Helen Morgan MP: speeches

Speeches

• 2 Jul 2026 · Health Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I want to speak to amendment 6, which is tabled in my name, and amendment 7, which is consequential upon it. Amendment 6 would ensure that the CQC and NICE can “continue to make mandatory requests to the Secretary of State to establish an information system”, as they currently can with NHS England. At the moment, NHS England has a duty to co-operate with the CQC and NICE, and that is often enough for a collaborative approach that allows the CQC to access the data it needs. But the duty that applies to NHS England is not being passed on to the Department of Health and Social Care. The CQC raised the issue in written evidence to the Committee, saying that the duty “has been an important mechanism” that has “supported receipt of patient safety incident reports…information sharing between regional teams, and the development of central data sharing solutions.” The CQC went on: “Without an equivalent duty, we would be reliant on there being sufficient capacity and willingness within DHSC to share information, with no statutory backstop. This could inhibit our ability to receive the information” needed “to keep people who use services safe. Challenges in this area are often cultural and rely on the subjective judgment of individual data controllers as to whether particular data sets can be shared, how these should be used and what the timeliness of sharing should be, leading to protracted piecemeal conversations and delays.” As we have harrowingly heard over the past week, there is often reluctance to share data, particularly when there is a defensive culture in certain NHS institutions. Our amendment seeks to address the gap. I hope that what I have outlined is an oversight from the Government, not a deliberate attempt to reduce transparency or reduce regulator access to key data. The wider changes in schedule 11 will omit section 288 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012. The Government are dropping this key wider duty in a schedule entitled “Minor and consequential amendments”. We do not think it is minor. It holds major implications for patient safety and transparency. On a wider note, it seems counterintuitive that the CQC, as regulator, does not have easy access to the data collected nationally in the health service.

• 30 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Eighth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I wish to speak to amendment 36 and new clause 59, which are different ways of seeking to do the same thing. They are aimed at ensuring that “civil servants are responsible for the decision making and appointment processes for trust and ICB leaders, rather than Ministers or Special Advisers.” In earlier sessions, we spoke about the risk of political capture; the amendment and new clause intend to deal with that. The Government’s intention is to give providers more freedom to design services around local needs, but we are worried that giving the Secretary of State the powers to appoint trust chairs and non-executive directors will undermine that local flexibility and agency. It risks creating a bottleneck in the Department for Health and Social Care, leaving foundation trusts waiting for approval to make their arrangements. In theory, the Secretary of State will be responsible for the appointment of 143 foundation trust chairs and roughly 1,000 foundation trust non-executives, who themselves will appoint the executive directors. Clearly, there is the potential for a bottleneck there. We also think that in the hands of the wrong Secretary of State—I cast no aspersions about the current one—there is potential for mass manipulation of the make-up of future NHS leadership. I think everybody here would agree that NHS leaders should be the best possible people for the job, not those who best fit the political agenda of the Secretary of State of the day. We are worried that future Secretary of States could abuse their power, intervening unnecessarily and for non-clinical reasons in hiring and firing decisions. Their political views could heavily influence the make-up of trust and ICB non-executives across the country—who are themselves responsible for appointing the chief executive— and lead to the firing and hiring of those who suit their personal vision of what a leader should look like. From speaking to chief executives and other senior NHS leaders, I know that many already feel that chief executives are subject to the political whims of the day and are too easily scapegoated for wider failures. Holding poorly performing leaders to account is extremely important when there are failures, but sometimes those concerns and the blame culture that can exist in those organisations stops capable, impressive NHS leaders from taking the next step up the ladder to becoming a chief executive. We think a safeguard is necessary there. We recognise that someone has to hold that power and appoint those people now that NHS England has gone. That is why amendment 36 proposes that in order to ensure there is not political capture of those decisions, they are taken by impartial civil servants who are given a set criteria of what a good leader looks like, rather than by Ministers or their special advisers. As I mentioned, new clause 59 broadly seeks to do the same thing, but uses a different mechanism for getting that into the Bill.

• 16 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Good morning. Sarah, the Bill transfers a lot of NHSE’s powers to the Secretary of State. Do you have any concerns about the additional powers conferred upon the Secretary of State? Does that go too far? Sarah Woolnough: There are probably two concerns in a couple of different areas: appointments and the power of direction, which is very broad. We think it would be helpful to probe the detail and understand the intention a little more to see whether the legislation could do with amendment. There is more general point. If the narrative is that this is a straight transfer, of course, you cannot legislate for culture and how those powers will be used. Our concern is that, while the narrative is about a straight transfer, empowering local systems and earned autonomy, the legislation pulls a lot of power back to the Secretary of State, and you cannot legislate for how a future Secretary of State may enact those powers.

