Rachael Maskell MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 22 Oct 2025 · Trade Union Workplace Access · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to my hon. Friend not only for his incredible work to advance employment rights, but for securing today’s debate; I refer to my entry in the register of interests, having spent many an hour on street corners trying to get information to workers about trade unions. Does my hon. Friend agree that digital access needs to be directly with the worker—not via the employer, who could oversee it—and that any reciprocal communication with the union needs to be free from the scrutiny of employers?

• 22 Oct 2025 · Mental Health and Hoarding · Hansard source

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  I am really grateful to my hon. Friend for securing tonight’s debate. I have met York’s Community Bees, who have developed strategies for supporting people in the community. They dearly need money, because they are not only addressing mental health needs but de-risking a situation. Hoarding risks infection, infestations, fire and structural damage to homes, so they play a really crucial role.

• 22 Oct 2025 · Mental Health and Hoarding · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is being incredibly generous with her time. Community Bees in York has helped 600 people over the past seven years. It has a lot of expertise, not just in how to sensitively support people in decluttering, but in upcycling; it makes a positive contribution by selling things on. It has sold 7,000 books, and collected 5,323 items from landfill and passed them on. That not only helps people who have hoarded, but contributes to the future. Does she agree that that should be part of the holistic model?

• 22 Oct 2025 · Mental Health and Hoarding · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. From listening to, meeting and engaging with those from York Community Bees, I know that their big cry is for funding. These people are specialists in the work that they do to support my residents, but they need funding. Will the Minister send a message to commissioners to ensure that they commission these support services?

• 21 Oct 2025 · Mandatory Digital ID · Hansard source

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  The public did not vote for this, and the country cannot afford it. When we look at the Government’s stated purpose, there is also no evidence behind it. If we are looking to scrutinise the grey economy, employers are ignoring the documentation whether it is digital or paper. Of course, we have to come down on employers that exploit labour and do not pay their taxes, but this scheme will simply not achieve the aims that have been presented. When I meet digital experts and academics in my constituency who deal with encryption and the risk of data leakage, they say that 12,400 data breaches have happened in the last year—those figures are from the Information Commissioner’s Office. We know that there is no security. One thing the scheme has achieved is to unite my constituents. I am glad that the Government will consult, but this is not the way forward.

• 21 Oct 2025 · NHS Reorganisation · Hansard source

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  Likewise, in York, children and adolescent mental health services are just not working for children, who are left on waiting lists often with no management or treatment. In order really to achieve reorganisation in our NHS, would our Government look at local authorities commissioning mental health services, to deliver such services and to meet the holistic needs of young children’s development and mental health wellbeing?

• 21 Oct 2025 · Ending Homelessness · Hansard source

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  It was Rowntree’s work on poverty in York that gave rise to the 1919 Housing Act, which addressed homelessness. It is in this rich tradition of social reform in York, and in order to reduce poverty and inequality, that executive member, Councillor Michael Pavlovic, with his vast experience, dedication and determination, and Labour’s City of York council are today leading the way, along with academic Nicholas Pleace, who leads on housing first, and looking at how to integrate a person-centred, trauma-informed pathway delivered by multidisciplinary, multi-agency approaches. This is pragmatic, but we also need the supply, including of one-bed flats, to ensure that social housing is available, so that services such as mental health and substance dependency services can be integrated. We also need to recognise the complex and varied causes of homelessness. Wrapping services around somebody in their own home not only provides a practical pathway out of homelessness, but builds resilience, independence and dignity. Wider support can also ensure that people have new levels of security. Barriers to accessing health and social care can contribute to high numbers of preventable deaths. Involving partners in ensuring wellbeing and physical health, which the Salvation Army has done in setting up a new boxing gym in the city, will improve people’s holistic outcomes. As many have highlighted today, focusing on the causes, but also on the opportunities to support women and children out of homelessness, must be a first step. The governance arrangements being introduced in York will ensure that city partners hold the authority to account through multi-agencies. With York on a new cutting-edge path from homelessness to hope—one rooted in evidence and best-practice approaches—I invite the Minister to meet the team in York, the university partners and clients too.

