Marie Rimmer MP: speeches

Speeches

• 18 Mar 2026 · Freedom of Religion or Belief in China · Hansard source

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  I have to say that I did not hear everything that the hon. Member said, but I think we should do whatever we can to bring the issue to a head, one way or another. We cannot just leave it as it is. I urge the Government to make freedom of religion or belief in China a sustained priority in our diplomacy, multilateral engagement, sanctions policy and trade posture, because if freedom of conscience means anything, it must mean something when it is hardest to defend.

• 5 Mar 2026 · Palliative Care · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) for securing this vital debate. Her knowledge, understanding and compassion for people are outstanding and cannot be matched. Most people, when they are seriously ill, want to be at home, surrounded by the people who love them and whom they love. I know this personally from my own family’s experience. When my mother was dying, we were told that she had only a short time to live. She lived for another 22 days. During those 22 days, her hand was never left unheld by one of her children. Not once was she left alone. We laughed and talked, and we were able to be there with her. That experience stayed with me and all my family, and we treasure it. However, not everyone has that support. Some people reach the end of life alone, and we have a duty as a society to care for them too. That is one of the reasons I helped to establish the Willowbrook hospice in St Helens. Like many hospices, Willowbrook was created by the community itself. It was founded in 1993 by people who, like me, believed that families in our area deserved the same compassionate end-of-life care as those anywhere else. Today it is a wonderful place, with beautiful surroundings and gardens, and care that focuses on comfort, dignity, compassion, and people’s family and friends. It is rated outstanding by the Cheshire and Merseyside ICB, and provides short-term in-patient care for people with complex needs, alongside outreach, outpatient care, therapy and education services. The hospice has supported more than 10,000 patients since opening its doors, and it now receives over 1,000 referrals each year. Hospices exist to care for the individual person and their family. They give people a choice about where and how they spend the final part of their lives. They allow people to be treated not simply as patients, but as people—surrounded by family and friends, supported with compassion and dignity, and cared for in a way that recognises the humanity of those at the end of life. However, the reality is that, as charities, hospices are under enormous financial pressure. At Willowbrook, around 30% of funding comes from the ICB; the remaining 70% must be raised locally. That comes from 10 charity shops in St Helens and Knowsley, donations, the occasional legacy gift and, of course, sponsored walks. It costs £3.8 million each year to run the in-patient unit alone. In a community that is not particularly affluent, raising that level of funding year after year is incredibly challenging. The hospice is currently facing a large deficit. If this pattern continues, it could be forced to close within five years. The annual increase from the ICB was 2.2% last year and is 2.3% this year, but it is dependent on efficiency savings. The increases do not keep pace with inflation and are confirmed to the hospice partway through the year, which is very late, forcing it to set its budget without certainty. In truth, it is operating on a knife edge. The solution must be fairer funding. Patients who are medically fit for discharge, but who have no care package available at home, will be told that they do not meet the criteria for residing in a hospital, which is there for patients receiving treatment. Not many people know this until they get to that stage. There is no ready solution for people at the end of their lives if they are not receiving treatment in hospital or at home. We need funding for Willowbrook because it cannot meet the NHS nursing pay awards and is losing staff to NHS employers that can offer higher salaries, yet it is delivering NHS-commissioned care. The funding must reflect that reality, and it should pay NHS rates for hospice staff. However, we also need wider reform. The Government must get down to facing our end-of-life care crisis. It is not good enough to finance existing hospices, although such finance is needed, because a holistic infrastructure must be developed. Hospices are established only where individuals have developed them; they are not equally distributed everywhere. That means we need a clear national strategy for end-of-life and palliative care, including a national service framework; better data to understand where care is needed most; clear goals for improvement; and proper palliative training and resources for health and palliative care staff. Hospices such as Willowbrook show what compassion and end-of-life care can look like. Many people want that at home, and as I know, it can be provided at home, but without sustainable funding and a coherent national approach, such a service cannot continue to do the extraordinary work that so many families depend on and that the staff in nursing homes and hospices provide.

• 23 Feb 2026 · Industry and Exports (Financial Assistance) Bill · Hansard source

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  I rise to speak in support of amendment 1, which appears in the name of the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith). The Bill is narrow, but it gives us an opportunity to raise this matter. Thanks to the work of this House, public bodies such as the Department of Health and Social Care are legally required to eradicate slavery in their supply chains under the Health and Care Act 2022 and the National Health Service (Procurement, Slavery and Human Trafficking) Regulations 2025. We also strengthened the safeguards to ensure that public money is free from forced labour in last year’s Great British Energy Act 2025. There was a little bit of fuss about that at the time, but no slavery or human trafficking is present in any part of Great British Energy’s supply chain. UK Export Finance still lacks those protections, but amendment 1 would fix that inconsistency. If we are increasing the financial limits available to UK Export Finance, we should ensure that British support for business abroad is never tied to exploitation. It would make the protection much bigger by covering everything across Government. We tried something like that with the Great British Energy Bill, and I was told I was right that this would not have been covered, but the Bill then went to the Lords and came back pretty quick. I thank the right hon. Member for tabling his amendment.

