Julie Minns MP: speeches

Speeches

• 24 Apr 2025 · Flood Preparedness: Carlisle · Hansard source

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  I am pleased to have secured an Adjournment debate on a topic that is so important to my constituency of Carlisle. In the last two decades, Carlisle has suffered two devastating floods, which have left local people fearful whenever there is a forecast of heavy rain. In the flood of January 2005, which was the worst flood since 1822, three local people—Margaret Threlkeld, Margaret Porter and Michael Scott—tragically lost their life. Thousands were forced from their homes as 1,800 properties were overcome by water from the three rivers that converge in the centre of Carlisle. Power and telephone lines were disrupted. Road and rail networks were closed. All the city’s buses were damaged. The civic centre, designated as the emergency control centre, along with the police station, the fire station, the main electricity substation, the telephone exchange and the sewage treatment works, were all severely flooded. It was record rainfall that caused the flood of 2005, but just 10 years later that record was shattered, and Carlisle was flooded again. This time, 2,200 properties were breached with floodwater. Given that the floods were in 2005 and 2015, I think the Minister will understand why many of my residents are concerned that 2025, another year ending in a “5”, might bring further devastation to our city. That fear is heightened, because the defences promised by the previous Government following the 2015 flood were never completed. It is a fear I can personally relate to. In 1985, my family’s home in the Denton Holme area of Carlisle—one of the areas still at risk because of those incomplete flood defences—was flooded when the River Caldew burst its banks. I can personally testify to the terror and helplessness that people feel when their home is invaded by water. We waded through what was once our living room, surveying possessions and furniture destroyed beyond repair. It is a horrible, crushing feeling, and even after the water subsides, the smell of damp and sewage remains. Returning to any sort of normality can take months, even years. My parents had spent the best part of two decades creating a home in Denton Holme that they loved, and my mam—who, incidentally, will turn 91 on Saturday—still talks of it. After the flood, she said she could never shake the sense or smell of damp, and within 18 months we had moved house. In response to the 2005 flood, the then Labour Government commissioned and completed new flood defences, and over the next five years, £38 million was spent on the design and construction of flood defences at the Eden, Petteril and Caldew rivers. These were designed to protect Carlisle from a storm with a one in 200 chance of happening, and they did make a major difference. In 2012 and 2013, the defences were estimated to have prevented in excess of £180 million-worth of flood damage to the city. But on 5 December 2015, Storm Desmond hit Carlisle. It was a storm with a one in 333 chance of occurring. The rainfall triggered the highest level of flow ever recorded on the River Eden. In some locations, flood levels were approximately 600 mm higher than those experienced in 2005. Such was the extent of the flood that the crossbar posts at Brunton Park, Carlisle United’s famous stadium, were submerged under water. Fortunately, no one lost their life in 2015, and while the recently constructed defences were effective at reducing damage and delaying flooding in some locations, it was clear that more needed to be done. Progress has been made in subsequent years, and I commend the Environment Agency for that. Since the catastrophic floods of 2015, some 1,650 homes are better protected, thanks to over 6 km of new or raised flood defences. There have also been improvements to two culverts and their associated inlet or outlet structures. The Carlisle phase 1 and 1a schemes, completed in 2021, have increased protections for homes and businesses around the Warwick Road and Botcherby areas of Carlisle. The Carlisle phase 2 scheme, also completed in 2021, raised the flood defences along the River Eden, providing further protection to the Hardwicke Circus and Castle Way areas. The Rickerby and Low Crosby schemes have also reduced the flood risk to local communities. It is particularly excellent that the latter took an award-winning, innovative, low-carbon approach; it removed historical embankments to increase the effectiveness of natural floodplains.

• 27 Mar 2025 · Modern Slavery Act 2015: 10th Anniversary · Hansard source

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  On my hon. Friend’s point about modern slavery happening everywhere, Carlisle is the most northerly city in England. On 3 October 2018, officers from Cumbria police, the National Crime Agency, and investigators from the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority freed a man who had been kept in captivity on the outskirts of Carlisle for 40 years. He was vulnerable because of his learning disability, and had variously “lived”—been kept—in a horse box and in a disused caravan. When he was found, he was in a damp, rotten garden shed with neither heating nor lighting. The window did not close, the water poured through the door, and his makeshift bed was congealed with vomit. Does my hon. Friend agree that the fact that someone could be kept in such a circumstance for 40 years on the outskirts of one of England’s cities should shame us all, and that we should recommit ourselves to ensuring that every single person who might still be in that circumstance is found and freed in the same way that that gentleman was?

