Lizzi Collinge MP: speeches

Speeches

• 16 Mar 2026 · Middle East: UK Armed Forces Personnel · Hansard source

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  7. What steps he is taking to protect UK armed forces personnel in the middle east.

• 11 Mar 2026 · Royal Mail: Universal Service Obligation · Hansard source

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  People across Morecambe and Lunesdale are suffering from late Royal Mail deliveries. In fact, one constituent was told by a frustrated, overworked postie that second class letters were being delivered once a week, at most. What steps is the Minister taking to address that problem?

• 4 Mar 2026 · Healthcare in Rural Areas · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I thank the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Blake Stephenson) for securing this important debate. I represent a semi-urban, semi-coastal, semi-rural constituency, and I know that delivering healthcare across a wide and dispersed population brings very real and practical challenges. I want to speak briefly about three things: hospital trust funding, staff recruitment and transport. Unfortunately, our funding formulas do not fully recognise the additional costs of providing services over a larger geographical area. Major cities can rely on one large hospital with everything in one place, covering a range of specialities. My local trust serves a similar population size, but it goes from the south of Lancaster all the way to Barrow, around the beautiful Morecambe bay. It is not safe or practical for one hospital to try to do the whole job, yet the funding arrangements do not fully recognise those costs and tend to treat them as inefficiency, rather than as an inherent part of delivering over that geography. Although funding rightly takes into account deprivation, deprivation can look different in different areas of the country. In my constituency, we have a mix of wealthy and low-income households in the same larger geographical area, and that often determines the funding. Pockets of deprivation get diluted and sometimes miss out on vital funding pots or targeted interventions that would really help. At the same time, my population is older, with higher rates of dementia, which is caused not only by ageing, but by poor cardiovascular health and inequalities. Hospitals in coastal and rural areas often have persistent issues with staff retention. Professional development opportunities are often focused on the big cities, so services such as major trauma, where people need to go to do their training, are more likely to be there. For patients living in rural areas, the cost of and lack of access to transport place huge burdens on their time and finances. I do a lot of work with Lancaster Bus Users’ Group and Sedbergh and District Public Transport Users. We all know the challenges facing rural bus services. One of my constituents was waiting in A&E with her sick child, but they had to leave the hospital before they were seen, because they simply could not afford a nighttime taxi journey. Progress has been made; I really welcome the 10-year health plan, particularly the shift from hospital community care, which will ensure people are seen closer to home. However, I urge the Minister to consider the points I have made today about recognising the true scale of the real and unavoidable costs of serving dispersed rural communities.

• 3 Mar 2026 · Spring Forecast · Hansard source

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  We know that the volatility of oil and gas prices has driven the high cost of living over the last decade. We also know that renewables cut the wholesale costs of electricity because they reduce the amount of time for which electricity prices are driven by gas. Does the Chancellor agree that, given the inevitable impact of the events in the middle east, our drive for clean energy is the right thing to do both for bills and for economic stability, and that those who are advocating continual reliance on oil and gas, and not investing in clean energy, are actually committed to higher bills and to our continued reliance on foreign instability?

• 2 Mar 2026 · Small Religious Organisations: Safeguarding · Hansard source

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  I believe that Alexis Jay told the Home Affairs Committee that this mandatory reporting was one of the most important recommendations. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is really important that we deliver on the recommendation in full, and do not allow any leeway when there is reasonable evidence that abuse may be occurring, which would allow people to get away with not reporting that suspicion?

