Julie Minns MP: speeches

Speeches

• 28 Apr 2025 · Football Governance Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  This evening’s debate demonstrates to all of us, regardless of our opinion on the Bill, just how important our football clubs are to our communities. The sense of pride with which we have all spoken this evening is, I think, a tribute to all our clubs. Sadly, my remarks tonight are tinged slightly with sadness. On Saturday, Carlisle United confirmed their relegation to the national league, losing 3-2 to Cheltenham. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson) is not currently in his place, because I was going to congratulate him—through gritted teeth—on his team’s win. My spirits are, however, somewhat restored by the provisions of this Bill—namely those to improve the financial stability of our football clubs, protect our clubs’ important cultural heritage and assets, and ensure that they engage with fans on matters important to them. I am pleased to say that on those three counts at least, Carlisle United are on good form. Thanks to the Piatak family, who bought Carlisle United just 18 months ago, the club’s financial position has vastly improved. The new owners not only bought the historic debt but have invested millions in Brunton Park, creating new fan facilities including an excellent fan zone that befits loyal Blues fans. The owners have also agreed terms with Cumberland council to develop a new training ground adjacent to the city’s athletic facilities. The board is also conscious of Carlisle United’s important cultural heritage. Last year, to mark the club’s 120th anniversary, a special exhibition was created at our city’s Tullie House museum, featuring among the exhibits Jimmy Glass’s blessed boots—if you don’t know, you should look it up. Fan engagement is also strong, with open forums, community involvement and an active commitment to diversity and inclusion. This was recognised last August, when the club was ranked second in English football for fan engagement by Think Fan Engagement. Therefore, although I might be saddened by Carlisle’s relegation, I am confident that the club’s foundations are stronger than ever. Not all clubs can say that, though, and that is why this Bill is required. I do not need to tell this House that our football clubs are more than just clubs; they are the lifeblood of our communities, bringing us together, giving us moments of collective joy and sorrow and engendering local pride. That is why I am glad we are finally stepping in to give football fans up and down the country some peace of mind about the future of their clubs. Although Carlisle might be in the national league next year, I know the club is in good hands and I am reassured that the Bill will keep other clubs safe, too. That is how it should be. As former Carlisle manager the great Bill Shankly once said, “Some people think football is a matter of life and death…I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.”

• 8 Apr 2025 · Easter Adjournment · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to speak in this Easter recess debate, to pay tribute to Sir David and to bring to the attention of the House a movement that has been spreading across cities and communities all over the world. I speak, of course, of yarn bombing. Yarn bombing is an urban art form that involves decorating objects in public places with knitted or crocheted yarn. [ Interruption. ] The vandalism! It is a way of transforming everyday places into something colourful, creative and alive, and it has taken my constituency of Carlisle by storm in the last 18 months. The term “bombing” comes from traditional graffiti culture, where street artists would leave their mark in public places. However, unlike spray paint, yarn bombing is softer, as it is about creating a sense of warmth and whimsy in an often difficult and challenging world. At a time when we are all too often disconnected from one another by screens and technology, yarn bombing brings a sense of connection. It is an invitation to stop, notice and engage, and it can be playful, light-hearted and fun. In Carlisle, that light-hearted fun started with three ladies who began meeting in their local community centre. The following weeks and months saw the group grow in number. Their first project, in May last year, was the yarn bombing of Mayor’s Drive in Bitts Park, in the centre of Carlisle, for an attraction as part of Carlisle Matters’s Show and Tell event, which was attended by more than 4,500 members of the public. Next, The Lanes shopping centre, in the city centre, asked the yarn bombers whether they would crochet a large-scale poppy display to celebrate Remembrance Sunday. The resulting publicity, including that generated by our brilliant community radio station CRFM, prompted an outpouring of support, leaving Carlisle Matters with far more poppies than the shopping centre could possibly display—and so it was that the steps of the old town hall and the ancient market cross came to be yarn bombed. The yarn bombers are currently working their fingers to the bone creating yarn bunting and flowers in bright colours to decorate the pedestrianised area of our city centre when it reopens after a multi-million pound transformation in a few months’ time. However, yarn bombing is about more than beautiful crocheted creations; it is a genuinely inclusive community activity. One elderly lady told Carlisle Matters that her husband had recently passed away, but that yarn bombing had given her a purpose again. Even I, who cannot successfully sew on a button, have dabbled—and, may I say, have successfully produced a pom-pom. Next time you pass a tree wrapped in brightly coloured yarn or a lamp post draped in knitted flowers, Madam Deputy Speaker, take a moment to appreciate the creativity, the effort and the message behind it. Finally, on the subject of meaning and message, I will take a moment to celebrate and thank our church leaders during this busy period of Lent and as they approach the celebration and hope of Easter. I give special thanks to the Bishop of Penrith, Robert Saner-Haigh, who, for more than 18 months now, has also been acting diocesan bishop of the diocese of Carlisle, and for whom Easter will therefore be doubly busy. I conclude by conveying my good wishes to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to Mr Speaker, the other Deputy Speakers and all parliamentary staff for a joyful Easter.

