Julia Lopez MP: speeches

Speeches

• 16 Oct 2025 · Ada Lovelace Day · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. I feel I should donate some of my minutes to some of the other hon. Members present, who, by the time they had finished their contributions, had effectively given a rap to the audience. [ Laughter. ] It was highly skilled. I loved the potted, warm biography of Ada Lovelace and the tribute to her own beautiful daughter by the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge). I was glad to hear of another father who has three girls, including chemists. My dad has three girls, but unfortunately one of them became an MP rather than a scientist—and this MP has not even got the brainpower to remember everybody’s constituency names, so I apologise. This morning I had the special privilege of visiting the Royal Society in St James’s, and I was lucky enough to get a glimpse of its incredible archive. Founded in 1660, the Royal Society is the world’s oldest continuously existing scientific academy. It was established by natural philosophers and physicists, including Christopher Wren and Robert Boyle. Its motto, “Nullius in verba”—“Take nobody’s word for it”—reflects the commitment to evidence and experimentation that has defined British science for over three and a half centuries. Archivist Keith Moore brought out the most incredible selection of gems, including the society’s founding register, which has the original signatures of Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday, Francis Crick and Stephen Hawking. It is simply extraordinary. The first female signature comes only after 1945, the point at which women could be admitted as fellows. Since then the register has included the Nobel laureate Dorothy Hodgkin, who revealed the structure of penicillin; Dame Anne McLaren, whose research laid the foundations for IVF; and Dame Sarah Gilbert, the Oxford scientist behind the covid vaccine. Margaret Thatcher, a chemistry graduate, is also listed, and this month we mark her centenary. These are utterly remarkable scientists, who stand on their own merits and happen to be female. Keith also shared with me a letter from Ada Lovelace herself, who happened to be born at the wrong time to be admitted as a fellow. It reads: “You were quite right to make your letter mathematical. I can understand that language better than any other.” Today, we mark Ada Lovelace Day, not only to highlight women’s contributions to science, but as an opportunity to encourage more women into STEM—and my goodness, what can be achieved by them if we do. Just recently, I found myself walking in the middle of a three-carriageway road junction next to the M25 as the junction 28 works neared completion. My guide was an inspirational young female engineer, around 30 years old. She had completed a degree apprenticeship in civil engineering, gone straight into the workplace and was now building the bridges and roads that impact thousands of my constituents’ journeys daily. That is a practical, clear example of success in getting women into STEM careers. Other examples have been cited today, including that of women in nuclear technology by the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour). Right now, however, there are too many young people leaving university to a very tough job market. At the same time, too many employers in STEM industries are wondering how to get people with the right skills into their businesses. We have to get much better at matching those two challenges so they can solve one another. Since 2010, successive Conservative Governments have worked on those challenges. Education reforms have raised standards, with a focus on maths, science and a knowledge-rich curriculum. Apprenticeships have been expanded, the apprenticeship levy introduced and skills bootcamps launched to support retraining in digital and technical skills. In my constituency, New City college has been awarded a prestigious accreditation as a STEM centre of excellence with strong industry partnership. I also have local job fairs to match companies such as AstraZeneca to young jobseekers in my constituency—other Members, including those elected in 2024, may wish to do that as they get more experienced. We have things such as the Women in Innovation programme to support hundreds of female entrepreneurs, with women-founded tech firms raising £3.6 billion in 2022. The STEM ambassadors network reaches thousands of schools, providing role models in science and tech. The STEM returners programme helps women resume careers after a break, which has been discussed by a number of hon. Members. Indeed, the hon. Member for Congleton (Sarah Russell) made an excellent point about free childcare for PhD students. I fully understand as a working mother the unbelievable costs of childcare but had not been aware of the issue in relation to PhDs. Will the Minister touch on that? We also have the Turing scheme, which funds international placements for students in STEM subjects, and we have heard about many other initiatives today. The former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), made mathematics a personal focus, recognising numeracy as the foundation of opportunity. The importance of maths was also referenced by the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom). There are still challenges, however, and we have heard some of the stats today, including from the Lovelace report and those cited by the Royal Society, which show the disparity between girls and boys in their interest in STEM subjects. Teacher recruitment in STEM subjects is an enduring challenge. The hon. Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) highlighted an example where he had provided inspirational leadership to a student simply by asking whether they had considered going into astrophysics at university. That is an incredibly insightful moment. What steps are the Government taking to get inspiring science and maths teachers into the classroom to encourage the next generation of female scientists and mathematicians? I am also keen to know what is being done to combat youth unemployment, especially among graduates, and on a new skills policy to match skills gaps, especially for those seeking to work in STEM subjects. Also, what are the Government doing to make sure that, in the long term, we retain our position as a leading science and technology nation, especially in the life sciences? We have seen particular challenges in that area in recent weeks, with the loss of important investments such as that of Merck in King’s Cross. From Ada Lovelace’s letter in the Royal Society archive to that young engineer I met building our infrastructure, I have seen what incredible scientists and engineers can do. I hope we will see many more young women with fantastic science and tech careers ahead of them, who will utilise their talent not just for themselves but for the good of others.