• 24 Feb 2026 · Gaza Healthcare System · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The deregistering of international organisations is abhorrent. They are absolutely vital to this response, and I will touch on that point later. Despite these unsurmountable barriers, healthcare workers have absolutely persevered. They have rebuilt health centres. Open-heart surgery has resumed at Al-Quds hospital. Childbirth services have restarted. I cannot be the only woman in the room who would have died in childbirth without medical intervention. It is horrendous to think of all those Palestinian women giving birth without medical support and of the impact on child and maternal mortality. International humanitarian organisations have been absolutely indispensable. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency carried out a 10-day vaccination campaign, which reached a third of Gazan children. That is absolutely fantastic. We and the rest of the international community must put pressure on Israel. We must demand the immediate release of detained medical personnel, along with a guarantee that they will be protected to do their work. We must insist that the Rafah crossing is opened to allow in essential lifesaving equipment, and we must insist on lifting the forthcoming ban on organisations such as Médecins Sans Frontières. Restoring and rebuilding healthcare systems will be a core part of overall reconstruction efforts, but we must look further into the future. The blockade and systematic underfunding have meant that even in times of relative peace, Gazan healthcare was very fragile. Reconstruction cannot mean rebuilding the fragility that existed before. We need to strengthen local medical education, infrastructure and training. That can only come with a free and democratic Palestinian state. Palestinians deserve to live in peace and health—as do all their neighbours. The situation in Gaza shows that health is more than a technical issue and about more than getting medicines: it is political, structural and absolutely central to any hope of lasting peace.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Gaza Healthcare System · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Opher) for bringing forward this important debate. It has been 137 days since the ceasefire started in Gaza, and although attention has drifted in the media, the humanitarian crisis rages on. The health sector is at absolute breaking point. Medicines are scarce. Hospitals lie in ruins, and wards have been reduced to rubble. Temporary relief will not be enough. What is required is a sustained and effective humanitarian response and the rebuilding of Gazan healthcare. Not only must we put pressure on the Israeli Government to fully open the border, allow the aid in and allow transfers of care, but the international community has to go further. We have to ensure that Gaza has the infrastructure and sustainability long term to cope with future crises. Years of blockade have left Gaza with a staggering list of challenges: shortages of medical equipment and medication, the destruction of hospitals, the killing of staff and an absence of patient evacuations. Bombs and bullets are not the only things that have been killing Gazans: lack of access to medical care has already killed thousands. At the start of the war in 2023, there were 1,244 kidney patients in Gaza. Now, that number is just 622. Thirty of those patients are documented to have died in Israeli military attacks, but hundreds have died simply for the lack of dialysis. The shortages of medicines are still acute. Basic painkillers have become a luxury, and more than half the people in Gaza do not have access to their regular medication. Lab tests are at risk of complete standstill. Oncology surgery, operating rooms, intensive care—all have been hit very badly. Ongoing restrictions on the free passage of medical equipment by the Israeli Government have meant that the quantity of medicine reaching Gaza’s hospitals is simply not enough. It is not only about the supply. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud laid out, Gaza’s medical workforce has been devastated. More than 1,700 medical workers have been killed, 3,000 have been wounded and more than 500 have been abducted or detained. Twenty-two hospitals have been put out of service, and 211 ambulances have been damaged. Of Gaza’s 176 primary healthcare centres, only a third remain even partially functional. Health services are overwhelmed. Thousands of critically ill patients cannot be evacuated, and 20,000 patients are waiting for treatment abroad, but Rafah is still not fully open. Options are severely constrained. These evacuations are not just a matter of immediate care; they of course relieve the crushing ongoing pressure on the healthcare system. As my hon. Friends have laid out, there are functioning hospitals in the west bank and East Jerusalem, but access to them has been barred, which seems cruel.

• 24 Feb 2026 · NHS Dental Services: Morecambe and Lunesdale · Hansard source

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  9. What assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of access to NHS dental services in Morecambe and Lunesdale constituency.

• 24 Feb 2026 · NHS Dental Services: Morecambe and Lunesdale · Hansard source

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  One of my constituents contacted me because their spouse is bedbound and cannot get dental care at home, so he gets no routine care. He recently waited three months for an emergency extraction—something he could have had on the same day if he was not disabled. What work is going on to help my constituents access the care they need?

