Patrick Hurley MP: speeches 2026

Speeches

• 26 Jan 2026 · Youth Hubs · Hansard source

  More

  3. What steps he is taking to support the roll-out of youth hubs.

• 15 Jan 2026 · Co-operative Live Music Venues · Hansard source

  More

  10. What steps her Department is taking to help support co-operative live music venues.

• 15 Jan 2026 · Co-operative Live Music Venues · Hansard source

  More

  Southport does not need to apply to be the UK town of culture because we have a fantastic year of culture coming up this year anyway—Members should check out southport2026.com for more details. As part of building a legacy off our year of culture, I am meeting music industry professionals next week to discuss the live music scene. Grassroots music venues are vital to nurturing new talent, but too many venues in this country are closing because of soaring costs. Can the Minister outline whether music venues should have their own sector-specific support package so that we can protect live music for the future?

• 12 Jan 2026 · Call for General Election · Hansard source

  More

  Those people voted in good faith and they were lied to by people like him—

• 12 Jan 2026 · Call for General Election · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. The petition presents itself as the voice of democratic urgency. In truth, it is something with which we are far more familiar, and something far less noble: it is nothing more than the collective stamping of feet, accompanied by the online equivalent of the call and response, “What do we want? And when do we want it?” We have all encountered this impulse before—or at least those of us who are parents have. It is an impulse pandered to by the Tory MPs who are present: the impulse of the toddler. But a democracy cannot be run like a nursery. This great country of ours, which they repeatedly let down over 14 years of decline, cannot be governed like one either. However loudly certain voices and views might be expressed, or however much they are featured on GB News or shared on Facebook late at night after half a bottle of wine, the truth is that we do not get something simply because we want it.

• 12 Jan 2026 · Call for General Election · Hansard source

  More

  I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Back in 1983, when he was the Leader of the Opposition — [Interruption.] Members may remember Michael Foot—the right hon. Gentleman will never be the Leader of the Opposition. Michael Foot thought he was storming to victory back in 1983. “Look at this,” he said to John Golding. “I’ve got a rally here. There’s a thousand people cheering me on.” “But Michael,” John replied, “there were 122,000 outside saying you’re crackers.” A million people have signed the petition, but how many people voted in the general election? Well over a million people. This Parliament was elected in a general election held under rules that were well known in advance, and those rules include a parliamentary term. Some Members might not like it, but it is true. The rules do not include a rolling plebiscite triggered whenever a sufficiently large group of people becomes bored, frustrated or impatient—or someone has shared a video clip with them on WhatsApp.

• 12 Jan 2026 · Call for General Election · Hansard source

  More

  I acknowledge that a million people want the Government to change course. The petitioners who have put their names to the petition say that the people want change, but they are not the majority of people in this country. There are tens and tens of millions of people in this country and only 1 million people signed the petition. Here’s the news: the people actually got change in 2024. Eighteen months ago, we got a Government who explicitly said they would not just go and put sticking plasters on the gaping wounds of the previous 14 years. We got a Government who explicitly said it would take a decade of national renewal. That is what we went to the people with 18 months ago, and that is what they were happy to vote for. We said it would take a decade to fix the country’s problems and the mess the Conservatives left us in. The people who want change now are the very same people who want to go back to the years of stagnation and decline under the Conservatives—the years of austerity under Eric Pickles, George Osborne and Michael Gove, and, of course, the self-harming referendum that has done this country no favours whatsoever.

• 12 Jan 2026 · Call for General Election · Hansard source

  More

  It looks like Reform MPs turn out only when there is something in it for them. We should be honest about what the petition represents. It is not a considered proposal for the better governance of this country. We can tell that by the way Opposition Members are giggling behind their hands on the other side of the room. The petition is not accompanied by a constitutional argument for changing this place to make it better, nor by any sort of legislative necessity. It is simply an expression of dissatisfaction at how long it has taken the new Government to fix the problems that were left behind after 14 years of chaos, division and decline caused by the Conservative party. There were years of economic stagnation, a referendum of such consequential proportions that the economy has barely grown since 2016, and a Tory Government who were more concerned with looking after themselves than with looking after the most vulnerable in this country.

