Laurence Turner MP: speeches

Speeches

• 24 Jun 2026 · Nottingham Maternity and Neonatal Services · Hansard source

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  I was born in Nottingham City hospital, and while the Ockenden report was necessarily bounded by the last 13 years, I think it is important to record that women and children were avoidably harmed and avoidably died in those settings many years before, and the pain is not diminished by the passing of time. As I have listened to these exchanges, I have had at the forefront of my mind those friends and people I grew up with who, many years later, found themselves close to death in circumstances that could have been avoided. As my right hon. Friend said in his compassionate and thoughtful statement, the description of what happened in Nottingham will be all too familiar to families well beyond that city. He will know that Sandwell and West Birmingham hospitals NHS trust is one of the trusts that are subject to particular attention as part of the national investigation. What assurance can he give people in cities such as Birmingham that this time, after these reports and their recommendations, things will change and NHS senior management will be held to account?

• 10 Jun 2026 · Railways Bill · Hansard source

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  I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker, for being able to speak so early in this debate. I wish to focus on Government amendment 92, amendment 166 on devolution, which stands in my name, and the Transport Committee amendments on disability access. At the outset, I thank the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), for her leadership on this issue. Public ownership as a means to the end of improving passenger services has always implicitly been at the heart of this Bill, and Government amendment 92 makes that intent explicit. I warmly welcome its presence on the amendment paper. I hope the House will forgive a few words on the origins of this amendment. As the Minister said, a drafting issue was identified. In essence, although the requirement for public ownership was contained in other legislation, it was contingent on the circumstances of transition and on definitions set out in secondary legislation. I am sure that Members across the House will agree that, whatever their views on the merits of particular ownership models, such an important decision as public ownership or privatisation of the railways should be taken only by the majority consent of the whole House, and that is exactly what the amendment will achieve, safeguarding Great British Railways from the spectre of privatisation through the back door. I thank the Minister, the Minister of State the noble Lord Hendy and the Bill team for their constructive engagement on this issue. I am optimistic about the Bill’s devolution provisions and I hope that under them Birmingham and the west midlands can enjoy some of the improvements that passengers in London and Liverpool already benefit from. Great things were done in the past through the old section 20 agreements under the Transport Act 1968, not least the creation of the cross-city line which runs through my constituency, but such agreements proved impossible under the fragmented post-privatisation railway. I hope section 5 proves to be a worthy successor to Barbara Castle’s section 20. In the west midlands, we have a particular issue. We have a well-established devolved body, the West Midlands Railway Executive, which covers counties beyond the combined authority’s boundaries, such as Worcestershire, Warwickshire and Staffordshire. Clause 5, as it stands, specifies that devolution agreements will cover services in the area of a combined authority. It is important that such devolution agreements reflect the natural railway geographies of those areas, so I hope that reassurance can be given from the Government Front Bench. Several amendments would take forward the Select Committee’s recommendations on disability access. We can judge our transport services on the ability of all passengers to use them and the Bill contains some welcome provisions. Clause 18 states that GBR must “in particular” advance the interests of disabled people. I believe this is the first time any such commitment requirement has been set out in railway legislation. GBR will be subject to the public sector equality duty, but new clause 39 would ensure that when the passengers’ council is constituted disabled people are represented on that body in accordance with the old commitment, “Nothing about us without us”. I hope Ministers will look carefully at that issue. We heard from the Opposition Front Bench and the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover), that they wished to advance a passenger growth target. The hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage will know that that was the subject of some constructive disagreement on the Select Committee. Freight has historically been the poor relation on the railway network, in particular when it comes to pathing agreements. I fear that if a passenger growth target was in the Bill on the same basis and weight as the freight growth target, the advantages for the freight growth target in those decisions would be lost. That is an argument we heard in the Public Bill Committee’s evidence sessions from the Rail Freight Group.

• 10 Jun 2026 · Railways Bill · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills is, I say respectfully, wrong on this issue. When the Labour party first committed to the reintegration of track and train, under the then shadow Rail Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), I wrote the announcement—so I do bring some bearing to that question. It has been a privilege over these years to ride on the footplate of this reform journey. The Bill will end the national buck-passing game of “Whose Line is it Anyway?”. Most importantly, it will establish a rail network that is run by and for the nation. I look forward to voting against amendments that would undo that important journey of reform.

