Lizzi Collinge MP: speeches

Speeches

• 4 Nov 2025 · Supporting High Streets · Hansard source

  More

  I thank the right hon. Member for his generosity in giving way, because I am finding this debate very interesting. In the rural areas of my constituency, businesses are struggling to hire workers not because of the cost but because local workers cannot afford to live in those areas because there is no affordable housing. Does the right hon. Member agree that it is very welcome that the Government are focusing on the practicalities that ordinary workers need in order to be employed, which will help rural businesses like those in my area that are struggling to recruit?

• 4 Nov 2025 · Supporting High Streets · Hansard source

  More

  I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman got to his point, kind of. He mentioned hospitality workers. I was a hospitality worker for many years, so I know how hard work it is. I also know about the people who will benefit on the shop floor from the Government’s Employment Rights Bill. Could the right hon. Gentleman say more about how regulation is supposedly harming workers, because as a former hospitality worker I see the benefits of the Employment Rights Bill for all my former colleagues.

• 4 Nov 2025 · Supporting High Streets · Hansard source

  More

  What my hon. Friend is saying really resonates with me. Does he agree that the fact that pride in place is a 10-year fund allows us to be really strategic about the regeneration of our high streets? Instead of them receiving bits and bats of money for six months with really tight frameworks, local people will be empowered by the fund to regenerate their own area.

• 4 Nov 2025 · Royal Mail: Universal Service Obligation · Hansard source

  More

  I represent a partly rural constituency, Morecambe and Lunesdale, so my constituents rely on the universal service obligation. They also rely on regular mail deliveries for vital information such as hospital appointments. But my constituents, particularly in villages like Endmoor, are suffering with irregular and delayed deliveries. Does the Minister agree that my rural constituents deserve a good postal service, and that Royal Mail should focus on delivering one? What steps is the Minister taking to secure that service?

• 3 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  The Hillsborough law we debate today is not an historical problem; it is something that my constituents need right now. I have already spoken in this place about baby Ida Lock, who died after failings in her care, and the incompetent investigation and lack of transparency that followed. Today I want to talk about another constituent of mine. Vicki had autoimmune diseases, and she had regular treatment for them, often needing steroids. In 2021, Vicki fell pregnant and had a flare-up, which was treated with steroids. Not long after she tragically suffered a miscarriage. Days later she was admitted to hospital with severe abdominal pain and an increased heart rate, and she began to deteriorate. The differential diagnosis was either an infection or a flare-up of her autoimmune disease. Vicki kept getting more poorly. She was treated with antibiotics but not given any steroids. Her care was fraught with errors: her lipids were scored incorrectly; the right tests were eventually requested but not carried out in a timely way; and a pharmacist spotted that she had missed crucial medication, but nothing was done. According to her family, the doctors got caught in a loop of circular thinking—they focused on sepsis and covid—even when there was another possibility, particularly with her history of autoimmune problems. There is a rare but known complication of autoimmune disease called hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, which is a massive overreaction of the immune system that causes hyperinflammation, damaging vital organs. If the hospital had listened to Vicki and done a bone marrow test earlier, that HLH could have been identified, and it is possible that it could have been treated successfully. But once the decision to do the test—it gives results in only 10 minutes—was finally made, it took 18 hours for it to be done. The bone marrow test confirmed that Vicki had HLH. Twenty-four hours later, she died. Vicki knew that she was having a flare-up, and she said so, but she was not listened to. From her hospital bed, she had written a letter of complaint to the patient advice and liaison service; then, just a week later, she was dead. Her family just want the truth to be recognised, because, in their experience, it has not been. Their experience echoes that of Ida’s parents. The pain is compounded because the family had felt that she was in the right place to be cared for. They trusted the hospital to get it right. We know that no one goes to work in healthcare to do harm, but doctors and nurses are humans; they will make mistakes, and it is difficult for them to admit that they have harmed someone, so we need to create institutional cultures in which people feel able to speak up and raise concerns. Mistakes are often one-offs, but what is not is the institutional response to these tragedies. The institutional response of cover-up is part of a wider, long-standing pattern of poor culture and weak accountability. What harmed families tell me in the wake of these tragedies is that it is not necessarily the mistake itself that causes so much harm to them but the cover-up and the denial. Families, instead of grieving their loss, are forced to fight for the truth. My hope is that the Bill will protect victims and their families—like Vicki’s, like Ryan and Sarah Lock and those who lost loved ones at Hillsborough—from this prolonged trauma. They deserve honesty, accountability and humanity from the very start, because that is how we rebuild trust.

