Melanie Ward MP: speeches

Speeches

• 16 Jun 2026 · Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill · Hansard source

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  I certainly agree. Misinformation and disinformation are a huge challenge to our democracy and our country. We know that many enemy nations, such as Russia and Iran, are seeking to exploit loopholes, and I believe the Government have to take further action on that, for sure. We should not wait to find out whether AI has the potential to damage our critical national infrastructure; we know that in some cases it does, and we should be prepared for it. “Catastrophic risk” includes harm to critical infrastructure, national security or a severe, large-scale harm to human life. Governments should have the power to prevent those risks from coming to pass. It is our No. 1 duty to keep our citizens safe. In a speech in April, the Secretary of State argued in favour of greater AI sovereignty in the UK, and kill switches would provide exactly that—sovereign control over the most dangerous risks posed by artificial intelligence. New clause 12 includes proportionality and accountability, and the costs of implementing kill switches on data centres would be minimal, particularly in comparison with the financial losses associated with major cyber-attacks; we have heard more about that from many of my hon. Friends in this debate. It would ensure that there is parliamentary reporting within seven days of any direction from the Secretary of State and a debate in this House at the earliest opportunity. Any operator served with direction would have an immediate right to receive a High Court review. We are elected to this House first and foremost to keep our nation safe. AI developers are moving at a pace far, far faster than Governments, and they are racing towards superintelligence. It is crucial that if—or, more likely, when—that is achieved, we have the right safeguards in place to avoid catastrophic outcomes. That is a crucial part of our national resilience and an issue that I and others who are present today continue to speak about, because it badly needs more attention. New clause 12 does not seek to stymie the development of AI systems that could bring radical benefits to our society. Instead, it provides the Government with a suitable mechanism to stay ahead and in control of real threats to our critical national infrastructure. That is why I support the new clause and hope that the Government will do the same. If not, I ask the Minister to set out how the Government plan to ensure that we have these powers, which are so clearly needed.

• 20 May 2026 · Defence Readiness · Hansard source

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  I rise to speak in support of His Majesty’s Speech and to call for our Government to take bolder action on many of the challenges faced by our country, and indeed our world. We are living through global instability on a scale not seen for decades. The power shifts are real. Now more than at any time since world war two, we must stand up and defend our values on the international stage. To do that, we need more hard power—much more—but we should also protect and wield our soft power. After 14 years of Tory neglect, our Government’s commitment to defence investment is vital not only to our national security, but to communities like mine in Fife. From the £340 million invested in Rosyth dockyard to support for Methil-based Navantia, now with 120 new jobs and 20 new apprenticeships, this investment is creating skilled jobs and driving the local economy. It comes alongside a new Government support package for defence sector SMEs such as Viper Applied Science in Aberdour and PowerPhotonic in Dalgety Bay. UK Government backing is helping to strengthen our local economy for the future. After two decades of wilful neglect by the SNP on defence skills, Fife and Kirkcaldy in particular stand ready to play our part in rapidly scaling up the next generation of workers in the defence industry. We must heed the warnings on the defence investment plan and rapidly make it a reality—I am sure the Defence Secretary will agree with that. As we strengthen our nation’s ability to protect our people, we must work with our allies and form new relationships, including stronger relations with our European allies and friends. Our collective defence is a cause of the utmost urgency, but so is the defence of our common values: democracy, the rule of law and human rights. Make no mistake—they are under attack. We must act faster to build the UK’s national resilience, too. Our country and our people are not yet ready to face the kinds of turbulence and crises—even conflict—that may lie in our future. Comparable European nations are well ahead of us in building their resilience, and it is time to turbocharge that work in the UK. As we build our hard power and our own resilience, it would be a mistake to allow our soft power to fall away. DFID, a proud achievement of the last Labour Government, is a body that we miss today amid so much conflict and global health crises, such as the latest Ebola outbreak. As defence chiefs said this week, recent cuts to the aid budget are a source of deep pain to many of us, but to no one more so than the children going to bed hungry because of them. In north-east Nigeria, where I once served as an aid worker, more than 1 million people affected by the conflict with Boko Haram risk being cut off from food and nutrition support because of cuts to the World Food Programme. What happens when the world cuts aid at a time of greater global conflict than any other since world war two? Already displaced people will be further displaced. They will migrate in search of survival.

