curriculum can mean that reading for pleasure is seen as a “nice to have”, crowded out of the everyday practice of some schools. A Department for Education survey found that 21% of parents of secondary-aged pupils and 14% of parents of primary-aged pupils said their children were too busy with homework to find time for reading. We have heard that cuts to library services and school libraries have limited access to books. Local authority spending on public libraries decreased from £1.5 billion in 2009-10 to £673 million in 2022-23, followed by a slight increase the following year. The Great School Libraries campaign found that there were 10% fewer libraries in secondary schools between 2019 and 2022, and that 15% of secondary schools had a library but no budget at all for it. I warmly welcome the Government’s commitment to ensure that every primary school has a school library by the end of this Parliament and to provide funding for secondary school libraries. The lack of a quiet reading environment due to overcrowded housing and reduced community provision is also making a difference to the reading habits of children from the lowest income backgrounds. The evidence also points to a decline in reading among adults, leading to less shared reading with children and less role-modelling of reading by adults. The Reading Agency found that only 53% of UK adults now read regularly for pleasure, compared with 58% in 2015. Children are more than twice as likely to report seeing parents relax by watching TV than by reading. Luke Taylor, senior researcher at the Centre for Social Justice, told the Committee that it is particularly important for boys to see men reading, and highlighted a lack of male role models as a factor in the lower levels of reading among boys. It is also important that children can find themselves in books. Children from minoritised communities are particularly likely to say that they do not see themselves in what they read. Only 24% of children’s books published in 2024 featured a racially minoritised character. Onyinye Iwu said that although there was a boom in ethnically diverse books in 2020, it has not been sustained. The Committee also reviewed evidence on what works to get children reading. We have heard that connecting reading to children’s interests is important. The National Literacy Trust survey found that two in five children and young people were motivated to read when material related to a favourite film or TV series, or matched their interests or hobbies. Debbie Hicks, creative director at the Reading Agency, told the Committee that tying reading in with interests such as sports, music or science, technology, engineering and maths can offer “really familiar entry points for reluctant readers.” Our witnesses spoke of the need for “mirrors and windows” to ensure that children are represented in books while also being exposed to different cultures and experiences. Onyinye Iwu said that there has been a “big jump forward” in the availability of books with diverse characters and stories, but a much narrower range of authors is still being regularly highlighted and promoted in shops and in the curriculum. Witnesses spoke of the need for children to have genuine “choice and agency” over what they read. The National Literacy Trust survey found that a quarter of children said that being free to choose what they wanted to read was a motivating factor. The Committee has heard that children with special educational needs and disabilities, especially those with dyslexia, can struggle to access traditional texts. Ellen Broomé, the chief executive officer of the British Dyslexia Association, said that dyslexic children can find reading “difficult, exhausting and something they avoid” and that they can have “feelings of failure and embarrassment and stigma around their reading.” The evidence that we have received has emphasised the importance of accessible texts for children with SEND and ensuring that read-for-pleasure initiatives are inclusive. We have also heard that seeing reading as a social activity is a motivating factor for children. Children are motivated to read by social factors such as having opportunities to discuss books with their peers or—as we heard from children at Mulberry Canon Barnett primary school this morning—to act out the story in class or have the opportunity to continue or finish the story themselves. Professor Jessie Ricketts highlighted the special importance of social factors for teenagers, as they are “very much guided by what their peers think” and often do not see reading as a social activity. There is much to be learned from World Book Day for the encouragement of reading for pleasure all year round. Professor Teresa Cremin told the Committee that teachers should aim to “spread World Book Day practice…throughout the year” by supporting children to read in their own time and to develop the habit of reading. She said: “If you had a rich reading pedagogy in your classroom, every day is World Book Day. Every day I am trying to support you 32 as readers. It is my job...not an occasional piece”. Jonathan Douglas, chief executive of the National Literacy Trust, and Annie Crombie, co-chief executive of BookTrust, told the Committee that events such as World Book Day have “immense value” in creating a buzz of excitement around reading and making partners on the ground feel that they are part of something bigger. However, they highlighted the need for that to be built on a wider infrastructure of reading activity throughout the year. The Education Committee will make our recommendations to the Government later this year. The benefits of reading for pleasure for children and adults are enormous; they speak directly to some of the most significant challenges that children and young people face around mental health and wellbeing and the impacts of screen time and social media. Reversing the decline must therefore be an urgent priority. I will end by once again thanking everyone who is involved in supporting this year’s World Book Day and the National Year of Reading. Whether they are marking World Book Day by dressing up as their favourite character or simply curling up in a corner with a good book, I hope they enjoy the day.