• 10 Jun 2026 · Railways Bill · Hansard source

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  When privatisation happened, the Government of the day fought hard to keep state-owned foreign railways out of the running of the railways, but they were compelled to accept them by European Union legislation. In Committee, the hon. Gentleman described the involvement of state-owned foreign railways as “a gift from abroad”, so may I congratulate him on his bravery in taking a more pro-European approach on this question than John Major?

• 10 Jun 2026 · Railways Bill · Hansard source

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  I hear what the right hon. Lady says, but it is contradicted by the record and our own experience. She says that integration of track and train is an idea that came from that review, but we were advancing that idea for railway reform on the Labour Benches in 2011 and 2012. The Bill is the culmination of all that reform effort over many, many years.

• 10 Jun 2026 · Railways Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member describes the railway as it could be—and he tempts me to get on to Red Star Parcels, but that might be one for another day—but we must have regard to the railway as it is now and the fact is that the railway the Bill inherits sets up that binary choice all too often. I very much hope we can get more interaction between modes, as he describes. The right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) said—I hope I do not misrepresent her—that the Bill carries forward, in a different form, an idea created by the previous Conservative Government, but I think that is really too short a horizon.

• 10 Jun 2026 · Railways Bill · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend will have heard representations for ensuring that, under clause 5, devolution agreements must not be unduly limited, either by the Bill or its implementation. Is he able to offer any reassurances to Transport for West Midlands and other bodies that they will continue to be part of the conversation about how the Bill is implemented?

• 10 Jun 2026 · Belfast: Violent Disorder · Hansard source

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  I commend the hon. Member for Belfast South and Mid Down (Claire Hanna) for her words in this place. My constituents will have been horrified by last night’s scenes in Belfast, just as they were horrified by the attacks on police in Southampton. Both followed horrifying individual incidents that were subsequently exploited for extremist political ends, including online, as the hon. Lady said. The only difference between shouting something through a megaphone and posting it on social media is that the latter might reach millions, so what consequences will be faced by those who meet the threshold for encouraging acts of criminality, including online?

• 9 Jun 2026 · Road Safety: West Midlands · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate. It is striking how many of the issues she describes ring true for city constituencies as well. In Birmingham, the number of collisions has fallen over the past decade, but the number of people killed or seriously injured on the roads has remained remarkably stable, at around 500 a year. That indicates that if someone is unlucky enough to be in a smash, the risk is actually greater. Many of our roads were not designed for the wider and heavier vehicles that now use them. Does the hon. Lady agree that we need more adaptations for historic roads, and better and more up-to-date guidance on what interventions are effective in this age of wider and heavier vehicles?

• 3 Jun 2026 · Rail Freight · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate. Rail freight moves everything from Tesco containers to Cornish clay on its way to Stoke through my constituency. I would like to raise the issue of the rail freight workforce, because drivers’ wages and employment conditions can be very variable in the sector. Will the hon. Lady join me in recognising the value of ASLEF’s “Rail Freight Future” campaign? It backs many of her calls and emphasises the need for proper sanitary, welfare and rest facilities for freight drivers.

• 3 Jun 2026 · General Strike Centenary Commemorations · Hansard source

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  It is a great honour to bring this Adjournment debate before the House to mark the centenary of the general strike of 1926. Twelve years after the general strike, the Welsh miners’ poet, Idris Davies, asked, “Do you remember 1926? That summer of soups and speeches,” which was a reference to the bitter months endured by the miners and their families after the general strike ended. He also referred to the strike itself, which he called “The great dream and the swift disaster”. I am really grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to Mr Speaker for granting parliamentary time so that we can answer that question in this place and do so in the affirmative, just as it has been answered at events across the country during the past month. The general strike remains the most extensive confrontation in our national history between organised labour on the one side and employers and Government on the other, and it remains contested history.