• 13 Oct 2025 · Digital ID · Hansard source

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  Nearly three weeks ago, the Prime Minister unveiled a plan for mandatory digital identity that will fundamentally shift the balance of power between citizen and state. He did not announce it here in this House, but at a love-in of the progressive left, sponsored by Labour Together and haunted by the ghost of Tony Blair. The justification was his own catastrophic failure on migration. He knows it will not stop the boats. When Brits are forced to have ID as illegal migration continues unabated, it will simply confirm fears of a two-tier society, fuelling the division and conspiracy theories that he so arrogantly claims he is the antidote to. What a cynical mess. Can the Secretary of State set out how the scheme will identify illegal migrants working in the black economy, when their gangmasters are experts at avoiding any state interaction? She rather slinked away from those key points in her wonderfully innocuous statement about making it easier to join libraries. We have in the official press release this glorious piece of doublethink: “It will not be compulsory to obtain a digital ID but it will be mandatory for some applications.” When employment itself requires Government-issued identity, you cannot meaningfully consent—unless, of course, you never want to work. Here is the fundamental issue: in a free society, the burden of proof has always rested with government to justify its actions to earn our trust. Mandatory digital identity reverses that. While today the scheme focuses on work checks, Labour says it wants to extend this type of mandate into more areas of our lives. Which areas? Where does it stop? I understand that even 13-year-olds are now being considered. What about those without digital access? Labour has deprioritised gigabit roll-out and published a very worthy digital inclusion action plan without any action. The Prime Minister points to Estonia and India as models we should seek to replicate, despite serious cyber vulnerabilities. The UK’s own sign-on system was breached during red team testing this very March. When 2.8 million people petitioned against the plan, the Government assured them that they would adhere to the highest security standards. Can the Secretary of State confirm to us here today that the system on which her mandatory ID will be built already meets those standards, and that the National Cyber Security Centre will publicly back her up? This crafty scheme was not in Labour’s manifesto. Even the Cabinet think the whole thing is a fantasy. The Secretary of State cannot even bring herself to tweet about it. Why does the Prime Minister keep handing her his steaming messes to scoop up? The migration argument has totally bombed—we heard it here today. She and the Prime Minister are now reframing this whole thing as the route to better online services—no more rifling around for utility bills; not an ID, we hear today, but a key. They are deliberately conflating two very different things. Better and more convenient online services were already coming in. We already had right to work and rent checks, convenient DBS—Disclosure and Barring Service—checks and driving licence renewals, all designed with choice, consent and privacy in mind, paper options retained, nobody forced down the digital route and trust as the key, and private identity providers enabled. This is not about Luddites versus modernisers; this is about the fact that Labour cannot resist its big fat socialist dreams: centralised databases, state mandation, big money, the exclusion of private sector expertise. Why create this honeypot for hackers? How much will it cost? Why should we trust Labour to be the verifier of someone’s identity, when during the passage of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 it would not even commit to recording someone’s sex accurately? Let me be clear: Conservatives oppose mandatory digital identity in principle and in practice. If we believed it was necessary, we would have introduced it in government. We chose not to because you can deliver better online services without resorting to a costly, controlling, complex and risky system. This is a cynical distraction from a desperate Prime Minister. He wants people to believe that mandatory ID will fix his migration mess, but it will not. Channel crossings will continue until he introduces a real deterrent, but he has not got the guts to take on the lawfare industry that made him. We believe that government should empower citizens, not the other way round; that government should earn citizens’ trust, not the other way round. Only those entitled to benefits should receive them and those with no right to be here must leave, but those imperatives are not best delivered by controlling British people instead of those who do not play by the rules. The Government who promised to tread lightly on our lives have got their boots out. Will the Secretary of State now kill this plan, rather than be the sacrificial lamb for another of this Prime Minister’s grubby mistakes?

