Kevin Bonavia MP: speeches

Speeches

• 8 Oct 2024 · SEND Provision: East of England · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) for securing the debate on SEND provision in the east of England. Accounts from hon. Members today show acutely that, although we aim to highlight our local situation, there are similarities in issues and themes in SEND provision both regionally and nationally. For me, this subject has been the most spoken about since I was elected Member of Parliament for Stevenage, and for a good reason. I ran an online campaign in my constituency to encourage residents to tell me their SEND provision stories, an unfiltered account of the frontline reality. I used those accounts to raise awareness of issues faced by SEND students and families in a recent Westminster Hall debate on SEND provision in Hertfordshire. I have used subsequent opportunities in the Chamber to lobby Ministers to help address the situation. Ultimately, our primary function as MPs is to elevate the voices of those who elected us to this place. As I did in the last SEND debate I participated in, I want to raise an account from the frontline, which I did not get the chance to highlight last time. A distraught mother told me: “My son was permanently excluded whilst we were awaiting the outcome of his EHCP—which left me to look after a traumatised, out-of-school, six year old, organise a new school, fight for his EHCP, look after my daughter, work my busy job and prepare practically and mentally for a tribunal. With NHS waiting lists for a diagnosis sitting at two years, I eventually funded a diagnosis 10 months later. He was deemed suitable for specialist provision but no places were available.” That family was left traumatised. Such blatant accounts tell a clear story: the diagnosis and EHCP processes are hard to navigate and too slow, and placement in a suitable school is a postcode lottery, where too many cases can easily fall through the net. The problem cannot be fixed by simply holding our local authorities’ feet to the fire. We have to recognise the position they have been put in over the last 14 years, with soaring demand, plummeting budgetary power and mass reductions in staff. I want to thank the frontline staff, who work so hard in tough conditions, to get results for children who deserve an education just as much as their fellow pupils. Their lives and their futures matter.

• 7 Oct 2024 · British Indian Ocean Territory: Negotiations · Hansard source

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  I welcome the fact that an agreement has been reached over the Chagos islands that helps to right a historic wrong and guarantees the security that we need. Among the confected outrage from the Opposition Benches we have heard the expected scaremongering over the future of other territories, including Gibraltar. Both the Foreign Secretary and the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) have in recent months reaffirmed the double lock on Gibraltar’s sovereignty, meaning not only that Gibraltarian sovereignty will never be altered without its people’s consent but that the UK Government will never enter into a process of negotiation with which the Gibraltarian people are not content. Does that remain the case?

• 10 Sept 2024 · Ukraine · Hansard source

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  I, too, welcome the Secretary of State’s statement and his wholehearted commitment of this country to the defence of our ally in its hour of need in the face of Putin’s aggression. I am very pleased that my constituency of Stevenage is where many of the Storm Shadow missiles being shipped to Ukraine are manufactured, but, of course, manufacturing missiles and other armaments takes time. Will the Secretary of State explain what steps he and his Department can take to speed up that process?

• 9 Sept 2024 · SEND Provision · Hansard source

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  10. What assessment she has made of the adequacy of the provision of SEND services.

• 9 Sept 2024 · SEND Provision · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the Secretary of State for her answer and to the Minister for School Standards for her response to last week’s Westminster Hall debate, led by my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin (Alistair Strathern), on SEND provision in Hertfordshire. As the Minister will recall, there are many heartbreaking experiences faced by children and young people in Stevenage and across Hertfordshire, where waiting times are much higher than the national average. Will the Secretary of State therefore consider a fairer funding settlement for SEND provision in Hertfordshire when she is next able to do so?

• 4 Sept 2024 · SEND Provision: Hertfordshire and Central Bedfordshire · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin (Alistair Strathern) for securing this debate on such a vital issue for all our residents. For the last few weeks, I have been running an online campaign to encourage residents in my constituency to tell me their SEND provision stories. One constituent told me: “Despite constant concerns raised and referrals, I was left undiagnosed, unmonitored and untreated for ASC1 and ADHD for over two decades. In retrospect, I can see that many of the difficult experiences I had throughout school could’ve been so different.” A local councillor told me: “My constituent has a 10-year-old son with significant cognitive delay. He was placed in a comprehensive school with no SEND support capacity whilst stuck on a 90 child waiting list for a place at a suitable SEN school.” A mother told me: “My son with special needs was excluded before we were able to complete his EHCP application, then sent to a school an hour and a half away as the nearest option with capacity to meet his needs. Unable to cope with the daily taxis, we were then refused funding for a transition into a new school. He has been left without formal education for 5 years. I’ve been unable to make any contact to get help for years.” Those harrowing accounts tell a clear story: the diagnosis and EHCP process is hard to navigate and too slow. It is easy to see such cases as just another piece of complex casework, but they are much more than that. There is clearly a systemic problem in Hertfordshire, as the recent Ofsted and Care Quality Commission report found. Every case is about the future of a child who deserves an education, just as much as anyone else, and all children are impacted by a failure to provide SEND support to those who need it. I hope these remarks have underlined the importance of fixing the fundamental flaws in SEND services to secure a dignified future for all affected. We must do better. I am hopeful that Hertfordshire county council can turn things around. I ask the Minister to consider a fairer funding settlement for our county, so as to help deliver the support our young people need.

• 2 Sept 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  My constituency has been held back by 14 years of Conservative cuts to the county council and to borough and district councils, so I hope that the new Government’s devolution agenda will help rebuild and improve our local public services. Can the Secretary of State provide an update on the consultation with Hertfordshire county council and our 10 borough and district authorities?

