Richard Quigley MP: speeches

Speeches

• 21 Oct 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T8. I welcome the changes in the GP booking system, but in many cases it is still very difficult to obtain a GP appointment on the Isle of Wight. A large factor in that is the difficulty of recruiting GPs to the island. Will the Minister assure me that he will investigate all options for improving GP recruitment to coastal, rural and island communities, like mine?

• 14 Oct 2025 · Onshore Wind Turbines · Hansard source

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  15. What steps he is taking to support green energy companies to build onshore wind turbines.

• 14 Oct 2025 · Onshore Wind Turbines · Hansard source

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  The UK is committed to growing our wind energy manufacturing capacity, but this requires investment in innovation to develop the next generation of products that could be made in the UK, using expertise that exists in places like my constituency of Isle of Wight West. Can the Minister assure me that the Government are doing everything possible to provide the funding to not only create jobs but provide sovereign ownership of blade technology and development in the UK, so that we become a true energy superpower?

• 14 Oct 2025 · Mental Health Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I will speak to new clauses 28 and 36 and amendment 39, which I tabled not just as an MP but as a father. After what my family have been through, I believe that any parent would do the same. Yesterday, alongside the right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen), I had the privilege of hearing Dr Kate Szymankiewicz speak about her daughter Ruth. She shared not only the tragic circumstances of Ruth’s death but the type of person Ruth was: her dream of becoming a vet, her kindness, and how friends described her as a character straight out of an Enid Blyton novel. That is the Ruth her family remember and cherish. As parents, we became part of a world we never wanted to know. I am privileged to have met Kate, but we agreed that we wished our paths had never crossed because of what that meant. Ruth was admitted to an in-patient facility for treatment of an eating disorder, but instead of receiving the care she needed, her family were shut out and allowed only two two-hour visits per week. They spent more time travelling than they did with their daughter. Ruth was just 14 years old when she fatally self-harmed, just five months into her stay. Three months from that date, my family were faced with the same hospital, Huntercombe, as the only choice of a bed for our daughter. At that same hospital, when a child asked if they could have an extra type of jam for breakfast in the morning, they were told it did not have the budget, and when asked why Minstrels were no longer part of snack time, they were told that they were eating too many. That is the problem with NHS-funded private provision: even at £900 a night, the operators plead poverty. My wife and I have two vivid memories of our youngest being prised from us without any warning. We thought that was normal. Six months of nasogastric tube feeding—we thought that was normal. Illegal restraint so bad that it caused post-traumatic stress disorder—we thought that was normal. Forgetting to feed our daughter 11 times—we started to realise that that was normal, but not acceptable. Instead of wishing to improve its practice, the hospital has accused me of making this up. If a child is facing any other physical illness such as cancer, or even something more short-term that requires a hospital stay, parental visits and involvement are quite rightly seen as a means of enhancing care. I genuinely struggle to understand why our clinical consensus around mental health continues to support a model where already vulnerable children are isolated from their parents—the very people who know and love them most. Children on these wards are treated as wilful—they are not; they are children—and without empathy or sympathy. Many consultants we encountered opted not to apply the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines. Staff were poorly trained and in fear of psychiatrists, who ruled the roost and prevented people from speaking up. The private equity firms are focused not on long-term treatment but just on turning mental health into money. My amendments do not seek to undermine the Bill’s strengths, nor the important work undertaken by the Department. In fact, the cross-party support I have received, including from the right hon. Member for Salisbury, reflects how uncontroversial they are. The Minister and I have had robust and constructive discussions on the matter, but I ask him to confirm that he will do everything in his power to ensure the following. Parents must not be shut out of their child’s care, as evidence shows that regular parental contact enhances care outcomes. The placement of children on adult mental health wards under the Mental Health Act must be limited strictly to exceptional circumstances, and practitioners must be actively compelled where appropriate to involve themselves in the development and delivery of a child’s care and treatment plan. We have a duty to ensure that the tragic circumstances surrounding Ruth’s death are never repeated. The Government were elected with a phenomenal majority, winning places we never thought possible—including my own constituency of Isle of Wight West—on a platform of meaningful change. If we do not use this moment to do the right thing and acknowledge that children in mental health services need their parents more often than not, I fear that we may never get another chance.

