Lauren Sullivan MP: speeches

Speeches

• 12 Mar 2026 · International Women’s Day · Hansard source

  More

  It is a privilege to speak in this debate. I pay tribute to the women and men here, and particularly to my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Dr Tidball) for her powerful and moving account, and for sharing her experiences. She is a voice for so many, and there will be action because she is here. Thank you. In Gravesham in my constituency, I have met many amazing women. I want to mention a couple before I move on to the substantive part of my speech. Nageena Hussain is a phenomenal woman. Last week, I met over 100 women, and we had a beautiful, wonderful evening together, in which we shared food at the breaking of the fast—it was phenomenal. I pay tribute to her, as well as to our business leaders, such as Sandra Hassan from Nell’s Café, who I nominated for the MP HERoes, which is Savvitas’s programme in partnership with NatWest. She is a business institution, and a business leader. I also pay tribute to Sylvia Mead, who brought people from wonderful Gravesham businesses to visit me in Parliament this week. These are women coming together to bring communities together, and there are many more such business leaders. Women in Gravesham do great things, and I will tell the House a little about just one of them. Catherine Green grew up in Gravesend. She went to Gravesend grammar school for girls. She went on to university, to study natural sciences. She earned her PhD and completed many fellowships. She was part of the team at the Jenner Institute that developed the AstraZeneca covid vaccine. She worked with Sarah Gilbert, and we thank them for using their talents and expertise. When the world needed them, they were there, so I thank and recognise them for that. When it comes to celebrating women and science, not all women in science have been recognised. I want to pay tribute to some who have not been recognised. Ada Lovelace is the mother, inventor and founder of computers, but that was recognised only 100 years afterwards. Rosalind Franklin was a chemist and X-ray crystallographer. She was not credited or valued for her research, but it was her X-ray image that showed that DNA is a double helix. Alice Ball was an African American chemist who discovered a leprosy treatment, but it was stolen and written up as the Dean method. That term was later changed, but still. Marie Tharp is the mother of plate tectonics. Those women were absolutely credible, and their names and contributions need to be recognised. UN research shows that only a third of the global scientific community is made up of women, and only one in 10 of those researchers are women in leadership roles. Why is that? Well, women face a set of different challenges. One of those challenges is the motherhood penalty, from pregnancy and beyond. There are structural issues. In science, PhD students receive a stipend, and they are not employed, so they do not get access to maternity rights or Government-subsidised childcare. Maternity time is not really factored into their two-year contracts, so what should they do if they need to step out for six months or a year? Put their research on pause? Have somebody else come in and finish it? It means that they produce fewer papers, have less impact, and are less likely to see progress. Many women have suffered through that system, and have delayed having families until they have tenure—a permanent position. That is possible, but it does not need to be that hard. That is just the pregnancy part. What about when the children grow up? Half of respondents to the Carers in STEMM report said that they had to cancel travel plans because of care responsibilities—I have experienced that myself. We might spend months planning an experiment, but then the nursery rings and says, “Come and collect your child—they’re ill.” Researchers in the field say that they do not travel to international conferences, where scientists network and bring ideas together, because of caring responsibilities. It is fine; we look after our families instead—but it all means that we are one step behind. Others take career breaks, as I did. I declare an interest: I was the recipient of a Daphne Jackson fellowship. Those fellowships are amazing, because they help women and men return to science. The fellowship was named after Daphne Jackson, an English nuclear physicist who became the first female physics professor in the UK, at the University of Surrey, at the age of 34—phenomenal. She thought that qualified women who are unemployed or under-employed following a career break because of family commitments represent an appalling waste of talent and of the initial investment in their education, and I could not agree more. Many such women are eager to return to their original careers, or to field activity in which their initial education is relevant, and Daphne Jackson fellowships provide retraining, so that they can return part time. I thank and pay tribute to the Daphne Jackson Trust, as well as to the Francis Crick Institute, for supporting many women back into research. After my meeting with the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology—in which we discussed my career, the choice to leave science to raise a family, returning and trying to wiggle everything through to make it work—she launched yesterday a new charter to support women in research. It calls on all PhD funding bodies supported by UK Research and Innovation to step up and include 52 weeks’ maternity leave. That is about raising the bar and improving paternity leave, too; a rising tide lifts all boats. She also announced a £2.3 million increase in support for the Daphne Jackson Trust. That is over 100% extra. How many returns to science will that fund? It is incredible. The charter is a direction of travel—a marker. We are not done. This is a call for women researchers in the UK to tell us what else we can do, and how we can work together to make changes to improve science for everyone. In my concluding remarks, I want to speak to all those young women and girls who are curious about science, and who want to help people or save the world: do not doubt yourself. The country needs you. Finally, to the men who support us and let us embrace our talents: thank you. Good men never finish last; they help us improve everybody’s quality of life. I believe that the profession of science has the ability to improve lives beyond measure. I thank the scientists who are making a difference. We see you and we thank you.

