Liz Saville Roberts MP: speeches

Speeches

• 2 Jul 2025 · Points of Order · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Mr Dirprwy Lefarydd. Privy Counsellors can request and receive confidential briefings on urgent matters, and that makes it possible for them to come to a fully informed decision on matters of national security. That is particularly pertinent for today’s motion on the proscription of Palestine Action. Could you advise me on how I am to make an informed decision when my request for a Privy Council briefing on Palestine Action was refused this week?

• 26 Jun 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  My constituents are facing a crisis endured by people across the UK: a lack of access to basic dental care. Siân Gwenllian, Member of the Senedd for Arfon, has commissioned a report that provides a compelling case for a dental school at Bangor University. While the Welsh Government have acknowledged the potential benefits of the proposal, they cite financial constraints. Given the promise of two Governments at both ends of the M4 working together, does the Leader of the House agree that time should be found to revise Wales’s financial settlement to make this vital proposal a reality?

• 25 Jun 2025 · Nuclear-certified Aircraft Procurement · Hansard source

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  The proposed NATO 5% target will be split into two categories: a new, broader set of defence-related items at up to 1.5% of GDP, alongside a commitment to spend at least 3.5% of GDP on traditional defence. Will the Minister confirm the UK Government’s commitment to article 2 of the NATO treaty on the development of peaceful and friendly international relations? Will she also confirm that funding for UN peacekeeping missions qualifies as defence spending to NATO and that this budget will not lose out on the increase in the MOD budget?

• 24 Jun 2025 · Care Settings: Right to Maintain Contact · Hansard source

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  That is exactly the point. The real good that family carers could do for health and care settings that are well run should not be regarded as a nuisance to be fitted in but something that can complement excellent services. Care and nursing homes operate under a number of constraints, financial and regulatory pressures especially. Many are excellent. They are shining beacons of humanity and kindness and provide a welcoming home. Remember, this is a place where people live and a home for the people who live within their walls, but that is not the case for all those who live in care settings. MPs will almost certainly have been approached by family members who are extremely reluctant to raise questions about the care of a loved one in a home, because they are afraid that their loved one will be evicted from that home. That is what the care home owners and managers can do, so it is our role to raise those concerns and be their voices. I pay tribute to the many pressure groups and charities that have drawn attention to this issue. Among them are John’s Campaign, Rights for Residents, and Care Rights UK, which was formerly the Relatives & Residents Association. I am personally immensely grateful to Julia Jones of John’s Campaign and dementia nurse Delyth Thomas for their advice after my mother Nancy’s stroke at Christmas 2020 and her final death from dementia a year later. I would like to read a tiny bit that I wrote at the time: “Many of the key workers with whom we interacted over the last 12 months were extraordinary. We have been beyond lucky to have dealt with a number of nurses, doctors and care workers who had the confidence and humanity to keep to the spirit and not the letter of official edicts. Even so, I touched my mother’s hand only once during the critical six weeks after her first stroke. There were no hugs. Health authority infection policy vetoed family bonds of love as a health hazard to be minimised.” She used hearing aids, and we could only speak to her through the window, but the batteries were not replaced. She could hear nothing, and we know how important hearing is for reducing the effects of dementia. Ysbyty Gwynedd and Ysbyty Bryn Beryl—that is the district hospital and the local community hospital—were signed up to John’s Campaign, which enabled me to be recognised as my mother’s carer. If only I had known that months earlier. I of course bear in mind that this was during the covid period, but people need to know their rights. At one stage in early 2022 the staff at the community hospital asked me to come in specifically to help to take pressure off nurses because there was a covid outbreak. I contributed as a carer—I had a role to play. As a family carer I helped that hospital. I was required to take covid measures—tests and vaccination—exactly as was expected of staff members. That is completely feasible for identified family carers alongside salaried carers—it is an option for us. Family members, as recognised and respected carers, can be a real source of help to hospitals and care settings, if we can only tease apart the web of fear of liability, and a culture that presumes that the human needs of adults with cognitive impairments are limited to food, shelter and a screen in the corner of the room whenever an emergency threatens the organisation that holds their life in its hands. We are social creatures. If we are denied social contact, we are damaged. We need to recognise that as a human right. Regulations expected to be facilitated in undefined emergency circumstances are evidently failing. I am so glad that health and social care was in the Labour party’s manifesto for the last general election. It was in Plaid Cymru’s manifesto too. Health and social care are devolved, but it is a human right, and that is not devolved; that is a reserved power. I hope that now we have learned the lessons of covid we can move ahead and legislate to make health and social care a human right.