• 19 Mar 2026 · Online Harms · Hansard source

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  It is an understatement to say that the internet and social media have changed everything. The early optimism of internet pioneers was that we would all benefit from a world in which all information was at our fingertips. In many respects, they were not wrong, and rapid technological advancement has massively improved our lives, whether that is significant developments in healthcare and easier communication with friends and family or online banking, which is a real benefit to many people here in the UK. We have also seen the benefit across the world—in humanitarian crises, for example, where cash transfers are increasingly used as part of the humanitarian response. It is much safer and easier to make those happen from a laptop or someone’s mobile phone, rather than having to helicopter huge sums of cash through war zones or refugee camps, which is what happens without that ability. The fact that the online world has amplified everything means just that: almost everything, no matter how sinister or extreme, is available to us and, most distressingly of all, to our children. Not only is it available to us, but algorithms designed to push extreme content mean that violent, misogynistic, racist, antisemitic, Islamophobic and other hateful content is winning the battle for our attention and causing real harm. It is no longer just in ideological echo chambers. Algorithms and the introduction of suggested content that is pushed at the user mean that such content has permeated youth culture and taken over many of the spaces where young people communicate with each other and the language that they use. It is now just as easy—if not easier—-to tune in to extremist content online as it is to watch cartoons, go to the park or go to a house party, and that has real-life impacts in our constituencies. In Cowdenbeath in my constituency, antisocial behaviour is a real issue. Tomorrow, I will hold a second meeting on antisocial behaviour, following an antisocial behaviour summit I held in December. We have found that social media is having a real impact by encouraging more extreme behaviour between young people, because it is filmed and shared online. Local headteachers also report the impact of apps like Snapchat as a real factor in bullying between schoolchildren. We know that this is a global problem. Radical and violent groups profit from the recruitment to their online causes of young men in particular, pushing violence and very real threats to our democracy, including ISIS in the middle east, the Proud Boys in the United States and Yoon Suk Yeol, whose misogynistic platform was a factor in his election as President of South Korea and the attempted insurrection in 2024 for which he is now serving a life sentence. The truth is that the big tech companies are so obsessed with outdoing each other to profit from the attention of our children or other vulnerable people that they have ignored their responsibility to keep them and our communities safe, and to prevent people from being exposed unwittingly to the most horrific material. Madam Deputy Speaker, I am about to mention another hon. Member, who is not present, and I just want to confirm that I have notified him in advance. Too many people have been prepared to sacrifice the safety and cohesion of our communities for the right price. This week, an investigation showed that the leader of Reform has been paid to take extreme political positions on the Cameo app. According to The Guardian , the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) took money to call for the release of P. Diddy and of a Honduran drug trafficker, to support a rioter, to repeat extremist slogans and to endorse a neo-Nazi event. Members of the public will be able to draw their own conclusions from that kind of behaviour. Too often, action to prevent harmful content is too slow. In March last year, when new powers in the Online Safety Act came into force, I wrote to Ofcom requesting that action be taken, using that Act, against a website that actively encourages its users to die by suicide—I will not name the site for obvious reasons. Ofcom launched an investigation of the site, but it had still taken only a provisional decision against that site last month. I promise hon. Members that spending five minutes on the site would tell them immediately that it has no place in our country and no place online at all. It is shocking that action has not been taken. Tragically, since the illegal harms code came into force last year, the death of two more people have been linked to that site. Does the Minister agree that Ofcom is far too slow in responding to sites like this, and will he please take that up with Ofcom? There are so many reasons why I am glad that our Government are taking steps to consult on a social media ban for under-16s. To be clear, I support such a ban.

• 19 Mar 2026 · Online Harms · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I would add that I was recently at a primary school in my constituency, and I asked the young people how many of them were on social media—a class of 10 and 11-year-olds—and almost all of them were. However, when I talked to them about how social media work, I found that everybody had different rules for what they are allowed to do and when they are allowed to go on social media. It was clear that their parents are trying really hard to regulate their children’s access to social media. Among the reasons why I want us to act by banning social media for under-16s are not only the impact on young people, which I have tried to lay out, but the job parents are struggling to do because social media companies cannot behave properly. I saw a survey showing that one third of parents had cried because of the stress of trying to manage their children’s access to social media and online content. To me, this is about backing parents as well as about keeping our young people safe online and in the real world. We banned the sale of alcohol to under-18s in 1923, and when we banned the sale of tobacco to those under 16 in 1908. I very much hope that future generations will look on our Parliament as the Parliament that finally took action to prevent the public health risk and the real-life harm that is addictive social media and extremist content in the hands of children, as well as in the hands of so many vulnerable young people. We must act now. The safety and wellbeing of our children is at risk.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Fuel Duty · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Gentleman tell us what the Conservative policy was in relation to fuel duty at the last election? By my recollection, it was that fuel duty would have been higher under the Conservatives than it is now under this Labour Government.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  Will my hon. Friend join me in recognising the work of charities such as Kirkcaldy Foodbank and Kirkcaldy YMCA, which joined me in Parliament earlier this year to call on the then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who they met, to lift the two-child cap? They underlined the need for this cruel policy to be scrapped. Indeed, Kirkcaldy Foodbank has fed 833 children so far this year, and it has welcomed the lifting of the cap. Will my hon. Friend join me in recognising that lifting the two-child cap was the only possible step to ensure that child poverty levels go down, instead of up?