• 16 Dec 2025 · Planning Reform · Hansard source

  More

  This is really about ensuring that we can balance national standards and local decision making. As a former chair of a planning committee, I seek reassurance on how we and local decision makers can hold developers to account on stalled sites. We absolutely need to get building on brownfield sites. We have over 5,000 permitted homes in Gravesham, but we need reassurance that the small pockets of beautiful green space in our urban areas are protected, so that we see development where it needs to be.

• 12 Nov 2025 · SEND Provision: Kent · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I thank my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) for securing this incredibly important debate. We have had a number of debates in this Chamber about the SEND crisis, particularly in Kent. I speak as the former leader of the opposition at Kent county council and I served on the SEND scrutiny committee, which looked at the SEND measures. I have also been a teacher and have worked in schools with young people with special educational needs. I want to go through the various aspects of the problem, because the system is incredibly complicated. Like everybody here, I have met parents in utter desperation, in tears—in a place of hopelessness—because there is nowhere else to go. When they pick up the phone or send an email, there is no answer. I have brought them together with We Are Beams, a fantastic charity supporting our constituents in north Kent, and they have unburdened themselves and shared their frustration about the lack of communication and incorrect information being provided. My hon. and learned Friend spoke about EHCPs not being updated, which means that they are not implemented rightly in the classroom, so the young person does not get the right support. Parents feel gaslit; they feel that they have no one on their side. It is absolutely heartbreaking. Children and young people I have met feel that they are not getting the right information and that they are not being included. They are missing out on key aspects of socialisation—the key skills that will enable them to work in the future. We know that early intervention at a young age can help to get young people and children on track to thrive. It is well established now that we are not all neurotypical; some of us are neuroatypical or have additional needs. An education system should support, encourage and bring out those wonderful talents, but sadly I fear that that is not happening. I was a teacher under the last Government, and saw some of the changes that the then Education Secretary Michael Gove brought in. I remember starting a year with five statemented children in my year 8 mixed-ability class. I had two teaching assistants who were brilliant at helping me navigate the wonders of science education—but by the end of that year, those teaching assistants were taken out because the funding was not there, and the Education Endowment Fund said that TAs were high cost but low value. It could not have been more wrong. Years later, we can see that specialist teaching assistants are often the bedrock supporting our teachers. The hon. Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones) said some fantastic things about teachers and their workloads; it is a team effort. I have visited a number of schools. Ifield is of course a fantastic special educational needs school, but there are so many young people there that they need more space. I have visited mainstream schools and seen how they are catering for children with special educational needs, but they lack the specialist TAs and the resources to help. I have had parents tell me about schools that are off-rolling students because they cannot meet their needs. There is nothing in writing; they are merely saying, “Please do not enrol your child here” at parents’ evenings. That cannot be fair and right. The challenge that some heads pose to me is league tables and percentages of students passing their exams. They can either keep their exam grades up and high, or they can be inclusive—I am not defending that argument; I am just saying it has been presented to me. I do not think it is fair, and I think we should all be there to help young people succeed no matter where they come from or what their needs are. There are parents, young people and schools, but the other part of the picture is the council. When I sat on the SEND scrutiny committee, it was striking even back then—maybe four or five years ago—that the caseworkers for SEND had double the number of recommended cases from the Government that they should have had. One SEND caseworker should in theory, by the Government’s then standards, have had 125 children to monitor and update plans for. In Kent at that time, it was double that. Although those caseworkers are inundated with parents and needs, they have been positioned as the gatekeepers rather than the supporters. A large part of what I hear from parents is that they do not feel that anybody is on their side. If there are to be changes to the system, we need to position caseworkers so that people can trust that they have their back and that they have their children’s best interests at heart. The other paramount thing that I saw was the changes to the free school and academy system, which meant that local authorities could no longer build schools based on needs. It meant there was a delay in schools—including specialist schools—coming forward. Thankfully, we have a few green lights in Kent, but they should have been here years ago. Because the ability of local authorities to plan, prepare for and build schools was taken away, Kent was reliant on private specialist schools. However, I fear that the council’s improvement notice may have been lifted in error when the Government came in last summer. A target of reducing the number of children with EHCPs on the council’s books, set under the last Government, is incredibly perverse. How does that put the needs of young people first? How can the parents of Kent have faith in the system? The council is under an improvement plan to reduce the number of children with EHCPs, yet parents and schools believe that having an EHCP will entitle them to further support. It is a complete perversion. I say to our wonderful Minister that the message I have heard from parents and schools is that we must not water down the legal protections. They are long fought for and hard won, and when they work, they work really well. The problem is with their implementation. If there are any announcements or communications, the Government must be really clear about how they will preserve the legal protections. Many aspects of the curriculum review can be welcomed. I would reduce the exams, for instance—there is an awful lot of pressure on youngsters at the moment, so that would be a good thing—but I encourage the Minister to look at other ways to demonstrate the sheer talent we have in this country, such as coursework and practical tasks. I am sure she knows never to underestimate the scale of the challenge; it is vast, but we are ready to help and support.