Jess Asato MP: speeches

Speeches

• 6 Mar 2025 · Public Procurement: Support for SMEs · Hansard source

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  Pathways Care Farm is an amazing charity in Lowestoft that supports people with disabilities, those with mental health issues and ex-offenders to get back on their feet by working with animals and growing food. The charity has excellent outcomes, particularly with helping people to get work-ready and improve their health, but it finds it hard to access opportunities for public contracts, such as social prescribing, because it is so small. Does the Minister agree that organisations in the voluntary, community and social enterprise sectors and charities such as Pathways have an important role to play in providing solutions for the public sector?

• 6 Mar 2025 · Public Procurement: Support for SMEs · Hansard source

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  17. What steps he is taking to support small and medium-sized enterprises in public procurement.

• 26 Feb 2025 · Online Safety Act: Implementation · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright), the former Secretary of State, for securing today’s important debate. I am proud to have worked on the Online Safety Act alongside colleagues in the women’s and children’s sectors, and to have successfully pushed, in particular, for stronger age verification measures to stop children from accessing harmful pornography. Given the abundant harms within the online world and the detrimental impact they have on young people’s development, the need for strong regulation was aways going to be necessary. Tech companies have no incentive to care for children when their profit motives compel them to create addictive content, purposely designed to keep kids hooked. However, regulation is only ever as good as its ability to be enforced. It is clear from my conversations with those who care about children’s online safety that the regulator, Ofcom, needs to do better in many areas. Adequate regulation has never been needed more than now, in an era of a roll-back in online giants’ desires to protect and safeguard their users—from X to Meta—given changing political winds. Self-regulation has clearly failed and we must ensure that Ofcom’s implementation of the Online Safety Act is not loose enough to allow that to continue. I agree with the concerns raised by the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam; what we have seen so far from Ofcom demonstrates that Parliament needs to be doing more to ensure that its will is stamped on the regulatory framework that Ofcom has been forming. There are many areas where we need to go further. One of the most concerning trends online that we have witnessed has been the rise of extremist misogyny and a culture that incites violence against women and girls more generally. Last year, 77% of girls and young women aged seven to 21 experienced online harm; that includes things such as revenge porn, which affects one in 14 adults. The revenge porn helpline has experienced an average 57% increase in cases each year since it was founded a decade ago. It has also witnessed a 400% rise in cases involving deepfake images. AI is powering today’s misogyny and abuse and more must be done. That is why I have been campaigning for a ban on nudification apps that create deepfake pornography, by and large, of women and girls without their consent. Issues such as those need to be tackled now and not stewed over for another decade. I am concerned that Ofcom’s age assurance and children’s access codes of practice for part 5 providers—that is, dedicated pornography sites—do not include a clear and measurable definition of what highly effective age assurance means in practice. Without a stringent definition, pornography sites will likely shirk responsibility for implementing a robust system, and Ofcom’s ability to enforce action will be made more difficult. Moreover, we know that the Act did not look at content regulation. That is why we are all eagerly anticipating Baroness Bertin’s pornography review, which I believe is due to be published this week by the Government. Ensuring that online content is aligned with that of offline, regulated by the British Board of Film Classification, will be key. We must look to expand age assurance to the level of the app store. App stores were not included in the Online Safety Act. Indeed, Ofcom has been given two years to conduct a review into app stores. I strongly believe that that needs to be brought forward. App stores are not adequately ensuring that apps are age-appropriate, and more needs to be done to stop children downloading apps that can lead them to dark and harmful places. As a Parliament, we must be willing to bring forward legislation that complements and builds on the Online Safety Act, to ensure that Ofcom acts to protect our women and children.

• 12 Feb 2025 · Online Pornography: Regulation · Hansard source

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  Online pornography sites are awash with content that depicts sexual activity with children. Adult performers are made to look like children through props such as stuffed toys and school uniforms. Popular search tags include “homework”, “pigtails”, “teen” and “barely legal”, and the content is often particularly violent. Videos that depict incest such as sex between fathers and daughters and between brothers and sisters are also prevalent. Child protection experts warn that this content, which is illegal offline, sexualises children and is driving demand for child sexual abuse material. Does the Secretary of State agree that we need urgent action following the pornography review to equalise online and offline content regulation, to tackle violence against women and girls and shut down a gateway to paedophilic content?

• 12 Feb 2025 · Online Pornography: Regulation · Hansard source

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  6. What steps his Department is taking to ensure the regulation of online pornography content is aligned with offline regulation.

• 22 Jan 2025 · Child Arrangements: Presumption of Parental Involvement · Hansard source

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  One of my constituents, a domestic abuse survivor, has had all contact with her children removed, as well as her domestic abuse claim rejected without evidence. She has now had to pay not just for contact visits but monthly drug tests, when her drug use was not proven at all, making it completely unaffordable for her to see her children. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is past time that we stopped our family courts from being used as a tool of abuse against survivors of domestic abuse and sexual violence?