• 16 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I think I would agree with you, Minister, that no one thinks that abolishing NHS England is, in itself, a bad idea, given the duplication and cost. People do not think that a single patient record is a bad idea; I think that they assume that it already exists, and it could be transformative. There are therefore some really good points of agreement on the Bill. It would, however, be helpful to reflect on where there is not agreement: on abolishing Healthwatch and HSSIB. You make the very good point that they have not been successful in their current incarnation, but it is important to consider whether that is because they do not have teeth, or because the organisations that they are trying to change are defensive. We heard earlier about the culture of fear, and I think that we have probably all had people in our surgeries who can describe being frightened to speak up about their own personal care because they feel that they might be victimised for it. I know of clinicians who are frightened to speak up about their own experience in the organisation in which they work, because they feel that they will be punished for it. In the light of that defensive culture that we know exists in the NHS, and has been highlighted time and again—Mid Staffs; the Shrewsbury and Telford maternity scandal—is the answer not to put the patient voice in the organisations that have a culture problem, but to give those other organisations the teeth they need, or confer a duty on the ICBs or providers to act on recommendations that are given to them, because I think that might be a more helpful way of dealing with this problem? Karin Smyth: I think that gets to the crux of some of this. We will discuss it a lot in Committee, and I am obviously very open to keep discussing it. Thank you for your support on the main provisions. I do not take that for granted because, again, they are still controversial. However, as I think I said earlier, you are right, although it is not true everywhere. I am not blaming individuals, because I think that people have been trying to do a difficult job, particularly in getting us through the pandemic and beyond. But they are defensive. That is why Members of Parliament and others do not get responses to their phone calls or their emails. That is a culture that we have to change, and we need to support people to change. One of the things that we will do is to bring in regulations—that is a manifesto commitment from the Government—but another commitment that we have made outwith the Bill is to develop a leadership college to support in particular clinical and non-clinical managers, who have a very difficult job, in having the right skills for the new world, which patients and the public rightly expect to be more open and more transparent. We have to change this defensive culture. However, even since Francis, the adding of bodies and the adding of recommendations, and with the bad experience that you have done so much around, something different has to happen. Again, what we heard from Jeremy Hunt was that we needed to put more prescription into the system and yet more requirements to do something without actually making that someone’s central function and job. Now, it is a source of disagreement. As I have said, I think that there is a philosophical disagreement about the best way forward. It is not an antagonistic disagreement; there are fundamentally different views about what to do. We will continue to have discussions, because I think that ultimately we all want the same thing: a more open, transparent and supportive culture. By the way, nobody wants to work in a defensive culture, so I think people want that outcome. It is up to us as politicians to support difficult conversations and trade-offs that happen locally. My view has always been that politicians will support difficult conversations and trade-offs—we heard a little bit about reconfigurations earlier—if the system provides good clinical rationale, good data and good evidence, but those bits of it do not always line up. That is what I would like to get to. I absolutely understand and hear what you say—we will hear more about it and discuss it more, and I have read all the amendments about the best way forward. I think that we all want to get to the same place, but what is the best way to do that, given that we all know that this is really not working and cannot continue?

• 9 Jun 2026 · Health Inequalities · Hansard source

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  The former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), recognised an appalling culture of medical misogyny and basic, everyday sexism within the NHS. As such, it was extremely disappointing to see that the new women’s health strategy was inferior to the men’s health strategy. The men’s health strategy received 60% more funding for new initiatives and has a named academic network, a formal research mandate aligned with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, and a commitment to publish a one-year accountability report with named, responsible organisations and formal timeframes for every action. It also commits specific funding to trials and pathfinders. As it stands, the women’s health strategy has none of those things. It contains no specific, measurable, time-bound target to reduce the backlogs in endometriosis care, nor does the NHS 10-year plan include endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome or fibroids in its prevention agenda. Can the Secretary of State explain why?

