Lauren Sullivan MP: speeches

Speeches

• 21 May 2026 · Family Justice System: Domestic Abuse and Safeguarding · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss. I congratulate the hon. Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones) on bringing this topic to the Chamber, where it belongs. We need to keep the pressure on to ensure that survivors have an improved sense of trust in the system. I have experience of this issue as an MP. I would not say that I have been inundated, but many amazing women have shared their stories with me in my constituency surgeries. I pay tribute to and thank them for being brave enough to come forward. Without wanting to disclose characteristics or anything identifiable, I will share a flavour of what I have been told, which I am sure will not be unheard of for either the Minister or other Members. For example, one mother and her children lived under coercive control, financial abuse and violence for many years. After separation, the abuse did not stop but simply changed form—the hon. Member for Wokingham described a similar case. The perpetrator continued to exert control through child contact arrangements, intimidation and financial manipulation, the children required to attend overnight contact despite repeatedly expressing fear and distress to professionals, including to their school. Critically, the abuse has never been tested in court. The survivor was discouraged from seeking a fact-finding hearing and had no access to legal services advice at that stage. As a result, her experience was minimised as “conflict” rather than recognised as abuse. Coercive control and abuse are still not fully tested in court. Abuse is often reframed as conflict rather than what it actually it is, which leads to significant delays in therapy and support for children and a continuation of harm. The Home Office harm panel’s 2025 research on family courts found systematic failures, including the minimisation of domestic abuse. Having IDVAs or those that specialise in domestic abuse within the court system is a good suggestion, and one that I also call for. The court process is incredibly traumatic for families, and children’s voices are not listened to within it. Many survivors have reported to me unsafe contact orders that often allow public and unsupervised contact. In north Kent, there is a lack of supervised contact centres. Children’s voices are being silenced—the voices of children with special educational needs are missing in this space. Within the court system, a lack of education and expertise means that people do not always understand why children’s behaviour changes when they are distressed, especially when they are unable to communicate verbally in the traditional way. It would be interesting to hear from the Minister about the special educational needs aspect of this issue. We have a new supervised contact centre in Gravesham, which is welcome news for many families, whether they have gone through court or not. It will be housed at the Maltings Child Contact Centre at the City Praise Centre and will provide a safe, structured environment for well-behaved parents who should have contact with their children. The contact centre is one of only 340 centres nationally to be accredited by the National Association of Child Contact Centres. Given that there are 650 MPs, that is not even one per constituency. That needs to change. We need people to speak up and come forward when they are experiencing harm and abuse, and we need to make sure that the system, including the court system, backs them and protects our children and survivors.

• 19 Mar 2026 · Online Harms · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Bedfordshire for securing this important debate. Online harms are systemic, they are scaled, and they are producing real-world consequences, as we have seen. Social media is now the environment in which young people grow up—it is almost universal when children enter secondary school. According to a consultation by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, 81% of 10 to 12-year-olds are on social media, and 86% have accounts. The Youth Select Committee also did a study on youth violence and social media back in 2024, and found that 97% of 13 to 17-year-olds were online and that 70% of them see real-world violence online. That is a huge number of statistics, but they demonstrate the fact that social media is now in every young person’s bedroom, in their hand and in their pocket. Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore from the University of Cambridge told me that adolescent brains are highly sensitive to the social environment, and the social media companies are probably aware of this. Adolescents’ brains have heightened neuroplasticity, and this will continue until their mid or late 20s. During adolescence, young people are trying to find identity and belonging, and I fear that the tech companies are exploiting this. Where can we see evidence of harm? The National Education Union did a study called “Big Tech’s Little Victims”, in which researchers created fictional accounts and spent half an hour each day on Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube. They found that harmful content appeared within three minutes, and often immediately. Young people in my constituency say, “I do not want to see this harmful content anymore,” yet they are still shown it, so what is going on? The hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Bedfordshire mentioned the “Inside the Rage Machine” documentary, which I have seen a number of times. I am absolutely horrified at what the whistleblowers have revealed.

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

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  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.