• 13 Jan 2025 · Children’s Social Media Accounts · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I pay tribute to Ellen Roome’s steadfast campaign in the most awful, unimaginable circumstances, and to the campaigns of all the other bereaved parents who seek change so that no other parent has to suffer like they are. As citizens, parents and legislators, we are rightfully worried about what our children consume online. The recent Channel 4 programme “Swiped” demonstrated the addiction our children have, the concerns parents have about the time they spend online, and the harms that children continue to face. Before they are able to properly comprehend it, our children are sucked into the online world by algorithms that are designed to get them hooked and, as if it were a drug, they keep coming back for more. In this world, they are taught to look up to influencers with unhealthy opinions, unrealistic beauty standards and conspicuous wealth beyond their dreams. They are told that they are not good enough, they may be cyber-bullied by their peers for not being good enough, they have trouble sleeping and their attention span withers. We also know that short-sightedness is becoming more prevalent. Our children’s work suffers and they find it increasingly difficult to read and learn. Our children see pornography online before they receive high-quality sex and relationships education in school. They are shown adverts for apps that can use AI to nudify their peers and spread such images to their friends and around school. They are criminalised for doing that, but the tools they use remain legal and readily accessible. They get trapped in the whirlpool of online pornography and dragged into increasingly extreme and violent content. They become desensitised and their perceptions and expectations of sex and healthy relationships are warped. Online behaviours quickly become offline behaviours, such as self-harm, dangerous viral challenges and peer-on-peer sexual abuse, which do huge harm to mental health, so that one in five children now has a diagnosable mental health disorder. A generation of children chronically online and harmed by it bear the brunt of a technology that was never designed with children’s development in focus and that acts with no regard for the consequences of the harm it causes. When questioning tech companies recently, none of them could confirm that they develop products widely consumed by children with input from child development experts. I do not understand why we expect stringent standards in all other aspects of our children’s lives—their toys, cots and bikes, and our cars—and yet not on the impact of social media products. We cannot stand idly by in the name of freedom, because there is no freedom in addiction or in being harmed. We cannot let our children’s lives be dominated by the dangerous online world. Whether it is depression or misogyny, eating disorders or myopia, we are failing children by continuing to subject them, and those they interact with, to the impacts of a childhood spent online. We need to reclaim childhood for the real world. I recognise the important role of internet access in providing spaces for children to access support, but I wonder how we weigh up the harms caused through access to social media, which support services, mostly in the voluntary and community sector and our public services, need to mop up afterwards. We must look more at whether we could provide that access more safely in school settings or through youth services. I am very aware of the huge impact of abusive parents and carers, but it might be time for us to start asking whether we are using that as an excuse, rather than thinking about how we ensure our children can get the access they may need to get safe without also succumbing to the dangers of the online world. We fundamentally need to change the role the internet plays in growing up, and that must be a societal shift, given the pressure children and young people feel to be online. That is why I back Ellen Roome’s call for parental oversight. Parents deserve to have all the tools available to them to help them to protect their children, and that is why I am proud to be one of the co-sponsors of the safer phones Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister). Much of the focus is on parental control, but as the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) has eloquently outlined, there is potentially no control from the age of 13. Even with controls, who sets what is the right developmental level for access to some apps and social media when there is no child development expert involved? App stores, for example, determine age restrictions themselves. In a number of instances, developers have set an age restriction of 18 for an app, but app stores have lowered that to 17 or 16. There is access but no scrutiny. Unlike for films or other things that our children consume, we have no way of understanding whether there has been independent, child-led expert oversight. We need to raise the age of internet adulthood and ensure that, this summer, Ofcom properly implements age verification for pornographic content as part of the Online Safety Act 2023. We need to remain open to the need for a new online safety Bill to fill the gaps left in the legislation, as has been argued for recently by Ian Russell, Molly Russell’s father. I also support the calls in this debate for bereaved parents to be given retrospective access to their children’s social media accounts. With children’s safety and the future of our society on the line, the time for action is now.