• 3 Jun 2026 · General Strike Centenary Commemorations · Hansard source

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  That was an important intervention, and it is absolutely right that we remember the role of the Red Clydesiders and the members of the Independent Labour party, among whom Jimmy Maxton was so prominent not just in responding to the strike but in shaping the course of Labour history. In Birmingham, production continued throughout the strike at such employers as Fort Dunlop and the BSA, despite a strong response from members of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union. At Cadbury, more than 1,000 workers walked out. Although the firm’s Liberal owners were relatively sympathetic to the strikers’ cause, differences in turnout within the workforce were apparent from the beginning. The position at the Austin Motor Company’s works in Longbridge in my constituency was instructive. Herbert Austin had been a Conservative Member of Parliament. He had lost the King’s Norton seat two years before, but the factory remained a bastion of what has been called “cloth-capped Chamberlainism”. The universities provided many middle-class volunteers, who tried their hand at skilled manual work—sometimes with comically inept consequences; sometimes resulting in tragedy—so the factory swelled the ranks of the strike’s opponents. It is likely that more workers did strike than the company claimed, but they were comfortably outnumbered by the 400 men who volunteered as special constables. The politicisation of policing and the justice system during the strike left broken heads and bitter memories in many areas. For every account of friendly relations, which were real enough—in many districts, the police and strikers took pride in the fact that no violence occurred during the strike; the most famous example is probably the football match between strikers and the constabulary at Plymouth where the strikers won 2-1—there were more cases of police overreach and the denial of freedom of speech. The chief legal weapon ranged against the strike was the set of regulations expedited under the Emergency Powers Act 1920, which were debated in Parliament only retrospectively. It is necessary to quote regulation 21 to bring home just how loosely some of those powers were worded. It was made an offence for a person to cause, or attempt to cause, “disaffection among any of His Majesty’s Forces, or among the members of any police force…or among the civilian population”. Further, it was made an offence to possess “any report or statement”, the publication of which would cause such disaffection. The term “disaffection” was never defined, however, and the police had the power to raid premises on the basis that they might contain such documents. Although those powers were affirmed by Parliament mid-way through the strike, they were established by an Order in Council—that is, under the royal prerogative—and were in force before Parliament had a meaningful chance to debate or scrutinise them. It is no wonder that the then Home Secretary, William Joynson-Hicks, could reflect that the powers practically “made the Government dictators”. Many strikers were brought before magistrates simply for making statements of political opinion. As Miliband—Ralph, that is—put it: “Large number of arrests were made…often on the flimsiest of pretexts, and sentences to short terms of imprisonment were freely handed down by magistrates little disposed to sympathy with those brought before them.” To give one example, in Cumbria, a lead miner and branch secretary of the National Union of General and Municipal Workers posted handbills that encouraged members to refrain from enlisting as special constables. He was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment with hard labour. The headquarters of the Daily Herald , the only Labour-supporting newspaper of the day, were raided on the basis that seditious literature might be discovered. The Government attempted to prevent the publication of the TUC’s improvised news sheet, the British Worker , by commandeering paper stocks. The nascent BBC preserved its technical independence, following consultation with Ministers, through the expedient of denying its platform to critical voices, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) noted. As John Reith put it in his diary: “They”— that is, Ministers— “want to be able to say that they did not commandeer us, but they know that they can trust us not to be really impartial.” In Birmingham, after the local strike bulletin contained an erroneous—but, it seems, innocently arrived at—report that the Government had suffered a defeat in this House, the union’s entire emergency committee in the city was arrested, and the printing presses held at the Birmingham Labour party’s offices on Corporation Street were seized. One Labour councillor, Percy Shurmer, was dismissed and blacklisted by the Post Office on account of a speech made during the general strike, although he was later elected to this place as the Member of Parliament for Birmingham Sparkbrook. I can