• 5 Mar 2026 · World Book Day · Hansard source

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  I thank all hon. Members who contributed to this debate. It has been a consensual debate, celebrating the power of World Book Day and the benefits of reading. It has also been an enlightening debate, in which we have learnt about the poetic talent of the hon. Member for Windsor (Jack Rankin), which he should be congratulated on. We have learnt about the Cyclops costume of my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow), which he has mentioned previously in the Select Committee. We are all very anxious to see it in real life. We have heard from the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) about how a whole career can be built on World Book Day costumes, and from my hon. Friend the Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard (Alex Mayer) about the book she wrote. Congratulations are due to her on her success in getting Dunstable the recognition it deserves. It was lovely to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow West (Patricia Ferguson) about the benefits of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Many years ago, I spent a summer at Drumchapel, and it is lovely to hear that the community there has benefited from that brilliant initiative. We have heard about literary traditions on the Isle of Wight, and the benefits of reading for communities across the country, including in Northern Ireland. This has also been a serious debate, in which we have recognised that reading is a powerful part of our toolkit for tackling many of the serious challenges that our children face, from closing the disadvantage gap to improving mental health and wellbeing. We will take those lessons forward from the debate, with a commitment to spread throughout the year all the good practice and benefits of the fun and excitement of World Book Day, as we continue to grapple with the challenge of how we support more children in getting back into reading for pleasure. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered World Book Day.

• 2 Mar 2026 · Small Religious Organisations: Safeguarding · Hansard source

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  My constituent is a survivor of abuse within a religious organisation, and she represents a larger group of survivors at the same organisation. She has found the Charity Commission to be utterly ineffectual and far too slow in dealing with her complaint. When I wrote to the Minister about this issue, she referred me to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. When I wrote to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, I was referred back to the Home Office. The religious organisation continues to operate with the suspicion that the practices that led to the abuse claimed by my constituent are continuing. We are a couple of years down the line in raising these concerns, so will the Minister advise me how I can get some traction on behalf of my constituent to ensure that her allegations and those of other survivors of the organisation are properly dealt with, and that the organisation cannot continue to operate with the same practices?

• 2 Mar 2026 · Small Religious Organisations: Safeguarding · Hansard source

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  I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. On reasonable suspicion, does he agree with me that in any closed community, including religious organisations, it is a characteristic of abuse that people have suspicions, but often nobody feels able to speak up? Bringing reasonable suspicion into the definition for mandatory reporting, and putting that on the statute book, is a really important safeguard in that context. It creates an additional duty that could allow us to deal with circumstances that are pretty common.