• 29 Jul 2024 · Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and congratulations on your own election. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Mr Amos) on his excellent speech. Today is my first opportunity to speak on behalf of the people who have sent me to this House, the residents of the tremendous town of Stevenage and the vibrant villages of Knebworth, Codicote, Datchworth and Aston. It is such a special honour and responsibility to represent the place that I am proud to call home. Stevenage itself is a trailblazer town, the UK’s very first new town, created by the transformative Labour Government of 1945 to deal with the last great housing emergency after the second world war. It was built around the old town of Stevenage, which made its name many centuries ago as the first staging post on the Great North road from London to Edinburgh. It is also a town ringed by beautiful villages, including Knebworth, the site of many great, world-famous music festivals over recent years. I would like to record my thanks to my immediate predecessor, Stephen McPartland. I am not sure how much I have in common with him, apart from our shared birthday and our height—or lack of—but what I do know is that, when he cared deeply about a matter, he was a tenacious advocate for it, including notably in being a champion of those affected by the cladding crisis following the awful Grenfell fire. I am also mindful that Stevenage has been represented by two amazing women Labour MPs. The first was the redoubtable Shirley Williams, who represented Stevenage up until 1979. In her own maiden speech of 1964, she described Stevenage as a microcosm of modern Britain. That was at a time when the new town of Stevenage was being built, providing the new homes and jobs that attracted people of all backgrounds to start new lives and families there. Our town was, is and always will be a town of aspiration. Stevenage makes a leading contribution to health and security around the world, whether it is our internationally renowned hub for life sciences, with GlaxoSmithKline being the town’s biggest employer and the brand-new Autolus facility manufacturing T-cell therapies for cancer; or our indomitable defence industry, with MBDA manufacturing the Storm Shadow missiles, which I am deeply proud are being provided by this country to Ukraine to fight back against Vladimir Putin’s horrific invasion, and the Airbus Defence and Space UK headquarters, which provides a quarter of all satellites used in space. They say the sky is the limit; we in Stevenage like to travel that little bit further. Yet to be at the forefront of modernity, we need to empower people with the ambition, the vision and the skills to make it happen. This was something the next Labour MP for Stevenage, Barbara Follett, championed formidably. In her own maiden speech in 1997, she noted the need to equip more young people to take on the skilled careers that would be possible with the high-tech employers in Stevenage. She was then part of the Labour Government who placed education at the heart of their programme from early years right through to advanced qualifications. Now the challenge in Stevenage, as across so much of the country, is to ensure that there are homes in which people can grow up, work hard and grow old with dignity. It is a painful irony that the original residents of our new town now watch as their children and grandchildren face down the lost dream of home ownership or even renting a home. That is why I am so pleased that a priority for this Labour Government is to build many more new homes to meet this housing emergency, including new towns just like Stevenage. I am delighted that another Labour woman from Stevenage, Baroness Sharon Taylor, is a Housing Minister in the other place. I am looking forward to working with her and others in our new Government to help build the homes that Stevenage and our country so desperately need. So I am proud of the legacy of Labour women from Stevenage. It was pointed out to me recently that I am the first male Labour MP for Stevenage. I have looked into that, and it turns out I am not. That first goes to Philip Asterley Jones, elected in 1945. He deserves to be remembered for championing the building of Stevenage New Town, despite many misgivings at the time. I then thought I might be another first. One reaction to my election that I had not been expecting came from the country of my birth, Malta, where it has been proclaimed that I am the first Maltese-born Member of this House. I have looked into that one too, and again there was another first—Gerald Strickland, the Member for Lancaster in the 1920s and subsequently Prime Minister of Malta. I can confirm I have no plans to follow his career path. I think the point in life is that being the first is not as important as acknowledging how you achieve your dreams and ambitions—not alone, but thanks to the support of others. My mum and dad moved to this country from Malta when I was an eight-year-old boy. They worked hard so that my brother and I could wish for nothing. I was also lucky to have teachers who believed in me so that I could believe in myself. From a young age, my mum and dad instilled in me that, if you see a problem, you roll up your sleeves and you fix it. Since then, I have done just that. I have worked as a solicitor, getting justice for victims of the phone hacking scandal. I also served for over a decade as a councillor and an armed forces champion, helping residents with their problems and focusing on the needs of veterans. As someone who came to this country as a little boy, I have also campaigned for the welfare of child refugees, who have never had the luck and support that I had. It is that instinctive drive to serve and make a difference to people’s lives that brought me to Stevenage, the town of aspiration. As I talk about championing the needs of residents, I want to touch on the topic of today’s debate—a topic that matters a great deal to my constituents. I am delighted that the very first Bill of this new Government is to improve our railways by establishing Great British Railways and bringing train operators into public ownership. Residents in Stevenage and our villages are strivers: they work hard to build a better life for themselves and their families. Key to that is a properly integrated rail network that is affordable, on time and accessible. Alongside my strong support for the Bill, I will be lobbying for the restoration of the Knebworth express to bring back a fast train in and out of London to Knebworth station, because those who live in villages have no less aspiration to succeed than those who live in towns. I will also work hard to ensure that accessibility in Stevenage station is a priority, from ensuring a full-time working lift to securing the future of the ticket office. As I start the work in my constituency of returning the role of MP to its founding purpose, public service, I also stand ready to support our new Government in delivering on the change that our country needs. I ask the new Government just one thing: look back to the great reforming agendas of the Labour Governments in 1945, 1964 and 1997, who built our new town, revolutionised the life prospects of a generation and transformed our public services. Aspiration was their watchword, and aspiration has remained the very essence of towns such as Stevenage ever since. Now look to the present day in 2024: let us recapture the imagination, innovation and vision that our predecessors showed, and carry it forward to transform the lives of this generation and the generations to come.