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

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) on bringing this important debate to Westminster Hall. I will attempt to say [In British Sign Language: Good afternoon] to the members of the public and members of the deaf community who have joined us today. For more than 150,000 people in the UK, BSL is their first or preferred language. That is 150,000 people who cannot routinely follow debates in this Chamber; 150,000 people who may be unable to read information about how to travel to Westminster or, indeed, anywhere across the UK; and 150,000 people—approximately one in 450 people—whose language has been and continues to be misunderstood and whose communication preferences often go unmet. Their language is misunderstood because BSL, as we have already heard this afternoon, is not a translation of English. Many people do not realise that, but it means that too often service providers believe that they have met the needs of BSL users because they provide webchat or email access to customer services, not understanding that many BSL users may not read English. The lack of understanding was brought home to me all too clearly a few years ago when I was working for an electricity distribution network. Following engagement with our deaf customers, I recommended that the network introduce video relay access to its customer services. That recommendation was initially met with bewilderment, as customer services had only recently introduced webchat and the view was that the needs of deaf customers were therefore met. After several discussions explaining and re-explaining that BSL is not a translation of English, video relay was introduced to those customer services. Although a growing number of organisations now provide video relay access to their customer services, many do not. I did a quick check ahead of today’s debate and confirmed that although my constituents in Carlisle and north Cumbria can access their water company by video relay, they cannot access their gas and electricity networks. Considering how vital those utilities are, we need to do more; I will certainly be writing to my local electricity and gas distribution networks after today to urge them to introduce video relay. British Sign Language is a beautiful language, but its users can face less than beautiful consequences from using it. BSL users can face social exclusion as a direct result of linguistic exclusion. That can negatively affect their employment, education, access to healthcare, and navigation of the justice system and victim support. The concerns that we all have about our public services become doubly concerning when people cannot routinely access information about those services. That is why the 2022 Act introduced by the former Member for West Lancashire—we have already spoken about it this afternoon—was a major step forward. The requirement to produce a report every three years on the use of BSL by Departments is key to ensuring that Government communications are as inclusive and accessible as possible. I welcome the Labour Government’s commitment to continuing to improve the accessibility of Government communications to the deaf community and BSL users. In conclusion, I want to share with hon. Members that earlier this week, my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Alison Hume) and I took part in an introductory BSL training session specifically for MPs. I urge all colleagues to look out for it if it is offered again.

• 13 Feb 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Madam Deputy Speaker, I know that I and many new Members have been grateful over the last seven months for your guidance and for the support from your teams in helping us get to grips with the rules and procedures of this place, which I know the Leader of the House is committed to ensuring are upheld and respected at all times. I imagine that my right hon. Friend therefore shares my concern that last night’s political broadcast from the Conservative party not only extensively featured the use of a taxpayer-funded ministerial car, but was filmed in part on the parliamentary estate in Speaker’s Court, in direct contravention, as I understand it, of the rules of this House. Will the Leader of the House ensure that the matter is fully investigated?

• 5 Dec 2024 · Plan for Change: Milestones for Mission-led Government · Hansard source

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  When I was a child in Denton Holme in Carlisle, PC Kevin Scott was a very familiar figure. He knew us and we knew his name. Does the Minister agree that not only does society exist, but it is woven from thousands of communities such as Denton Holme, and that our commitment to reintroducing named community police officers will strengthen those communities, strengthen society and take back our streets?

• 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.

• 11 Nov 2024 · Rural Affairs · Hansard source

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  We have had an excellent and varied debate that perfectly illustrates the variety and colour of rural life in our country today. I want to concentrate on one aspect of rural life that blights the lives of people who live in rural north Cumbria, in my constituency, and across all of the UK: rural crime. I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith) on his work on this issue. I will certainly support him in trying to ensure that that statutory instrument is brought forward. Rural crime, be it sheep rustling, fly-tipping or the theft of vehicles or equipment, has exactly the same impact on the communities and individuals it affects: it has a huge financial repercussion on everyone whose livelihoods rely on livestock and machinery for the generation of their income. It leaves rural communities feeling vulnerable and fearful for their personal safety. However, despite that financial and personal cost, it is a fact that rural crime rose under the last Government. NFU Mutual’s figures show that there was a 4.3% increase in crime in 2023, pushing the cost of rural crime to a shocking figure of over £52 million. In my own county of Cumbria, rural theft cost an estimated £815,000—a rise of 12% on the previous year. It is clear that criminal gangs have been able to take advantage of the holes left in rural frontline policing, as a direct result of cuts to rural police forces under the last Government, to target farmyards and fields across Britain. Rural crime is no longer the preserve of the opportunist thief. Instead, we now see internationally organised criminal activity, with gangs that target high value farm machinery and GPS kits, knowing that they can be sold all over the world. That degree of serious organised crime demands a serious, organised response, and I am pleased that it is this Government that are delivering that response in the form of a cross-governmental rural crime strategy. In Cumbria, our new Labour police, fire and crime commissioner is committed to building on the work of our dedicated rural crime team, which recently marked its first anniversary. During that year, the team recovered stolen property worth £820,000, cut quad bike thefts by 10% and made dozens of arrests. More importantly, that same team engaged directly with rural communities, making over 200 visits to victims of rural crime.

• 11 Nov 2024 · Rural Affairs · Hansard source

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  I thank the right hon. Member for his intervention. As we have heard, funding for rural communities affects not just crime and policing, but the availability of GPs, healthcare and dentistry. If anyone on the Conservative Benches would like to explain to my constituents why they have to go on a 100 mile round trip to register with an NHS dentist, I would happily take that intervention. On the point about personalised engagement with rural communities, I draw the House’s attention to the dedication of one particular rural police officer in my constituency: PC Susan Holliday. I should declare that Susan and I have been friends for over 50 years, and she has spent 37 of those years as a special constable in Cumbria constabulary, clocking up over 5,000 hours in her own time in the last decade alone, and exhausting every possible long-service award available to her as a special constable and that she is entitled to. Herself a farmer, Susan was integral to the setting up of Cumbria constabulary’s farm watch scheme, and she is well known to the rural communities across the north of my constituency. Sadly, the excellent work of officers like Susan was too often undermined by the cuts to frontline policing that we saw in 14 years of chaotic Conservative Government. Those 14 years saw the closure of rural police stations and the diversion of officers away from their rural beats to plug the gaps in policing in our towns and city centres. It is not before time that we finally have a Government that will back our frontline rural police officers with a rural crime strategy. That strategy will increase police patrols in rural areas, has tougher measures to clamp down on antisocial behaviour and has stronger laws to prevent farm theft, fly-tipping and drug dealing. I am delighted that this Government will deliver the rural crime strategy that communities like mine in north Cumbria so desperately need.

• 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?