do no better than quote Dr David Torrance, who somehow manages to combine writing histories of this decade with his role as a subject specialist on the constitution in the House of Commons Library. In his excellent recent book on the politics of the strike, he put it this way: “If anything, it was the…government rather than the TUC which came close to behaving ‘unconstitutionally’ during the general strike.” The strike’s end and the final rift between the Miners’ Federation and the rest of the general council has been covered elsewhere, and I cannot do it justice in the time available tonight. It is sufficient to say, I hope, that the trade unions, having lacked a theory for winning the strike, also lacked a plan for ending it. At some firms, the unions were able to secure a return to work on the same terms as prevailed before and without victimisation, but other employers took the opportunity to reduce wages and settle scores. Some strikers never worked in their chosen occupation again. The Economic League, a professional blacklisting organisation, found new reach and strength, often in collusion with public bodies. An even harder fate awaited the miners, as they struggled on during those hot and hungry summer months, until they too were eventually forced to concede. In the most hostile districts, principally south Wales and Nottinghamshire, their independent associations were all but broken by the so-called non-political miners’ industrial unions—better known as Spencerism—which owed their position to the coercive enforcement of the colliery companies and the quiet backing of a fund instituted by Baldwin. It left a legacy of division that I think is comparable with the aftermath of the 1984-85 strike, which has still not entirely faded. If the House will indulge me, I have in my pocket a token of the Nottinghamshire Miners’ Association. It was a small token that hung around the neck of miners, and it is stamped “1925”. They were never made again, because it was too dangerous for men to identify themselves as members of a free union. In the months that followed the general strike, the defeated issued pamphlets and the victors issued commemorative truncheons. If the trade unions conducted inadequate soul searching before the strike, they made up for it later, asking themselves many inward questions. By contrast, the Government perhaps asked themselves too few. At the time of the 80th anniversary, we could still meet women and men who stood in their youth on the picket lines. Now, the strike has all but passed out of the outermost limits of living memory. The collieries are gone, the Austin works are gone, and so is much of the world that they sustained. It has sometimes been argued that the general strike had little long-term effect on industrial relations or political life, as great as the consequences for some individuals may have been; that the response of the Government was surprisingly restrained; and that the conflict, in its own peculiar way, represented a very British form of moderation. I think this is a misreading. The severity of the blows dealt to many of the strike’s participants disqualifies the last claim, and the strike fundamentally altered politics and industrial relations, too. It drove the unions closer to the Labour party, and it seems to have hastened Labour support in some working-class areas. For the ageing leaders of the new unionism, the strike marked the end of an era. It might be said that the spirit of 1889, already dampened by the war, was finally extinguished in 1926, giving way to a paternalistic and deferential internal style that dominated union politics and shaped the post-war consensus, until that too broke on the rocks of the prices and incomes policy 50 years later. Let us look at the official response. The Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1927 imposed restrictions on the political levy, and consequently upon political funding, despite the issue being of no relevance to the strike. That was undone in 1946 and reimposed in 2016, but we repealed those provisions again in December. In that sense, we are still contesting the battle lines drawn up 100 years ago. I think the best way we can remember the general strike’s participants—and I make no apology for placing the emphasis on the nearly 3 million coalminers, transport workers, printers, dockers and more who answered the TUC’s call—is by carrying forward some lessons from their times to our own. It seems to me that the strike raises questions for us that are immediate and vibrant. What should the roles and limits of the police and the courts be in the settlement of industrial disputes? What obligation does the state owe to its dissenters’ liberties in times of civil contingencies? Do our laws provide sufficient protection from the potential abuses by the Executive of prerogative powers? Those questions must be asked and answered another day. Tonight, it is enough to answer the question put at the start of this debate. In Idris Davies’s words: “Ay, ay, we remember 1926… And we shall remember 1926 until our blood is dry.”