• 16 Oct 2025 · Creative Copyright · Hansard source

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  Daisy May Johnson is an exceptionally talented author of children’s books in York, but her work has been scraped and reproduced by generative artificial intelligence. She has not given permission and has not received a penny, but she has lost thousands of pounds. The same can be said about artists, musicians, writers and other creatives. When the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 was going through this House, we were given a commitment that the Government would do more, so could the Minister set out what progress has been made and ensure that there is legislation on this in the next Session?

• 16 Oct 2025 · Creative Copyright · Hansard source

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  2. What steps she is taking to help protect creative copyright, in the context of further advances in AI.

• 16 Oct 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  York is a kind and welcoming city. Following the recent wave of intimidation, racism and violence perpetrated by a few which has rocked our city, I have launched the York Unity campaign with the hashtag, #ourthreewords, to ask people across York to provide three values that define our city. Mine are inclusion, community and caring. What support can the Leader of the House bring to our campaign, and may we have a debate on inclusion in our cities and communities?

• 15 Oct 2025 · Educational Assessment System Reform · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Josh Dean) on securing today’s debate. The assessment system is so broken that it is breaking our young people. It shows that those who can pass exams do well and those who cannot do not do so well. It assesses what people cannot recall or pull together as opposed to emphasising their strengths and building on their knowledge base, skills and talents. I have long researched this issue and believe it is time for the Government to be bold and welcome this review. The level of mental health issues, stress, trauma and anxiety among our young people is unsustainable. We have to change course. That is why I support the recommendation to scrap the SATs assessments, which place such pressure on our young people. There are other forms of assessment that can continue to map a child’s journey. Assessment should be a continual process for educators, to stretch their pupils and ensure that students can move on to the next stage of their learning. That is what we should do: enable teachers to use their professional skills to maximise a child’s learning journey, stretch their creativity and give them a hunger to explore curiosity and critical thinking—the skills that are so needed in our economy today and which employers often say are so lacking among new starters. Every child learns differently so the way they are assessed should reflect that diversity so that the fullness of their learning journey can be reflected in the assessments. I hope that we adopt a much more comprehensive form of assessment, in which we look at the diversity of how children express themselves. That should also be ongoing: people who can cram for exams have an advantage over those who process information and apply skills in very different ways. I say again in this Chamber that I recommend listening to the work of Sir Ken Robinson, which highlights how the education and assessment system must change. Scrap the SATs. We do not need them in our education system. It is not right that young children should be so stressed. I have a challenge for the Government around GCSEs, given that children do not leave school any more. We need to think about how we prepare our young people for the next stages of life, showing that they have proficiency in their learning and encouraging children to stay with and enjoy their learning. If we are to prepare people for the rest of their lives, when they will not continue to sit exams, let us think about portfolios of assignments—learning journals and project work that reflects the reality of the society that we live in. Let us enable people to have those portfolios that they can use as evidence. That would involve the skills needed and mean we could assess better through a modulated system.

• 15 Oct 2025 · Educational Assessment System Reform · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister look at how young people can develop a portfolio around their learning as you would with professional development as an adult and in employment, so that they can map that journey and use it as part of the assessment portfolio that they could gather as they move through their education?

• 15 Oct 2025 · Educational Assessment System Reform · Hansard source

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  I am grateful for what the hon. Member is saying. As well as widening inequality through the current assessment system, which we know occurs, does he not agree that it also stifles social mobility, holding many young people back from the opportunities they could have?

• 14 Oct 2025 · Middle East · Hansard source

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  I thank the Prime Minister for his statement today and also for this peace—may it be long lasting. Over 1,700 health workers have lost their lives in Gaza, and many more have been physically and psychologically traumatised by the conflict. There are not the health workers now to provide the healthcare that is urgently needed at this time. Will he ensure that the UK plays its part in providing healthcare to Gaza, and with the decimation of all the universities in Gaza, can we also play a part in training the healthcare workers of the future?