• 23 Feb 2026 · Firearms Licensing · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman makes a very interesting point. We already have backlogs for firearms licensing. Some people rely on firearms for their living. If there are changes to the licensing laws, those need to come with proper resourcing to make sure that they are actually enforceable. As we have heard in this debate, it does not really matter what is on the page; it matters what happens in reality—as with any law that we pass. That needs to be thought about very carefully. We need to make sure that these rules would meaningfully increase safety, not just ramp up bureaucracy, and that they are evidence-led, proportionate and targeted at genuine risk. I will continue to listen; this debate has been absolutely fascinating. I will also listen to my constituents, the police, and experts in lots of different areas. I urge the Minister to ensure that any way forward be informed by the evidence and by the practical realities on the ground.

• 23 Feb 2026 · Firearms Licensing · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Alec. I thank the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Ben Goldsborough) for his excellent introduction. I came here today because I want to listen to the arguments and help inform my thinking about gun licensing. This debate is about one very narrow aspect of shotgun licensing and, while my instinct is always towards stricter gun control, my starting point has to be that any change to the law must make people safer in a meaningful way. It should not add complexity or bureaucracy unless there is a clear and proportionate safety benefit. I am proud that Britain has strong gun control. Public safety has long underpinned our approach to gun control, and that is reflected in our relatively low levels of firearms offences. Shotguns have legitimate uses, both for sport and animal control. The process for obtaining a shotgun licence is simpler than that for other firearms. Police must be satisfied that the applicant can be trusted with a firearm, has a good reason to own one and will not endanger public safety. At the moment, shotgun licences are generally granted unless there is a good reason to refuse one, whereas rifles, which are more powerful, require a higher level of proof. They require applicants to demonstrate a good reason for the use of each firearm. The consultation that the Government introduced asked whether those tests should be joined together under a single framework to make application rules for shotguns the same as those for rifles. The current framework has worked well for the vast majority of licence holders, but we have seen tragedies with legally held firearms, such as in Plymouth in 2021 and Woodmancote in 2020. The Government therefore launched a consultation on whether the existing distinctions still made sense. I came here today because I am genuinely undecided. I do not know the best way forward, so it has been interesting to hear the debate, particularly the details of coroners’ reports and of what underpinned the tragedies that we have seen with legally held firearms. I grew up in a very small Cumbrian village of about 300 people. I may have shot a few tin cans in my time, so I understand that the vast majority of gun owners are responsible, and I understand how important shooting is to rural life. A number of my rural constituents have reached out to share how these potential changes would affect their community. I am glad that the Government are committed to listening to what is said about the role that shooting plays in the rural economy and in rural culture. My constituents have reminded me just how strict the safeguards that are already in place are—background checks, medical markers, police interviews and renewals every five years are not trivial hurdles. Of course, there are substantial differences between the ways that shotguns and rifles are used. Shotguns are generally less concealable, more associated with game and pest control, and less commonly used in organised criminality than other firearms. However, at the same time we have to look at the logic of the system. There are practical difficulties to having different legal tests for different weapons, and it can feel inconsistent to the public, particularly to those who are not used to being around guns and the legal use of firearms. It can be difficult for the police to apply different tests. Of course, those who have been bereaved by gun violence, those who have been harmed by guns, those who work in domestic abuse settings, and those who have experienced domestic abuse in which firearms were a part will rightly ask what we are going to do to help prevent future tragedies. Given how deadly they are, we of course need tight controls on weapons; I think that everyone here agrees with that. There have already been important steps in this area to try to prevent harm, including a greater focus on screening for any signs of potential future violence, and police interviewing partners or household members, where reasonable, to spot signs of domestic abuse or other red flags. I will touch on suicide prevention. We know from studies of suicide prevention that restricting the means of suicide can save lives. That is why we have controls on the sale of paracetamol, and why we have blister packs for medication. Interrupting the suicidal impulse before harm can be caused is really important. Shotgun deaths are a very small proportion of total deaths by suicide but people who attempt suicide by shotgun normally die. Making it harder to obtain a gun could possibly prevent impulsive acts or accidents. The question before us is not whether we want to prevent tragedies; everybody in this Chamber wants to do so. This is about whether aligning the licensing regimes would reduce deaths and serious harms, whether any benefits would justify the additional burdens placed on applicants and police forces, and whether there would be any unintended consequences. I know that police forces are already under pressure on the licensing of firearms.