• 9 Jan 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  I wish to acknowledge that I have had the privilege of working alongside the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), for a number of years while I worked in the domestic abuse sector. She was a one-woman safeguarding service. Members from across the House would ask for her advice, so frequently she would advocate for victims when others were unable to do so or when no other service would come to their aid. She has done more for abused women than anyone at X or in the Reform party, Members of which have not appeared here today. I therefore add my voice to those condemning the attacks on her and on others who have spent so long trying to fight for victims of domestic abuse and sexual violence. Having spent my career working to prevent violence against women and girls, I am dismayed and frankly disgusted by the way the issue of child sexual abuse, mostly against vulnerable girls, has recently been exploited by political opportunists for their own gain. To see the way people both in and outside the House have spoken about this issue, as if victims and survivors were a political football to be kicked about because of the passing interest of social media-crazed billionaires and their political servants, has been disgraceful. We do not need empty rhetoric or opportunism; we need action, and we need it now. The independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, led by Professor Alexis Jay, published its report in 2022, after a seven year-long process that engaged with more than 7,000 victims and survivors, many of them girls. It processed 2 million pages of evidence and published 61 reports and publications. It spent two years working on an inquiry into child sexual exploitation and grooming specifically. In the last three years, I worked closely with colleagues across the children’s sector, including survivors of child sexual abuse, to ensure that the previous Government implemented the inquiry’s recommendations. I am grateful to the Government for having said that they will take many of them forward, but as organisations such as the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the National Association for People Abused in Childhood have argued, what we need now, and crucially what victims and survivors urgently deserve, is for the recommendations to be implemented. I have been shocked by the lack of progress that we have made as a country in tackling violence against women and girls. I pay tribute to hon. Members across the Chamber who have made a number of big steps to ensure that women and girls are safer, most notably through the Domestic Abuse Act, but despite the changes that we have made in this House, the problem is only getting worse. It has been driven by technological changes and exacerbated by cuts over the last few years to the provision of support for victims and survivors and those at risk. The financial situation facing local specialist charities, for example, is acutely concerning, particularly as many, such as Suffolk Rape Crisis in my area, have been forced to close. I totally understand the financial pressures facing the Government due to the huge black hole the Conservatives left, but charities such as Women’s Aid and Victim Support have raised real concerns after cuts were made to grants in the core victim services budget for police and crime commissioners, at the same time as they are having to grapple with national insurance contributions increasing. After terrible cuts for many years, services are faced with the spectre of having to think about whether they need to close, just as we start our mission as a Government to halve violence against women and girls. Victims deserve to be, and should have a right to be, adequately supported and kept safe from further harm. Services such as the Waveney Domestic Violence and Abuse Forum in my constituency support hundreds of victims without any statutory funding, yet the work that they do is high risk and specialist, and saves women’s lives. Specialist services need long-term, sustainable funding arrangements. We in this place should look to formulate a new statutory duty to commission services for victims of domestic and sexual abuse, both adults and children, and thereby end the postcode lottery that leaves too many vulnerable women and children to fend for themselves. That would meet a key recommendation of the IICSA review, which was to ensure that all child victims of sexual abuse are offered specialist therapeutic support. Similarly, given the significant harm and trauma caused by growing up being exposed to domestic abuse, we need to address the critical shortage of child independent domestic violence advisers. One in five children experience domestic abuse growing up, yet there are barely any services to support them. The domestic abuse charity SafeLives has estimated that an additional 1,900 CHIDVAs are needed to meet the needs of children identified in domestic abuse cases. We also need to look at the drivers behind men’s violence against women and girls. As an officer of the all-party parliamentary group on commercial sexual exploitation, I would like to raise the issue of pornography. Women are the targets of both physical and verbal aggression in 94% of scenes in pornographic content, and most of the time the aggressors are men. One woman involved in the pornography industry describes her experience: “I was being hit and choked. I was really upset and they didn’t stop. They kept filming. I asked them to turn the camera off and they kept going.” I am hopeful that the Government will look more closely at online pornographic content that depicts sexual activity with adult actors made to look like children, and content that depicts sexual activity between family members. Children’s charities such as Barnardo’s are concerned that such content acts as a gateway for some viewers who, after repeated consumption, end up needing ever-more-real content, leading them to seek out child sexual abuse material. What is the purpose of pornography that dresses adult women as children—girls, with lollipops and teddy bears, in school uniform? Widely accessible violent pornography is normalising abuse in everyday life, warping the perceptions of both young men and women of sex and healthy relationships, and fuelling the rise of a misogynistic incel culture. Illegal pornographic content is found across the internet, from the most popular pornography websites to social media apps that children still have access to. Ensuring that the Online Safety Act’s age verification checks for children are brought in properly this year, and that websites are held accountable by Ofcom, are paramount in tackling this issue. If necessary, we need to close any loopholes that might allow websites such as Pornhub to swerve their responsibilities under the Act. The Government should also require all online platforms to verify that every individual featured in pornographic content on their site is an adult, consenting to publication, and should bring the regime of online pornographic content regulation into the same system as offline pornography, which