• 14 Jan 2026 · Science and Discovery Centres · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Harris. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr (Steve Witherden) on securing this important debate. Seeing the passion and excitement among the speakers, I have found my people—let us go with that. It is also wonderful to meet another trypanosomiasis person, the hon. Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers). I also studied that in Dundee, so I thought, “Amazing—where have you been?”—and there is our love for Dundee and the amazing science centre there. My hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr made many incredible points in this debate, so I will skip to the fun bits. I am a research scientist and a science teacher. My real love of science was fostered when we were able to visit places in London, because we lived nearby. Learning about Alexander Fleming—about antibiotics and the impact they have had on our world, which we now take for granted—was amazing. The challenges we have coming forward in the next few years, if not longer, are those big questions that the hon. Member for Winchester spoke about: how we feed 8 billion people, and how we power the nation. We have the talent in this country, and that is what these science centres really represent. Obviously, 25 years ago there was a slew of new centres off the back of Aberdeen and other places, and they have been inspiring youngsters and adults throughout that time. I made one quick visit to the Dundee Science Centre last summer, where they have a water drop machine. Someone can watch the water drop and then, as it makes impact, have a photo taken of them going, “Oh!” It is quite cool. It also has volcanoes, and the brainwave machine, which is also quite cool, where someone has to calm their brain so the ball moves along. I nearly had it—then I saw I was winning, and the ball came back to me. That centre is so much fun and bring so much curiosity and excitement. I think the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) made the point that we sometimes get bogged down in the economic and inspiration arguments, and they are incredibly valid, but fun and memories are also incredibly important. My asks are that SDCs have a home and a Department that champions them. From meeting with and speaking to representatives from science and discovery centres, there is currently a revolving door, and they need a home. I raised this with the Secretary of State fairly recently, and she is looking at it. I hope the Minister can provide an update today on where that home might be. More than 3,000 scientists, academics, business leaders and educators have signed an open letter on this issue. It is something that is desperately needed. We live in a world challenged by misinformation and disinformation about what is fact, what is not fact, and how we consider evidence: these are places where we can prod that evidence and gather understanding. I will conclude by saying that I hope the Minister has heard all these things loud and clear, and will have many stories of his own to draw on, and thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr again for securing this debate.

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

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  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.

• 21 Oct 2025 · Cancer Diagnoses · Hansard source

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  A local teacher went to her GP with clear symptoms of a facial tumour but was told it was simply the effects of age. It took almost two years to receive a confirmed diagnosis, including eight months lost in the system after an urgent referral. Does the Minister agree that reducing times for cancer diagnosis must start with strengthening systems to support early recognition and follow-up, so that no one is left waiting? I wish the Minister well with her own cancer battle and thank her for bravely sharing her experience of living with cancer.

• 20 Oct 2025 · Post-16 Education and Skills Strategy · Hansard source

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  I recently had the pleasure of visiting North Kent College in Gravesend, which is one of the 10 new construction technical excellence colleges. The announcement of the new V-levels is a welcome step, giving vocational education real parity of esteem with academic and technical routes. Can the Secretary of State assure me, however, that the assessment of V-levels will involve physically demonstrating competence, such as practical or placement examinations and building a portfolio of evidence, rather than exam-based memory tests, which do not reflect real life? Will she meet me to discuss that further?

• 15 Oct 2025 · Educational Assessment System Reform · Hansard source

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  I was a teacher of chemistry and science. Under the new curriculum that was instigated by the Conservative Government, young people had to learn 19 equations for physics, including mass, units and all of that. I can go to Google and ask for that, but as a scientist, what I need is scientific inquiry and the curiosity to ask, “Is this fact real?” Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the change to a knowledge-based system has cut back on the ability for young people to learn curiosity and scientific inquiry?

• 11 Sept 2025 · Regional Transport Inequality · Hansard source

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  I am incredibly grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Catherine Atkinson) for bringing forward this important debate. She spoke with passion about the subject. The south-east can be described as leafy and rich, with Kent being the garden of England, but parts of that garden have been left unnurtured, untended and left behind. Transport inequality can be framed as a north-south divide. In my constituency, there is a north-south divide where people living in the north of the constituency have a lower life expectancy of over a decade. But both the urban and rural communities have been left behind. When I spoke with young people during the campaign and more recently, they told me that transport is their No. 1 issue. It is about connectivity and getting across Gravesham, because there are no buses on a Sunday that can take them to town to meet their friends, and there are no buses that can take them after school if they want to stay and do extracurricular activities. A mum recently contacted me about her 16-year-old who was excited to start at Northfleet technology college, which specialises in engineering. They chose that college because of the bus route, the 305, but that has now been scrapped. We see this up and down our country: bus routes are there one day and scrapped the next. The new bus route means nearly an hour’s journey with a 20-minute walk. On top of that, a pass costs £640 for that privilege. The Kent freedom pass, which is run by Kent county council—previously Tory but now Reform-led—used to cost £50. Now it is over £550 a year and rising. Families are being priced out, and although I helped to secure options to pay in monthly instalments, the cost remains out of reach for many. In urban areas of my constituency, reliability is a major concern. The cliff collapse at Galley Hill in the neighbouring constituency is having a major impact on the reliability of buses. Under the Tories’ Ebbsfleet Development Corporation, millions of pounds have gone to shiny, fast-track routes. However, they serve the new developments while existing communities have lost their services altogether. The people of Northfleet lost their bus route. They were promised a physical connection between Northfleet station and Ebbsfleet International—a place that has some of the highest levels of deprivation—but that has been placed on hold indefinitely, meaning that new housing developments see that investment while those who really could do with that opportunity have been left behind. That is a two-tier public transport system, and it is not fair. In Gravesham we see bus companies competing in a relatively small area for similar routes, undercutting each other and making timetable choices based on profit, not where people actually want to go. I am incredibly confident that the new bus services Bill will enable local people to make the routes better for themselves. I must mention the ferry—bring back the Tilbury-Gravesend ferry—because it is not only about getting across the borough but getting to Essex, supporting our businesses as a place for growth.