Luke Myer MP: speeches

Speeches

• 9 Sept 2026 · Public Confidence in the Police · Hansard source

  More

  I thank my hon. Friend for paying tribute to our incredibly brave police officers in Cleveland, who have had an extraordinarily difficult couple of weeks but have dealt with the situation with extreme professionalism. One of their challenges is that since 2010 Cleveland has 220 fewer officers—it is at the bottom of the table for police cuts—so it is extraordinary how the force has approached the situation with such professionalism, bravery and courage despite that situation. Does my hon. Friend agree that the funding formula needs to be urgently reviewed so that we are not penalising areas of high deprivation?

• 7 Sept 2026 · Hate Crime Law: Misogyny · Hansard source

  More

  I absolutely agree, and I thank the hon. Member for making that point. That takes me to the next point I wanted to raise, from the second specialist organisation that I spoke to today. ARCH Teesside does vital work supporting victims and survivors of sexual violence and preventing harm before situations escalate; it puts wraparound support around an individual. It raised with me today a practical concern about what will happen to prevention funding, particularly when police and crime commissioners are abolished from 2028. They are often a main source of funding for local specialist violence against women and girls organisations. ARCH Teesside is concerned that the need for services will not change when the structures change, and it does not have certainty about the funding currently held by PCCs. Organisations such as ARCH need to be able to plan ahead, retain specialist staff and know what funding framework they will be working with. I will be grateful if the Minister can give some reassurance that specialist local services will not lose dedicated prevention funding as responsibilities move away from PCCs, and tell us a little about the clarity that organisations will receive about the future framework into which they will need to bid.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Hate Crime Law: Misogyny · Hansard source

  More

  PCCs will be abolished in 2028, but the reforms will take much longer than that. In many parts of the country the PCC role will easily transfer over to a mayoral role, but that will not be the case in Cleveland, where the boundary of the police is not coterminous with that of the combined authority. The Minister mentioned that one of my councils is very advanced in this work. Can she take away the proposals for some of the funding and powers to go straight to the local authority level in cases where there are such tensions between different government boundaries and bodies?

• 7 Sept 2026 · Hate Crime Law: Misogyny · Hansard source

  More

  I agree. This is slightly tangential to this debate—I apologise—but when I was in local government, we set up a specialist team to work with families and young people at risk of exploitation, and we gave them that sort of long-term focus and freedom to approach things in a range of different ways, rather than giving them time-limited funding, say for three months. Chopping and changing can be very disruptive for families, and it is exactly the same here. The petitioners are right to ask Parliament to take misogyny more seriously. The Government have taken some important steps, which I welcome, but I hope they will now build on that work, look carefully at the remaining gaps in the law and, above all, make sure that the ambition of halving violence against women and girls is matched by what women experience in communities such as mine.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Hate Crime Law: Misogyny · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) on introducing the debate. I am grateful to the petitioners for bringing this important issue before the House, and to the more than 114,000 people who signed the petition, including over 100 from my constituency. Might I say, as a former sabbatical officer myself, that this is yet more evidence that the phrase “student politics” should be seen as a compliment in this place, rather than a criticism? Misogyny and violence against women and girls are not inevitable, and they should not be dismissed as something that women and girls simply have to put up with, whether on the street, in the workplace, in school or, increasingly, as the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) said, online. I have spoken in this place before about the scourge of deepfakes and AI-enabled abuse. In the spirit of cross-party collaboration, I also commend the work of Baroness Owen in this regard. I welcome the Government’s commitment to tackle violence against women and girls and halve it within a decade. Prevention, early intervention, relentless pursuit of the perpetrators and proper support for victims are the foundations that we absolutely need. We need to deal with the attitudes and behaviours that allow violence and abuse to develop in the first place. That is particularly important when we consider the growth of misogynistic material online. Young people can now be exposed very quickly to content that presents contempt for women as normal, glorifies control and abuse, and can draw boys and young men into increasingly extreme communities. That is why the Government are right to put prevention at the heart of their strategy, including through schools, colleges and universities, and to recognise the particular challenge posed by online misogyny. However, there is much more to do, and the petitioners are right to ask us to recognise misogyny as a hate crime. The fact is that our hate crime framework has developed unevenly, although we have seen some progress. As we heard from the hon. Member for Bath and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe, the Crime and Policing Act added sex to the characteristics covered by aggravated offences, which is a significant step forward. But the petition raises the wider question of consistency, and I hope the Minister will look carefully at whether hostility on the basis of sex or gender should be reflected consistently across the wider sentencing framework. There is also the question of stirring up hatred. The Law Commission has previously recommended extending such offences to cover sex or gender, in part because of the growth of extremist misogynistic ideologies and their potential to contribute to serious offending. I heard today from organisations working on the frontline in my constituency, and what they told me should be part of this debate as well. My Sister’s Place supports women experiencing domestic abuse across Teesside. We have had some progress recently in the form of domestic abuse specialists now embedded in the 999 control centre at Cleveland police—something that the Government promised in their manifesto and are now starting to deliver. That is a positive step forward, but one issue that My Sister’s Place raised with me is that there are simply not enough refuge spaces or suitable move-on housing locally in Middlesbrough, so a woman who makes the extraordinarily difficult decision to leave an abusive relationship faces the question, “Where is it safe to go?” I would welcome the Minister’s saying a little about how the Government intend to improve the availability of safe accommodation and, crucially, the route from emergency refuge provision to decent and permanent housing.