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

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  It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair today, Ms Lewell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Jas Athwal) for his powerful opening speech and for securing the debate. I declare an interest as a mum of two students who are currently in higher education. I want to acknowledge the strength of feeling among graduates with plan 2 loans and the material impact that current loan terms and the planned freeze in the repayment threshold are having on them. The generation of graduates with plan 2 loans studied between September 2012 and July 2023. They are the same generation who have found themselves increasingly locked out of the housing market, unable to put down roots in their community, and squeezed by the cost of living and the cost of renting in particular. Plan 2 loans add unfairly to those cost pressures. If the promise of education is that if you work hard, do well and get a good degree, then that degree will be a passport to increased earnings and a good standard of living, that promise is not being fulfilled for far too many in the plan 2 generation. I believe there is an urgent need to look at the value for money of student loans. We need to do that for the plan 2 generation, but also for the generation of young people who are considering university. We need to recognise that students from the lowest-income backgrounds are most likely to be deterred by the perception that university is not good value for money because of the impact of the loans. I share concerns about unilateral changes in payment terms; that does not meet the standard of fairness that we would expect from any other lender. I share concerns that loans are linked to a measure of inflation that the Government do not use as the basis for other calculations. However, in short, the solutions are not straightforward. The Education Committee is currently undertaking work on the funding of higher education institutions, and its headline conclusion is that they are very fragile. The proposals made by the Leader of the Opposition this week are entirely untenable, and I reject in particular her war on arts degrees, which will always have an important place in our education landscape.

• 24 Feb 2026 · EU Membership Referendum: Impact on the UK · Hansard source

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  I will not give way, because of the number of Members who wish to speak. Some 16,400 SMEs have given up exporting to the EU because of Brexit-related red tape. [ Interruption . ] I will not give way, because of the number of colleagues who wish to get in. Our food is more expensive, regulation has dropped, and there was no £350 million a week for the NHS. During the debates that followed the referendum, I took the view that I would prioritise representing my constituents’ views, and that on such an important matter, even if we were losing the argument, democratic representation and plurality of voices mattered. It led me to rebel on a number of votes and to resign from the shadow Front Bench in order not to vote in support of the Conservatives’ Brexit deal. Brexit drove a huge wedge through the middle of our country. It divided regions from each other, split communities and even families, according to strong and sincerely held views. We do not need to re-litigate those arguments and to keep telling each other we were wrong, or seek to convince ourselves that we can easily return to where we were. However, responsible government demands that we reckon with the reality we find ourselves in. We must acknowledge the immense harm that has been done—that we are poorer and less secure as a consequence of Brexit—and it is right that we seek to undo the damage. I welcome the steps that the Government have already taken to reset our relationship with the European Union, starting with re-establishing the warmth of our friendship, reopening regular and constructive dialogue, negotiating new deals and rejoining Erasmus+. There is further to go, but we must move forward, step by step, making the consensus, building community and connection, and moving forward in a realistic way, recognising that relationships are mutual, not unilateral, and that there is more to do to rebuild our relationship.

• 10 Feb 2026 · Inner-London Local Authorities: Funding · Hansard source

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  I urge the hon. Member to reflect with a bit of humility on what his party did to local government funding when it was in power.