• 20 Mar 2025 · British Sign Language Week · Hansard source

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  In a rare moment of cross-party agreement, I think the work done on the implementation of the ’22 Act was very welcome. It is also worth noting the Media Act 2024, which extended the quota requirement on BSL programming to on-demand services. That quota is only 5%. Does the hon. Lady wish to comment on whether that quota is sufficiently ambitious?

• 6 Mar 2025 · English Football: Financial Sustainability and Governance · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, not least because our respective teams are currently propping up the bottom of league two. She mentions the important community work that the Shrimps do, and that is vital. We are fortunate at Carlisle United to have very generous owners who have invested huge amounts of money over the last 18 months, but even I can see that community work can best be guaranteed by having a fairer distribution of revenues.

• 4 Mar 2025 · Market Towns: Cultural Heritage · Hansard source

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  It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southend East and Rochford (Mr Alaba) for securing this debate. I must start with a confession: Carlisle is a city, albeit a small one. However, its population size and look and feel, and indeed its charter, make it more closely resemble a market town than perhaps many cities. However, my constituency includes two market towns to the north and north-east—Longtown and Brampton. Longtown lies on the English-Scottish border in an area known as the debatable lands, because for many centuries the kingdoms of England and Scotland could not quite agree on who had ownership and claim to Longtown and the debatable lands. Arthuret church on the outskirts of Longtown dates from 1150 and is said to be the resting place of the legendary King Arthur. Not to be outdone on history and heritage, the original church of the market town of Brampton stands on the site of a Stanegate Roman fort built around 80 AD. During the Jacobite rising of 1745, Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender, summoned the mayor of Carlisle to surrender the city. Those familiar with the rising will know that it did not end well, at least for the Jacobite soldiers who were hanged from the Capon tree in Brampton’s town centre. A memorial commemorating that act remains. The great border city of Carlisle is the final resting place of a further 33 Jacobite soldiers who were hanged, drawn and quartered following the unsuccessful rebellion. We only have to look at the regal lion that sits atop Carlisle’s market cross to understand that Carlisle’s loyalty, and that of its citizens, has largely always been to the English Crown. Carlisle received its charter in 1158, confirming its status as a trading hub for the north of England, and much of that trading happened in the Greenmarket in the city centre. However, in the late 19th century the market stalls were moved indoors, into Carlisle’s new market hall, which is one of the few Victorian market halls that people can still see. Its impressive ironwork was made by the local engineers Cowans and Sheldon. In the following years, the market hall established itself not just as a market but as a venue and concert hall for some of the world’s greatest acts. However, like many places we have heard about today, the fortunes of our market have ebbed and flowed. The market hall’s future looks bright once again, and the former Greenmarket is undergoing a multimillion-pound transformation. As I look forward to Cumbrian devolution and all that it promises for Carlisle and the surrounding area, including its two market towns, I look forward to reimagining and rejuvenating Carlisle city centre, so that it thrives for many years to come under the watchful eye of the regal lion atop the market cross.

