Luke Myer MP: speeches

Speeches

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

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  Can we secure some time to discuss the emerging risks to the bioethanol sector, which faces job losses across the north? I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Anna Turley) has been lobbying hard for Government support on that issue.

• 19 Jun 2025 · Water Safety Education · Hansard source

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  I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton Itchen (Darren Paffey) on securing the debate. I will be very brief. I just want to highlight an ongoing issue in my part of the world. I am deeply concerned about the case of Serren Bennett, an 18-year-old who has been missing from my constituency since 8 June, 11 days ago. She was last seen approaching Redcar beach, where an item of her clothing has been found. I hope Members across the House will join me in sending our thoughts to Serren’s family and friends at this difficult time. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] I hope that the Government will be able to assure me that the relevant authorities will be working with Cleveland police to do everything possible so she can be found.

• 19 Jun 2025 · European Convention on Human Rights: UK Obligations · Hansard source

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  I want to ask about our compliance with article 14 with regard to the fast-track justice system. My constituent, a woman with schizophrenia, has been convicted of not paying her TV licence during mental health difficulties sparked by her mum’s mental illness. Will the Solicitor General meet me to discuss the single justice procedure and the way it is used in cases such as that?

• 18 Jun 2025 · Post-industrial Towns · Hansard source

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  My community in East Cleveland was once home to the ironstone mines and the steelworks that helped build this great country, but I often speak to steelworkers who say that when they left school they had a guaranteed job for life and this is not the case any more. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a role for our combined authorities to play not just in creating jobs but in having a skills strategy that guarantees decent, well-paid jobs for our young people years into the future?

• 18 Jun 2025 · Post-industrial Towns · Hansard source

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  As the debate is winding up, I just want to give the good people at Hansard an opportunity to record the fact that not a single Conservative or Reform MP was here in the Chamber to listen to this important debate.

• 12 Jun 2025 · Employment Costs · Hansard source

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  On 12 June 1996, a Conservative Minister stood at the Government Dispatch Box and said: “Labour’s minimum wage would cost hundreds of thousands of jobs”. —[ Official Report , 12 June 1996; Vol. 279, c. 248.] They were wrong then and they are wrong now. With particular focus on the Teesside region, what steps are the Government taking to bring more well-paid jobs to people to make sure they can spend more in our local economy?

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

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  My constituents Peter from Liverton Mines and Morgan from Brotton are very keen to buy electric vehicles, but they are unable to because they do not have driveways on which to charge them. Will the Government take it upon themselves to make it easier for people to buy electric vehicles, and find solutions to pavement charging?

• 12 Jun 2025 · Covid: Fifth Anniversary · Hansard source

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  Hon. Members have mentioned the memorial wall on the banks of the Thames, opposite this place, on which 240,000 hearts denote individuals we lost during covid-19. I want to mention one of those individuals: my grandad Bill. We lost him in June 2020, five years ago next week. He went into hospital with something else, but he contracted covid on the ward and he passed away. He died on his own in a hospital bed. None of us was allowed to see him, because we were following the rules, and the next time I saw him, he was in a coffin, in an empty church. The reason I remember that date in June 2020 so viscerally is not only because we lost my grandad in a way that meant it was impossible to properly grieve, but because on that very same day, the then Prime Minister had a birthday party in No. 10. Many people across this House and this country will have stories like that. While we followed the rules, made sacrifices and lost people, others acted with impunity. I do not want to make my comments party political— I know that there will be Conservative Members who will also feel angry about what happened—but as we mark this anniversary, I hope all of us commit to ensuring that the bond of trust between politicians and the public is rebuilt, and is never again frayed and broken in such a fundamental way. In the remaining seconds that I have, I pay tribute to all our key workers, everyone in our NHS and all our communities, particularly those in Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland. They came together during that pandemic, as we always have in times of hardship, but in a way that we have never seen before.

• 11 Jun 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill · Hansard source

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  rose —

• 11 Jun 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill · Hansard source

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  Does the Minister agree with me that Teesside International airport is a real gem in our region, and it is absolutely critical that it returns to profitability as soon as possible?

• 11 Jun 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Bill, particularly the introduction of the revenue certainty mechanism, which is not only a sensible intervention but a timely one. It gives investors clarity, it gives producers confidence and it gives communities such as mine a sense that this transition will bring jobs rather than take them away. I thank Ministers for listening not only to the sector but to those of us who represent Teesside. In our region, we have a number of producers with an interest in scaling up SAF production—principally Alfanar, which has already invested £2.5 billion in our region and wants to go much further by building a brand-new plant that will create 2,300 construction jobs and 300 permanent jobs. Alfanar is not alone, however; we also have Iogen, Willis, Nova Pangaea, Abundia, Arcadia and many active producers or others looking to scale up—serious players with serious plans. I spoke to one earlier this week; it said that the Bill is exactly what the industry is looking for. May I put just a couple of questions to the Minister? What those producers need now is confidence that enabling work for final investment decisions can begin, ideally before the Bill completes its full legislative journey. Of course, there is a precedent for that in the Energy Act 2023. What engagement will the Minister have with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero on the carbon capture track project. I know that a number of the producers are keen to benefit from track 1 expansion, so producing those two things in train seems like a sensible thing to do, and I hope that there is cross-departmental engagement. Ultimately, I thank the Government and urge them to move at pace to deliver the jobs that we want for the industry in our region. I want to ensure that young people watching from working-class communities across Teesside know that these are not abstract opportunities that are distant from them, but opportunities for them that they can get into—like our expansion in skills training. This sector can be transformative for the Tees valley region—not only for Middlesbrough but for Redcar and Cleveland, Stockton, Darlington and Hartlepool. Our area suffered industrial decline for many decades, but now we are seeing new life and new industry. Finally, Teesside is taking off.