• 3 Jun 2026 · General Strike Centenary Commemorations · Hansard source

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  I agree with my hon. Friend, and it is only right to say that he, through his role on the GMB executive and as one of the delegates to the national policy forum in opposition, was one of the people who helped draw up the reforms to employment rights that have been passed by this Parliament. The general strike raised profound questions about the proper balance of state power and the rights of dissenters at times of civil contingency, and we should ask them again and with urgency in each generation. It is difficult to capture the essence of the world that created the strike: the depths of poverty in the older mining districts; the extreme social control exercised by employers in the villages put up around the more lucrative and newly exploited seams; and the critical dependence of the nation’s economy upon a coal industry that killed one in 1,000 of its workers each year and seriously wounded one in 10. When working people rallied across occupational boundaries to defend the miners in 1926, they showed extraordinary solidarity, and their unions channelled national power to a degree perhaps unseen before, even if they were unsteady in exercising it and uncertain of its limits.

• 3 Jun 2026 · General Strike Centenary Commemorations · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend has displayed his customary ingenuity in mentioning Harlow. I believe that, as a new town, it did not exist at the time of the general strike—but I will come on to the points he made. Ranged against Ramsay MacDonald was, of course, Stanley Baldwin, a Conservative party leader who convinced many of his natural critics of his sincere desire to bring about industrial reconciliation, summed up by his famous declaration in this Chamber a year earlier: “Give peace in our time, O Lord.” —[ Official Report , 6 March 1925; Vol. 181, c. 841.] That apparently heartfelt plea masked a hidden ruthlessness, and an extraordinarily singular capacity for political calculation. In 1926 the Government made, not altogether comfortably, common cause with the coal owners who, taken together, could have been the archetypes of Baldwin’s famous description of “hard-faced men who look as if they had done very well out of the war.” The British coal owners, unlike their counterparts in America and Europe, mostly represented small concerns that had failed to adapt, amalgamate and modernise, and they would go unmourned when Parliament obviated their role 20 years later. Opponents of organised labour sometimes claimed that union leaders sought national confrontation, or that they wished to supplant the authority of Parliament with that of the TUC general council, but those wild words had foundation only in the imagination of their accusers. As Jonathan Schneer’s brilliant and evocative new history of the strike shows, they spent the weeks before the strike exhaustively, even desperately, trying to prevent the breakdown of talks and searching for some compromise, some new formula, and a negotiated path through. The way in which they convinced themselves that settlement was possible, as they masked their private doubts of the likelihood of victory and tried to balance what were probably irreconcilable internal and external forces—often in the small hours, and often in rooms not far from this Chamber—as the clock ran down, will feel familiar to many who have had the privilege and responsibility of trade union office. But such doubts cannot have been at the forefront of the minds of the great majority of the nearly 3 million men and women who answered the stoppage call on 3 May. They did so at great personal risk to their livelihoods and pensions. In that hot spring, many of them wore their war medals as a conscious rebuke to those who charged them with a lack of patriotism, and even with falling under the influence of a foreign power. It is easy to see why so many strikers thought that victory was imminent and assured. In Birmingham—then, as now, inland transport’s great, interlocking heart—it was said that neither bus, tram nor train moved on that first day. “Every man in every union involved is out,” the city’s trades council enthusiastically, if somewhat improbably, reported to the TUC. That claim, incidentally, committed the sin of omission, because many women joined the strike. At the Joseph Lucas factory they were led by Jessie Eden, an imaginative version of whom was immortalised as a character in “Peaky Blinders”. Some officials actually had to coax members who had not been called out to remain at their work, with mixed success. Most strikers could see neither the depth of their opponents’ preparation nor the lack of their unions’ own. In truth, most union leaders and the members of their executives expected the Government to resume negotiations swiftly, and extend the subsidy until the mining industry could be reorganised along the lines of the Sankey and Samuel commissions. They did not perceive, until it was too late, the Government’s hidden determination to force not settlement but surrender. While the TUC and the newly constituted local committees attempted to resolve profound logistical problems on the fly and to adapt sometimes confused central instructions to local circumstances, the well-resourced and carefully attuned Government machine sprang into action. In Birmingham—the city of a thousand trades, where general unionism and the centralising and organising tendencies that it represented had long struggled to prosper—the response to the strike was uneven from the start.

• 3 Jun 2026 · General Strike Centenary Commemorations · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention and for sending me a copy of the documentary on the Cramlington train wreckers ahead of this debate. It was moving to see those men in their later years. It is telling that the general strike tends to be remembered as local history, and there will be much to say throughout this debate about the general strike in Birmingham and elsewhere.

• 3 Jun 2026 · General Strike Centenary Commemorations · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, and I truly welcome the cross-party support he has demonstrated for the principle of trade unionism and for workers’ rights. It is only fair to note that right now, additional enhanced employment rights are being considered in Northern Ireland, as well as in the rest of the United Kingdom. In interpreting the general strike, it is important to note that union members were, as they remain, fiercely defensive of the independence of their individual organisations, and those factors militated against planning for the national confrontation that fell upon them. Ranged against the unions were a Government determined not to repeat the humiliation of the so-called red Friday a year before and whose preparations had been meticulous over the nine months that followed.