• 29 Oct 2025 · Gaza and Hamas · Hansard source

  More

  My colleagues have already asked about the current horror in Gaza, so I will pivot to the longer term. Before this crisis, we saw decades of illegal settlements on Palestinian territory, so I welcomed the Government’s sanctions on extremist settlers and Israeli Ministers. I do not want us to lose sight of that issue, so will the Minister consider what further steps he can take, including trade restrictions, to combat illegal settlements?

• 29 Oct 2025 · Sentencing Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I really welcome this Sentencing Bill, because I think my constituents want not only criminals being punished for their crimes, but the prevention of future crime. It should be about not just punishment—which is rightly owed to a lot of people—but making sure that our communities are safe in the future. Could the Minister lay out how the intensive supervision courts in the Bill will help to do that?

• 27 Oct 2025 · North Sea Oil and Gas Industry · Hansard source

  More

  Does the Minister share my concerns about Reform and the Conservatives denying the reality of climate change, and denying that the best way to protect people’s jobs, including energy jobs, is to follow the green jobs plan? Does he agree that nuclear, including as Heysham 1 and 2 in my constituency—and, if I get my way, new nuclear at Heysham—is vital to the clean energy jobs plan?

• 16 Oct 2025 · Ada Lovelace Day · Hansard source

  More

  I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend and with Georgina that having role models and mentors is really important. One of Ada’s mentors was a woman called Mary Somerville, a scientist and polymath. It was Mary who introduced Ada to Charles Babbage, whose work would capture her interest and provide the inspiration for her most significant contributions. Babbage was a professor of mathematics and a celebrity in the scientific world. He was a visionary, with countless unfinished plans for clockwork calculating machines. At the time, his fascination was his latest device, the analytical engine, a proposed improvement on his earlier and uncompleted difference engine. The analytical engine, he said, would be able to perform any calculation set before it, but the patience of his parliamentary sponsors had worn thin. Having funded him to the tune of £1.7 million in today’s money, they refused to finance a second machine while the first was unfinished. Babbage was therefore forced to look abroad. After he gave a lecture at the University of Turin, the Italian engineer Luigi Menabrea wrote up his notes and published them in French. Charles Wheatstone then suggested that Ada translate them into English, as she was fluent in French and other languages. She showed the translation to Babbage, who was ecstatic, and he suggested that she add her own notes because as he put it, she understood the machine so well. Ada’s footnotes tripled the paper’s original length, because she understood Babbage’s device, but she also saw further. She rightly saw it as what we would now call a general purpose computer. For Babbage, these machines were nothing more than calculators, but Ada saw past that. She understood that a machine capable of manipulating numbers—and of representing any value, from letters to musical notes—would have a grip on a world beyond mathematical calculation. Crucially, Ada’s vision for computing recognised that technology must be applied for, in her words, “the purposes of mankind.” Technology must serve humanity, not the other way around. At the time, Ada’s ideas amounted to little more than a vision. Let us remember that she was working in the 19th century, before there were even any functional computers. Her work was not revisited until nearly a century later, when Alan Turing quoted her in his work.

• 16 Oct 2025 · Ada Lovelace Day · Hansard source

  More

  I absolutely agree with the right hon. Lady. Having that visionary view of science—looking beyond what is to what could be—is absolutely essential. The providers and the businesses that she talked about are essential to that. Ada contributed to a debate that is extremely pertinent today when she discussed the possibility of machine intelligence back in the 1800s. She said: “The Analytical Engine has no pretentions…to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform… Only when computers originate things should they be believed to have minds.” That is in contrast to Alan Turing’s later thought that computers should be understood in terms of their ability to appear to think. He termed her thoughts “Lady Lovelace’s objection”, which I think is rather beautiful. What developments would we have seen by now if we had understood earlier the potential that Ada saw? What developments do we still lose out on because we do not see the potential in women? The barriers keeping women and girls back from STEM do not just disadvantage them; they disadvantage all of us. The 2025 Lovelace report, written by Oliver Wyman in collaboration with the organisation WeAreTechWomen, found that the tech industry loses between £2 billion and £3.5 billion every year through a broken career framework that drives out talent, with women bearing the heaviest cost.