• 11 Sept 2025 · Life Sciences Investment · Hansard source

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  (Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology if she will make a statement on the cancellation of life sciences investment.

• 11 Sept 2025 · Life Sciences Investment · Hansard source

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  Last night, US pharmaceutical giant Merck cancelled the construction of a £1 billion drug research centre in the Prime Minister’s constituency. Eight hundred jobs that were going to be provided have now evaporated; 125 scientists were to be employed—no longer. The message from Merck executives was unsparing: simply put, the UK is not internationally competitive. The Government must wake up now. If AstraZeneca’s announcement on investment was the canary in the mine for UK life sciences, last night’s announcement should be a klaxon sounding across Whitehall. Will the Minister assure us that he is arranging urgent meetings with Health, Business and Treasury Ministers today? The facility was going to specialise in diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis. It was going to feed into the work of a cluster of life sciences bodies, such as the Francis Crick Institute. Did the Government engage with Merck before its decision? What damage will this cause to research and medicine access for our constituents who are affected by those conditions? The Government told UK taxpayers that their devastating national insurance hike would boost the NHS, but NHS leaders admit that the money has gone on national insurance, wage deals and drug price inflation, not better services, and there is no money left for negotiations with life sciences companies. In fact, life sciences have faced a £1.6 billion tax bill and a real-terms cut to research and development. What are Ministers in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology doing to push the Health Secretary for progress on health data, advanced therapies, price negotiations and regulatory reform of the kind that will improve our life sciences offer? For the last year, Labour has dined out on deals secured by the last Conservative Government. We were promised that a US-UK trade deal would open doors for business. Instead, American firms are cancelling projects, and our ambassador, who should have been batting for Britain, was battling for survival. Now that Lord Mandelson has slinked away—again—who is speaking to the Americans about this collapsed deal? What will the Prime Minister be doing ahead of President Trump’s state visit to help UK life sciences? I welcome the Minister to his place, but where is the Secretary of State? In her very first week, she has overseen a £1 billion investment collapse. If she does not understand that this is the most important thing in her brief right now, and if the Government do not change course, it will not be the last deal to collapse.

• 11 Sept 2025 · Life Sciences Investment · Hansard source

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  I hope you will give me the same flexibility if I go a little over my time, Mr Speaker.

• 10 Sept 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Mr Speaker. I welcome the new Secretary of State to her place and, of course, I welcome her stellar team. The Minister of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray), is so hot that he snared two jobs from the guy who just fired him. The Tech Secretary replaces the Ozempic of Whitehall, the right hon. Member for Hove and Portslade (Peter Kyle), who claimed that his digital plan would shear £45 billion of fat from the Government. By how much did it cut the civil service?

• 10 Sept 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I fully agree with the right hon. Lady, but the number of civil servants has risen to a 20-year high under Labour. If somebody in the private sector led a reverse efficiency drive, they would get sacked; Labour made the person responsible Business Secretary. For a welfare meltdown, you get to be the Minister for the future, but while AI is screaming for cheap electricity, the Prime Minister cannot sack his failing Energy Secretary. Why should the tech sector believe that this is a Government of delivery?

• 14 Jul 2025 · UK-France Migration: Co-operation · Hansard source

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  I fear it is another week, another fig leaf from this Government on small boat crossings, which are up 40% under Labour. I hope this French deal works, but as my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) says, the numbers of returns need to be very substantial, not just a modest pilot. We are also now waiting to hear from the EU about whether it will approve this very modest UK-French migration deal. We know from experience that the EU tends not to give such approval without extracting a heavy price, so can the Home Secretary guarantee that the UK will not sign up to any element of the EU pact on migration and asylum, when it launches next year, that could see us accepting much larger asylum transfers from the continent?

• 14 Jul 2025 · High Streets · Hansard source

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  14. What steps she is taking to support high streets.