• 2 Jun 2025 · Fraud · Hansard source

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  Facebook Marketplace is responsible for three quarters of the fraud on social media, yet it seems uninterested in doing anything about that. Will the Minister assure the House that he will take Facebook to task, in order to clamp down on that fraud and make sure that consumers are protected?

• 2 Jun 2025 · Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  Will my hon. Friend give way?

• 22 May 2025 · School Teachers’ Review Body: Recommendations · Hansard source

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  I had not planned to ask a question, but I have to say that I was pretty surprised by the tone that the Opposition struck. I did a postgraduate degree in education, and I will never forget finding one of my professional mentors, who had been a teacher for years, crying at her desk because of the pressure that the then Government had put on her and other teachers. Is it not the case that the Conservatives left our teachers overstretched and undervalued, and this Government are taking a different approach?

• 22 May 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Thanks to the decisions of this Government, NHS waiting times have been falling consistently month on month, but there are still some delays for specific kinds of treatment. My constituent, Alan, has been waiting over a year for the specialist corrective procedure he urgently needs. Does the Leader of the House agree that these delays in specialist treatment deserve serious parliamentary attention?

• 22 May 2025 · Independent Sentencing Review · Hansard source

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  There are thousands of decent, moderate Conservatives all across the country who will have seen the ridiculous spectacle today of the Opposition denigrating David Gauke—of all people—on the prison system. The review was absolutely clear that short sentences are driving reoffending—60% reoffend within the year. Will the Minister set out the steps that she will take to cut crime and create fewer victims?

• 22 May 2025 · National Church Institutions: Safeguarding · Hansard source

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  Next month I will meet the Safeguarding Minister alongside my constituent and a group of survivors of abuse and safeguarding failure within the Church. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) for the work she has been doing to push the case for fully independent safeguarding processes. Will she continue to impress upon colleagues the need for full independence in terms of operations and oversight within the Church?

• 22 May 2025 · National Church Institutions: Safeguarding · Hansard source

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  6. What progress the National Church Institutions have made on improving safeguarding.

• 20 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Last week I raised with the Minister for Social Security and Disability the case of a local disability charity being hit by increased bank charges, and the Minister committed to work with me on the issue. Will Treasury Ministers do the same so that we can take these banks to task and support fantastic local organisations?

• 19 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Yesterday, a Conservative councillor in my constituency said that the Government were “dancing to the tune of warmongers” because of their support for British defence manufacturing, despite one of those manufacturers being in his ward. Do the Government believe, as I do, that we need to do more, not less, to support British defence manufacturing?

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

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  I thank my hon. Friend for setting out how we are falling behind many of our allies around the world. Does he share my concern that, for the first time, the UK is the only country in western Europe to be rated amber rather than green? It was a Labour Government who took forward LGBT rights in the past, and this Labour Government ought to do the same.

• 14 May 2025 · Rebalancing Regional Economies · Hansard source

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  Do the Government accept the subsidiarity principle wherein powers should not just sit at the mayoral level, but should be as close to the community as possible? That would empower our local authorities and communities themselves, rather than just creating structures that sit above communities and are distant from them.

• 14 May 2025 · Rebalancing Regional Economies · Hansard source

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  It is now nearly 13 years since the Institute for Public Policy Research North published its landmark report, “Northern Prosperity is National Prosperity”, which set out in black and white the evidence that investing in the regions—all regions across the UK—is one of the best ways to achieve growth nationally. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is long past time that we devolved power and funding in order to create jobs in all our communities across the UK?

• 13 May 2025 · Local Housing Need Assessment Reform · Hansard source

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  I commend the Government on their work to change the local connection rules to ensure that veterans can access social housing. In our region, the local authority has come in off the back of that and given veterans the highest priority banding for social housing. Will the Minister take a moment to commend our local council for that reform, which comes off the back of the work that the Government are doing?

• 13 May 2025 · Defence Industries: North-East · Hansard source

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  I completely agree. I have one note of caution for our region: although we have fantastic manufacturers and SMEs, it is important for our regional economy—the one my hon. Friend and I share—to have a proper skills pipeline. There is a real job for our combined authority and our mayor to step up and work with education providers to ensure that proper planning is in place. My hon. Friend has a fantastic college in his constituency—Hartlepool college, which has inspirational leadership from its principal, Darren Hankey—but such colleges need to be joined up with local manufacturers, so that there is a proper skills pipeline. All those manufacturers are vital for delivering local skills. Many of them offer advanced training and apprenticeships and ultimately provide high-quality, well-paid jobs in the areas that need them most. I recently met various manufacturers, both prime and SME, to discuss the issues that they face. They strongly welcome the Government’s decision to identify defence as one of the eight growth sectors in the industrial strategy. One manufacturer told me that it “puts defence in a different place” from where it was before. Manufacturers also welcome the decision to increase defence spending to 2.5%, the strategic defence review, the progress on trade with the US and the decision to step in to save British Steel. This Government are stepping up, not stepping back, and putting our strategic industries on a secure footing. Just four months ago, I spoke in this Chamber during a debate secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor (Alan Strickland) on the challenges that SMEs face in defence procurement. I called for better access for SMEs to the pipeline. I was therefore pleased to see the Government’s recent commitment to set direct SME spending targets, and I hope that the Minister will provide further clarity on when those will be published. As it stands, SMEs in the defence sector are often contracted for one-off, short-term jobs, and that can create challenges. The unpredictable, project-based nature of the contracts makes it difficult for companies to commit to the up-front capital investment needed to grow.