• 14 Oct 2025 · Postural Tachycardia Syndrome · Hansard source

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  I am really grateful for this debate. Dr Gupta is a leading specialist in PoTS but, although he knows the physiological changes that take place and he knows how to treat it, he has been stopped in his practice because we do not have the clinical guidelines in place. The Government must now ensure that that happens, so that he can continue his practice, which he knows has an impact on patients—indeed, they recover well.

• 14 Oct 2025 · Postural Tachycardia Syndrome · Hansard source

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  There are very few PoTS specialists across the country. Will the Minister meet those specialists to hear why they are facing barriers, and work with them to ensure that they can practise the medicine they know works?

• 13 Oct 2025 · Glasgow Safer Drug Consumption Facility · Hansard source

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  I thank the Select Committee for its report. I have been following the international evidence on taking a public health approach. Could my hon. Friend set out how the centre is developing a harm reduction model and how it will evaluate that? I am thinking particularly of engagement with clinicians. It is so important that people get the right support in the right way when they enter such a centre.

• 13 Oct 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  In my kind and inclusive city of York, those who are putting up flags and expressing support for them have been emboldened to perpetrate racism and intimidate communities. They have beaten people up and hung a death threat on our city wall. What further support can the Government give my local authority to enable it to get those flags down, given that even contractors are being intimidated?

• 13 Oct 2025 · Digital ID · Hansard source

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  Identifying rogue employers who exploit labour and dodge taxes is one thing. However, it makes no difference whether someone holds digital ID over paper ID if the employer refuses to acknowledge the ID. Could the Secretary of State point to the evidence, which I am very interested to see, of how a digital ID will prevent rogue employment?

• 13 Oct 2025 · Bovine Tuberculosis Control and Badger Culling · Hansard source

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  I am grateful for the hon. Member’s intervention, but it is important to understand the scale of the deposits from cows wading in their faeces compared with those from badgers, which have a far more fastidious hygiene regime. The risk of infection from badgers is very much reduced. If we were not putting the faeces from cows into the badgers’ food chain, badger faeces would be TB-free. The science speaks to that. We should stop putting untreated slurry on our fields, so we can take the TB out of the badgers’ food chain. Two steps now need our focus. The first is allowing the testing of herds to show that they are free from infection before they become infectious. We need to do that early, routinely and assuredly, with the right testing. That is for the Government to scale. Secondly, we need to make sure that we treat slurry before it is placed on our fields. Anaerobic digestion is one solution. Let us stop the cull, engage better with testing, control movements and put in place the biosecurity measures that will make improvements. As with all communicable diseases, we must always ensure high levels of hygiene. That is one of the basics of public health, and it should be applied here. Above all, we know that it works: it benefits farmers, it reduces their stress and anxiety, and ultimately it will save not only cattle and farms, but the badger.