• 16 Oct 2025 · Ada Lovelace Day · Hansard source

  More

  I beg to move, That this House has considered Ada Lovelace Day and Government support for women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss. Today, many hon. Members will talk about modern women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics—or STEM—but I confess that I am mostly interested in the fascinating woman Ada Lovelace. Ada was born into the nobility in 1815, the child of two very talented parents. Her most famous parent was Lord Byron, while her mother—Lady Annabella—was a gifted mathematician. Lord Byron called his wife the “Princess of Parallelograms” and later, when they fell out, his “mathematical Medea”. Ada never knew her father, and her education was organised by her mother. She inherited both the mathematical genius of her mother and the creativity of her father. In her early teens, she was distracted from her proper studies by designing a flying machine in the form of a horse with a steam engine inside. She is now best known for working alongside Charles Babbage on his hypothetical computer—the analytical engine. Ada was a pioneer in computer science. She saw the possibilities of computing when no one else could. She understood technology as not just a set of calculations but a way to unlock creativity and serve humanity. For years, Ada was denied the recognition and credit that she deserved for her insight into the potential of computing. She displayed a grasp of mathematical imagination far beyond that of most of her contemporaries. However, we know that talent alone is not enough. Innovation needs opportunity, guidance, and room to fail and try again. Too often, women and girls are denied that chance, and with them ideas that could transform our world are lost. How many Ada Lovelaces have we lost because they did not have access to that support? Although she was brilliant, Ada’s achievements did not happen solely as a product of her talent. They were made possible by her position in society and through the efforts of the women around her: by a mother determined to see her educated, by tutors she could access only through her social status, and by the circles she moved in, which led her to her collaborator, Charles Babbage. Even with those advantages, it took remarkable persistence for Ada to be part of that work, and her insight would go unrecognised for generations. I take a moment to thank Suw Charman-Anderson, who is in the Public Gallery. She is the founder of Ada Lovelace Day and has given me much of her expertise on Ada. This speech would not be possible without her contribution, and in some cases I have used her words directly. I also put on record my thanks for all the work that she has done over many years to promote women in STEM.

• 16 Oct 2025 · Ada Lovelace Day · Hansard source

  More

  I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Groups such as the Women+ in Engineering group at the University of Strathclyde can do so much to support other women in STEM. I must also put on record my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield (Laurence Turner) for inspiring this debate. Now, back to Ada—it was her mother, Lady Annabella, who allowed and encouraged Ada to pursue her intellectual passions. Annabella hoped that mathematics would temper whatever dangerous poetical tendencies young Ada might have inherited from her father. Ada was a curious child. At 13 she was designing flying machines. By 15, she had already impressed a man called Augustus De Morgan, a mathematician at the forefront of symbolic logic. He tutored her in maths and logic, exchanging dozens of letters. He even wrote that, had she been a man, she would have had the potential to become “an original mathematical investigator, perhaps of first rate eminence.” But Ada was a woman and as such, De Morgan believed, like many at the time, that mathematics might simply be too strenuous for her. Ada had been plagued with health problems—first headaches, then a bout of measles at 13 that left her paralysed. Confined to her bed, she had to relearn to walk at 15, and De Morgan believed that tackling mathematical problems would only exacerbate her frailty. He wrote that “the very great tension of mind” that maths problems require is “beyond the strength of a woman’s physical power of application.” Ada, of course, ignored him. At a time when women were not allowed to go to university, her academic development relied on a cobbled together series of tutors and mentors. She burned through one tutor’s entire mathematical knowledge in just a few weeks.

• 16 Oct 2025 · Ada Lovelace Day · Hansard source

  More

  I absolutely agree that that is a travesty. We are losing women in STEM at a terrible rate, which I will come on to. The UK has made bold commitments to become a global leader in machine learning and digital technology, but to meet our goals we need to double or triple our workforce capacity in that sector. How can we do that when there is a steady exodus of women from STEM, with approximately 40,000 to 60,000 women each year leaving their tech or digital role? Surface-level takes have attributed that to caregiving responsibilities, but surveys from the Lovelace report found that caregiving was cited in less than 3% of cases. The true culprits are systemic: underpayment, stalled career progression and lack of opportunities for influence and leadership. Surveys show that more than 70% of experienced women pursue extra qualifications, yet 60% still struggle to go into leadership roles. That damages progress and profits. Evidence suggests that not only do more diverse teams come up with better solutions to problems, but companies with more women in senior leadership roles are more profitable. Change comes through different perspectives, different worldviews and different visions for the future. On vision for the future, the world’s most powerful military, in the Pentagon, is now running a programming language called Ada. That is quite a legacy, and we need to ensure that that legacy is available for future women and girls in STEM. Finally, I come to my daughter Ada. I want her to see the story of the woman who inspired her name and I want her to know that nobody can tell her what she can or cannot achieve.

