Martin Wrigley MP: speeches

Speeches

• 23 Apr 2025 · Hospitals · Hansard source

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  Coming back to community hospitals, I came to this House to try to save Teignmouth community hospital, which has been under threat of closure because Torbay, its parent hospital, has such a massive maintenance backlog that it cannot afford to maintain both itself and Teignmouth hospital, so it is shutting down community hospitals. In Devon, we have just three principal hospitals: North Devon, which we understand is under pressure, Torbay, which is under pressure, and Exeter. We need the community hospitals. Will the Minister stop Teignmouth hospital from being shut, so that we can maintain it until it can be rebuilt?

• 22 Apr 2025 · Residential Estate Management Companies · Hansard source

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  In the town of Teignmouth in my constituency of Newton Abbot, FirstPort has been buying up other management companies, and the sinking funds—the contingency paid by residents—appear to have disappeared: they have been sunk. Does my hon. Friend agree that that should be looked into?

• 2 Apr 2025 · Non-disclosure Agreements · Hansard source

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  Does the Minister agree that we need to change the social contract for companies such that they no longer take all the benefits of limited liability and simply focus on shareholder value? Will he support my better business Bill—the Company Directors (Duties) Bill—which will have its Second Reading on 4 July, and meet me to discuss it? The Bill is backed by some 3,000 businesses, the Institute of Directors and others. As I mentioned, it would balance the responsibility of company directors with the interests of shareholders, employees and the environment; fundamentally change their basic responsibilities in how they run their companies; and therefore turn the purpose of the company to good, including that of the employees. It would prevent many of the circumstances that we are describing today.

• 2 Apr 2025 · Non-disclosure Agreements · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Sheffield Heeley (Louise Haigh) on securing this important debate. We have heard from Members how widespread this issue is: we heard about the hospitality industry and the creative industries, we just heard about teachers, and the hon. Member for Congleton (Mrs Russell) told us that it occurs in every HR department. I am horrified that it also happens in the NHS. I was approached by a constituent whose employment as an NHS nurse was terminated, but I do not know many of the details, because she cannot speak to me about it. Her employment was terminated due to—how can I put it best?—a medical condition that she suffered and is now over, but she cannot talk about it, and it has given her issues ever since. I do not know how many people in my constituency fall into that category, because, as the right hon. Member for Sheffield Heeley said, they cannot talk to us about it.

• 2 Apr 2025 · Non-disclosure Agreements · Hansard source

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  I fully agree. Absolutely—people do not know what they can do. Will the Minister investigate how widespread the use of NDAs is in the NHS? Given that it is probably in the Government’s power to ban it in the NHS without primary legislation, will he take steps immediately to have it stopped and seek what recompense is required for those who have suffered it? I agree absolutely that this practice must be stopped entirely. It is just one of many poor practices that are carried out by some businesses—not all, but some—often unwittingly. That is why I introduced my Company Directors (Duties) Bill, which will have its Second Reading debate on 4 July. Right now, the company directors’ duties say that they must put shareholder interests first and might have regard to other things. My Bill—I hope the Minister will consider working with me on making it happen—would change company law so that directors have a duty to balance the interests of shareholders, employees and the environment. I seek the support of Members present to make the Bill law; I hope that we can have further discussions to see what we can do to get it into the Government’s schedule. Until we put that balance at the foundation of the company directors’ duties, it will be impossible to get rid of circumstances, such as those the hon. Member for Congleton described, where company directors behave badly. I fully support the right hon. Member for Sheffield Heeley on all the issues that she identified and will happily engage and do whatever I can to advance work on them.

• 27 Mar 2025 · Community Buses: Category B Licence Holders · Hansard source

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  My constituency is fortunate to have both Dawlish community transport and Newton Abbot community transport. They provide vital services for many people who would otherwise be isolated and lonely but, like many other volunteer groups, they are finding it hard to recruit. Recruiting drivers for their minibus services is a particularly. Anyone who took their driving test before 1997 automatically got a D1 minibus class licence, as I did. Since then, younger drivers have had to take a new driving test; the estimated associated training and costs are between £800 and £1,800. Will the Secretary of State work with me to add exceptions to D1 requirements to cover community transport and other volunteer community groups?

• 27 Mar 2025 · Community Buses: Category B Licence Holders · Hansard source

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  18. If she will make it her policy to allow holders of category B driving licences to drive community buses.