• 22 Apr 2026 · Car Insurance Industry: Fraud · Hansard source

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  I am aware, because I was once hit by an uninsured driver. It is incredibly stressful not knowing how to get the car fixed and whether it is going to be written off. I was very young and did not know how I was going to afford to deal with that problem. I welcome any measures to deal with uninsured drivers. At the heart of this issue is the fact that insurance fraud is not a victimless crime. The victim is put through an extremely stressful time, and everyone else pays through higher premiums. I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that issue. Let me return to my point about solicitors, who are supposedly bound by the ethical codes of their regulator. I am a chartered accountant. In every profession, there are individuals who let us down from time to time, but there are clearly described ethical standards to which members of our organisation should adhere. We must undertake annual training on spotting problematic ethical situations, which for an accountant may not always be clearcut. I know that other professional bodies have a similar approach to this issue—yet a solicitor can work for a firm benefiting from this type of scam activity, and the firm might be fully registered with the Solicitors Regulation Authority. I argue that the SRA needs to up its game, because those individuals are bringing their profession into disrepute, seemingly with the blessing of the organisation that is supposed to uphold standards. Will the Minister have conversations with her colleagues across the Government to deal with this problem? Surely, people in this country should be able to trust a legal professional, and the Government should be taking steps to ensure that the profession has its house in order. There is a related point: the websites and search engines that host these paid ads are clearly designed to defraud and mislead. When will we hold the tech companies to account for the content that they host? Surely, they should have a duty to do a basic level of due diligence on the ads they place at the top of their search results. The online world is a free-for-all, where some of the most powerful companies in the world absolutely disregard basic levels of morality so long as they are paid. What can be done to introduce some sort of regulation to crack down on fraud and prevent it from happening in the first place—essentially, when it is perpetuated online? The only people who are not paying anything are the owners of the companies that host the problem. As I said in response to the hon. Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow), fraud is not a victimless crime. In the case of motor insurance fraud, every driver is paying in the form of increased insurance premiums. When someone is the victim of a scam, they are left shaken, with their confidence knocked, and potentially significantly out of pocket too. My constituent is a retired professional. The realisation that they have fallen victim to a scam has had a profound effect on their self-esteem. Paid ad spoofing is not the only type of motor insurance fraud. I thank the ABI, Aviva, Admiral and the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers for getting in touch in advance of this debate and providing briefings. Fraud remains the single greatest threat facing the UK, accounting for about 44% of all crime reported in England and Wales. It continues to pose a serious and systemic challenge to the insurance industry, and ultimately to honest motorists and consumers who are forced to pay the price. In 2024 alone, £1.16 billion of fraudulent general insurance claims were identified, which was a further increase on the already staggering £1.14 billion detected the year before. Motor insurance remains the area most affected, with insurers uncovering more than 51,700 fraudulent motor claims worth £576 million. That is 5% higher than in 2023 and represents more than half of all detected insurance fraud. The ABI has written to me to say that insurers are investing heavily to tackle the problem. Its members spend more than £200 million each year to combat fraud, including funding the Insurance Fraud Bureau, which leads the fight against organised insurance crime, and the insurance fraud enforcement department in the City of London police. Unsurprisingly, motor insurance fraud is the most prominent focus of investigation and enforcement activity. However, I argue that, in the case of paid ad spoofing, where there are properly registered firms clogging up the courts with excessive claims that could have been sorted out through the normal insurance settlement process, those organisations are operating in plain sight. I urge fraud specialists to investigate that. Other types of fraud are equally serious. One of the most concerning trends is the rise of ghost broking, which is a crime where fraudsters sell fake or invalid car insurance policies to unsuspecting customers. Criminals obtain policies using false information to reduce premiums, then manipulate documentation to make those policies appear legitimate. The consequences for their victims are severe. Many believe that they are fully insured, only to find that they hold no valid cover under UK law. That often only comes to light when they are stopped by the police or attempt to make a claim following an accident. Drivers caught without valid insurance face vehicle seizure, potentially unlimited fines and even driving bans. Victims are then left to cover repair costs themselves and find new insurance, often at a much higher premium. Although ghost broking was once carried out face to face, social media has transformed its reach. Fraudsters now routinely target people online, with younger drivers particularly at risk. That group are more likely to seek cheaper insurance options and engage with sellers via social media platforms. The scale of the problem is deeply concerning. Data published by Aviva in November 2025 shows that ghost broking cases have risen by 22% over the past two years. Almost one in three people surveyed reported buying car insurance through social media, and 84% of those who purchased a fake policy online suffered serious negative consequences, including police intervention and identity theft. On average, those victims lose around £2,000, excluding the additional costs of fines, vehicle seizure, legal consequences and higher future premiums. That is a heavy burden to place on people who believed they were just doing the right thing. Again, the social media and online companies who host those adverts are the only ones not paying the price. I repeat my concern that this area is effectively unregulated. As I have said, fraud is not a victimless crime. It drives up premiums for everyone and leaves individuals facing financial and legal consequences through no fault of their own. Tackling it effectively requires robust enforcement, proactive investigation and a willingness to change harmful practices wherever they occur, particularly when they are happening in full view of the system. In the interests of time, and because many of them have been well rehearsed over the years, I have not touched on the other types of fraud for which we all must pay: fake claims, orchestrated crashes and even inflated claims, which large numbers of people admit to even though it is a criminal offence. I look forward to hearing from the Minister, particularly regarding the unethical practices of some in the legal profession and the steps that can be taken to prevent online giants helping to perpetuate this problem. I particularly look forward to her describing how we can look at this problem across Government, because I fear that it is falling between the stalls of the various Departments that have an interest in it.