• 14 Jul 2025 · High Streets · Hansard source

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  I hear what the Minister is saying, but our high streets are under enormous pressure because of Labour’s jobs tax and cuts to business rates relief. As good tax-paying shops shut down, they are being replaced by dodgy front businesses. To fight that in my constituency, Havering trading standards last week seized £17,000-worth of illicit goods from one shop in Upminster through a collaboration between the council, the public, the police and me as the MP. This vital work is at risk because the Government are planning to shift council grant money away from the capital and up to places in the north of England. Can the Minister assure me that Labour is not, in the Mayor of London’s words, planning to “level down” the capital by threatening resources for councils here?

• 7 Jul 2025 · Government Performance against Fiscal Rules · Hansard source

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  The Chief Secretary to the Treasury seems to have only one line to survive this urgent question on behalf of the Chancellor, and that is to make reference to the former Prime Minister. Can he answer a simple question, to which we have already heard the answer today? Are Government borrowing costs higher now under him, or under the former Prime Minister in September 2022?

• 24 Jun 2025 · Rights of Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  I should like to know what steps the Foreign Office is taking to protect women and girls in this country. There can be no better candidates for deportation than non-UK nationals who have violently raped children here. After the Casey report into the gangs scandal last week, Ministers promised that they would do everything they could to deport the men involved. Will the Foreign Secretary confirm that he has already told Pakistan that British aid and diplomatic visas will be withdrawn if convicted rapists are not taken back?

• 23 Jun 2025 · Unemployment Levels · Hansard source

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  To cut spending and balance the books, Labour has to get people off welfare, but the Chancellor’s job tax and the Deputy Prime Minister’s unemployment Bill mean that there are fewer jobs for them to go to. Some 285 more of my constituents are out of work than last year, and since the Budget a quarter of a million jobs have vanished. A rise in public sector roles in the same period is probably masking a far deeper crisis going on in the private sector. There is no joined-up thinking. Has the Secretary of State warned her Cabinet colleagues that their policies are making her job impossible?

• 23 Jun 2025 · Unemployment Levels · Hansard source

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  3. What assessment she has made of the potential implications for her policies of recent trends in the level of unemployment.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I am afraid there is simply not enough time. That failure is now being used to justify the loosening of abortion laws still further due to a recent uptick in cases of women being investigated. I have looked carefully at the arguments being pushed for decriminalisation, and with those from the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy), I see that the bogeyman of the US right is back. Apparently, unless we agree to these amendments, evangelical religious groups paid for by US cash are going to start rolling back women’s reproductive rights in this country. This is utter nonsense. We are in the UK, and we have a very different and a more balanced national conversation. This is not pro or anti life. It is not extremist to want protections for viable babies, and it is not anti-women to say that coercion or dangerous self-medication should not be outside the reach of the law. We also see the argument made that this is solely a woman’s health issue and nobody but she should have a say over what happens to her body, but that is to ignore a very inconvenient truth that has always stalked the abortion debate: this is not about one body; there are two bodies involved. Like it or not, this House has a duty to consider the rights of a woman against the safety and morality of aborting the unborn viable child without consequence. It is not extreme or anti-women to say that a baby matters too. I accept that new clause 1 does not decriminalise a doctor or third party carrying out an abortion outside existing time limits, but let us step back and ask why we have criminal law at all. It is not simply to punish, but to deter. The former Justice Minister Laura Farris has expressed concerns that the challenge of prosecution for infanticide will become greater. She has also raised similar concerns about prosecuting coercive partners if the termination is no longer a criminal offence.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I was also expressing my concerns about other amendments that have been tabled, but I believe the hon. Member is none the less proposing a substantial change that deserves more than a two-hour debate among Back Benchers. As MPs, we are not here simply to express our opinions of an ideal world or even to focus only on highly distressing cases; we are legislators, and no greater legislative duty exists than to make sure that what we do in this House does not lead to unintended consequences in the real world for the most vulnerable. In two hours of debate on a Tuesday afternoon, we are being asked to rewrite a profound boundary in British law that protects the unborn child. That is not responsible lawmaking; it is a procedural ambush. It is telling that not even the promoters of decriminalisation in this House can agree on the form it should take. That ought to make each one of us pause, because it speaks to the challenge of moving beyond principle to real-world application. It is worth our recalling previous efforts to amend Bills in this way and their consequences. The temporary pills-by-post scheme brought in during the crisis of the pandemic was made permanent by an amendment hooked, with little notice, on to an unrelated Bill, and what have we seen since? We have seen women accessing pills under false names and gestational dates, and taking them far beyond the recommended 10-week limit, and viable babies have been lost after late-term abortions. That is not women’s healthcare; it is legal and medical failure.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I rise to speak against new clauses 1 and 20, which represent rushed changes to our abortion laws of profound consequence not only for the unborn child, but for women themselves. My fear is that, if passed, these new clauses would undermine the ability to prosecute abusive partners who force women into ending a pregnancy, inadvertently lead to more dangerous and highly distressing at-home abortions, and risk reducing the status of an unborn child to a legal non-entity. I also wish to put on record my deep unease about the continued attempts to lasso unrelated legislation with amendments on abortion. Whether or not one supports liberalisation, we should all be able to agree that these amendments represent substantial change to the existing law.

