Josh Dean MP: speeches

Speeches

• 14 Sept 2026 · Water Sector: Public Ownership · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve with you in the chair this afternoon, Sir Jeremy. I want to speak this afternoon about the River Stort, one of the globally significant chalk streams that runs right through my constituency. It is a place where families walk, where anglers spend their weekends, and where countless residents connect with nature. It delivers enormous social, recreational and environmental benefits for our community, but at the start of the month, raw sewage was again discharged into the Stort navigation in a spill that lasted more than eight hours, leaving dead fish and visible pollution in its wake. I have been requesting a meeting with Thames Water to discuss protecting the Stort since the start of the year, following hundreds of hours of sewage discharges. It has repeatedly failed to engage with that process, only agreeing to meet with me this week after I said that I would effectively turn up at one of its sewage treatment sites to demand an explanation. That is not good enough. We know that, whatever Thames Water says when I meet it later this week, the truth is that the privatised water industry is failing in its duty of care to our environment, and that privatisation has been a failure. There is simply no other way to put it. We were told that private ownership would drive investment, efficiency and better outcomes, but too often, we have seen the opposite. As others have said, water is not a luxury; it is an essential public service. We therefore need a system that puts the public interest before shareholder returns, investment before extraction, and environmental protection before corporate profit. To my mind, the only credible path forward is to call time on a failed system and move to a model of public ownership of our water industry. We should start by bringing Thames Water into special administration now. The pollution of our rivers and waterways cannot continue. For the sake of the River Stort, for communities across the country and for future generations, we must take this opportunity to choose a different path. I am grateful to the Minister for taking the time to meet me earlier this year regarding Thames Water and the River Stort. As I said, I will be meeting Thames Water later this week, so I would be very grateful if she set out in her response what message she would deliver to Thames Water were she in my position, and whether she would consider meeting me again to discuss these repeated failures.

• 10 Sept 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T3. One of my constituents contacted me about her mother, who had worked for the Department for Work and Pensions since the age of 18 but sadly died before Capita released the pension she had earned through a lifetime of public service. Given the distress caused to families like hers by such delays, what steps is the Minister taking to ensure that civil servants receive their pension payments promptly upon retirement?

• 1 Sept 2026 · Direction of Government · Hansard source

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  Over the bank holiday weekend, a treasured green space in Sawbridgeworth was decimated by building work without planning permission. Thanks to our community’s exceptional response, East Herts council was able to move quickly and secure an injunction, but across the country that is sadly the exception and not the rule. While this kind of unpermitted development is not a specific offence, residents in my community certainly felt that what started on Saturday was criminal. The Prime Minister has made it clear that he wants to tackle the thorny issues that make a real impact on people’s lives in communities like mine, so will he agree to meet me to discuss why we need to change the law to ensure that the police and local authorities have the right powers to stop this kind of unpermitted development in its tracks?

• 9 Jul 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  On Armed Forces Day a few weeks ago, our community came out not just to celebrate our armed forces personnel, but to support Ben Hardy. Ben, who is 11 years old, has had 10 operations on his eyes and is severely visually impaired, but that did not stop him putting on an outstanding sensory exhibition, bringing Dunkirk spirit to life for local people through sight, sound, smell and taste. Will the Leader of the House, and indeed the whole House, join me in congratulating Ben and thanking him for his outstanding contribution to our celebrations and all his hard work?

• 8 Jul 2026 · National Youth Strategy · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair this afternoon, Ms McVey. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Harpreet Uppal) on securing this debate. I welcome this Labour Government’s national youth strategy, and how it recognises the importance of achieving good work and the emphasis that it places on trusted adults. Too often, those relationships have been seen as a soft offer—a nice to have—when in fact they are a key strategic asset in tackling youth unemployment. That is because today we risk having a lost generation. There are a million young people neither earning nor learning, with hundreds of thousands of them disconnected from traditional employment support and hidden from the system entirely. A growing evidence base suggests that trusted adult relationships, whether with youth workers, coaches, mentors or others can act as the connective tissue to the wider support that will help to address the barriers locking young people out of education, employment and training. They can transform a young person’s journey to employment through the continuity, advocacy and encouragement that many need to navigate a system that is often confusing and isolating. That consistent, person-centred support can be vital in identifying those hidden NEETs too. On Monday, to mark Youth Employment Week, I hosted a roundtable with the Youth Futures Foundation where we heard the powerful testimony of its youth ambassadors: Aarya, Elaina, Grace, Niamh, Serena, Sharna and Yusra. They talked about the impact that the presence, or absence, of a trusted adult had had on them. I am living proof that trusted adults can succeed where traditional provision falls short. When I dropped out of school feeling like the world had ended, it was a local youth worker called Russell who helped to rebuild my confidence and set me on a positive journey. I would not be here representing the home that I love without the support that he gave me. In a fragmented and often confusing landscape, trusted adults can act as a golden thread, bridging young people into the right support at the right time. They can also help to draw this Labour Government’s offers together, aligning work across employment, education, skills, health and youth policy, delivering the system change required to tackle the NEET challenge. Young Futures hubs can act as centres of excellence for relational practice, offering open access and co-ordinated support for young people across employment, mental health and crime prevention in every community. I would be grateful if the Minister could set out in her response how she is working across Government to deliver this manifesto commitment, and how she thinks we can strengthen and support the role of youth workers like Russell, and trusted adults more generally, across this important policy area.