• 1 Sept 2026 · Policing in Cleveland · Hansard source

  More

  The whole of Teesside has been shaken by the tragic deaths of PC Tom Clough and PC Matthew Blades last week, and the real Teesside—the one not depicted in the media—is the one that filled up the Riverside with a standing ovation for those two brave officers on Saturday, that has raised over £1 million for their families and that stands with our emergency services every single day. However, those services need their Government to stand with them, too. I am grateful for the £2 million extra funding that has been announced today, and for the 300 extra officers who have been deployed from across the country to keep our streets safe in the short term, but what we need in the long term is funding formula reform, so will the Home Secretary bring that forward at pace and ensure that we get the fair funding settlement that Cleveland so desperately needs?

• 14 Jul 2026 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to follow my constituency neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald). I share his views about the need for action on the Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys inquiry. When I first considered running for public office, my wife said to me that she was sure that at some point I would end up voting for things with which she did not agree, but that I must promise her that I would do one thing, and that was never to engage with The Sun . That is one small snapshot of the depth of feeling in her family, who are from Wavertree and Kirkby, and in families across the Merseyside region. They are well represented today by all my colleagues from that part of the world, but in particular by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne), whose speech was one of the finest I have heard in this place—and outside it as well. I also, of course, pay tribute to the Hillsborough families whose courage and determination have brought us to this point. For decades those families were forced to fight not only with their grief, but against institutions that should have served them. They faced delay, denial and the closing of ranks. They were made to prove the truth again and again, while those in positions of authority avoided responsibility. No family should ever have to endure that. It is a credit to them that they did not give up, and their campaign has changed our country’s understanding of public accountability. The duty of candour in the Bill makes it harder for public bodies to hide the truth, mislead the public, or obstruct those seeking answers. It says that public service must mean honesty, especially when things have gone badly wrong. I pay tribute to the Ministers who have led the Bill through the House, including my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), who is sitting in front of me and who also made an excellent speech. It takes great bravery for the Executive to agree to restrict their own power, and I think that applying the offence they have created of misleading the public to senior members of the Government is a courageous thing for a Government to step up and agree to do. I therefore support clause 11, but I also feel strongly that it ought to apply to all of us as politicians, and I am grateful to the more than 30 Members on both sides of the House who supported my amendments 13 to 18 to that effect. In the age of disinformation and the rise of autocracy, politicians who intentionally or recklessly engage in serious or repeated dishonesty on a matter of significant public concern must face consequences, and I hope to hear more from the Minister about that. None the less, I am firmly in support of the Bill. Nothing can bring back those 97 people who went to watch a football match on a sunny afternoon, or return the years taken from the families in their long struggle for truth, but we can learn from that injustice. We can support bereaved families at inquests, and we can ensure that future families do not face the same walls of silence and obstruction. I pay tribute again to all those who have campaigned for justice, and I am pleased to support the Bill today.

• 13 Jul 2026 · Police Officer Numbers · Hansard source

  More

  I welcome the 48 new neighbourhood officers and policy community support officers who have joined Cleveland police in the last year, but I want to see an overhaul of the national police funding formula to support the Cleveland area. The Policing Minister has committed to do that, but can she clarify the timeline for when we will see the formula changed and more officers back on our streets again?