• 11 Feb 2026 · Local Government Finance · Hansard source

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  What can councillors do to fund the statutory duties? People were given much better in the past, but we have to ration the services. They are quality services, and the integrated health has helped us with our social care. I do not want to go into party things, but the fact is that, under the Conservatives, St Helens lost £127 million a year from the support grant. We were left with something like £9 million or £11 million from the Government—that is all it was. The only way councils can get the funds to provide services is from the Government and income to the councils. Where should we get the funds from? We have no assets to sell, and we get very little. Yes, we have low-paid jobs, so it is a hike, but what we should be doing is taking it from the broadest shoulders; they should be bearing the burden. It is inappropriate and incompatible that the people on the lowest pay the biggest proportion of their incomes on the necessities of life, while others have mansions—some people have a cottage and nothing else. We do not all have a mansion in London, so we need to look at wealth.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  I want to turn to another measure in the Budget that speaks to fundamental fairness in our society: the high value council tax surcharge, known as the mansion tax. Under the last Government, a band D home in Darlington or Blackpool would cost nearly £300 more in council tax than a £10 million mansion in Mayfair, which cannot be right. Working families are paying more to support their local public services than owners of luxury penthouses, but the Chancellor’s Budget will put an end to that. Her high value council tax surcharge will ensure that those living in multimillion-pound homes who have long escaped their fair contribution pay more, easing the burden on other households. However, this is about more than domestic fairness. For decades, London’s most expensive properties have served as safety deposit boxes for corrupt wealth from around the world. Russian oligarchs have poured billions into luxury London property—not to live in, not to contribute to our communities, but simply to park their wealth beyond scrutiny. These properties sit empty, increasing in value, while some families struggle with overcrowding and soaring rents and many people attempt to sleep on the streets. The mansion tax sends a clear message: if people own property in Britain, they will contribute to Britain; if they use our capital as a private vault, they will pay their fair share; and if their wealth is tied to Putin’s regime, corruption and the exploitation of the Russian people, London will no longer offer sanctuary. Our Government have intensified pressure on Russia through widespread sanctions. Just in the last year, we have sanctioned Russia’s two largest oil companies—Rosneft and Lukoil—as well as the vessels it has been using to transport its oil and gas around the globe, but we must go further. It is not enough to freeze Russian assets; we must ensure that those assets are put to work rebuilding what Russia has destroyed. In October, our Government joined forces with those of France and Germany to signal our readiness to use frozen Russian Government assets to help Ukraine, and now the time has come for us to put words into action. I urge the Government to continue working with our European partners to establish a clear mechanism for using those frozen Russian assets for Ukraine’s reconstruction. The principle is simple: Russia bombed it and wrecked it, and Russia should pay for its damage. The proceeds from sanctioned oligarchs’ frozen wealth should not remain static while Ukrainian families live without electricity, heating or homes, and with minimal food. This Budget shows that our Government are prepared to make difficult choices in pursuit of fairness. The mansion tax and our strengthened sanctions regime are two sides of the same coin. They represent a Britain that will not tolerate a system rigged in favour of the corrupt and the powerful.

• 5 Nov 2025 · Financial Transparency: Overseas Territories · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to work under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) for securing this important debate, and for his excellent introduction to it. There is one particularly alarming case that we cannot overlook in this debate: that of Roman Abramovich. His activities epitomise how opaque offshore structures undermine UK financial integrity and global trust. In a letter to the Chancellor dated 10 September, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) and I, as co-chairs of the APPG on Magnitsky sanctions and reparation, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West, as chair of the APPG on anti-corruption and responsible tax, warned that Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich may owe HMRC up to £1 billion on profits from his multimillion-pound hedge fund investments. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that these hedge funds, although registered offshore, were being run from the UK. Under UK law, they should have been paying UK taxes. This investigation revealed that Abramovich benefited from a fraudulent scheme designed to evade €14 million in VAT due in Cyprus on his fleet of superyachts. Cypriot tax authorities have since filed criminal charges to recover more than €25 million in tax. As our letter pointed out, HMRC has yet to respond to these findings. Even when journalists offered to brief HMRC’s permanent secretary, their offer went unanswered. That silence has raised serious concerns about the Government’s willingness to act decisively against those who use offshore networks and shield vast sums from scrutiny. The Government’s reply, sent in October, insists that “everyone should pay the tax that is legally due”, and highlighted new enforcement measures, including 5,500 extra compliance staff and the creation of a complex cross tax and offshore team. Those steps are welcome, but they do not answer our central question: why is there still no visible enforcement action in this case? This is not just about one oligarch; it is about ensuring that our own financial system and the jurisdictions linked to it cannot be used to hide wealth, evade tax or escape sanctions. That £1 billion would build the 500 schools so badly needed in our poorest areas.