• 4 Sept 2025 · Future of Terrestrial Television · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg, and I thank the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) for securing this important debate and for the hard work that he has already put into this area. I am very pleased that broadband coverage in my Isle of Wight West constituency is improving—it was at 94.2% in 2022 and is projected to reach 99.4% by 2040—thanks to our very own fibre company, WightFibre. However, actual take-up tells a different story, and it is one that we cannot ignore. Only 63.5% of households were using high-speed broadband in 2022, and even by 2040 only 76.1% of households are expected to be using it. That means that in 15 years’ time, nearly a quarter of households still might not be online. For such households, terrestrial TV is not a back-up; it is their primary connection to news, entertainment and public service content—and not just reruns of “Mrs Brown’s Boys”. That is especially true for older residents, those in rural areas and families facing financial pressures. As hon. Members have already said today, terrestrial TV is free, reliable and accessible. It does not require expensive subscriptions or high-speed internet. It just works. At a time when loneliness and isolation are growing, it plays a vital role in promoting wellbeing, inclusion and a sense of community. Three quarters of people say that terrestrial TV has helped to reduce loneliness, and among those aged 65 and over the figure rises to 87%. Additionally, I worry that any decision to switch off terrestrial TV could further exacerbate the cost of living crisis and deepen existing inequalities in our communities. I know that not everyone on the Isle of Wight has the means to afford high-speed internet or multiple streaming subscriptions. For many households, especially those on fixed incomes or struggling with rising bills, terrestrial TV is not just a preference; it is a necessity. Asking such families to transition to online-only services could mean they face additional costs of hundreds of pounds a year, not only for subscriptions but for upgraded devices and internet packages. That is a burden that many of those families simply cannot bear, and it is imperative that we do not impose it on them. It is also important to realise that any imposed switch-off would not have a limited impact; it would be deeply felt across our communities. The reality is that some people would be left behind, and many people would feel a greater sense of entirely avoidable social isolation. This shift is not just a technical one, but a social one. If we move too quickly or without providing proper support, we risk entrenching inequality, whereby access to media and public service content becomes a privilege available only to those who can afford it. Terrestrial TV helps to level the playing field. It ensures that everyone, regardless of their income or their location, can stay connected to other people around the world—and that is worth protecting.

• 3 Sept 2025 · Hospitality Sector · Hansard source

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  Unlike most, if not all, of the Conservative Members listed on the Order Paper as supporters of the motion, my wife and I own two successful hospitality businesses. We welcome the increase in national insurance contributions and the improvements in workers’ rights because they are good for our employees, our businesses and our customers. Does the Minister agree that the Tories only know how to race to the bottom and not how to give workers a leg up?

• 3 Sept 2025 · Hospitality Sector · Hansard source

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  Does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that, under the Tories, a pub closed every 14 hours? That was 10,000 in total, so whether it is 14 hours or 14 years, the Tory party cannot be trusted with the economy.

• 3 Sept 2025 · Hospitality Sector · Hansard source

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  rose—

• 2 Sept 2025 · Eating Disorders: Prevention of Deaths · Hansard source

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  I agree entirely. We are fully aware of the political situation and the condition that the NHS was left in under the previous Government, but the point of today’s debate is not to make cheap political attacks; it is to focus on the matter in hand, which is eating disorders, so I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. With widespread under-reporting, misclassification and inconsistencies across the country, many of these deaths are wrongly recorded as organ failure, masking the true role of eating disorders and preventing us from fully grasping the scale of the crisis, especially among otherwise healthy young people.

• 2 Sept 2025 · Eating Disorders: Prevention of Deaths · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his extremely pertinent point. Early intervention saves not only lives but a huge amount in costs to the NHS. I know the vast majority of NHS staff go above and beyond to support patients, often under immense pressure, and many of us here would like to put on record our thanks to them. However, these failures point to a systemic issue.