• 24 Jun 2025 · Care Settings: Right to Maintain Contact · Hansard source

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  I am interested to hear the Minister talk about visits, but I think the essence of what many of us have discussed today is that there is a role for family carers alongside salaried carers. We desperately urge the Government to find a way to bring that forward in law.

• 24 Jun 2025 · Care Settings: Right to Maintain Contact · Hansard source

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  Diolch yn fawr, Cadeirydd. I am very glad to see you in your seat, Ms Butler, and I am deeply grateful to the hon. Member for Liverpool Walton (Dan Carden) for bringing this debate forward. He will be aware that this is a hugely important topic for the many of us whose experiences with our families during the covid pandemic have not faded into the past. Visiting restrictions at that time threw a harsh focus on the issue. Between 2 April 2020 and 22 July 2020, UK Government guidance advised against all visits to care homes except in exceptional circumstances, such as “end of life”. End of life? What happens before that matters too. We need to know what the exceptional circumstances in the regulations may have been, because there is obviously room to define them. Fundamentally, though, we need clarification on a legal right. We need to learn from that time. Following the experiences of many families during the pandemic, more and more voices have called out the inconsistency between the treatment of vulnerable or cognitively impaired adults and the treatment of children, who have a right to be supported by their parents in health and care settings. Of course, it is entirely right that children maintain contact with their parents, and we would rightly be appalled were that denied, but somehow the social needs for love and family contact are regarded as a luxury—a “nice to have” but something that is ultimately expendable—for adults in certain circumstances. A clear case emerged at the time for the Government to support giving families and carers of dementia sufferers the same rights that parents of sick children have. The Government should allow for family representatives to stay with such patients at any time of the day, and for their role as carers to be recognised and accommodated. It is recognised that changes in environment for people with dementia, such as going into hospital or moving into care, can cause immense challenges. Just think about it: all familiar things and all familiar routines are left behind, and the routines of the institution take over. What is most convenient for the institution is inevitably the priority. We talk about putting the patient first, but we know how flimsy those words are when health and care institutions feel threatened, liable or under staffing pressures.

• 23 Jun 2025 · UK Military Base Protection · Hansard source

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  Direct action at military bases is nothing new, and we remember with respect the women who marched from Wales to Greenham Common and the thousands of women who joined them. They did not just march; they pulled down fences and criminally damaged infrastructure. So does the Minister recognise the risk implicit in proscribing as terrorist organisations protest groups calling out war?

• 18 Jun 2025 · HS2 Reset · Hansard source

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  The cost of HS2 has now spiralled to over £100 billion. Welsh taxpayers are paying dearly for this appalling mess, even though we get no benefits whatsoever. Wales is now owed at least £5 billion. This is not going to go away—so when will we get our fair share?

• 16 Jun 2025 · Iran-Israel Conflict · Hansard source

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  It was reported that the Israeli Government planned to kill the leader of Iran over the weekend. As history shows, attempts to collapse a regime with nothing to put in its place risk creating a power vacuum and state collapse. They also risk creating further waves of refugees and instability in the energy market. What assessment has the Foreign Secretary made of those reports and the wider implications that such a strategy would have on the UK?