• 21 May 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. In Birmingham Northfield and across the country, there are many reports of inappropriate houses in multiple occupation that prove actually to be poor-quality supported exempt accommodation. At its best, SEA can provide a valuable service, but at its worst it can be a byword for neglect, antisocial behaviour, exploitation and serious organised crime. Please can parliamentary time be found to discuss the need to bring forward proper regulation and end the unacceptable blight on the lives of many of our constituents?

• 21 May 2026 · Employment Rights Act 2025 · Hansard source

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  I draw attention to my membership of the GMB and Unite trade unions, and I welcome and acknowledge the Minister’s firm commitment to this area. The Department recently published its response to the trade union right of access consultation. Capping fines at £500,000 equates to a potential liability of 0.02% of operating profits for Amazon’s warehousing operations, but up to 20% of the surplus of a medium- sized trade union. We must get this right. How does disproportionate liability achieve the Government’s aim of creating a workable right in the minority of cases involving very well-resourced and hostile employers?

• 21 May 2026 · Employment Rights Act 2025 · Hansard source

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  6. What progress his Department has made on implementing the Employment Rights Act 2025.

• 20 Apr 2026 · Draft Train Driving Licences and Certificates (Amendment) Regulations 2026 · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister and the Government for bringing forward this secondary legislation. As he knows, there is a need to improve the diversity of the driving workforce and to address the challenges of an ageing workforce, so this is a much-welcomed change and a fantastic example of industry, Government and unions working together to deliver for workers and the travelling public. Will he join me in recognising the role that ASLEF, the train drivers’ union, played by working with industry and with the Labour party in opposition to help secure this important change?

• 20 Apr 2026 · Security Vetting · Hansard source

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  Peter Mandelson’s conduct has disgraced himself and, by extension, brought shame upon the two Houses of which he was formerly a Member. Does the Prime Minister agree that the famous Armstrong memorandum on the conduct of the civil service was correct and holds true today, as it says that “it is the duty of the civil servant to make available to the Minister all the information and experience at his or her disposal which may have a bearing on the policy decisions to which the Minister is committed or…preparing to make, and to give to the Minister honest and impartial advice, without fear or favour, and whether the advice accords with the Minister’s view or not”?

• 15 Apr 2026 · Strategic Defence Review: Funding · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister look at the sorry tale of Glenart Castle Mess in Longbridge, Birmingham? This is armed forces accommodation not from decades ago; it opened in 2017 at a cost to the taxpayer of £36 million. It was built with 95% flammable external cladding, and the fire defects within the accommodation have now been judged to be so severe that the facility will be closed for up to a year at further great cost to the taxpayer. This was hopelessly mismanaged by the previous Government. The armed forces personnel who work at the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine in Birmingham do an essential job, and they deserve better.

• 26 Mar 2026 · National Savings & Investments · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Minister’s statement and the way in which he has addressed the House. I want to pick up on the important question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Ms Minns). The administration of a deceased loved one’s affairs is a lengthy and difficult process at the best of times. It will come as a tremendous shock to many of our constituents to learn that matters that they thought were settled are in fact not so. We can also all think of examples of public agencies that have promised tact and sensitivity, but have not always followed through in practice. Will the Minister look at individual cases that we might raise with him as constituency Members, and will he meet with groups of Members who have constituents affected by the issue?

• 26 Mar 2026 · Resident Doctors: Industrial Action · Hansard source

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  I declare an interest as chair of the GMB’s parliamentary group. The week after next, there will be another strike, when GMB members of the BMA’s own staff go out on industrial action, as has already been referenced. Their employer’s offer is 2.75%, which is lower than the 3.5% for doctors that the BMA called a “crushing blow”. Does the Health Secretary agree with the GMB union when it says: “These strikes have laid bare the BMA’s ongoing hypocrisy”?

• 24 Mar 2026 · Oil and Gas · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member talks of the national interest, but does he agree that it was disgraceful that Gazprom was allowed to acquire an interest in the North sea in the years after 2011, without a word of protest from his party when it was in government?