• 12 Jan 2026 · Call for General Election · Hansard source

  More

  If the hon. Member knows how to get growth and bring up the GDP of the country, why has the economy been stagnating since 2010? Why did he not do anything about it?

• 12 Jan 2026 · Call for General Election · Hansard source

  More

  They were lied to inadvertently.

• 12 Jan 2026 · Call for General Election · Hansard source

  More

  Will the hon. Member give way?

• 12 Jan 2026 · Call for General Election · Hansard source

  More

  If the hon. Gentleman is genuinely concerned about the rights of the children of this country, will he support cracking down hard on Elon Musk and X?

• 12 Jan 2026 · Call for General Election · Hansard source

  More

  It doesn’t look like it. If adults behaved in their working lives the way the petition urges Parliament to behave—abandoning responsibility at the first sight of trouble, and demanding resets whenever outcomes failed to please them—we would call it irresponsible and childish. We would not reward it. Democracy requires more than just knee-jerk, reflexive wanting. To indulge every demand for an immediate election is not to respect the voters, but to infantilise them. The House should do better than that.

• 12 Jan 2026 · Call for General Election · Hansard source

  More

  I will withdraw it, but does the right hon. Gentleman respect the vote in 1975 on the exact same thing—staying in the European Community, as it was—which was overturned 41 years later? In every Parliament, at every moment, some people want change and others do not. Some want more spending and others do not. Some want radical reform and others want stability. The fact of merely wanting something to happen does not constitute a constitutional imperative. If it did, the Government would be paralysed. We would lurch endlessly from one election to the next, just like we did at the end of the last decade, incapable of governing because the Government were perpetually campaigning. That is evidence not of a democracy that works, but of a democracy that is failing, just like it failed in 2017 and 2019, and just like it failed when the Conservative party was partying while members of the royal family were dying. An election is not a comfort blanket to be demanded whenever politics becomes difficult or the previous Government’s chickens come home to roost. There is a tendency in debates such as this to treat an election as though it is some kind of harmless release valve. It is not. A general election is disruptive, expensive and all-consuming. It stalls legislation, freezes decision making and turns Parliament in on itself. That is necessary at the right moment, but it is not something to be done after 18 months simply because people have run out of patience.

• 8 Jan 2026 · Road Safety Strategy · Hansard source

  More

  As the Minister knows, my constituents Marie Cunningham and Grace Foulds were killed by a driver who had been told several times that his eyesight fell far below the legal standard to drive. Eyecare professionals are not currently required to inform the DVLA if someone’s vision is so poor that they cannot safely get behind the wheel. Will the Minister consider mandating eyecare professionals to report directly to the DVLA all drivers with insufficient visual acuity and an inadequate field of vision, no matter their age?