• 13 Jun 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  Diolch yn fawr iawn, Dirprwy Lefarydd. I rise to speak to amendments 39 to 41, which stand in my name; clause 47, on the provision of information in Welsh and English; and new clause 21, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater). Others have touched on the Welsh language, and I will touch on the settlement in Wales as well. In relation to the Welsh language, we are talking about something that is quite conventional: forms and guidance should be available in written Welsh. However, of much more significance is the opportunity for people to use Welsh—it may well be their first language—in dealing with the provisions in this Bill. My amendments would ensure that “all reasonable steps” are taken to find a co-ordinating doctor and an independent doctor who can question people in Welsh where necessary. I would dearly like it to be more than “all reasonable steps”, but the reality is that we have to deal with the staff who are available and the language skills that they have. I thank the hon. Member for Spen Valley for tabling new clause 21. It recognises that it is really important for a Welsh-speaking individual to be able to communicate in the language in which they can best express themselves when it comes to the assisting dying review panel, because that is the final stage at which we will recognise whether there are questions of coercion and capacity. I welcome the fact that there are different clinical specialists on the panel; I believe that having an expert psychiatrist and a social worker will help to identify potential questions of coercion and capacity, because they will have different approaches to those questions. I must step back to the reality of how Welsh language speakers can use Welsh in the justice system, which is where the assisted dying review panel comes in. In the justice system, an individual has the right to speak Welsh. If they use Welsh in a court, an interpreter will be used to interpret their words to the people to whom they are speaking. That is not acceptable in this context. This is the most serious and most desperately difficult conversation that people will have, and they must be able not just to speak Welsh, but to be heard in their own language, if all the subtleties and what they really want to express are to be heard. I will not press my amendments 39 to 41, and will support new clause 21 wholeheartedly. I turn to the Senedd powers, particularly those in clause 54. I welcome new clause 20, which provides clarity on the responsibility of Ministers in the Welsh Government and the UK Government, but there are two issues here: the clarity of powers, and respect across legislatures. I have concerns about amendments 94 and 95, tabled by the hon. Member for Spen Valley, which would amend the amendments moved by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) in Committee. What did those amendments do? They ensured a vote in the Senedd to decide when the Bill will come into force in its entirety in Wales. The Scottish Parliament passed stage two of the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill on 13 May. Such a Bill could not be brought forward in Wales, because Wales has no powers over criminal law. The Bill that we are discussing today could not be brought forward in Wales. Although I appreciate what the hon. Members for Cardiff West (Mr Barros-Curtis) and for Monmouthshire (Catherine Fookes) said about the devolution settlement, and I am glad that we have clarity, there is also a question of respect for decisions already made in the Senedd. As things stand, what does the Senedd have to do? It will be required to pass a legislative consent motion, as required by the Sewel convention, but that can be ignored by the UK Parliament. This legislation effects action in Wales, but the Sewel convention can be overridden, as can an LCM. The second thing that can happen in the Senedd—and this will be expected—is in those areas that are within the power of the Senedd. On commencement, a decision is required on the provisions of the Bill that have devolved competencies: specifically, the NHS in Wales. Bear in mind that if that consent is refused in Wales, the Bill, if enacted, can be brought in only in the private sector. That decision lies with the Senedd.

• 11 Jun 2025 · Devolution: Crown Estate · Hansard source

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  There is no long-term vision. Torfaen council has voted unanimously to devolve the Crown Estate to Wales, which means that every local authority in Wales, including every Labour-run council, supports the policy. Does the Secretary of State really believe that the UK Labour Government know better than the entirety of Welsh local government? When Wales speaks with one voice, isn’t it time that Wales’s voice in the Cabinet says the same thing?

• 11 Jun 2025 · Devolution: Crown Estate · Hansard source

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  Was that the answer? It is hardly even looking at the question. In opposition, the Secretary of State for Wales joined Plaid Cymru in condemning the Conservatives for denying Wales £4.6 billion in rail funding. Now in government, she is waxing lyrical about 10% of that, and she was recently content to move the goalposts and deny Wales a further £300 million by classifying the Oxford-Cambridge line as benefiting Wales. I don’t know how they make this up. Does she oppose that new injustice, or was she ignored? Or is it her mission to see Wales short-changed?