• 16 Jun 2025 · School-based Nurseries · Hansard source

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  Does the Secretary of State monitor the number of private nursery closures? If so, can she tell us how many have closed since the Budget?

• 9 Jun 2025 · Local Authority Funding · Hansard source

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  As an outer London borough, Havering has been hugely disadvantaged by a funding formula based on outdated population figures. We heard today that the Mayor of London himself is concerned that this Labour Government will level down London altogether. Will the Minister confirm that the fair funding review will report by this summer—I have been told that previously by a Minister—and will specifically address the disparities between inner and outer London?

• 9 Jun 2025 · Chinese Embassy Development · Hansard source

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  Things that seem politically and economically expedient at the time can become things that Governments regret very much in the long term, as I found when I was the telecoms Minister having to lead the £2 billion strip-out of Huawei from our 5G infrastructure. It took only a few minutes for the Prime Minister to change his position on the Chinese embassy after a call from President Xi Jinping. The Minister has said he cannot answer any questions on the substance of the issue, but on a planning level will he commit personally to having a secure briefing ahead of making any planning decision, and also to publishing and sharing with this House details of all the representations he has received on the planning application, including those from his own Government?

• 9 Jun 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  As my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) ably recalled, the Minister’s superiors told us that there would be a run on the pound unless pensioners took a hit on winter fuel. Given that every economic indicator was worse last year, can the Minister tell us whether the pound is safe with this U-turn, or whether this is just another example of his seniors’ talking utter bilge to justify their terrible decisions?

• 21 May 2025 · Immigration · Hansard source

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  Does my right hon. Friend agree that not only are the measures inadequate, but they potentially open a big new route for inward migration? At the weekend, the Paymaster General suggested that the youth mobility experience scheme that we have with the EU was comparable to the scheme that we had with Uruguay. That involved 500 visas a year. We read in the papers today that the EU is asking for hundreds of thousands of youth visas. Is my right hon. Friend as concerned as I am about the possibility of this being a back door to very substantial migration?

• 13 May 2025 · UK-EU Summit · Hansard source

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  If that is outside the boundaries of what is acceptable, I will withdraw the comment. My second lesson is that when Labour negotiates, Britain loses. We have already seen it in this Parliament, from the Chagos islands to the backroom deals with the unions. It is ideological naivety dressed up as serious and sober diplomacy. Labour thinks that signing a deal is the same as securing a good one. It is not, and all that will become clear. Let us remind ourselves that Brexit was never a rejection of Europe and its people. It was a demand for democratic control over our laws, our borders, our trade and our future.

• 13 May 2025 · UK-EU Summit · Hansard source

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  Next week, the EU and the UK will meet in London for a much vaunted reset of our post-Brexit relationship. If that delivers real benefits for our country, that is great—let us hear them—but forgive me, because I am a doubter. I have learned two lessons from my miserable direct experience of how Labour operates. First, do not trust the Prime Minister. Between 2017 and 2019, I and others watched him, as the shadow Brexit Secretary, twist every parliamentary rule to block what the British people voted for. That was not principled opposition; it was sabotage. In so doing, he connived to empower Brussels in a way that directly and actively undermined our national negotiating position. He was not alone in that endeavour, but it was a spectacle that disgraced this House.

• 13 May 2025 · UK-EU Summit · Hansard source

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  I was deliberately careful to adhere to the rules of the House, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I hope my intent was clear. Let me be clear. I do not think that the Prime Minister is a straight dealer. He says what suits him, poses as a man of decency and hopes—