Julie Minns MP: speeches 2024

Speeches

• 14 Oct 2024 · Nuclear Industry: Cumbria · Hansard source

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  Does my hon. Friend agree that bringing new nuclear to our wonderful county is not just important for economic growth but absolutely essential if we are to attract new people to come and live in Cumbria, so we can grow our population and begin to overcome some of the demographic challenges we currently face?

• 10 Oct 2024 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  In recent weeks, two of my constituents have contacted me about unacceptable delays at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, and particularly about wait times for medical assessments. Most recently, concerns have been raised about the performance of the Driving and Vehicle Standards Agency. People in Carlisle and north Cumbria are experiencing incredibly long wait times for driving tests. In areas like mine, where public transport is virtually non-existent, driving is a precursor to being economically active. Will the Leader of the House arrange for the Secretary of State for Transport to make a statement on the steps that the Department for Transport is taking to improve the performance of both the DVLA and the DVSA?

• 10 Oct 2024 · Sport: Team GB and ParalympicsGB · Hansard source

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  I warmly congratulate everyone on an excellent debate this afternoon. I particularly welcome the maiden speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes). I am sure his family, watching at home in Salford, are extremely proud. I echo the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Andrew Lewin) in congratulating the England cricket team on their outstanding performance today. I congratulate Joe Root on overtaking Alastair Cook as England’s leading run scorer in test cricket yesterday, and his teammate Harry Brook on his triple century against Pakistan today, before he was cruelly caught on 317 when he was arguably just beginning to get his eye in. I hung up my hockey stick and put down my squash racket several years ago, since when my enjoyment of sport has largely been as an enthusiastic spectator. It was therefore a genuine honour to meet the inspirational Olympians Rebecca Adlington and Tessa Sanderson at a Women in Sport event earlier this week. Women in Sport celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. Established in 1984, at the heart of Women in Sport lies a deep understanding of the sporting needs of women and girls and a passion to address the stubborn gender inequalities that still exist. As we celebrate sport today, it is worth reminding ourselves that women’s right to compete and play at the highest levels of sport has often been hard-won, and all too recently won. It is just over 50 years since the FA lifted the ban on women playing football at official football grounds. It is only 40 years since women were allowed to compete in the Olympic marathon, and less than 30 years since the first professional boxing match between women was sanctioned in the UK. As we congratulate Women in Sport on its 40th birthday, I urge Members on both sides of the House to reassert our commitment to equality of opportunity in sport; to challenge messaging that young girls are fragile, weak and do not like competition; and instead to reinforce the expectation that girls can be courageous, powerful and fearless in their own way, and are expected to be, and can be, good at sport. Last Sunday marked World Cerebral Palsy Day. I was privileged to be invited to join the students of William Howard secondary school in my constituency, not only to mark the day but to welcome back former pupil and Paralympian shot put star, Anna Nicholson. Anna was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at a young age and was first introduced to field events by William Howard’s former head of PE, Lenny Miller, who incidentally is the father of another great Cumbrian athlete, the hammer throwing star, Nick Miller. Anna, like Nick, began her athletics career at Carlisle’s Sheepmount athletics facility, home to the mighty Border Harriers and soon to be home to a new training ground for Carlisle United. What the Blues might currently lack in form on the pitch, we more than make up for with the enthusiasm of our fans, with home crowds regularly exceeding 7,000, a reminder of the unifying power of sport. Having been encouraged at school, Anna began competing in 2011. She was one of the over 200-strong Team GB who competed in the Tokyo Paralympics, where she placed sixth, but this summer, in Paris, Anna went three places better, bringing home a bronze medal in the F35 shot put. Listening to Anna at William Howard school last week, I could not help but notice the huge impact her words had on disabled and non-disabled pupils alike, because Anna is not just the holder of a Paralympic bronze medal, she is also a chemical engineer and enjoys successful a career in the car production industry. It is absolutely right that Anna’s self-proclaimed superpower is to do anything she believes in. Anna is not the only former William Howard pupil to have competed at Olympic and Paralympic level. Having won badminton gold in the 2019 European games in Minsk, Lauren Smith went on to compete in Tokyo, before she was knocked out in the quarter finals. The joy and success of sport transcend the winning of medals. They can be found in the walking netball, run at the brilliant Currock community centre in my constituency, which this week celebrated 90 years of community activity. From boxing to ladies that lift to keep fit with cake, Currock is a community centre that genuinely offers something for every member of our community. The joy of sport can also be found in the villages of north Cumbria, like Wetheral, where the village hall offers locals pilates, pickleball and swing-fit. And it is to be found in the Cumbria wheelchair sports club, where disabled people can play tennis, basketball and boccia. As we rightly celebrate the performance of Team GB and ParalympicsGB this summer, let us also celebrate the school staff, amateur coaches, teachers, parents and volunteers who, week in and week out, give their time to support grassroots sport across all our constituencies.

• 8 Oct 2024 · Farming and Food Security · Hansard source

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  Does the hon. Member agree that one of the elements of that betrayal was on rural crime, which increased, again, in the last 12 months? Will he join me in congratulating Cumbria’s rural crime team on their one-year anniversary, and in supporting the Government’s commitment, finally, to reversing the disgraceful rise in rural crime that we saw under the last Government?

• 12 Sept 2024 · NHS: Independent Investigation · Hansard source

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  I declare an interest as the mother of an NHS nurse. It is important that we remember what is at the centre of this issue: people. Three individuals came to my Carlisle surgery last week because they were at the end of their tether about the care that their loved ones had received, or not received, at our local hospital. One is the husband of a woman who has profound physical disabilities and cannot leave the House unaccompanied. She now has no trust in her local hospital because, among other things, her recent care involved her being fed food that she was known to be allergic to. I also saw the parents of a young woman who has epilepsy, a physical disability and profound anxiety. The failure to put in place a care plan to account for all that means that she is now self-harming. The other case was that of an elderly woman whose husband was discharged from the hospital without her consent. He is now in a care home 20 miles away, and she cannot visit him. Will the Secretary of State assure those people that this Government will not only fix our NHS, but restore their broken trust in it?