• 23 Feb 2026 · Firearms Licensing · Hansard source

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  I appreciate the point that the hon. Gentleman is making, but does he accept that there have been instances where firearms have been lawfully obtained by people without a previous criminal record who have nevertheless used them to commit harm, particularly to themselves or someone very close to them?

• 11 Feb 2026 · Hughes Report: Second Anniversary · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This scandal follows a pattern that we have seen far too many times before: early warnings ignored, information withheld or downplayed, measures to protect people not effectively enacted, and public bodies closing ranks rather than being open and honest when things go wrong. I have done a lot of work on maternity safety, and I have seen those patterns again and again; the parallels are really clear. Had concerns been properly addressed at the outset, so much harm could have been avoided, and so many more children would not have been born with lifelong, preventable conditions. Their families have been waiting for far too long. There were initial recommendations for redress six years ago in the Cumberlege review, but the previous Government failed to act. Through the Hughes report, we have an even more comprehensive examination of what needs to be done to support those families, but they are no closer to getting even a formal response to that. That constant delay increases the cost, delays support and builds up ill-will with affected families, who have already spent their lives fighting for their kids. I urge the Government to provide an interim payment for those families. We know that that is possible; Dr Hughes has outlined how to do it in this case, and we have seen it in the infected blood scandal. The main question for the Minister is this: when will we get a full response to the Hughes report? When will we actually see some action? Like so many of my colleagues, I pay tribute to Emma and Janet from the Independent Fetal Anti-convulsant Trust, who are here today. Their children were affected by sodium valproate, and they have been tireless campaigners for compensation for affected families—I have known them for many years now. They have been invaluable in raising awareness about foetal valproate spectrum disorder. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Cat Smith), who has worked with In-FACT for many years on this and has been a staunch advocate for their campaign. Despite all their hard work, progress from the Government’s side seems to have stalled yet again, and families are left waiting. We know that things go wrong in medicine, and that all drugs have side effects, but when a harm that is caused was preventable, and when the state fails to act on warnings, the Government must step up. We should do what we should have done years ago, and give justice and support to the families who have already paid a heavy price for our failings.

• 11 Feb 2026 · Hughes Report: Second Anniversary · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve here today under your chairship, Ms Allin-Khan. I thank the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sarah Green) for securing this important debate. I am going to focus on sodium valproate, which was prescribed for decades without proper warnings about the effect on unborn children. As a result, those children were harmed and, despite multiple Government-commissioned reports, families are still waiting for accountability and redress. Two years on from the Hughes report, that delay can no longer be justified. Sodium valproate is a medicine used to treat epilepsy and bipolar disorder. It is a very effective medicine for many but, if taken while pregnant, it can cause serious harm. Those harms include major physical birth defects, developmental delays, learning disabilities and a significantly increased risk of autism. Many of the children affected will need lifelong care. For years, despite those risks being known, women and prescribers were not given clear or adequate information about them. Even after the effects were more widely known, prescriptions continued without proper safeguards in place. At least 7,000 children have been affected by this medicine since it came on to the market in 1973, but the real number is quite likely very much higher because of the lack of awareness around foetal valproate spectrum disorder. My constituent Nicola was one of the many women affected. Her children were profoundly harmed by exposure during pregnancy. Like so many others, Nicola trusted her doctor and followed proper medical advice. She was badly let down. She has explained to me just how immense the impact has been on her and her children and, of course, what a difference compensation would make to her kids’ lives.