• 11 Jun 2025 · Spending Review 2025 · Hansard source

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  Diolch yn fawr iawn, Dirprwy Lefarydd. The announcement of just £44.5 million a year for the next 10 years for Welsh rail is Labour’s flimsy fig leaf of an excuse for the multibillion and multi-decade scandal that is HS2. The money announced today is only significant if it matches what Wales will continue to lose from all England-only rail projects, up to now and in the future. Can the Chancellor guarantee that from now on, Wales will receive the full £4 billion HS2 consequential funding, or will she admit that her announcement on Welsh rail funding is nothing but smoke and mirrors?

• 11 Jun 2025 · Points of Order · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. During Question Time today, the Secretary of State for Wales—I have endeavoured to contact her about this—accused me of unintentionally misleading the House when I raised concerns about the reclassification of the east-west Oxford to Cambridge rail line as an England and Wales project, thereby denying Wales its full share of consequential funding. She claimed that the previous classification of England-only was merely a Conservative publishing error and insisted that all heavy rail projects would now be classified in such a way—so as to deny funding to Wales. To my surprise, however, the 2025 statement of funding policy still lists the Oxford to Cambridge line as England-only. That contradicts the Secretary of State’s assertion and raises questions about the accuracy of her comments in the House. What steps should I take when I have been accused of misleading the House yet Treasury documents suggest that it is the Secretary of State who has done so?

• 10 Jun 2025 · Nuclear Power: Investment · Hansard source

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  Penblwydd hapus i chi, Mr Llefarydd—happy birthday to you, Mr Speaker. The nuclear community at Trawsfynydd remains disappointed not to be on GBN’s SMR site and will continue to push for that and also for alternative uses. Security of supply of medical radioisotopes is critical to avoid the ethical nightmare of rationing diagnoses and treatments for a range of diseases including cancer. The Welsh Government’s Project Arthur will see north Wales become the home of a public sector national laboratory to produce medical radioisotopes. What is the Secretary of State’s Department doing to help the Welsh Government to realise Project Arthur at Trawsfynydd?

• 22 May 2025 · Independent Sentencing Review · Hansard source

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  On behalf of the justice unions parliamentary group, I welcome the independent review’s recognition of probation officers and join the call from the National Association of Probation Officers for extra direct investment in staff now. Stable accommodation on release is also key to offender rehabilitation. There are presently no approved premises for women in Wales and women centres struggle for funding, so how will the Justice Secretary improve rehabilitation and life chances for Welsh women in the criminal justice system?

• 21 May 2025 · Broadband and Mobile Connectivity: Rural Areas · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the Minister’s BDUK officers, who are really useful. The radio teleswitch service switch-off will affect people, and it is starting to happen on 30 June—just over a month from now. There are 11,000 households in Wales that are presently dependent on it, and if they do not have access to signal, as many off-grid homes do not, it will have an immediate effect on them. I beg the Minister to discuss with his colleagues in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero how to resolve that for vulnerable people.

• 21 May 2025 · Broadband and Mobile Connectivity: Rural Areas · Hansard source

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  On the matter of the radio teleswitch service, there are 790 meters in my constituency still running off RTS, which operates Economy 7 meters, and across Wales there are 11,000. The Government do not know how many households depend on those meters for their heating. In many areas, particularly rural areas, that are off-grid and without any signal, smart meters will not work. How will we ensure that these often very vulnerable people are kept safe?