• 10 Feb 2026 · Inner-London Local Authorities: Funding · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend makes the point about the recovery grant very well. I will come on to some practical suggestions for what the Government could do to alleviate that situation in the short term. Council tax equalisation, such that the grant is now based on each area’s share of the national tax base and not actual local tax levels, penalises low tax base, high-needs areas like Lambeth and Southwark. The business rates reset will wipe out historical strong growth in some inner-London boroughs, and falling numbers of children will also have an impact through the children’s formula, even though need is growing and increasingly complex. The risk is that our councils are left in an increasingly precarious situation and are forced to make impossibly hard choices about local services in the face of increasing need. Having agreed the final funding settlement—it is welcome that it is for three years, which gives our councils more certainty—there is more for the Government to do to help councils bring down their costs and reduce need, so that service delivery is manageable within the resources that are available. On behalf of my councils of Lambeth and Southwark, I have a number of asks of the Minister. Our councils desperately need help with the costs of temporary accommodation. The average cost of temporary accommodation in London has risen by 75% over the last five years, and the number of people seeking help with their housing has also increased dramatically, yet the amount that the Government pay councils to subsidise temporary accommodation has been frozen since 2011. Will the Government work towards increasing the subsidy so that it is closer to the actual housing costs that our councils face? Temporary accommodation is the least stable form of housing and it has terrible consequences for residents. I have known many constituents to get up at 5 am to travel long distances by bus to keep their children in the same school and give them some stability. Those costs could be saved if more residents could afford to rent privately, yet the freezing of the local housing allowance has made that increasingly impossible. Will the Minister work with her counterparts in the Department for Work and Pensions and the Treasury to increase the rate of local housing allowance to stop private renters from needing temporary accommodation? Some of the £5 million that is spent every day by London local authorities on temporary accommodation would be much better deployed keeping residents in stable homes through the local housing allowance than propping up the most awful situations in temporary accommodation. With the application of the £35 million cap, councils in receipt of the recovery grant currently face a cliff edge. For Lambeth council that will mean, as my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) said, a loss of £47.5 million over the next three years. If the cap was removed for just next year, it would give the council an additional £11 million to reduce the savings that it is currently having to plan for. Will the Minister consider that? Councils have expressed concern to me about the Government’s assumptions about the level of council tax receipts. Will the Minister work with councils to ensure that the assumed level of council tax receipts closely matches actual council tax collections? The social housing crisis requires that new social homes are delivered at pace. In my constituency, we have council and housing association-owned sites with planning permission that are not currently being delivered because the soaring inflation caused by the Liz Truss mini-budget priced them out of viability. The Government’s commitment to invest £39 billion in social housing is very welcome, but will the Minister ensure some of that funding is urgently made available to London boroughs that have sites that are ready to build? We urgently need that. The overnight accommodation levy is very good news for London but it must be apportioned to where it is most needed. Will the Government mandate that at least 50% of the funds raised by the levy are retained locally by London boroughs to cover the costs incurred by services affected by tourism and to support local growth?

• 10 Feb 2026 · Inner-London Local Authorities: Funding · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the hon. Member for his intervention. I will come on to talk about those sites in my constituency that have planning permission but currently are not funded to build the social homes that could be on those sites. I think that is an important part of how we solve these challenges. The Conservatives’ interventions to reduce social housing rents have also been disastrous for the ability of our councils to fund the maintenance of social housing and to fund new social homes. Southwark council calculated that Conservative-imposed rent cuts and freezes will cost the council’s housing revenue account £1 billion over 30 years. What is a very small saving for tenants has had a really big impact on the ability of councils to keep up with the maintenance needs of their social housing stock. The Conservatives were happy to cut our councils’ budgets to the core and did not worry about the erosion of services that inevitably followed. Reform imagined that our councils were full of waste and profligacy, only to find that they are lean organisations that have constantly innovated in the face of austerity but that, over time, have become stretched, sometimes to breaking point. A budget settlement based on a definition of deprivation that did not include housing costs, as was originally proposed, would have had absolutely dire consequences for inner-London councils. The reality is this: if rent eats up so much of someone’s income every month that they cannot afford the bare essentials, or if the only property they can afford to rent is so bad that it causes them and their family to become ill, then they are deprived and they face exactly the same consequences of that deprivation as anyone else anywhere in the country who simply does not have enough money to get by.

• 10 Feb 2026 · Inner-London Local Authorities: Funding · Hansard source

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  I am not taking an intervention; I have been really clear about that. I am grateful to the Minister for her response. I fully appreciate the challenging situation that she is in, the complexity of her brief and the pressures that she is facing from colleagues and from councils all across the country. I appreciate deeply her commitment to local government, and her deep understanding of its workings and the challenges that our council colleagues face. I am encouraged by her assurances on local housing allowance in particular, and on the costs of temporary accommodation. I look forward to seeing progress on those points and will certainly remain engaged on those issues. I would be hugely grateful for anything that the Minister can do to unlock the stalled sites. We have three in my constituency—two of them are council-owned and one is owned by a housing association. Between them, they have the capacity to deliver quite a good number of council and social homes. We would really like to see those come forward quickly. I believe that the Minister has good intentions in the settlement that has been announced today. I support her in her aim of reconnecting local government funding with deprivation and ensuring that funding is fairly distributed, but the challenges that our councils face will remain. There is further work to do, and I hope to be able to engage with her further on behalf of my boroughs as we seek to repair the damage that has been done over a long period of time, and get things back on a better footing so that our councils can deliver for our communities. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered funding for local authorities in inner London.