• 3 Feb 2026 · Town and City Centre Safety · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. I want my constituency, where beauty surrounds and health abounds, to be a place where everyone feels safe on the high street. There is still work to be done, but I am committed to doing that work alongside our local partners. Central to that is the Government’s plan to put 13,000 additional police officers, PCSOs and special constables into neighbourhood roles by 2029. Those officers will be embedded in our communities, building relationships, preventing crime and responding quickly when crime occurs. Locally, there are some fantastic initiatives such as Safe Morecambe, which brings together the police, the business improvement district, the local authority, the community safety partnership and my office. Through funding from the police and crime commissioner, we are putting in place a street warden to help reassure residents further. A key part of making our streets and town centres safe will be tackling the antisocial behaviour that people suffer, from vandalism to noise, and drug use to harassment. Those are the everyday issues that really upset people, quite rightly. To combat that, the Labour Government are bringing in respect orders, and local authorities are getting powers to issue higher fines and to seize those damned bikes and get them off the road. We are also cracking down on shoplifting and violence against retail staff. It is horrendous that people are going to work in fear of being assaulted. However, it is not all doom and gloom. There have been some real successes in London under Mayor Sadiq Khan, where crime is at its lowest level since comparative records began. This shows that it can work.

• 3 Feb 2026 · Town and City Centre Safety · Hansard source

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  I would welcome the hon. Gentleman sending me those statistics, but they go against all the other pieces of evidence I have seen, particularly for serious crime. Obviously there are spikes in particular crimes. Phone theft, for example, has been a real problem in London, as it has been elsewhere because they are now very high-value items. Online crime, as I discussed with one of my hon. Friends earlier, is becoming more prolific—people are being scammed and defrauded. The nature of crime has changed. I am very happy to look at all the evidence. All the evidence I have seen shows that serious crime in London is going down, and that is the result of co-ordinated policing efforts and public health measures because, in some respects, crime is a public health problem. Visible policing, backed by good community relations and street-level intelligence, can work. It reassures communities and deters crime. That is the approach we need in Morecambe and Lunesdale and across the country—neighbourhood policing, targeted funding and practical local initiatives, such as Safe Morecambe, together with national action, such as the creation of a specific offence for an assault on a retail worker. We owe it to all our constituents and communities to make sure they feel safe in our town centres.

• 3 Feb 2026 · Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill · Hansard source

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  When the Labour Government came to office, 4.5 million children were living in poverty, and I believe that that is a moral stain on our nation. It has been a central mission of this Labour Government to tackle child poverty in all its forms. They are taking a range of measures, like introducing breakfast clubs. We have had some fantastic pilots of those in my constituency, and we have heard from schools that provide them that attendance is improving as a result. That is yet another impact of tackling childhood shortages. The Government are also extending free school meals to more children, while family hubs will help families who are struggling to get the support they need, and of course, there is more childcare support for working parents, who are too often kept out of work by the high costs of childcare. Today, though, we are talking about ending the two-child limit on universal credit. This measure alone will lift nearly half a million children out of poverty, and in my constituency of Morecambe and Lunesdale about 1,900 kids will benefit. It is not just the right thing to do, in and of itself; the evidence shows that tackling poverty in childhood is more cost-effective than mopping up the damage later—the damage of poverty that was outlined so eloquently by my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams). The fact is that poverty kills. It is as simple as that. Some will say that poverty is caused by fecklessness or laziness, ignoring the 70% of children affected by this limit who live in working households; ignoring the fact that 15% of those affected by the cap are mothers with really young babies—mothers who we would normally not expect to work; ignoring the significant number of people affected who are in ill health or have caring responsibilities; and ignoring the fact that the cost of living crisis, which was brought upon us by the Conservatives and by reliance on foreign gas, means that people who could afford their children when they had them are now struggling to put food on the table. About six months after the election, I knocked on a door in Morecambe, and it was opened by a lady who was really distressed. Once I got talking to her, it turned out that she had five kids. She said to me, “I could afford those children when I had them. I would never have had these children had I not been able to afford them.” She worked days, her husband worked nights, and she was on the minimum wage. They were struggling to prevent their children from finding out just how difficult a financial situation they were in. I was able to tell that lady that in a few months’ time, thanks to the Labour Government, she would receive a pay rise, because we were putting the minimum wage up—yet another measure that we are taking to tackle child poverty.