is regulated by the British Board of Film Classification. We know that online pornographic content is normalising strangulation. Devon and Cornwall sexual assault referral centre looked at a five-month period in 2023. Of the referrals in that period, 31%—53 out of 172—were of victims who had suffered non-fatal strangulation as part of the sexual violence that they had experienced. Only seven of those cases involved a stranger. Three had to go to A&E due to the severity of their symptoms. Pornography has repositioned strangulation as “breath play”, and so minimised the hugely detrimental health implications: seizures, stroke, paralysis and death. I am, however, particularly glad to see that the victims Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), has this week confirmed that the Government will introduce legislation to create a new offence for creating sexually explicit deepfake images. New deepfakes are having an increasingly insidious impact on children’s lives in particular, as well as the many women and girls who experience it every day. I have been campaigning alongside organisations such as Internet Matters to ban the nudifying tools and apps that create deepfakes. We know they have only one purpose: to violate women and girls; 99% of the images created on the apps are of women, and many do not work on images of men. I see no reason why they not only are freely available to use, but are free to advertise themselves to young people on platforms, such as TikTok and Instagram, and app stores, where there is no true age verification. Even with age verification, it is up to the app stores to determine whether content meets an adult’s level of age verification, and I urge the Government to look closely at the regulation of app stores to ensure that the content is independently verified as being suitable for our children to access every day. We are failing our women and girls, and men, if we continue to ignore the public health crisis generated by violent and addictive pornography and the porn culture it generates. I know just how committed the Government and our Front Bench are to tackling violence against women and girls, and I am honoured to be here to support the—I hope—cross-party work we will do to truly end the huge trauma that too many women and girls face.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  Does the hon. Member agree that there was a two-year inquiry on organised networks and sexual exploitation, which is grooming gangs, in the language of inquiry? The chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood said: “we urge the Government to focus on delivering improvements… rather than proposing new inquiries that may potentially delay action even further”.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education for bringing forward this landmark piece of genuinely transformational legislation. As someone who spent three years in the voluntary sector fighting for vulnerable children, I know that the Bill prioritises children and their needs, righting many of the wrongs of the last 14 years of failure under the Conservatives. The Bill signifies a much-needed movement towards preventive services, which were shamefully slashed by the Conservative party. Sure Start, with its huge impact on child development, disappeared. Youth services were decimated. Due to the huge cuts by the Conservative party, in England we spend 11 times more on late intervention, and spending on early intervention has fallen by 44% since 2010. The reforms laid out today, coupled with the funding needed to realise them properly, have the potential to ensure that, with the right support, more children can remain safely living with their birth families. The Bill should also ensure that when children need to live with foster parents or in a residential home, we are able to provide them with the best possible care. These children, after all, are the responsibility of the state. We are their parents, and we need to have the same high ambitions for them as we do for our own children. The recognition in the Bill that young people need more support when they first leave care must also be celebrated. The Bill will help to improve the situation by finally extending Staying Close to all areas of the country. That was a key recommendation of the independent review of children’s social care. That review also recommended extending corporate parenting principles, so that they apply not just to children’s services but to a greater range of public organisations. In November, the Government outlined that that important reform would be implemented. Will the Secretary of State confirm that extending corporate parenting responsibilities remains part of the Government’s plan to improve support for care leavers? We have also heard about the postcode lottery in the help available for care leavers. The support that a young person receives too often depends on where they live, not what they need. That is why we need a national offer of support, which could include things suggested by the children’s charity Barnardo’s, such as the right to a free bus pass, free prescriptions, and help with rental deposits. Like the Children’s Commissioner for England, I believe that the Bill presents an opportunity for this House to ensure finally that children in England, like their counterparts in Scotland and Wales, receive equal protection from assault and battery. We cannot adequately ensure children’s welfare if we fail to protect their physical safety and wellbeing. A 2021 review in The Lancet of 70 studies found that physical punishment had no positive outcomes for children, and was instead linked to greater child behaviour problems over time. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health also found that children who experience physical punishment are 2.6 times more likely to experience mental health problems, and potentially 2.3 times more likely to experience more serious forms of physical abuse. These children are also more likely to believe that violence is an acceptable and normal way of expressing frustration, contributing to a cycle of violence in society that we need to break. Though physical punishment may, for many of us, seem a relic of the past, data from 2020-21 found that more than one in five 10-year-olds have experienced physical punishment, and the NSPCC has seen a threefold increase in the number of child welfare calls mentioning physical punishment in the past couple of years. Given that 71% of adults believe that physical punishment is unacceptable, the time to end this injustice is now. In the context of one child dying every four days from deliberately inflicted injuries, and the horrific murder of Sara Sharif, whose father sought to justify her treatment under the dark cloak of discipline, it is clear that the threat of violence that children face should no longer be given legal cover. The Bill does so much for children and young people, and it is my view that by extending corporate parenting, ensuring equal protection and establishing a national care leavers offer, we can do even more to ensure that everyone growing up is given the opportunity to flourish.