• 5 Sept 2024 · Great British Energy Bill · Hansard source

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  Thank you for calling me, Madam Deputy Speaker. I also thank the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine) for her maiden speech, made on what I understand is a very difficult afternoon for her. I am sure that everyone in the House would join me in sending condolences to her and to the family of her friend. This has been a most entertaining and enjoyable debate. Any debate that marries ABBA, Stan Laurel and Shane Warne is one that I want very much to be part of, so I am delighted to have the opportunity to make my maiden speech in this context. It is also apt that I make it during a debate on Great British Energy. It is apt not just because the transition to clean energy and tackling climate change are critical to Carlisle—flooding has already decimated our city twice during this century, and local villages are too often cut off by localised flooding—and not just because we need to remove the obstacles that prevent Cumbria’s farmers from connecting their solar and wind farms, but because people right across Carlisle and north Cumbria tell me that they are desperate to see that cut in their energy bills. It is also personally apt that I speak on this topic. My great-grandfather, a Conservative alderman and councillor for Carlisle, was a man of unusually progressive thinking. In 1909, he urged our city’s industries to set aside coal and instead harness the hydroelectric power of the three rivers on which our great border city stands. I like to think that, whatever our political differences, my great-grandfather and I would have agreed that Great British Energy is not just right, but essential for Carlisle, for Cumbria, and for our country. I am the first Carlisle-born Member of Parliament since 1918, and the very first woman to represent England’s most northerly city. It is a city of many little-known facts. For example, in the 1830s it was home to Britain’s first black police officer. In 1916, David Lloyd George nationalised all our city’s pubs and breweries, declaring that their intoxicating effect on munitions workers was doing more damage to the British war effort than the entirety of the German submarine fleet. In 1963, the Beatles were thrown out of Carlisle’s Crown & Mitre Hotel after a complaint from the local golf club that the young Liverpudlians were too casually dressed. My predecessor, John Stevenson, is himself a keen golfer, and I like to think that while he might be a stickler for the rules, he would have recognised the fledgling talent of the Fab Four, and would not have been so hasty in demanding their removal. I say this because John was a strong advocate for the potential of our young people, and played an important role in securing the new Pears medical school at the University of Cumbria, which will open its doors next year. In over 2,000 years of city history, the University of Cumbria is a relative newcomer, and its creation is testimony to the work of the last Labour MP for Carlisle, Eric Martlew, who did so much to secure a university for our city. I look forward very much to the opening of the new medical school, and the contribution that it will make to our Government’s mission to rebuild our NHS and train the next generation—like my own daughter—of home-grown doctors, nurses and paramedics. My constituency lies between the Lake district and Hadrian’s wall. It is plentiful in sheep and cattle, and is populated by folk known for good craic and a love of XL crisps. For the uninitiated, let me explain that the XL crisp is a savoury, cheesy—no onion—delight, whose availability in the catering outlets of this House I shall passionately campaign for. I shall also campaign for more critical matters, such as the completion of our flood defences—defences that were promised but not delivered by the last Government—the rebuilding of NHS dentistry across north Cumbria, and the growth of Carlisle’s night-time and visitor economies. Carlisle and north Cumbria already have much to offer visitors. I challenge Members to name another UK city than can boast not only citadels, city walls and a Norman castle, but a Victorian railway station, a cathedral, and original Turkish Baths. At this point I must declare an interest, as chair of the charity working towards the refurbishment and reopening of Carlisle’s historic Turkish baths. It is one of only 12 original baths still in working order in the UK, the only one left in the north-west of England and the only one with a tiled interior made by the company responsible for the exquisite tiles here at the Palace of Westminster. We are also blessed with a rich industrial heritage. Over the years, Carlisle has been a hub of food manufacturing, with the sweet manufacturer Teasdale, famous for its liquorice Nipits; Cavaghan & Gray, which produces not just any ready meals, but M&S ready meals; and Carr’s biscuits, home of the Table Water and employer of generations of cracker packers. I could not be prouder to represent the city where I was born and raised. I owe a debt to Robert Ferguson school and Trinity school for helping a working-class child from Denton Holme to become the first in her family to go to university. Without university, I would not have become involved in politics and would not have had the privilege of campaigning for John Smith, a great parliamentarian, to become leader of our party. Nor would I have realised the ambition of my distant cousin Ernest Lowthian, who was Labour’s first parliamentary candidate for Carlisle back in 1918. In conclusion, I return to my great-grandfather. At the opening of one of the bridges that cross the rivers whose energy he sought to harness, he said: “Our job as servants of our great border city is to leave it a little better than we found it.” That, Madam Deputy Speaker, is the task that I have set myself.

• 24 Jul 2024 · Flood Defences: West Worcestershire · Hansard source

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  Does the Minister agree that many flood schemes have not been completed, including a number in my constituency of Carlisle, as a direct result of the economic chaos created by the previous Government, which has forced the Environment Agency to cancel a quarter of the planned schemes?

• 18 Jul 2024 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Will the Leader of the House join me in wishing Shankhill Church of England Primary School a very happy 150th birthday? Like the hundreds of other rural schools across Britain, including a number in my own constituency of Carlisle, Shankhill not only provides an outstanding education for its very small number of pupils, but makes an important contribution to what is an isolated community in north Cumbria. Will the Leader of the House make time for a debate on the important contribution that rural schools make to our country?