• 3 Feb 2026 · Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill · Hansard source

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  That is actually a reasonable question. The answer is that we had to make sure the country could afford it and we had to take a strategic approach to tackling child poverty. What we were not going to do, given the absolute state of the economy when we came into government, was make very quick decisions on such a scale. We did it properly, carefully and as part of a strategy. [ Interruption. ] I am interested by Opposition Members’ interpretation of reality. Let us not forget—moving on to something else that seems to have been missed in this discussion—that the families hit hardest by the two-child limit are those who spend the largest share of their income on absolute essentials. Lifting those families out of poverty not only reduces hardship, but actually boosts the local economy in the same way that raising the minimum wage does. In Morecambe and Lunesdale, I have thousands of fantastic small local businesses who rely on local people having enough money in their pockets to go out and spend, whether it is in the corner shop, the local supermarket or the clothes shop on the front where I get my kids’ school uniforms. They rely on people spending and we know that people who are hard up spend every single penny that they have. I have spoken in this Chamber before about the cost saving of prevention. This measure is no different. Investing in our children now pays dividends later, improving educational outcomes and raising adult earnings. Even if, in the face of all contradictory evidence, we accept the myth sown by the right that all the parents affected by the cap are somehow scroungers and feckless, I still do not believe that their children should have to live in poverty. Using children as pawns to influence parental behaviour or illustrate moral lessons not only does not work, it is profoundly unjust. And it did not work. Even by its own logic, the two-child benefit limit has been woefully ineffective. Back in 2019, a cross-party Work and Pensions Committee found “no evidence” that it was working as intended. It had next to no effect on employment rates and hours worked in affected households, and the stated effect on birth rate is so tiny that it is doubtful that it is greater than the margin of error in the data. The cap has not led to greater employment rates or a higher number of hours worked. What the cap has done is make childcare and travel costs an even higher barrier for those households who are trying desperately to work more. The two-child benefit cap also assumed that all pregnancies are planned, in full knowledge of the Government’s social security policy. I do not know about others, but most people I know are not over the details of social security policy. We know that it is simply not true that all pregnancies are planned. We know that contraceptives fail. Stuff happens. I remember when Tony Blair had an oopsie baby in the ’90s. With apologies to the Blairs for referring to them, I remember my dad saying, “Well, if the Prime Minister can’t always get it right, how we do expect every single person in the country to do so?” We also know—it became really clear from the previous Conservative policy—that a startling number of children are conceived through rape. The policy meant that traumatised women were having to disclose their rape to faceless bureaucrats just to try to get enough money to raise the child who had been conceived through rape. That is surely compounding the trauma of survivors of sexual assault. Finally, our country’s future depends on investing in the potential of our children—all our children, wherever they were born and however they were conceived. Today, we are saying that there are no second-class children in Britain and that under a Labour Government child poverty is not an inevitability. It is a choice and we choose to end it.

• 3 Feb 2026 · Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is entirely right. Parents, in my experience, will do anything to protect their children from the harsh realities of life. It is parents who go without food. It is parents who have to go to the food bank. I remember the first time I met the people running the food bank in Morecambe, in 2017. I walked up to them and said, “One day, I will put you out of business.” And they said, “Thank you”, because their strategic aim is not to exist. Food banks should not exist. Some of the people who oppose the lifting of this limit are also willing to ignore the fact that the policy itself did not work on its own terms. It did not limit the number of children born, but merely condemned them to living in poverty. They are also willing to ignore the evidence that dealing with poverty in childhood is much more cost-effective than mopping up later. It prevents huge costs later down the line in terms of education, health or indeed the criminal justice system. I am not saying that there are no feckless parents. Of course there are feckless parents, and there have always been feckless parents. I remember my great-grandma telling the story of having to go to the pub on a Friday night to try to get the housekeeping money off her drunkard father. She used to tell it as a funny story with a smile on her face, but it was not funny then and it is not funny now. I was really quite shocked at Reform saying that it would keep the two-child limit on universal credit and instead put that money into reducing the cost of beer. I love a drink—do not get me wrong—but I cannot help but think that, if Reform Members were around 100 years ago, they would have been standing with my drunkard ancestor, rather than with the little girl with her hand out for the housekeeping money. Do we condemn hundreds of thousands of children to poverty because there are a few feckless parents?