• 16 Oct 2025 · Ada Lovelace Day · Hansard source

  More

  I thank colleagues across the House for their wonderful contributions. I am very pleased to welcome our visitors from Ada in Porlock and of course Suw Charman-Anderson, the founder of Ada Lovelace Day, along with others who have travelled here today. We heard from the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) that maths is the worst topic for gender inequality—an inequality that opens up very early—and I am thankful to him for highlighting solutions. I also want to highlight the work of the Good Thinking Society on identifying talented mathematicians at a young age and nurturing them. We have heard today about many such excellent schemes across the whole of the UK, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) pointed out, but the question is how to link them up, including with museums such as the Northwest Computer Museum, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt) mentioned. I was fascinated to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Sarah Russell) about the Complete and Utter Chaos team at Sandbach high school building EVs at school. We also heard about Bracknell’s RealTech Bots and about Hazel and Jess at CSIDES in Weston. We heard more fascinating facts about Ada from the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour), but also about the practicalities needed to truly realise potential, such as financial equality and transport access. My hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham Northfield (Laurence Turner), for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett) and for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) spoke of Ada’s belief in poetical science and the false split between science and humanities. We heard about hon. Members’ personal and professional experience of boosting women in STEM from my hon. Friends the Members for Mansfield (Steve Yemm), for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) and for Wolverhampton North East (Mrs Brackenridge), as well as the need for good role models. My hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Dan Aldridge) also made excellent points about realising the full potential of this new industrial revolution. All those contributions have showed the strength of support across this House for Government support for women in STEM. They show that women’s potential is not being realised, just as Ada’s was not, and that that is damaging our country and our economy. It was an absolute pleasure to welcome the Minister to her place, and I am very grateful to her for outlining how this Labour Government are supporting women in STEM, and how together we will make sure that no future Adas are lost. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered Ada Lovelace Day and Government support for women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

• 15 Oct 2025 · Jhoots Pharmacy · Hansard source

  More

  My constituents in Sedbergh, a rural market town, have suffered greatly from the terrible pharmacy provision by Jhoots. Medicines have been unavailable, the pharmacy has often been closed, and staff and locum pharmacists are going unpaid, yet pay slips are being issued, so it is very hard for them to claim benefits. I have written to the Minister and met with the integrated care board. Doctors and neighbouring pharmacists—I say neighbouring, but this is in Westmorland, which is a 40-minute drive away—have stepped in to help, as has the parish council. Can the Minister outline what action he is taking nationally to force Jhoots to provide a better service for my constituents?

• 15 Oct 2025 · Pride in Place · Hansard source

  More

  The £20 million pride in place funding going into the west end of Morecambe shows that this Labour Government are really trusting local people to spend money locally, without lots of bureaucratic hurdles—and I really welcome that. Whether it is smartening up Yorkshire Street or Regent Road, or getting under the bonnet and helping people with their health problems, in Morecambe we are ready to go. Will the Minister tell me if we can work together to get this going as quickly as possible and speed up the pride in place timescales?

• 14 Oct 2025 · Middle East · Hansard source

  More

  I thank the Prime Minister for his statement and I welcome an end to the killing in Gaza. What guarantees are in place to ensure that humanitarian aid can now reach Gaza without interruption? Will that aid be independent of the whim of the Israeli Government or any other actor on the ground?

• 13 Oct 2025 · Digital ID · Hansard source

  More

  The current proposal is that digital ID will be mandatory for right-to-work checks by the end of this Parliament. Concerns have been raised with me by constituents that that makes it de facto mandatory for working-age people. Has the Secretary of State considered simply sticking with it as a voluntary service so that people who wish to can get the benefits of a streamlined ID, and then, when it is bedded in, perhaps looking at whether it is necessary to make it mandatory for right-to-work checks?