• 11 Dec 2024 · Dental Healthcare: East Anglia · Hansard source

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  Does the hon. Member agree that it is appalling that my constituents have had to resort to pulling out their own teeth because no NHS dentists in my constituency are accepting new patients, and that we need urgent action now?

• 29 Nov 2024 · Pimping websites and paying for sex · Hansard source

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  I rise on the fifth day of the UN’s 16 days of activism against gender-based violence, to present a petition on behalf of my Lowestoft constituents on commercial sexual exploitation. Pimping websites facilitate the trafficking and exploitation of women, yet remain readily accessible. These companies make millions of pounds out of extremely vulnerable women and are a core part of the business model of sex trafficking in the UK. The petitioners therefore request “that the House of Commons urges the Government to outlaw pimping websites and paying for sex, and provide support, not sanctions, to victims of sexual exploitation.” Following is the full text of the petition: [The petition of residents of the constituency of Lowestoft, Declares that demand from the minority of men who pay for sex is driving the prostitution and sex trafficking trade, and this sexual exploitation is being facilitated by pimping websites that operate with impunity. The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to outlaw pimping websites and paying for sex, and provide support, not sanctions, to victims of sexual exploitation. And the petitioners remain, etc. ] [P003024]

• 29 Nov 2024 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  After spending almost a decade working to protect women and children from harm, my focus with any piece of legislation is the potential it creates for abuse and coercion. While I would once have been supportive of the principle of assisted dying, and might wish that option for myself, I have been increasingly unable to reconcile my desire to safeguard the most vulnerable with putting that principle into practice. I am concerned that if the Bill passes we will see people coerced, either by an abuser or by societal expectation, into ending their own lives. We do not want to think about it, but abuse surrounds us—2.3 million victims of domestic abuse in the last year. One in six older people experience abuse. The definition of coercive and controlling behaviour includes behaviour that repeatedly puts someone down, telling them they are worthless. Victims describe this as a “drip, drip” effect, and it goes unnoticed. Not just because we do not want to think about it, but because it is hard for professionals to identify it without proper training and with the lack of specialist support. There is no mandatory training for judges on coercive and controlling behaviour, nor is there effective training for medical professionals. In a 2019 survey, 50% of healthcare professionals said that they did not feel they had received adequate training to identify a victim of domestic abuse. It is also hard for victims themselves to realise they are being coerced until they have got free. We know that older people, especially those who are disabled, are particularly susceptible to abuse by a family member and less likely to be able to escape their abusers. Those who are coerced are often isolated from friends and family. If people are not required to tell friends and family they are opting for assisted dying, who will raise the alarm? How would any concerns be reported? Will judges be able to investigate the police records of those around a person who has requested assisted dying—family or carers? I will always remember a conversation I had with a hospital-based independent domestic violence adviser, who was called to the bed of a lady in her 80s in her last days living with cancer. The lady disclosed to the IDVA that she had been abused by her partner of 50 years, and said “Thank you. I have never told anyone before, but now I am finally free to die, and I am grateful for the release.” We know from the Monckton-Smith report that a third of female suicides could be linked to domestic abuse, and from the Killed Women campaign that as many as 130 women each year could be murdered by a partner or relative but have their deaths are recorded as suicide or accident. Every week, we hear of family court judges failing to spot coercive and controlling behaviour. In one case, a judge found that a man repeatedly calling his partner worthless and telling her to die was not controlling conduct. Where is the discretion of gender in the Bill? Out of 60 documented cases around the world of euthanasia and assisted dying for people with anorexia, 100% were women. I have come to the view that no Bill, however drafted, could adequately sift those with a genuine desire to end their own lives from those doing it for all the wrong reasons. For that reason, I will vote against.

• 27 Nov 2024 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I congratulate the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) on securing this important debate. Having worked for charities supporting women and girls for the best part of a decade, I am undeniably passionate about this issue. All of us who are present know why it is so important. We have all met victims and survivors—those abused by the ones they love, the girls who shake off the unwanted sexual images sent to them on the way to school, and the women who are trafficked and pimped into prostitution. We know the situation we face, and I am glad that the Government have made a landmark commitment to halve violence against women and girls. I am conscious of time, so I wish to raise just two issues that I hope the Minister can address. First, I remain concerned that vulnerable women who have fled their abusers and found a new home in a refuge continue to have their addresses disclosed through court documents. That opens them up to be tracked down by their abusers and can force refuges to close. I believe this was a measure that the previous Government, to their credit, tackled; but the problem appears not to have gone away entirely. Secondly, I am concerned about the financial situation facing local specialist charities, many of which have been forced to close due to lack of funding, and the huge gaps in support as shown by the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s mapping report in 2022, which found that most victims could not access the support they wanted. We need a new statutory duty to commission services for domestic abuse and sexual violence victims, both adults and children, in order to end the postcode lottery and ensure that vulnerable people are not left to fend for themselves. The same applies to interventions for perpetrators. To halve violence against women and girls, we need to focus on the root cause: men’s violence against women and girls. I know how dedicated the Minister is and for how long she has campaigned to end VAWG. I look forward to working with her, the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse who obtained this debate, and colleagues from all parties to make our commitment to halving VAWG a reality.