• 20 Apr 2026 · Maternity Commissioner · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend makes a good point. Patient voice—listening to women, understanding their wishes and understanding the risks that their wishes might represent and how to manage them best—is such a critical part of safe maternity care. In drawing up our rescue package, I have drawn from my experience on the all-party groups on birth trauma, on maternity and on baby loss. There is so much common ground with the cause of the petitioners. We hope that they are buoyed by the fact that someone in Westminster is listening. With our package, a national maternity commissioner would oversee improved standards of care nationally, while a director of midwifery would be appointed in every maternity unit, alongside an extra 300 consultant midwives, to drive clinical excellence in each unit. Our plans would invest £600 million to tackle these vital staffing requirements, but the NHS could save billions of pounds on maternal clinical negligence claims, which cost more than £1.3 billion in 2024 alone. Those huge clinical negligence costs have consistently been reflected in the findings of local and national reviews, but most importantly, the package would save babies’ lives and spare families the trauma of injury or worse happening to mum and baby at what should be the most joyous time of their life. Liberal Democrats welcome the recent interim review by Baroness Amos. The findings of the review were devastating, showing that too many mothers are not receiving the level of care that they need, with devastating consequences for women, babies and their families. But this is the latest in a string of national and local reviews and inquiries, which have produced more than 700 recommendations. Those reviews, with their myriad but similar recommendations, illustrate why we need a maternity commissioner—someone who can bring together the learnings from past failings, along with the best practice from around the country, and oversee a step change in training and culture that will enable all the health professionals in maternity to work as effective teams and give women the personalised and high-quality care that is needed. People across the country were truly shocked by the findings of Donna Ockenden’s review of the Shrewsbury and Telford hospital trust, which serves my constituents. The review found that the deaths of more than 200 babies could have been prevented. Over the years, I have heard—sometimes as a friend, sometimes as an MP—from traumatised and grieving parents, each with their own experience of birth trauma, injury to their baby or worse. They have told me how important it is to them that the reports and inquiries spark the vital change that is needed, and do not lead only to warm words from politicians followed by decades of gathering dust on the shelves of the Department of Health. Since the Ockenden review, the Shrewsbury and Telford hospital trust has accepted and taken steps to implement almost all the immediate and essential actions that Donna Ockenden recommended. While that process has not been perfect, it has clearly been conducted with appropriate focus. The latest CQC rating for maternity at SATH is good, showing that with the right recommendations and leadership, positive change can happen. The team at SATH should be commended for that achievement. They demonstrate the value of focusing on the steps needed to get care right. As we found out subsequently, however, unsafe maternity care was not unique to Shropshire, or indeed to Morecambe, East Kent or any of the other places about which we have heard such awful stories. We know that women all over the country are still not receiving the care they need. None of the services that the Care Quality Commission inspected in its national review was rated outstanding. Some 65% of maternity units were unsafe for women to give birth in. It is a scandal that mothers in this country have to settle for potentially dangerous levels of care at what should be one of the happiest moments in their life. The introduction of a maternity commissioner is not a quick fix, but a commissioner would provide the leadership required for serious change to the way women and staff on maternity wards are listened to. That commissioner could look at disparities in maternity care and the poorer outcomes that we see for black and Asian women and those in deprived communities, and drive the change needed to make having a baby safe, no matter what your background is. Other improvements are needed, too. Our proposals are to guarantee specialist doctors on every maternity unit 24/7, and one-to-one midwifery care for every woman during labour to respond to the desperate need for safe staffing highlighted in each of the reviews and in the inquiries by the all-party groups that deal with maternity care. Previous research found that 73% of maternity units in England do not have a consultant present at night, despite most births taking place outside working hours. Many negligence claims for poor maternity care are linked to failings in care outside regular working hours. The proposals come alongside a new capital investment programme to fix crumbling maternity units in need of urgent repair and to deliver new dedicated bereavement suites. We would start with the 7% of maternity units that are at risk of imminent breakdown, and would restore the 42% of units in need of major repairs. These crucial steps come alongside many other proposals to improve staff training, to invest in bereavement support, neonatal specialists and pre-conception services and to eliminate maternal health disparities. It is really, really, really important to say that the vast majority of babies are delivered safely, even when things do not go to plan. But we should not dismiss those instances where they go wrong, and we should be tireless about making the improvements required. I congratulate the campaigners on the success of the petition so far. I continue to urge the Government to demonstrate that recommendations will be turned into actions, and that the cries for help from countless mothers and families will be listened to.