• 3 Feb 2026 · Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that fecklessness is not limited to any one socioeconomic group. It is interesting how people born into great wealth consider their position to be due only to their very hard work, yet they consider it to be other people’s own fault if they are born into poverty. That is really quite shocking. More than 1 million children live in households unable to afford even the most basic necessities of life. There are parents choosing between heating and eating, children doing their homework on the floor in housing that is too crowded to provide a space to study, whole families staying in one room because that is all they can afford to heat, and kids wheezing due to damp. What compounds this heartbreak is that childhood poverty festers and grows. It infects people’s prospects in education, health and employment across their whole life. Rather than tackling that, discussions about welfare inevitably descend into conversations about merit: who deserves help and who does not. These are children we are talking about—children entirely reliant on adults for their existence and their support, and entirely reliant on Governments such as ours to make sure they are looked after if, from no fault of their own, their parents do not have enough money for the necessities of life. If this Victorian attitude to the deserving and undeserving poor had won the day previously, we would not have had any of the public services that we now take for granted. We would not have had free education, because why should parents not just pay for education themselves? We would not have had the NHS, because why should people not just pay for doctors themselves? As we know, Reform Members would be very happy to get rid of the NHS and bring in a private insurance system. None of us earned those things through our own merit; we inherited them from people who recognised that everyone deserves a good chance in life and the chance to thrive and succeed, whether by starting their own business, getting an education or doing whatever it is that will make their life a good life. That is the obligation we have to our children. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation and others have shown that scrapping the two-child benefit limit could drive the single largest fall in child poverty in a single Parliament. My local Citizens Advice has done a brilliant report saying that scrapping the two-child limit is the fastest and most cost-effective intervention to tackle child poverty.

• 29 Jan 2026 · Economic Growth: Morecambe and Lunesdale · Hansard source

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  9. What steps his Department is taking to help increase economic growth in Morecambe and Lunesdale constituency.

• 29 Jan 2026 · Economic Growth: Morecambe and Lunesdale · Hansard source

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  In my constituency of Morecambe and Lunesdale, we have the Electech innovation cluster, which is a growing group of small and medium-sized firms, many of which supply specialist components into the clean energy sector, particularly nuclear, and into the vital defence sector. The Minister would be welcome to visit them. How is the Department supporting SMEs, such as those in the Electech innovation cluster, and how will they benefit from the Government’s investment in industry?

• 27 Jan 2026 · Medical Training (Prioritisation) Bill · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to speak in support of the Medical Training (Prioritisation) Bill. We all know that our NHS faces workforce shortages in many specialties. In my constituency of Morecambe and Lunesdale, the workforce problem, combined with other factors, means that my constituents are not seeing the improvement in waiting times that other parts of the country have seen. The progress that has been made nationally is astounding, and we Government Members should be proud of that, but there are pockets where that progress has not been made, and that is unacceptable. I would welcome more conversations with Ministers about how we can tackle that, and I will continue to raise the matter with the local NHS. Alongside the workforce shortages, we have the bizarre situation that doctors who need training places are struggling to get them, particularly those who are UK graduates. Competition for foundation and specialty training places has grown, partly because of a 2020 change to visas that lifted restrictions on overseas applicants applying for those training places. I would like to believe that that was done in good faith to try to increase the NHS workforce and to plug specialty gaps, but because of how it was done, UK graduates ended up competing, not with perhaps one other person, but with six other people for a training place. That is clearly unhelpful, particularly when we have already invested so much in their education. Doctors have taken on a lot of debt to go through their initial training. Faced with this level of competition, and unable to continue their training in the UK, many medical graduates are being pushed to seek employment abroad or, even worse, to leave medicine altogether. Pressure is uneven across the system; some specialties are heavily oversubscribed, while some are left with unfilled posts. For example, there is a 15% staffing shortfall in oncology. For many years, I was the deputy chair of the Lancashire health scrutiny committee, so I saw Tory incompetence in the health service in real time. That particular example adds to the litany of their failures in health. Over 14 years, they made us poorer, sicker and less able to get early help. This Bill addresses the failure to provide training places for doctors, in order to ensure that UK graduates can continue to train in the UK. It introduces a system of prioritisation for UK medical graduates, and will deliver this Labour Government’s commitment to a more sustainable medical workforce. It protects public investment, reduces excessive competition and ensures that our home-grown talent can become the next generation of NHS doctors. No disrespect to the fantastic medics who come from abroad to work here—they do such a fantastic job, and our NHS would not have survived without that immigrant workforce—but prioritising UK-trained graduates would bring us into line with international norms. Favouring domestically trained clinicians helps countries to ensure that they have a stable workforce. To be honest, we should not be nicking other countries’ doctors, particularly doctors from countries with underdeveloped health systems. I do not believe that is in line with our values. UK taxpayers invest around £4 billion every year in training doctors, so the aim of any sustainable workforce policy should be to see all UK graduates in training posts. A fifth-year medical student who wrote to me aptly described this Bill as essential to safeguarding what he calls “fair access to training opportunities amongst UK graduates”, and to ensure that the NHS workforce pipeline survives in the long term. I am glad to see the Government addressing this issue with the urgency it deserves. Doctors, of course, are only one part of the health service. Many professions work together to care for patients, but doctors are a vital part of the NHS, and we need to ensure that UK medical graduates can progress their careers. This goes alongside all the other work that the Labour Government are doing to make us healthier as a nation, whether on controlling tobacco and vapes, helping people to afford healthy food, or enabling earlier access to primary care. I urge colleagues across the House to support this Bill.