• 26 Nov 2024 · Online Safety: Children and Young People · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I welcome this debate, brought forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Lola McEvoy). Prior to being elected as an MP, I spent almost a decade working in organisations supporting vulnerable women and children. My experience in that area over those years was very much a case of one step forward, two steps back. Efforts to make our children’s increasingly online lives safer have been constantly outpaced by technological change. The law, the police and the courts have been unable to keep up with that change, and in its wake children have been the unwitting guinea pigs in a huge social experiment. The Online Safety Act has the potential to reset the relationship between children and the internet if the principles of safety by design are truly followed by tech companies and our regulator Ofcom. Of course we welcome age verification, which will finally come into force next year and will prevent children from accessing violent and harmful pornography. There remains much more that we need to do in this space. That is why I am pleased to co-sponsor the safer phones Bill—Protection of Children (Digital Safety and Data Protection) Bill—sponsored by my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister). Smartphones, and social media in particular, are clearly negatively impacting on the mental health of our children, as well as their sleep and learning. Only last week, in an evidence session hosted by my hon. Friend, we heard that smartphones are contributing to a significant increase in short-sightedness among children, who are glued to their phones and seeing a decline in outdoors activity. We risk creating a generation suffering from myopia, and yet—perhaps because as adults we are also glued to our phones—we have not yet acted in the best interests of our young people. We regulate the toys we give to children so that they do not contain harmful lead and are age appropriate, yet no such regulation applies to smartphones. What international board of child psychologists was consulted? What paediatricians? What parents? What children? A particularly worrying new trend that is outpacing our ability to counter it is the rise of nude deepfakes, or AI-generated sexually explicit images. They are becoming an increasingly worrying issue in schools and more than half a million children already have experience of them, according to new data from Internet Matters. Despite the fact that creating and sharing nude deepfakes of children or non-consenting adults is illegal, the programs that make them are still readily accessible. We would not ban the possession of zombie knives without banning their sale; that is why last week I called on the Government to ban nudifying tools and apps. We seem to be setting up our children to fail, to be harmed and to be criminalised. Some 99% of the images created are of women and girls—indeed, the apps often do not work on boys. The Government have an ambitious target to halve violence against women and girls within a decade, a target that can only be achieved if we tackle the root cause by looking online. I would be grateful if the Minister could look at how nudifying apps could be banned as part of this Government’s commitment to keep women and children safe.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Flood Preparedness: Norfolk · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone) on securing this debate. Next door in Suffolk we share the same coast and many of the same problems, being so low-lying. I am sad to say that in Lowestoft we are not adequately protected against severe flooding such as we experienced, to devastating effect, in 2013. Prior to the installation of flood wall protection measures last year, Lowestoft was the only coastal town without any formal tidal flood defences, and we remain very much at risk. We had a flood barrier project ready to go, one that would have protected 1,500 residential properties and 800 businesses and was an excellent example of partnership bidding. However, East Suffolk council was forced to abandon those plans earlier this year because the Conservative Government had delayed and delayed a funding decision for so long that it was no longer possible to continue. They avoided paying £100 million to complete a project that would have protected our town for 100 years and seen a return of £700 million a year in gross value added. The previous Government ran out the clock on the scheme and kicked the can down the road, as they did with so much else. With Lowestoft due a flood on the scale of 2013 every 20 years, residents are rightly worried. Resurrecting that scheme immediately is sadly not possible, but I am determined that we find a viable way forward. Without our flood barrier, the advanced plans we have for the regeneration of the area around Lake Lothing are jeopardised, hugely increasing costs for the redevelopment of the former JELD-WEN factory site, which would help us to meet the Government’s ambitious house building targets by adding up to 500 homes. However, the growth benefits of flooding protection measures are not reflected in how our flooding funding formula works. The formula as it exists now effectively protects wealthier areas and leaves poorer areas such as ours to fend for themselves. As such, it essentially bakes in inequality. I would be grateful if the Minister could look into a review of the current flooding funding formula. We need to factor in the potential for growth, for unlocking house building and for industrial progress when it comes to allocating funds. If we are able to do that, not only can we save what we already have, but we can build for a better future.

• 16 Oct 2024 · City and Town Centres: Regeneration · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Catherine Atkinson) for securing this debate. We have all heard about the challenges facing our high streets, and, in Lowestoft and Beccles in my constituency, the difficulties are all too real. Last year, a survey found that out of the 366 premises in Lowestoft, 96 were empty. In Beccles, our last remaining bank for business, Lloyds, is set to close, forcing businesses that rely on it to travel to Lowestoft on gridlocked roads to do their banking. Poor mobile connectivity in Beccles is also hampering our residents’ ability to do business effectively. We also lack a real plan to support Lowestoft’s nighttime economy, which includes our wonderful theatres, the Marina and Players, our cinema—the most easterly in the UK—and our excellent restaurants such as MarkG. We lack buses that run into the evening, and later trains from Lowestoft to Ipswich. I am glad, however, to say that in Lowestoft we have seen signs of life returning to the high street. Our heritage action zones have breathed new life into beautiful old buildings. Plans such as the £24.3 million cultural quarter and the £4.8 million creative hub in a former post office are incredibly exciting. Those investments are not just about buildings; they represent a belief in the future of our town. We are reimagining our future as a green energy gateway to the east of England and as a cultural destination, led by the excellent team behind the First Light festival. Meeting with businesses in the town, I see that belief, and I am confident that Lowestoft has what it takes to bounce back fully. I made a pledge during the election to open a parliamentary office on the high street should I win, and I am delighted that soon I will do just that. Lowestoft is a beautiful place with potential that is beginning to be unlocked by entrepreneurs, community leaders and the fantastic people behind Lowestoft Vision. The momentum we are gaining needs to be sustained. That is why this Government’s plans to boost business and build back the high street, whether by tackling antisocial behaviour or giving communities the power to revamp their high streets, are so important. I hope that the Minister can reassure us that the Government are working at speed to review business rates so that our small high street business are not disadvantaged compared with the online giants. I am confident that there is a way forward, so that our high streets are once again not just surviving but thriving.

• 14 Oct 2024 · Veterans: Support · Hansard source

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  7. What steps he is taking to support veterans.