• 26 Feb 2026 · Eating Disorders Awareness Week · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) for securing this debate and for her dogged campaigning, her tireless work as chair of the APPG on eating disorders and her excellent opening speech. I welcome Eating Disorders Awareness Week, and the important role that it plays in drawing attention to one of the deadliest and most harrowing conditions. I recognise and draw attention to the eating disorder charity Beat, which offers invaluable support for those with eating disorders, and the carers and healthcare professionals who provide support that, in many cases, can be lifesaving. Anyone with personal experience of eating disorders will know just how devastating they can be. They rob young people of the formative years of their life, put immense strain on families and carers, and have long-lasting physical and psychological impacts. I was shocked to learn that hospital admissions for eating disorders have doubled in the last decade. A development as stark as that demands robust action and investment. At the same time, over half of the country’s integrated care boards have cut children’s eating disorder services. Children and young people cannot be allowed to slip through the net because of underfunded services. The National Audit of Eating Disorders found huge disparities in the levels of support available for children compared with adults who have eating disorders. Adult community teams face an 89% higher demand than teams that support children and young people, with adults waiting twice as long for assessment and over 10 times as long for treatment. For a condition that progresses devastatingly quickly, early intervention is crucial. The Liberal Democrats welcome NHS England’s recent guidance on improving the design of eating disorder services and community-based support, but that support cannot fulfil its potential without investment and a meaningful strategy to tackle the problem. I add the calls of my party to those from the Members who have made excellent speeches in today’s debate. In Shropshire, I was pleased to see recent improvements in waiting times for children and young people awaiting treatment for eating disorders, with 96% of patients seen within four weeks. That has come from a fairly low standard, so it is a huge improvement, and I congratulate everybody involved. However, a quarter of children and young people referred to mental health services as a whole did not receive contact within the four-week waiting standard, and 19% were not seen within 18 weeks. Those waiting times are unacceptable. Urgent mental health problems are exactly that: urgent. Time is of the essence when tackling an eating disorder, and delays in assessment and treatment carry serious dangers. I know from constituents who have gone through the process of trying to access treatment for their children just how difficult it can be to get support on time, because services are underfunded, waiting lists are long and resources are stretched. I have heard from parents of daughters whose condition was not deemed serious enough for them to be referred to an eating disorder clinic, despite their having a dangerously low weight and BMI—they were told, essentially, that she needed to be thinner. I do not need to explain just how problematic it is to imply that someone’s condition must get significantly worse before they can be seen. One mother’s tale of struggling to get support for her daughter is too harrowing to report in this debate, but her cry for help speaks volumes: “Please help us…I am scared and desperate.” When patients do access treatment, gain some weight and are discharged, many are not given the continued mental health support they need to prevent relapses of the condition. That cannot go on. We must not underestimate the impact of eating disorders on entire families. Patients require around-the-clock care in many cases to ensure that they receive the support and nutrition they urgently need. One self-employed single mother who wrote to me about the delays and failures she had encountered when seeking support for her daughters had to forgo her income to care for them. We need far better support for unpaid family carers struggling to support their loved ones with eating disorders, and we must ensure they have the training and advice they need to be able to provide the help that is so urgent. The Government’s primary course of action for easing this burden should be to provide patients with the support they need, when they need it. That is why the Liberal Democrats are calling for proper investment in community mental health services, prevention and specialist support for eating disorders. We are campaigning to establish mental health hubs for young people in every community and to have a dedicated mental health professional in every primary and secondary school and regular mental health check-ups for the most vulnerable. Our Opposition day debate on Tuesday called for action to ensure that cinema-style age classification ratings are applied to social media sites to prevent children from being subjected to the worrying proliferation of harmful content promoting eating disorders, which, as we have heard, can be so pernicious and damaging. I urge other parties in this place to put aside the politics of that and to support our calls—as many children’s charities do—to ensure that an appropriate safeguarding regime is put in place for children’s use of social media. The Government must improve early access to mental health services so that cases can be caught early, before they become critical. Can the Minister commit to preserving the mental health investment standard and reinstating targets for the treatment of mental health issues, especially for young people, so that we can do that? The stories we hear from families and patients of their experiences of eating disorders are heartbreaking. We must treat these conditions with the urgency they deserve.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for that reminder. I have been astounded by the brilliance of the British media and the journalists who have sifted through thousands and thousands of documents from the Epstein files and, within a really short period, have uncovered a scandal that has rocked the British establishment to its heart, and that has got everybody in this place acting to try to uncover the appalling rot at the heart of the Epstein circle. Yet other jurisdictions have been sitting on those thousands of documents, potentially for decades, and have apparently had no curiosity whatever. That in itself speaks volumes. The Polish Government have launched an investigation into Epstein’s links with Russia. His links with Peter Mandelson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor must be causing enormous concern in the light of that development. It is therefore right that we seek transparency about the appointment of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor to this role. As my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) said, this is not about one mistake that led to an individual being in an inappropriate position; it is about the fact that the entire establishment failed to exercise curiosity and undertake due diligence. People put aside what accountants call professional scepticism and carried on with the appointment regardless because an entitled person needed a role. I am pleased that the Government have agreed to comply with the requests in the Humble Address by publishing the documents. That is really important, because the public need transparency. They need to understand quickly what happened and, crucially, what can be done in the future to prevent such an appointment from being made again. Their trust needs to be restored, including in this place. We need to show that we care enough to hold powerful people to account and ensure that we are always improving public life, not slipping backwards. The Humble Address seeks answers about how a man with such a questionable reputation came to be appointed to represent the British state, but this debate has highlighted the impenetrable networks of privilege that for decades protected a paedophile and those who surrounded him, possibly for their own gain, and who totally disregarded the victims of his crimes and the wider public, to whom they were apparently indifferent. When the Government came to power, they promised to clean up British politics, and they have a real opportunity to demonstrate that they are serious about that mission. I hope that they take the opportunity and do the job properly.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor · Hansard source