• 13 Oct 2025 · Bovine Tuberculosis Control and Badger Culling · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under you in the Chair, Mr Stuart. I congratulate the 102,000-plus petitioners on signing the petition, including the 185 from my constituency, and I join them in opposing the badger cull. I am so glad that it is this Labour Government that are looking at the evidence and the science in order to support farmers, the whole community and of course badgers, with better biosecurity, testing and, if necessary, vaccination. I have been debating the badger cull since I was the shadow Environment Secretary. At the time, I pored over the science and came to the clear conclusion that the badger cull was not the way forward. We needed to cull the cull and ultimately to put in place the right measures. I am so glad that, since that point, when just Gloucestershire and Somerset were involved in the culling experiment, further science has been developed. Today we know that about 250,000 badgers have been killed, which is around half the population of badgers. In some areas, that amounts to about 70% of the population. Badgers are now becoming an endangered species in our country. They are crudely killed, and many, of course, are not carrying the TB virus at all. Indeed, this places an increased risk on farmers and their cattle. As we have heard, 94% of transmission of bovine TB is from cow to cow, but the poor badger is being scapegoated. Bovine TB is present across our environment, and we have heard many examples of that already. It is recognised that farmers and Government want to stop the spread of this disease, and we need to do that by following the right methodology. To facilitate that, we must take the money being spent on the cull and ensure that it goes to farmers. Indeed, there also needs to be additional support to ensure that we get on top of this disease. Bovine TB follows the same pattern as human TB and other communicable diseases. We need testing, isolation of the disease and, where necessary, vaccination. We need only think about covid to know that the same methodologies that were recommended to us need to be applied to TB in cattle. Controlling the movement of cattle and putting in place more rigorous testing—the right testing—can make such a difference to livestock, stopping cross-infection between herds. This is all about good public health, which we are so familiar with. We practise that worldwide, so why be different with this community? It is seriously letting farmers down. Scapegoating and slaughtering badgers does not aid farmers in managing the disease. The culling has been condemned as inhumane. Up to 22.8% of badgers shot while free-roaming were still alive after five minutes. That demonstrates significant levels of suffering, yet monitoring of culling is at an all-time low. The evidence should make the Government determine that the cull is the wrong measure. Professor Rosie Woodroffe’s research, which dates back to 2007, has demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the badger cull, because of the way TB is transmitted. She has described it as the “largest manipulative ecological experiment ever conducted”. If anything, the risk of transmission from cattle to badger is far higher than the converse. Consistent DEFRA research shows that culling has no impact on bovine TB, yet culling continues. When I asked the then Secretary of State a question before the summer recess, I was told that Labour is now serious about looking at the science. I welcome that, but the cull has continued for two seasons under our watch, so it is really important that we bring it to an end. I, too, met the team from Gatcombe farm when they came to Parliament before the summer. I probed the farmer and the vet deeply for about an hour to understand the science and the methodology. I spent time hearing about the impact and about how a farm that had once been ridden with TB was now free of bovine TB. Surely that is the outcome that we want for all our farmers. We have to look at the testing regime. The traditional skin test will only show the presence of the disease when sufficiently loaded with reactor cells. By that point, the cow could have had advanced TB in its lungs for some time and could have managed to spread the disease to other cattle. A more advanced screening polymerase chain reaction test can identify the disease at a far earlier stage, so deploying that is a better approach. We all know that we can scale PCR testing, as we did over the covid pandemic. Research at Gatcombe, recognised elsewhere, showed that an accumulation of slurry led to a concentration of disease. Untreated and infested, the slurry is spread on to fields; it is then ingested by snails, slugs and other animals, and moves into the badger food chain. The risk of cattle-to-badger infection is incredibly strong, as PCR testing has proved. Further research has shown that intensification of farming increases the risk. Cattle wading through their own faeces, and that of other cattle, means a greater risk of cross-infection. It is far less likely where cattle graze in the open, as they eat the grass between the cowpats. We often think about TB purely as a respiratory disease, but we see lesions in other organs as well. It is now recognised that farming intensification and poor hygiene are the route of disease transmission; that is a basic thing that we learned through covid. Good biosecurity, testing and removal of cattle are the way to address this. Again, that is something that we practised during covid. The Gatcombe strategy works and should be adopted. The question is therefore not “What should be done?”, but “How will it be done, and how will the Government support it?” We need to use sensitive testing to identify the pathogens in faeces and blood, cut off the routes of infection, identify disease before cattle become infectious, ensure scrupulous hygiene and removal of faeces at pace and test new cattle before integrating with existing livestock with a more sensitive Actiphage test. The TB-infested farm has become a TB-free farm, all without killing a single badger, just by removing infected cattle. No badger vaccination was needed. In fact, it was proven at the time that the highest risk of infection comes from the most intensely farmed cattle, which are not free to graze. An infected cow produces about 500 times more faeces than a badger. Badger hygiene is also known to be far more fastidious, and badgers are likely to concentrate in one area. The risk of badger-to-cattle infection is minuscule. It is the other way around. Studies have shown that badgers do not approach cattle, so airborne infection via a badger breathing on a cow is so unlikely, if it is ever encountered.