• 14 Oct 2024 · Veterans: Support · Hansard source

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  The Lord Kitchener Memorial Holiday Centre is an extraordinary charity in my constituency, set up more than 100 years ago after the great war to provide convalescence for returning soldiers. Today it provides much-needed short stays for veterans and their families across the country, as well as a drop-in and information centre for veterans locally, but sadly its funding situation is precarious. Does the Minister agree that investing in our locally valued veterans’ charities is essential if we are to provide the best support for our brave service personnel?

• 8 Oct 2024 · SEND Provision: East of England · Hansard source

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  I agree with the hon. Member that early diagnosis helps that child and their family, and we also save ourselves money in the long term. I also welcome the curriculum review, which I hope will bring about a broader curriculum that allows everyone the opportunity to flourish. I am glad the Government have made breaking down the barrier to opportunity a key mission, ensuring that all children get the best possible start in life. It is such an important task. I look forward to hearing more from the Minister about the Government’s ambitious plans and to hearing contributions from Members from across our region.

• 8 Oct 2024 · SEND Provision: East of England · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered SEND provision in the East of England. Thank you, Sir Mark, for the pleasure of serving under your chairmanship. I thank colleagues from across the region and beyond for attending today’s debate. I have a personal interest in this discussion: one of my children has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and, like other Members, I have first-hand experience of the problems of our system. I am sure that other Members have been contacted by many constituents who continue to be failed by the special educational needs and disabilities system. It is not right that constituents come to me in tears after being unable to get their child into a school that can support them, fearful for their child’s future and completely tied down by the need to care for them all day, often without support. We seem to have a particular problem in the east of England. Nationally, half of all education, health and care plans were issued within the 20-week statutory period in 2023, but in the east the figure was just 34%. That is a low number, but it also masks inequalities in the region: 90% of EHCPs were issued within the time limit in Bedford, but in Suffolk—my county—it was only 4%, and in Essex it was only 1%. It is shameful that two thirds of children in need of support in our region, and 96% in my county, are being left without it, and in many cases are forced out of the education system entirely during some of the most formative years of their lives. The rate of severe absences for SEND pupils is triple that for other students. Long waits that keep children out of school compound other problems relating to mental health, social development and life outcomes. I have a constituent who is still waiting for a school to send their child to and is extremely concerned about the behavioural changes she has begun to witness due to a lack of structured learning. Absences further divide those with and without SEND. They isolate the children most in need and hamper their development. I am also concerned about the overly punitive way in which we deal with absences, particularly for parents of SEND children. Given my background of working with vulnerable women and children, I was alarmed to find out from the charity Advance that the majority of parents imprisoned for truancy are women. It is of course hugely important that children are in school, but for that to happen we have to support children and their parents, rather than simply add fines or the threat of prison to the already traumatic situation. We seem to forget that education is a right, as well as a legal requirement. Where is the right to education for children with SEND? Where is the legal imperative to provide a decent education for all children, particularly our most vulnerable? The delays parents experience serve only as a “how high can you jump?” barrier, and send the signal that children with SEND are second- class citizens. The SEND system is creaking at the seams: there has been an explosion in demand, and the supply has not caught up. Even for parents and children who have waited and received an EHCP, life does not get much easier. I have a constituent whose daughter experiences a range of health conditions and, despite having an EHCP, is forced by council delays to stay in her mainstream school, where she has been repeatedly held back a year. Another constituent’s son’s transition from school to college, and from disability living allowance to personal independence payments, was complicated by errors introduced by the county in his EHCP. The SEND system is broken, but we knew that: it was highlighted by the SEND review published under the previous Government in 2022. Parents and children have been asked their views again and again, but very little has changed. What would first steps look like for the Government? First, delays to the issuance of EHCPs require work to combat the national shortage of educational psychologists. Indeed, solving that issue and being able to invest in those professionals can also save us money. The Association of Educational Psychologists has found that, on average, an EP costs £234 per day, whereas agency and locum staff cost £600. Secondly, preventive programmes are key, which is why I welcome the Government’s swift announcement to extend the Nuffield early language intervention into next year. That is particularly important, given that children with speech and language challenges make up the single biggest group within SEND. Thirdly, it is my hope that the Government look to extend the funding for the early years SEND partnership led by the Council for Disabled Children, which comes to an end in March next year. I also hope the Government work to ensure that health visitors have adequate training around the ELIM—the early language identification measure—as part of the two to two-and-a-half-year review. The Government’s new core schools budget grant for special and alternative provision schools and the announcement that the Department is looking into the national funding formula are to be welcomed. After 14 years of Conservative Government cuts, the system needs to be rebalanced towards prevention and early intervention, which is more cost-effective in the long term.

• 8 Oct 2024 · SEND Provision: East of England · Hansard source

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  I thank the Chair, the Minister, the shadow Minister and all hon. Members for their contributions. I cannot do them justice in such a short time, but I hope that this issue will continue to command cross-party and cross-regional support. I just want to talk about the so-called “over-energetic” child, who faces exclusion for consistent poor behaviour. I want to see that child get access to the diagnosis and support that they need to stay in school and flourish, and to support our struggling families. As one mum told me: “I didn’t want to have to become a lawyer; I just wanted to be a loving mum”. I thank hon. Members very much for the debate today. Question put and agreed to. Resolved , That this House has considered SEND provision in the east of England.