• 27 Jan 2026 · Business Rates · Hansard source

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  I am sure that pubs and venues, such as the Alhambra in Morecambe, will welcome today’s announcement. The Minister might be aware of my letter to the Chancellor on the wider hospitality sector. On the high street, we know that consumer demand has changed, so businesses must change, too. Will the Minister tell me how the strategy will work with businesses and their representatives, such as the Morecambe business improvement district or Sedbergh economic partnership, to pivot businesses to meet the new market reality?

• 26 Jan 2026 · Armed Forces Bill · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. No longer can we just have warm words and lip service; we need action, because this contract says something very simple: “If you’re prepared to serve your country, your country must serve you properly in return.” For too long, our country has failed to honour that commitment. The latest armed forces continuous attitude survey revealed that only a quarter of our service personnel believe that they are valued by society. Let us think about that for a moment: only one in four of the men and women who wear our uniform believe that their country truly recognises what they give. That is a sign of a profound political failure over the past two decades. My constituents in Morecambe and Lunesdale know the value of our armed forces. In 2025, 30,000 people attended Armed Forces Day in Morecambe. This year, we are having Armed Forces Day over three days, and I am sure that any Front-Bench Member would be welcome to come. Local organisations such as Healthier Heroes, the Rawthey Project, Morecambe FC Community Foundation and Bay Vets all do fantastic work supporting veterans in our area. The armed forces covenant is also our nation’s commitment to fairness for those who serve, for our veterans, for their families and for the bereaved. That is not just in combat, but in housing, in hospitals, in jobcentres and in homes across the country. The renewal of that contract has to start with the Government. It has to be built into our law, the decisions we take here and the funding that we give. There is no better place to start than in housing, because for too long service families have been left in damp, cold and mouldy homes. That is a betrayal of their service. Labour has therefore ended the failed privatisation of military housing, saving more than £200 million a year, and we are reinvesting that in fixing homes. This Bill creates the publicly owned Defence Housing Service, renewing nine in 10 armed forces homes and delivering the biggest upgrade to military accommodation in more than 50 years. Of course, fairness for those who serve cannot just stop at housing. The Bill extends the armed forces covenant across government, making public services legally bound to consider the unique needs of service personnel and their families. That was a manifesto commitment from this Labour Government, and we are delivering it. The Bill also strengthens the service justice system, giving service police and courts greater powers and putting victims first, with new protections against sexual violence and abuse. I recognise the first steps made by the previous Government in that regard.