• 20 May 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill · Hansard source

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  I, too, pay tribute to the hon. Member for Knowsley (Anneliese Midgley) for speaking so movingly about Olivia and her family. I rise primarily to speak about the victim-centred measures in the Bill and would like to take this opportunity to thank the Minister for her engagement with me on this matter and with my constituent Rhianon Bragg, a formidable activist who has done so much work to improve support and services for victims. The expanded victim contact scheme should see more victims able to get adequate information about their offenders’ sentences and make representations about licence conditions or supervision requirements as they relate to them. Similarly, the victim helpline will give more victims the information they need. I truly welcome those measures, which the UK Government say will cost an extra £0.2 million for HM Prison and Probation Service each year, with updating the victim contact scheme costing £20,000 and the victim helpline costing between £100,000 and £200,000. I am concerned about whether those costings will be sufficient. As co-chair of the justice unions parliamentary group, I call on the Government to commit to delivering the additional resources necessary for the Probation Service to deal with the inevitable increase in demand, both initially and as victims become more aware that they have these rights. There is a risk of overextending a service that is already in a workload and staffing crisis, at the expense of victims. Extending the powers of the Victims’ Commissioner is also welcome. Victims should always feel secure that the commissioner can and will do everything in their power to tackle shortcomings where the victims live. That is why I continue my call for a victims’ commissioner for Wales, to represent victims of crimes in the specific context of Wales, where many victim support services and important policy levers, such as those relating to health and social care, are devolved and held to account by the Senedd. At this point I will mention another aspect of the Bill: the Crown prosecution recruitment. We need personnel in the criminal justice system in Wales who can operate in Welsh and English, so I call on the Government to seek such personnel. Of course, devolving the entire criminal justice system in Wales, as recommended by three independent commissions, would be the best way to ensure a well-focused approach to victim support. In the meantime, a victims’ commissioner for Wales would ensure that the particular voices and experiences of victims in Wales are properly represented. We need only look to the fantastic work done by the London Victims’ Commissioner, Claire Waxman, to see what is possible when we have a focused approach. The Victims and Courts Bill is a good basis on which to build. There are ways in which it could go further to better support victims, particularly in Wales, and I look forward to seeing how it develops with amendments in Committee.

• 20 May 2025 · UK-EU Summit · Hansard source

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  These incremental improvements are welcome as we begin to move on from some of the illusions of Brexit, although we had all this and far, far more 10 years ago. The Prime Minister once argued that “we should retain the benefits of the single market”. —[ Official Report , 1 May 2017; Vol. 630, c. 879.] Given his recent tendency to dismiss the views of others, what would he say to his younger self?

• 19 May 2025 · Gender Self-identification · Hansard source

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  I am sure the hon. Lady will know that when setting out last month’s Supreme Court judgment, Lord Hodge counselled against reading the judgment “as a triumph of one or more groups in our society at the expense of another”. None the less, it has caused immense distress to the trans community. Does she agree that now is the time for the Government to commit to a clear timetable for allowing transgender people to self-identify their legal gender, so that they can live with dignity and respect, which is a basic human right?

• 16 May 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  I am sure that the House will be interested to note that the jurisdiction of Scotland, as well as the Crown dependencies of the Isle of Man and Jersey, have variations that are different from what has been discussed. Will the hon. Member join me in commiserating with the family of Iola Dorkins, a campaigner I mentioned back in November? She died of motor neurone disease on her birthday last week. Let us remember that we are doing this for real people who are undergoing real suffering at the end of life.

• 15 May 2025 · Recalled Offenders: Sentencing Limits · Hansard source

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  Victims of domestic abuse, sexual abuse and stalking are now in fear, particularly those who live in rural areas, where tagging does not always work. What particular measures will the Minister put in place to support victims in rural areas who are distant from probation officers and the police?

• 14 May 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Diolch yn fawr iawn, Llefarydd. This Prime Minister once spoke of compassion and dignity for migrants and of defending free movement. Now he talks of islands of strangers and taking back control. Somebody here has to call this out. It seems that the only principle he consistently defends is whichever he last heard in a focus group. So I ask him: is there any belief he holds that survives a week in Downing Street?

• 14 May 2025 · Gaza: UK Assessment · Hansard source

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  The UN says that Israel’s denial of aid is evidence of “the systematic dismantling of Palestinian life”. There is therefore a risk that we are witnesses to genocide. The Minister’s Government can reinstate airlifts of aid along the lines of those arranged last year, which would send a powerful message. Will the Minister act now and enable aid airlifts?