• 10 Sept 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T7. Today, the first tranche of prisoners will be released early under the Government’s emergency measures to address the prison overcrowding crisis. It is welcome that this Government have excluded some domestic abuse offenders from the scheme. However, not all domestic abuse perpetrators can be excluded. Will the Secretary of State consider extending the victim contact scheme to all survivors of domestic abuse and violence against women and girls, regardless of the length of time that their perpetrator spends in prison?

• 3 Sept 2024 · Healthcare Provision: East of England · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) for securing a debate on such an important issue, which I know is close to the hearts of all our constituents. The NHS is clearly in crisis. Those who can afford to go private do so, while everyone else is forced to linger on long waiting lists. My constituents are frustrated, sometimes to the point of giving up waiting for urgent operations—and sometimes just for GP appointments. Lowestoft hospital in my constituency was closed a decade ago. The building now lies empty without a replacement, and we continue to wait for a long-term solution that benefits the community. As has been mentioned, the James Paget University hospitals rebuild is desperately needed. It is one of the two hospitals worst affected by RAAC—reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete—in the country. It seems clear that the crisis in the NHS is no longer just an issue of funding and that investment must be coupled with reform to fundamentally improve health outcomes. I have been impressed, for example, by East Coast Community Healthcare, a staff-owned social enterprise that provides community-based NHS healthcare across Norfolk and Suffolk. ECCH demonstrates that things can be done differently, and that technical solutions and the freedom to innovate can allow providers to do more with the same funding and operate a system that is able to absorb rises in demand. We sorely need to improve experiences of NHS care. For many, it has become something of a nightmare. I will focus on dental health. My constituents are particularly concerned about their inability to access NHS dentistry, and rightly so. Over the past 14 years, as we have heard, areas such as mine have become so-called dental deserts. As it stands, east Suffolk ranks seventh out of the 39 districts in the east of England for the lowest number of dentists. Even where dentists are practising, residents find it impossible to get an appointment. In 2022, it was found that not a single dental practice in Suffolk was accepting new NHS patients. I have talked to far too many of my constituents who have been forced to rip out their own teeth. As we have already heard, that is happening right across East Anglia, and that is why I made improving access to dentistry one of my six election pledges. Although some progress has been made by the formation of the Norfolk and Waveney integrated care board, it is the dental system itself that is holding the NHS back from making improvements to accessibility. We currently have a system that does not work for patients or dentists. A survey by the Dental Defence Union of its members found that 41% are looking to reduce their hours and 31% are planning to leave the practice or retire early because of the sheer pressures of the system. As NHS dentistry crumbles, I am particularly concerned about the impact on our children and young people. Data shows that almost a third of the 100,000 people who are admitted to A&E with tooth decay each year are children. It is the most common reason for children aged six to 10 to be admitted to hospital. Analysis from the British Dental Association found that on average, 116 children had to have their teeth extracted each day in 2022. In that same year, it was revealed that 40% of children—4.4 million—had not seen a dentist in the previous 12 months. This is clearly an issue of inequality. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds suffer from worse oral health than their more affluent counterparts. It is a significant gap: 34.3% of children from deprived areas had dental decay in 2019, compared with 13.7% in less deprived areas. Poor health contributes to poor life outcomes. For example, teacher surveys have shown that poor oral health contributes to social exclusion, leading to children missing school. Breaking that vicious cycle is essential. If we cannot improve people’s health, how can we improve their lives? Instead of ensuring children get the best start possible in life, we are handing them rotten teeth and rotten chances to succeed. I am glad that the Government have set their sights firmly on revolutionising dentistry in this country. Rebuilding NHS dentistry will be a difficult job but, unlike the previous Government, this Labour Government will not kick the can down the road. I am delighted that we have said we will create an extra 700,000 urgent and emergency dental appointments each year, including 100,000 for children. I welcome the financial incentives for new dentistry graduates to work in dental deserts such as mine. We will ingrain the importance of good dental health practice in children from a young age and crack down on the prevalence of hospital admissions for rotten teeth by introducing supervised tooth brushing for three to five-year-olds in schools. Most importantly, we will reform the dental contract, which is not fit for purpose and pushes dentists into private practice. With an active Government willing to attack issues at the root—sorry for the pun—of the issue, I am confident that we can make significant process in this and all other areas of healthcare. Ultimately, the NHS is the way in which most people interact with the Government. If we can rebuild trust there by delivering improvements, we can also rebuild trust in politics and the ability of the Government to improve lives. If we can get the basics right, then all the other issues become easier to solve.

• 29 Jul 2024 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  The situation facing specialist charities is acutely difficult. Many local services have had to close their doors due to a lack of funding, including, sadly, Suffolk Rape Crisis. Long-term sustainable funding is crucial if women are to be supported after abuse and kept safe from future harm. Could my right hon. Friend confirm that Labour’s mission will include a review of funding for these life-saving services?