• 26 Mar 2025 · Local Authorities (Changes to Years of Ordinary Elections) (England) Order 2025 · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Hobhouse. I would be delighted to invite the Lib Dem leader of Somerset council to elaborate on the condition in which he found the council when he took over, if I thought that the hon. Member for Broxbourne wished to read it; I suspect he would not. I thank the Minister and the Government for some things, such as for including the districts in the final invitation to participate in this process. I thank them for not allowing Devon county council in its outrageous attempt to stop the elections in Devon, knowing that 66% of the existing Conservative councillors now intend not to re-stand. I wonder why they wanted to stop the elections. They put forward a proposal that had no consensus across Devon whatever. I also thank the Minister for the multi-year settlements that are in sight, stopping the hand-to-mouth and “Hunger Games”-type funding that has been the scourge of local councils across the country. I am, however, very worried about the timescales, the volume of work and the cost of the work required of local councils. I am particularly worried about what might happen with the projected 2027 elections if the timescales are not met. Will the Minister clarify the dates that we are looking at in this process? Which are fixed and which flexible? How will the process be managed as we go through, and should we not meet the fixed dates that are set out so far? What will happen with multi-year settlements for councils that are not involved in this first phase of reorganisation? Can we expect to see those coming through sooner rather than later, please?

• 26 Mar 2025 · Local Authorities (Changes to Years of Ordinary Elections) (England) Order 2025 · Hansard source

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  The issue with most such situations in the past has been not only a short period of time for councils to respond, which they typically have managed to do, but the prolonged period of radio silence once those responses have been sent to Government. Can the Minister assure us that the Government will respond quickly to the proposals, so that councils can get on with them?

• 26 Feb 2025 · Online Safety Act: Implementation · Hansard source

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  If the Government fully support our concerns about small but harmful sites, will the statutory instrument be reworked to bring them back into category 1, as the Act states?

• 26 Feb 2025 · Online Safety Act: Implementation · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) on securing this debate. We have heard some consistent themes coming through. We have heard about Ofcom perhaps misinterpreting what the House intended with the Act. We have heard about the importance of the Ofcom code of practice, how it is constructed and how it drives online platforms’ behaviour. We have heard from the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) about the importance of conformity across different platforms. We have heard that regulators might not be fulfilling the expectations of this House. We have also heard from the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) about lawful but awful content and about how we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I think there is a feeling that the Act does what it does, but that the interpretation has not been what was hoped for and that there is still much more to do. We heard from the hon. Member for Livingston (Gregor Poynton) about the “legal but feasible” loophole, and also about bringing in safety by design, which became a consistent theme throughout the rest of the conversations. My hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Monica Harding) talked about the design to protect children and the framework’s lack of mitigation on livestreaming, and said that seven-year-olds and 17-year-olds are treated the same. That is clearly not right. The hon. Member for Hitchin (Alistair Strathern) impressed upon us the urgency and importance of the children’s safety codes. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) cited the astonishing fact that 83% of 10 to 15-year-olds have phones—that is an amazing proportion—and also mentioned cyber-bullying. Other hon. Members spoke about other areas, but the same things came up. As a member of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee and, until recently, a tribunal member with the telecoms regulator—that responsibility has now moved to Ofcom—I have seen the importance of the codes of practice and how long it takes to revise them. Thirty years in the telecoms industry showed me how tough age assessment can be. I have also spent time delivering app stores, but before the age of Google and Apple phones. It is clear that the hard-won amendment to include smaller sites with harmful content has been lost through its exclusion from the statutory instrument. In the Bill Committee, the Minister said that we must do everything in our power, and that there is much more to do. We have heard a lot about what needs to be done, and we urge the Government to do it. We urge them to look again at the exclusion of small but harmful sites and to continue to look at how we can improve the implementation of safety by design.

• 12 Feb 2025 · Google Quantum Computing Chip · Hansard source

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  3. What assessment he has made of the potential implications for his policies of the development of the Google quantum computing chip.

• 12 Feb 2025 · Google Quantum Computing Chip · Hansard source

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  Learning from the successful Y2K, or year 2000, prevention of systems failures, what progress has the Secretary of State made in considering post-quantum cryptography to prevent the so-called Y2Q—year to quantum—end of privacy, and what support is being provided for the development of quantum computing in the UK after the recent announcement of the Willow chip?

• 5 Feb 2025 · English Devolution and Local Government · Hansard source

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  I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I thank the Deputy Prime Minister for allowing the people of my constituency to vote in the Devon county council elections this year, and I congratulate her on seeing through the tired Tory administration, which was seeking to avoid the voters’ verdict. May I ask her for an assurance that when she sends out her invitation to the two-tier areas, that will include district councils as well as the county council, so that we get a representative view from across the entire area?