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  The scandal surrounding Jeffrey Epstein is reminiscent of other, similar scandals—perhaps not on the same scale, but certainly of a similar magnitude in terms of their impact on the victims. The one that comes to mind is the Jimmy Savile scandal, where people who knew what was going on did not feel able to speak up and break that conspiracy of silence, so victims did not feel able to come forward either. Does my hon. Friend agree that by embracing this opportunity to change the way we do things in Parliament, we can create a culture where people do feel empowered to come forward and break that conspiracy of silence, and where people who have observed things that they knew they should have reported do not feel constrained in their ability to report them, to ensure these terrible scandals do not happen in the future?

• 11 Nov 2025 · Rural Railway Stations: Step Free Access · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is right: there should be more transparency, but there also needs to be more attention to the issue of step-free access in rural areas. I am about to come on to that in more detail. Improving the accessibility of Whitchurch station will bring more people to the town via rail. That obviously could boost tourism—Whitchurch is Shropshire’s oldest continuously occupied town and is well worth a visit, along with the other beautiful and historic towns in my constituency—and bring customers to local businesses, workers to job vacancies, critically, and families to their loved ones. Rural towns and villages have been consistently deprioritised by successive Governments and this Government, I am afraid, are no better, continually focusing investment into mayoral combined authorities’ coffers. Those areas do not face the same fundamental issues that rural areas do. They have regular buses that come within minutes, even on Sundays, and train services that are more frequent than every two hours. If people choose to drive, they can do so without the risk of damaging their tyres because they have bumped into a huge pothole. In a town like Whitchurch, if the bus turns up the round trip to someone’s destination is likely to be more than two hours—even if it is only to Shrewsbury, which is 20 miles away. Investment like the Access for All scheme in rural areas is part of the solution to improving economic growth—to more businesses thriving, more people spending and more money flowing into our economy.