• 13 Oct 2025 · Baby Loss · Hansard source

  More

  I speak with a number of hats on: as the MP for Morecambe and Lunesdale, representing all my constituents who have lost babies in pregnancy; as a mum of two children; and as a woman who has lost two much-wanted pregnancies. I want to use my place here to shine a light on the pain that families are feeling due to baby loss, and the steps that the Government can take and are taking to help them, from enforcing a duty of candour on public bodies to giving bereavement leave to parents who have lost a baby before 24 weeks of pregnancy. First, I welcome the national maternity investigation. I thank the Secretary of State for his attention to it, and for listening to harmed families. I want to emphasise that, on the whole, maternity care in this country is safe, but where it is not, strong action must be taken. I was relieved to see that my local trust, Morecambe Bay, will be part of the national investigation, not least because of the experiences of my constituents Ryan and Sarah, whose baby Ida was born in 2019 and died seven days after. Ida died because of failings in her care. I know, as Ryan and Sarah do, that mistakes happen—healthcare workers are human—but they have had to fight every step of the way to get the truth about their daughter’s death, which feels so inhumane. After the hospital trust’s completely inadequate internal investigation declared there to be no care issues and Ida’s death was graded as “moderate harm”, Ryan and Sarah had to approach a senior coroner to get a full inquest. It was only at that inquest, five and a half years later, that the trust accepted that its failings had led to Ida’s death. The thing that breaks my heart is that those failings had already been identified: the Kirkup report identified major failings, which were meant to have been fixed. I first became involved in maternity advocacy in Morecambe Bay after the pretty awful birth of my first child. There was a lot of activity in the trust in response to the Kirkup findings, and I do believe that improvements were made, but two things never went away, and I think they are still harming families to this day. The first thing that I want to highlight is the ideological belief that certain types of birth are superior to others. We hear talk of “normal” or “physiological” birth. The belief that that is somehow superior to a birth with intervention still harms people today. The second thing is the organisational culture that led to a care organisation responding to a baby’s death not with care, respect and humility, but with a gross failure to investigate, a gross failure to act with decency and kindness, and a gross lack of transparency. Finally, I want to mention a constituent who came to my surgery a few weeks ago. Her stepdaughter was born sleeping many years ago, and she and her husband recently found out that she was buried in a mass public grave. They know the location where she was put to rest, and they really want to put a marker directly on the grave site, but apparently that is not allowed under local council rules. They are puzzled, as am I, as to why marking one baby’s death is somehow disrespectful to the other babies who lie in that mass public grave. I am working with my constituent to try to address that. I am glad that the pain that families feel across our country is being recognised in this place today. We cannot let more babies die preventable deaths. We cannot let those losses go unacknowledged. I thank Members in the Chamber today for their work.

• 16 Sept 2025 · International Day of Democracy · Hansard source

  More

  I am interested by my hon. Friend’s reference to Orwellian thought. Did he notice that on Saturday, Elon Musk was wearing a T-shirt that said, “What would Orwell think?”, and does he agree that anyone with a passing knowledge of George Orwell’s work knows exactly what George Orwell would think of Elon Musk and his actions over the weekend?

• 16 Sept 2025 · International Day of Democracy · Hansard source

  More

  The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that the murder of Charlie Kirk was an appalling act. No one should ever feel threatened by violence; no one should ever be killed for their beliefs or their actions. However much we disagree with the horrendous nature of his death, does the hon. Gentleman agree that some of the statements made by Charlie Kirk in life meant that other people felt that their freedom was being threatened, and that they were not safe to speak out?