• 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. Some 20 years ago, I started a new job with an as yet unbranded mobile network operator. At the time, the network had no masts, no handsets and no customers. Text messaging was just catching on, the BlackBerry was in its infancy and wireless application protocol was the new kid on the block. For those who do not know what WAP was, it was a bit like having Ceefax on a handset; for those who do not know what Ceefax was, I cannot really help. My counterparts and I at the four mobile networks were acutely aware that the introduction of 3G would change how we used our phones. I will, however, confess that understanding what that change would look like—all while using dial-up at home—was something of a stab in the dark. Nevertheless, no matter how challenging, we knew that the advent of 3G required the mobile industry to take greater responsibility to protect the safety of our customers, in particular those under the age of 18. The networks moved from walled garden internet, where access was controlled by age verification and personal identification number, to a world where internet was freely available. The mobile networks published the first self-regulatory code of content on mobile. It was a world first, and something that UK mobile operators were rightly proud of, but the pace of change was rapid; within months, we networks published a further self-regulatory code to govern location-based services, which, as we have heard already, present a clear danger to young people. We knew then that location tracking could be used in grooming and other predatory behaviour. We published the code, but the pace of change over the past 20 years has been unrelenting, and we now arrive at a point at which almost everything we do happens online. The role of the mobile network is no longer as a gatekeeper to services, but rather as a pipe to over-the-top services such as YouTube, WhatsApp and TikTok. Those services can be more readily controlled by both the service provider and the handset manufacturer. That is not to absolve the networks of responsibility, but to acknowledge that they operate in a mobile value chain. I might pay £25 a month to my mobile network, but if I renew my handset every two years at a cost of £800, I am paying far more to the handset manufacturer than to the mobile network operator. I believe there is a strong argument that those who derive the greatest financial value from that value chain bear far greater responsibility for keeping children and young people safe online than is currently the case. I turn now to one specific aspect of online harm. Having worked closely with the Internet Watch Foundation during my time in industry, I am fully aware of—and I thank it for—its important work in assessing child sexual abuse image material and removing it from the internet. I have visited and met the IWF teams who have to view and assess some of the most upsetting content. Their work is harrowing and distressing, but, sadly, it is essential. Last year, the IWF assessed more than 390,000 reports and confirmed more than 275,000 web pages containing images or videos of children suffering sexual abuse. Each page contained hundreds, if not thousands, of indecent images of children. The IWF reported that 2023 was the most extreme year on record, with more category A sexual abuse imagery discovered than ever before, 92% of it self-generated child abuse. That means that the children have been targeted, groomed and coerced into sexual activities via webcams and devices with cameras. For the first time, the IWF also encountered and analysed more than 2,400 images of sexual abuse involving children aged three to six. Some 91% of those images were of girls, mainly in domestic settings such as their own bedrooms or bathrooms. Each image or video is not just a single act; every time it is viewed or downloaded is another time that that child is sexually abused. That is why I conclude my remarks with a clear ask to both the online and offline media and broadcast channels of our country: please stop describing these images as “kiddie porn” and “child pornography”. I did a search of some online news channels before I came to this debate; that language is still prevalent, and it has to stop. These images are not pornography. They are evidence of a crime and evidence of abuse. They are not pictures or videos. They are depictions of gross assault, sadism and bestiality against children. They are obscene images involving penetrative sexual activity with teenagers, children and babies. If there is one thing we can agree on in this debate, it is that the media in this country must start describing child sexual abuse material for what it is. Language matters, and it is time the seriousness of the offence was reflected in the language that describes it.

• 28 Oct 2024 · Remembrance and Veterans · Hansard source

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  At the heart of my constituency lies Carlisle castle, home to the museum of the Border Regiment, the excellent Cumbria Museum of Military Life. The Border Regiment has a long and proud record of service and was the first British unit to join a major engagement by glider, during the invasion of Sicily in the second world war. The regiment went on to serve throughout the Italian campaign, and I wish to pay particular tribute to those who served in that campaign. My dad was just 20 when he set sail for the Italian mainland, but the liberation of Italy had begun some months earlier with the invasion of Sicily. That invasion cost the lives of 6,000 allied troops, including men from Carlisle’s Border Regiment who were killed when their gliders failed to make land. The invasion of the mainland followed, but the allies encountered increasingly difficult terrain. In particular, Monte Cassino became the scene of some of the most hellish encounters of the second world war. Finally, in the early hours of 18 May, the British and Polish troops surrounded the town of Cassino and forced a German retreat. A couple of weeks later, Rome fell, marking a significant milestone in the Italian campaign. Sadly for those who served, their recognition was overshadowed by the events on the Normandy beaches. To add further insult to injury, a perception grew that those serving in Italy were sitting out the real fighting of the second world war, and the myth of the D-day dodgers was born. Nothing could have been further from the truth: infantry losses on both sides made Italy the most costly campaign of the second world war in terms of casualties suffered by infantry forces. That is why I believe that in this, the 80th year since Monte Cassino, it is right that that battle is commemorated as other key battles of the second world war have rightly been.

• 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.