• 4 Feb 2025 · Draft Online Safety Act 2023 (Category 1, Category 2A and Category 2B Threshold Conditions) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  Absolutely—I am. The Secretary of State’s decision to proceed with this narrow interpretation of the Online Safety Act provisions, and the failure to use the power they have to reject Ofcom’s imperfect advice, will allow small, risky platforms to continue to operate without the most stringent regulatory restrictions available. That leaves significant numbers of vulnerable users—women and individuals from minority groups—at risk of serious harm from targeted activity on these platforms. I will set a few more questions for the Minister. How do His Majesty’s Government intend to assess whether Ofcom’s regulatory approach to small but high-harm sites is proving effective, and have any details been provided on Ofcom’s schedule of research about such sites? What assessment have the Government made of the different harms occurring on small, high-harm platforms? Have they broken this down by type of harm, and will they make such information available? Have the Government received legal advice about the use of service disruption orders for small but high-harm sites? Do the Government expect Ofcom to take enforcement action against small but high-harm sites, and have they made an assessment of the likely timescales for enforcement action? Will the Government set out criteria against which they expect Ofcom to keep its approach to small but high-harm sites under continual review, as set out in their draft statement of strategic priorities for online safety? Was the Minister aware of the previous Government’s commitment that Select Committees in both Houses would be given the opportunity to scrutinise draft Online Safety Act statutory instruments before they were laid? If she was, why did that not happen in this case? Will she put on record her assurances that Online Safety Act statutory instruments will in future be shared with the relevant Committees before they are laid? For all those reasons, I will vote against the motion.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Draft Online Safety Act 2023 (Category 1, Category 2A and Category 2B Threshold Conditions) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

• 4 Feb 2025 · Draft Online Safety Act 2023 (Category 1, Category 2A and Category 2B Threshold Conditions) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  I do not have the benefit of having gone through the Act in its entirety, so I appreciate the input of hon. Members on this subject. It is that one word: “or”. Amendment 245 entailed moving from a test of size “and” functionality to a test of size “or” functionality. That is not, as far as I can hear from what the Minister has said, what is causing the problem; it should be giving the Government the opportunity to keep that in there. In setting these categorisations on just size, they are ignoring that. The Minister also mentioned that the Act did not give the Secretary of State the power to allow somebody else to put organisations or sites into these categories; no, that is not what is being asked. It is about a recommendation from Ofcom for the Secretary of State to bring those smaller types of sites into the category. What this change does is remove the powers to stop those small sites that promote misogyny and racist hatred and those things that are very harmful, and which we saw examples of in the summer. The Science, Innovation and Technology Committee is looking into those events at the moment, as I know, because I sit on the Committee. However, those powers are being thrown away, and an opportunity is being missed, because the powers for setting the thresholds have been misinterpreted. I beg the Minister to take a moment and look again, because the Government are getting this wrong.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Draft Online Safety Act 2023 (Category 1, Category 2A and Category 2B Threshold Conditions) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  The Minister raised the issue of age verification, which is good. However, she did not say how “harmful to adults”, “harmful to vulnerable minorities” and “harmful to women” are categorised. Children are protected in this case, but those other groups are not. Also, in response to the answer that the Minister just gave, the difficulty is not the Ofcom powers; it is the obligation on the provider. If we have not put a provider into category 1, it does not have the same level of obligation as category 1 companies do. No matter what powers Ofcom has and no matter what fines it imposes, it cannot get such companies to give those commitments to a category 1 level if they are not in that category. Removing the section is not giving Ofcom the tools it needs. The Minister was absolutely right earlier when she said that there is much more to do. Why drop this ability to put other sites in category 1?

• 4 Feb 2025 · Draft Online Safety Act 2023 (Category 1, Category 2A and Category 2B Threshold Conditions) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Christopher. I am disappointed in this statutory instrument. I recognise the Minister’s acknowledgment of the small sites, high-harm issue, but the issue is far more important and we are missing an opportunity here. Can the Minister set out why the regulations as drafted do not follow the will of Parliament, accepted by the previous Government and written into the Act, that thresholds for categorisation can be based on risk or size? That was a long-argued point that went through many iterations. The then Minister accepted the amendment that was put forward and said: “many in the House have steadfastly campaigned on the issue of small but risky platforms.” —[ Official Report , 12 September 2023; Vol. 737, c. 806.] He confirmed that the legislation would now give the Secretary of State the discretion to decide whether to set a threshold based on the number of users or the functionalities offered, or both factors, with the change ensuring that the framework was as flexible as possible in responding to the risk landscape. That has been thrown away in this new legislation. The Minister just said that we must do everything in our power, and yet the Government are throwing out a crucial change made to the Act to actually give them more power. They are getting rid of a power by changing this. The amendment was to ensure that small sites dedicated to harm, such as sites providing information on suicide or self-harm or set up to target abuse and hatred at minority groups, like we saw in the riots in the summer, were subject to the fullest range of duties. When Ofcom published its advice, however, it disregarded this flexibility and advised that regulation should be laid bringing only the large platforms into category 1.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Local Post Offices · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. The distinction between Crown post offices and franchised post offices cannot be drawn heavily enough. In my constituency, we lost Crown post offices in Newton Abbot and in Dawlish, and the one in Teignmouth—which I believe is the last in my constituency; all the rest are franchises—is now under threat. Does he agree that the franchise system can provide a useful service but is absolutely no substitute for the full Crown post office service, which must remain?