• 16 Sept 2025 · International Day of Democracy · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake) for securing this important debate. We rightly talk about a lack of trust in politics, and there is one key element as to why that is: the first-past-the-post voting system. I found a beautiful quote the other day from Elie Wiesel: “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” We can see that indifference in the lack of participation in even general elections. Left unchanged, the first-past-the-post system will continue to erode public trust, produce unfair and unrepresentative outcomes, and undermine the stability of our democracy. A majority of the voting public support a change to the voting system. What I and other members of the all-party parliamentary group for fair elections are calling for is a national commission on electoral reform, so that all options can be examined independently and impartially. It will come as no surprise to anyone that I have views on what a new electoral system should have. It needs to be more proportionate, but it needs to take into account other things as well. I believe in constituency MPs. I believe in each MP’s representing a defined geographical area. However, the guidelines at the last boundary review, which had very tight numbers, have left us with some slightly odd constituencies. My constituency crosses the county boundaries of Lancashire and Westmorland, and it includes the Yorkshire Dales national park. I have three planning authorities, which is great fun. Although it is great for me to walk through the Yorkshire dales to see a red squirrel in Cowgill, I can see why people in Dentdale do not feel particularly connected to people in Morecambe, which is an hour’s drive away, so I think the Boundary Commission needs a bit more flexibility. I also think that any voting system should allow voters to rank their preferences, so they can say, “That person is my favourite. That person is also acceptable, as is that person.” They should also be able to not rank people if they definitely do not wish them to be elected. Some of my colleagues have spoken about the action that the Labour Government are taking on political donations, which I welcome. We cannot talk about the deficits in our democracy without talking about young people. We have a lovely history of older people bemoaning the youth of today; I found a brilliant social media thread with examples that go back to Plato. We have to stop berating young people for not engaging and do the work ourselves. I know that some people are on TikTok—that is not really for me. I do not think disengagement comes from the lack of me lip-synching along to pop songs. It comes from young people not being listened to and their concerns not being addressed. We are taking some steps. The Labour Government are giving 16 and 17-year-olds the vote, which is fantastic. If people start voting young, they keep voting. I know people who are older than me who have not voted just because they do not know how it works. They literally do not know how to physically go and vote, which is a real shame. More foundational changes also need to be made. If elections hinge on certain constituencies or certain voting blocs, then policies and campaigns will cater to them at the expense of other groups. Whenever I see young people, I tell them to vote. I say, “If you vote, you’ll get policies that work for you.” This week, the all-party parliamentary group for fair elections published suggested terms of reference for a national commission on electoral reform. This is a clear proposal for the Government to set up a national commission that could independently ask the big questions about our democracy. How do we build an electoral system that represents all voices fairly? How do we inspire public trust? How can we ensure that every vote, every voice and every citizen counts? It is only by answering these questions that we can protect our democracy, strengthen our democratic institutions and show that every voter matters.

• 16 Sept 2025 · Sentencing Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I want to speak today about how the Sentencing Bill will bring some common sense to sentencing and bring in an evidence-based approach to stopping reoffending and protecting victims of crime. That is the primary duty of government: to protect citizens from harm. I will particularly highlight changes that mean that victims and survivors will be at the heart of sentencing and that punishments will fit the crime, protect survivors and focus on true rehabilitation, not just warehousing. One example is the move from the existing system of exclusion zones, which prevent domestic abuse or sexual assault offenders from entering specific areas where the victim might be, to restriction zones that will limit the offender’s movement to an agreed-upon area. For too long, the burden has been on the victim, with survivors moving house, switching jobs and changing bus routes to avoid the person who hurt them. Restriction zones mean it is the offender whose life is reshaped, not the victim’s. Technology will track compliance, breaches will mean prison and survivors will help design the zones alongside probation officers, so that their freedom, not the attacker’s, is the priority. For years, magistrates and judges have been calling for more constructive and flexible sentencing options—more than fines that can be dodged or custody that does not fix the underlying criminal behaviour. The Bill introduces that, whether through driving bans, travel restrictions, football banning orders or sexual harm prevention orders. It moves past a one-size-fits-all approach and allows judges to deliver personalised punishment, hitting criminals where it hurts. Short prison sentences do not cut crime and they do not stop reoffending. Hon. Members need not just take my word for it, or decades of evidence; maybe the Conservatives will accept the word of a former screw. My constituent James, who worked in the Prison Service for decades, said to me: “Short sentences do nothing.” He welcomes many of the measures in the Bill: “In short, the Bill is the law we’ve all been advocating for, for a long time.” All the money that we currently spend on short prison sentences is not spent on Best Start centres, hospitals, schools, healthcare and drug treatment, where the root causes of crime can actually be addressed.

• 16 Sept 2025 · Sentencing Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I do not think the hon. Gentleman’s analysis of the Bill is correct. I understand that perhaps he has some personal experience here and I appreciate that he has very strong feelings on the matter. Perhaps he will listen again to my former prison officer, who welcomed the changes.

• 16 Sept 2025 · Sentencing Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I will not give way— [ Interruption. ] I think the hon. Gentleman is perhaps not showing the House the respect it deserves— [ Interruption. ] I would appreciate it if he would allow me to continue without this continuous chuntering. At their core, these reforms do two things at once. They keep the most dangerous offenders where they belong, in prison, protecting the public, and they end the waste of locking up low-risk offenders. The evidence is really clear. I know that the Conservatives really struggle when the evidence contradicts their instincts and their prejudices, but it is simply true. The hon. Gentleman disagreeing does not make it any less true. The victims of crime in my constituency deserve better than this current crumbling justice system. They deserve better than our overstuffed prisons that just churn out more and more criminals. They deserve this Sentencing Bill.