• 10 Feb 2026 · Inner-London Local Authorities: Funding · Hansard source

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  I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee.

• 10 Feb 2026 · Inner-London Local Authorities: Funding · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered funding for local authorities in inner London. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Dr Murrison. My constituency includes part of the London borough of Lambeth and part of the London borough of Southwark. Before I was elected to this House, I spent five years as a local ward councillor in Southwark. I just managed not to overlap with the Minister, who was also a councillor on Southwark council and stepped down in 2010 as I was being elected. Being a councillor is deeply rewarding, with a responsibility for delivering services in a way that makes a direct difference to people’s daily lives. From recycling to street cleaning, adult services, children’s social care, roads, parks, playgrounds and council housing, our councils are responsible for important aspects of the fabric of everyday life. They affect people’s quality of life and, in doing so, play a vital role in building trust and confidence in politics, the Government and public services. I am proud that, as a councillor, I helped turn around a local primary school in a deprived area of my ward from being one of the worst in the borough to one of the best. I am proud that we delivered road safety improvements at a number of dangerous junctions in the ward. I am proud of the work that we did through tenants and residents associations and local community organisations to bring people together and build community. I am also proud that, despite more than a decade of Conservative and Lib Dem austerity, Southwark continued to keep the borough clean and open new libraries. It was one of the first councils to fund universal free school meals for primary-age children and it is a borough of sanctuary that supports the refugees and asylum seekers who are part of our diverse community. I remember very clearly the Labour group meeting in 2010 in which we were briefed on the coalition Government’s local government funding settlement for Southwark. There was a stony silence in the room as the newly elected cabinet member for finance told us how big the cuts were and the services and investment that the council would no longer be able to deliver as a result. We had no idea how much worse the cuts would get over the coming years such that, a decade on from the 2010 election, our councils were receiving 60% less in grant funding from central Government, and the capital grant for new council homes had been decimated. That marked a huge shift in local authority funding away from the certainty of grant funding and towards retained business rates, the new homes bonus and endless small, short-term pots of funding, often requiring resourcing for a bidding process. At the same time, our councils saw rising need. Our ageing population has meant an increasing need for adult social care, and the erosion of support for families has resulted in more children being taken into care and the cost of expensive placements increasing. The rising numbers of children with special educational needs and disabilities has increased the costs of school placements and home-to-school transport. That is all before we get to housing. Inner-London boroughs are at the epicentre of our national housing crisis. Spiralling rents and a lack of security in the private rented sector mean that more and more families have turned to their council for support with housing, while the lack of investment in new social housing and the loss of council homes under the right to buy has meant that they have had to be housed in temporary accommodation, which is very expensive and often the worst-quality accommodation. London councils are currently spending £5 million a day on temporary accommodation—that is £5 million a day into the pockets of some of the worst landlords, and at times paying for damp, mouldy, overcrowded homes, often far from a family’s home, neighbourhood, community and their children’s school.

• 10 Feb 2026 · Inner-London Local Authorities: Funding · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to all hon. Members who have contributed to the debate today, particularly the hon. Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune), who is a great champion for his constituents and his borough of Bromley, and to my hon. Friends the Members for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) and for Brent East (Dawn Butler) for their interventions and for speaking up for their boroughs. I am grateful to the Minister for her response. I believe I am 10 years older than the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor), so I would say very gently to him that perhaps my memory goes back a bit further. When I was elected to Southwark council, it coincided with the arrival of the coalition Government and the beginning, presided over by the Liberal Democrats in government, of some of the deepest cuts to local government funding that we have ever seen.