• 22 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Money) · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Lady give way?

• 20 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I draw the House’s attention to my entry on the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. At Teignbridge district council, I oversaw the commencement of council house building for the first time in 30 years. Will the Secretary of State meet me and others to discuss what can be done to make it easier for other councils to build more council homes?

• 15 Jan 2025 · Local Government Reorganisation · Hansard source

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  I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Talking of localism, district councils provided a useful amount of local accountability. How will the Minister ensure that local accountability continues when the regional identity may be different? May I also ask about the future of towns and parishes, which are not mentioned at all, and neither are national park authorities? How will those be empowered to have more local responsibility?

• 14 Jan 2025 · Railway Services: South-West · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend makes a very good point. It is even harder for those down in Cornwall than it is for those in Devon. Both of these significant impacts are examples of the historic lack of investment in the railways in the south-west. In the south-west, we can often feel like second-class travellers—watching our services get worse so that other services can be made better. Local rail services in Devon are few and far between. Rather than a few minutes between services—as we enjoy here in London—we are lucky if we have one or two trains an hour. Trains are often made up of fewer carriages than planned due to faults or breakdowns. Schoolchildren travelling locally between towns have been unable to get on to services because they are too full, due to their having only half the expected number of carriages. A constituent told me that her young daughter was left in tears, having been denied access to a train with her group, which triggered an anxiety attack. On the London services, mobile phone coverage is barely useable for much of the journey. While for some that may be a blessed relief, it means that wi-fi connections are not reliable—a huge issue in a world where so many people rely on good connections to usefully work on the train. I consider myself fortunate, going to Devon. If I were to continue the journey in Cornwall, the train speed would slow down considerably—as my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) just mentioned. Journey times could be significantly reduced by even partial electrification, as hybrid trains on the line could speed up faster and climb some of the hills quicker. I am sure my Cornish colleagues could elaborate. I ask the Minister to consider what might be done to show my constituents, and the population of the wider south-west, that they have not been ignored. I am asking for us to receive some benefits from new investment, not just delays to accommodate fast access for others to the midlands and the north. I am specifically asking for more train carriages for more local services; full metro services with no greater than half an hour between scheduled trains; monitoring and accelerating the roll-out of the Access for All programme; reliable wifi across the entire route; electrification to improve journey times to Cornwall; fast trains from Wales to the west to the south-west not stopping at Old Oak Common; and commitment to complete the Dawlish rail resilience programme.

• 14 Jan 2025 · Railway Services: South-West · Hansard source

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  I agree entirely that the impact of Old Oak Common is immense, and will not be just during the construction phase. The six or seven years of delays and cancellations at weekends and Christmases have been covered in this Chamber before, so I will not repeat the list of weeks and weeks of diversions to Euston and significantly reduced services. I have already started to receive complaints from my constituents about the inability of Euston station to cope with the volume of passengers when the trains cannot complete their journeys to Paddington. But the piece of the plan that adds insult to injury for the millions of passengers from the south-west, is the idea that every Great Western Railway train will stop at Old Oak Common, even after construction is completed. It has been somewhat unclear—some misleading averages have been quoted—but having met with GWR and Network Rail, I understand that stopping at Old Oak Common will add some five to 15 minutes to every single journey. Adding 15 minutes on to the fast train—of around two hours—from Exeter to London is significant, and even more so on the quicker trains from Cheltenham or Bristol. Travel to Birmingham is already available via Bristol. Looking at journey times, it will usually be faster to go to Birmingham via Bristol, unless users are further east than Swindon or Westbury. Stopping at Old Oak Common will bring little or no benefit to the majority of the long-distance rail users of the west, south-west and Wales. Can the Minister confirm that fast trains from the south-west should be able to go through Old Oak Common without stopping?