Marie Rimmer MP: speeches

Speeches

• 9 Mar 2026 · Type 1 Diabetes: Infant Testing · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this evening, Sir Alec—for the first time as well. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Irene Campbell) for securing this important debate. Let me tell the Chamber about Gracie, a little girl from the historic village of Newton-le-Willows in St Helens, in the north-west of England. In November 2018, Gracie was only one year old when she was rushed to hospital. Only days earlier, she had been excited about her first Halloween party, dressed as cowgirl Jessie—a very enjoyable day was had by all. Gracie’s parents thought that she simply had a cough and cold, but within hours she became desperately ill. By the time her parents got to her GP the next morning, Gracie was lethargic, vomiting and soon became unresponsive. A quick finger-prick test in the hospital revealed the truth: undiagnosed type 1 diabetes and diabetic ketoacidosis. Doctors later told her parents that Gracie had been just 15 minutes away from dying, just like that. Thankfully, Gracie survived, and today she is thriving, but her family’s story had not ended there. They had to fight to access the life-changing diabetes technology that helps to keep little children like Gracie safe. They are still fighting hard to change the law so that access to this technology is no longer determined by postcode but is available to all who need it. Gracie’s story has a happy ending, but many families are not so fortunate. That is why I join colleagues today in calling for funding so that infants can be offered routine testing for type 1 diabetes. It is right to recognise that the Government have not ignored this challenge. NHS England has established a national task and finish group bringing together leading clinicians, researchers and experts to assess the opportunities and challenges for a national diabetes screening programme. The early surveillance for autoimmune diabetes or ELSA study is exploring the feasibility and the benefits of screening for type 1 diabetes, from newborns all the way to late teenagers. The recent findings of the first half of the study reveal that a type 1 diabetes autoantibody childhood screening programme is workable in the real world. I welcome that work and thank those involved in getting this far. However, I hope that evidence from studies like ELSA will reinforce the lesson from Gracie’s story: that early detection saves lives. Gracie’s story is a happy one, but too many others end in tragedy. We have the opportunity to prevent this, to detect the disease earlier, to protect children sooner and to spare families the trauma that Gracie’s parents endured. We must act now to ensure that Gracie’s story is remembered as a warning, not repeated as a tragedy. I do not think the country can afford not to go ahead.

• 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.

• 28 Oct 2025 · Obesity and Fatty Liver Disease · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Efford. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Dr Cooper) for securing this important debate. It is a pleasure to follow all the hon. Members who have spoken; we are all concerned about what is happening in our constituencies. This issue was brought to my attention by a constituent whose father had died—I will go into her human story later. After speaking to her in Portcullis House, I wrote to every practice in my constituency highlighting the facts of St Helens, in case they did not know them—and that is no disrespect to our medical professionals. Before I go into some facts, I thank the British Liver Trust and the Foundation for Liver Research, which have worked closely to prepare a joint debate briefing for MPs. I also recognise the excellent work by the Foundation for Liver Research at the Roger Williams Institute of Liver Studies, which continues to drive world-leading research in metabolic liver disease to help to shape how it is diagnosed and treated. Sadly, St Helens has the highest rate of deaths from liver disease in England, at 43.5 per 100,000, and the second-highest rate of deaths from fatty liver disease. The north of England consistently has the highest rates of liver disease and obesity, and premature mortality from liver disease is as much as six times higher than in the least deprived areas of the country. My constituency suffers at the knife-edge of this crisis: premature death rates from liver disease in St Helens were the worst in the country in 2023, at 43.5 per 100,000—double the England average of 21.9 per 100,000. Premature death rates from fatty liver disease in St Helens were twice the national rate, and the rate of overweight or obese year 6 children is 41.2%, which is markedly higher than the national average of 35.6%. The NHS Cheshire and Merseyside integrated care board that covers my constituency has in place only a partial pathway for the early detection of liver disease, despite the north of England having the highest rates of death and hospitalisation from liver disease. As of 2023, it did not have a named person responsible for liver disease, and only Liverpool carries out proactive case-finding for patients at high risk of liver disease. The inconsistencies in care that face my constituents and many more people are played out across England, placing thousands of patients at high risk of developing serious liver outcomes. I will turn now to the human impact of obesity and fatty liver disease, speaking on behalf of one of my constituents, Sara, the young lady I met with her widowed stepmum. They have asked me to speak out and share their story. Sara’s dad, Stephen, was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 2000 and told he had a fatty liver in 2014, but not to worry about it. He received a liver scan two years later, after which no further action was taken. It was only when Stephen was admitted to hospital in 2024, for an unrelated condition, that he was diagnosed with advanced fatty liver disease, and he sadly died from the disease a few weeks later, aged 62. Sara said: “I know everyone thinks their dad is amazing, but mine really, really was. He was a gentleman in every sense of the word and was so kind, loving and generous. To say we’re shocked, devastated and heartbroken at his death due to MASLD (metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease) and HE (hepatic encephalopathy) is an understatement. He was just 62 and had so much to look forward to. My dad Stephen wasn’t a drinker, but liked a sweet treat every now and then when he was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 2000. His diabetes was well managed and he didn’t need much in way of medication due to his healthy lifestyle. Dad especially loved cycling and walking in the Lake District. He did everything right, but it wasn’t enough. In 2014 blood tests revealed deranged LFTs and in his annual diabetic reviews my dad was told he had an abnormal liver but not to worry about it. He was never referred to anyone and the only scan I can see in his medical notes was in 2016, then nothing. In April 2023 he was feeling really lethargic which his doctors thought was an iron deficiency and prescribed tablets. He told my sister his blood results had come back fine, adding: ‘Nothing to worry about, love, I have a fatty liver, but I’ve always had a fatty liver’. By September Dad was quite withdrawn, forgetful, slurring his words, and kept going back to bed. The doctors were doing lots of tests and thought it might be something neurological like Parkinson’s Disease, but still weren’t looking at his liver. By December my dad was like a zombie and I thought could it be depression. If only we had known then that they were mild HE episodes.” As Stephen’s family come to terms with their loss, his daughter Sara and widow Dorothy have been campaigning with the British Liver Trust to raise awareness of fatty liver disease and its causes, and the urgent need for early diagnosis and effective national liver care pathways. It is those two ladies who brought this issue to my attention. One of their key asks is as follows: “We need assurance from government that the NHSE Liver Transformation Programme will be extended (as NHSE transition into Department of Health) and that the programme will be properly funded and resourced to ensure consistent care and early detection across England.” I will add to that a request for ICBs to look at the illnesses in their area and focus their attention on their community and our constituents.