• 13 Oct 2025 · Bovine Tuberculosis Control and Badger Culling · Hansard source

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  I am really grateful for all that my hon. Friend has said, but I am reminded of what Kate Bingham said when she talked about the scaling down and scaling up of our capability in responding to the pandemic. Will my hon. Friend look at the methodology so that we are able to respond not only to this particular crisis but, as the shadow Minister highlighted, to the future risks that farmers face?

• 16 Sept 2025 · Employment Rights: Impact on Businesses · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend has spoken powerfully and brought that observation to the attention of the House. Low productivity was also a major feature of the last Administration. The letter goes on to highlight how worker protection positively impacts productivity, how investment in skills improves the competency of workers, and how collective bargaining raises wages and stabilises employment. Over time, that positive investment will spill out to the wider economy and Government, so that there can be investment in the public services that have been so broken. If workers have more in their pockets, they are more likely to spend in the local economy, and wage disparities will be addressed so that wealth is more evenly spread, boosting local business. We also still have parts of the Taylor review and its 53 recommendations to implement to help small employers and those in irregular work.

• 16 Sept 2025 · Employment Rights: Impact on Businesses · Hansard source

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  I was not, because I walk or cycle through London, which I recommend to everybody. Those strikes did not have an impact on me at all. Good industrial relations are important for business, because when employers are in touch with their workers, business can boom. Ultimately, the people with the most vested interest in the success of a business are the people whose jobs depend on it, so when they are included in the industrial environment, the opportunities come. The hon. Member for Spelthorne referred to employees’ talent. If employees are brought into the fold, so their imaginations run free and their creativity flourishes, that opportunity really strengthens business. That is why the measures that Labour introduced this week are good for workers and good for business. I congratulate the Labour Government on bringing forward what I hope will be just their first Employment Rights Bill. Instead of causing the fragmentation that we are seeing across our country, good workers’ rights are good people’s rights above all. They address equality and bring fairness, not only in the industrial setting but across wider society as well. Too many workers have been left feeling insecure, however, such as those in the gig economy, the self-employed and the bogus self-employed. We have a duty to close those loopholes. Indeed, the hon. Member said that employers will seek more loopholes, but of course, we will close them if labour is being exploited. The picture of business for far too long has been about workers getting less of the wealth from business while contributing more. We have to restore such values in the workplace. Yesterday, I was filled with real pride as we went through the voting Lobby—I think we went through 12 times. I am proud of the legislation, which will provide day one employment rights, giving people real security in employment; improve statutory sick pay; give greater flexibility to workers while ending abusive fire-and-rehire practices and exploitative zero-hours contracts; and strengthen collective redundancy rights.

• 16 Sept 2025 · Employment Rights: Impact on Businesses · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the hon. Member for mentioning that. When I was the shadow Secretary of State for Employment Rights, we really fought for that right, not least during covid. What a difference it would have made to workers then, and it would have kept our country safer. Of course, we need to look after people when they are sick, so I dispute what the hon. Member for Spelthorne said about a menopause plan costing business—women generally would also certainly dispute that, because having a plan would be better for business and better for women at work. We must reset the relationship with trade unions, which is why establishing a Fair Work Agency and championing engagement around equality are important. I look forward to the future for businesses with a traditional Labour agenda that benefits businesses and workers by bringing better security and better productivity, and providing the green shoots of rebuilding the economy. I recognise that businesses are in a fragile environment. Over the summer, I held business summits for the daytime and night-time economy. The attendees are looking forward to engaging with me as we set out our plans for our city together: resetting the climate, realigning workers’ rights and giving businesses a boost. The voices of businesses are really important. The Living Wage Foundation notes that 87% of employers say that paying the living wage improved the reputation of their business, and two thirds said that it improved recruitment. A letter about the Employment Rights Bill from leading economists and employment lawyers, published by the Institute of Employment Rights, says: “The emerging consensus is that labour laws do not, on the whole, have negative economic consequences, and may well have positive ones.”