• 7 Jan 2026 · UK Town of Culture · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve, Ms Furniss. I want to tell a story about my own background and how it relates to the concept of culture-led growth. I grew up in the ’70s and ’80s in the north-west of England in a town called Prescot, about 15 miles or so from my Southport constituency that was dominated for decades by the factory site of an industrial cable manufacturer. The town adopted the cable factory almost as a part of its identity. Ask anyone for miles around, and they would say, “Oh, Prescot—that’s where they make the cables.” The town’s football club is still called Prescot Cables. When I was a little boy, I used to make Lego models of the machinery that I could see through the factory gates that I passed on my way to school. The factory hooter, telling the workers when their shift was open, could be heard all over the town, and on new year’s eve it would blow especially at midnight to bring in the new year. The importance of that place to the town cannot be overstated. Then they closed the factory down. Hundreds of well-paid jobs were gone. The next generation of lads growing up would not be making Lego models of the factory any more. There is nothing special about that story; it is one that is repeated everywhere. But there is a positive element, because over the last decade the town has been transformed through culture. There has long been a rumour—probably untroubled by fact—that in the 1590s William Shakespeare visited Prescot to escape the plague. Based on that rumour, 20 years ago a small group of cultural practitioners decided to build an Elizabethan-style, 500-capacity theatre on the site of a big old bus stop in the town. People laughed; the council leader actually said, “When I announced the plan in the council chamber, quite a few people started laughing”. They are not laughing now, because there is indeed a playhouse on the site of that old bus stop, training up young people in the creative industries, the arts and performance. The £40 million capital investment that was brought in was only the start of the story, though, because the theatre is attracting people back into the town. It has a positive multiplier effect. The jobs are coming back; cafés are opening where there used to be bookmakers; a community arts organisation is now going into schools to inspire children into a career in the creative industries. It would not surprise me if some of those children started building Lego models of the playhouse. Here is my point: the destiny of a town is not set in stone. It can be changed. Commitment to cultural infrastructure can reverse a downward slide. Change can happen off the back of cultural improvement. My hometown proves that, but we have also done similarly in my new home in Southport since I was elected. We have a year of culture in 2026. There will be an incredible sound and light installation taking over the town, turning it into a giant rainbow. There will be an outdoor ballroom in April, with 150 years of music and dance played out, and our favourite works of fiction are coming to life on the streets of the town in October—check out Southport2026.com for more details. We know that that is what a town of culture can do. It will allow the kids of today to look back in wonder in 50 years’ time, and to tell their grandchildren that they were there.

• 6 Jan 2026 · Less Survivable Cancers · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. Less Survivable Cancers Awareness Week is an important marker in the calendar, but I want to talk about another important marker when it comes to these cancers—one that is important for me and my family anyway—because this year marks 20 years since I was made unavoidably aware of the devastation of oesophageal cancer. In May of that year, my father developed the classic symptoms: difficulty swallowing, feeling like food was getting stuck, heartburn and weight loss. He was diagnosed in August and died on 23 December: from becoming symptomatic to losing his life was just seven months. The rapidity of the decline was overwhelming. Barely had he been diagnosed than he was given a terminal diagnosis. I must admit, though, that I was not giving my father my full attention during that time. In almost any other circumstances I would have been a much more dutiful son, but my own focus was elsewhere that year. On 1 August 2006, my wife Susan also became symptomatic with oesophageal cancer. She was diagnosed on 11 September and died on 14 November. The speed with which I read that sentence reflects the speed with which Sue died. There was barely any chance to understand what was happening, to seek help or for the family to manage. That is not unusual with these sorts of diseases. It is the sort of story that thousands of us know. Crucially, for my Southport constituency, it is also a story that disproportionately impacts people from the north-west and from north Wales. For my family, there was not any long fight or slow decline—only shock, confusion, urgent decisions and death. That is what a less survivable cancer looks like. May I make a clear ask of the Minister today? I am asking for a personal commitment, and a commitment across Government, to drive up survival rates for all these less survivable cancers, but most urgently—for my personal history and for the geographical distribution that shows that my part of the country has higher levels than elsewhere in the UK—for oesophageal cancer. That could mean things such as early diagnosis, recognising that one size fits all does not work. It could mean fast-track treatment pathways once suspicion is raised. Above all else, it should include serious investment in experimental and pre-symptomatic techniques, finding ways to detect cancers before symptoms even appear. These are difficult cancers to deal with, and that is why they need targeted action. I am here today because two people I loved did not get the help they needed, so I urge the Government to help other families avoid that same fate.

• 5 Jan 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

  More

  In relation to the changes, announced at the end of last year, to indefinite leave to remain, my constituent Dr Matthew Hewitt advises on an issue relevant to his family and many other families across the country: that the information being put out by the Government is ambiguous as to whether or not the shorter five-year route will remain for those currently on partner visas, or whether the baseline changes to 10 years will apply to those currently on those partner visas. I would be grateful for some clarity on that, please.