• 2 Sept 2025 · Eating Disorders: Prevention of Deaths · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for that important point—it does. The loss of a loved one is harrowing enough without the true cause not being recorded. That is why we are calling for a confidential inquiry into eating disorder deaths. Given the concerns about under-reporting and inconsistencies in the data, it is even more alarming to read the findings from the Health Service Journal that revealed that between 2018 and 2023, 19 deaths related to eating disorders could have been entirely avoided. These tragic outcomes are attributed to severe failures in care, including missed or poorly managed safety risks, a lack of specialist knowledge among healthcare professionals and unacceptable delays in accessing appropriate treatment. If I were to ask for a show of hands in this room, I am sure many would be raised on that point.

• 2 Sept 2025 · Eating Disorders: Prevention of Deaths · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered the matter of the prevention of deaths from eating disorders. It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I thank all hon. Members for attending this debate on a topic extremely close to my heart. As hon. Members may know by now, I am the very proud Member for Isle of Wight West and do my utmost to champion the island in this place, but I have brought forward this debate not only as an MP, but as a father who for some years was genuinely fearful as to whether I would see my child reach their 18th birthday. From the moment someone becomes a parent, their instinct is to protect and nurture their children—often, admittedly, much easier said than done—yet nothing can truly prepare anyone for the overwhelming sense of powerlessness that comes when their child develops an eating disorder. Eating disorders, in all their destructive forms, are one of the few types of illness where the person affected does not want to recover and they actively work against you. Watching your child struggle not only with the illness but with the very treatments meant to help them is truly something I would not wish on any parent, yet it is the reality faced by thousands of parents, families and friends up and down the country. We all know by now that the pandemic has taken a wrecking ball to children and young people’s mental health, but we cannot pretend that these issues do not predate 2020. Since the mid-1990s, eating disorders have been found to carry the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness. However, in the UK, we are unable even to quantify the true havoc that eating disorders cause, because of the lack of a national register for eating disorder deaths. The most recent year with confirmed data from the Office for National Statistics is 2019, when 36 deaths were recorded. However, a US study suggests that the real figure in the UK could be closer to 1,860 deaths, which I am sure people in this room would more than agree with.

• 2 Sept 2025 · Eating Disorders: Prevention of Deaths · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for his response and all hon. Members for their thoughtful contributions. It has been truly heartening. This is the main message I hope to leave today: one death from any eating disorder is one too many. These deaths are not inevitable; they are preventable, yet far too many lives have already been lost, and far too many people continue to suffer needlessly. I am pleased that the Minister and the Department have committed forcefully to improving the area, and to working with members of the APPG and me. We look forward to launching our report, at the end of October, on preventing eating disorder deaths. I hope to see many of my colleagues there when we do. Lastly, I pay tribute to Zara’s mum, to Debs and cousin Tricia, and to all the parents fighting for the wellbeing of their children. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the matter of the prevention of deaths from eating disorders.

• 2 Sept 2025 · Eating Disorders: Prevention of Deaths · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for her excellent intervention. I agree that this is a family-wide illness. We must reach the point where no one in the UK dies from an eating disorder, where every individual—man, woman, girl, boy—regardless of age, location or clinical classification has access to the support they need when they need it. I want to finish with the story of a young woman called Zara. She was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa in May 2013 and was admitted to an eating disorder unit almost immediately. Instead of being good news for her recovery, that was when the nightmare began. From May 2013 to June 2021, Zara endured 13 in-patient admissions across seven different units, including three years as a continuous in-patient, nearly two of which she spent without leaving one of the units or going outside. With each admission, her eating disorder and mental health deteriorated further. During that time Zara was restrained daily, often by a minimum of six people holding her down. She received very little therapy; instead there was a culture of patient blaming and shaming. In the last two years of her life, Zara was crying out for help but no one would listen. The eating disorder unit eventually discharged her completely, handing her over to the community mental health team. Her mum, who is with us today, spent nearly every day taking ligatures off her neck, lifting her down from a wardrobe when she was nearly unconscious, and performing CPR when she was found unresponsive in the shower. Zara’s mum states there was little to no support from the community psychiatrist; her family were left to cope alone. No matter how much they pleaded for help, it was a constant battle and they never received the support Zara so desperately needed. Zara should never have died of this illness. There was a whole world out there for her and she had so much to give, but ultimately she felt everyone had given up on her. She was only 24 when she died, but she was exhausted and did not know any other way to keep going without support. Unfortunately, Zara’s story is just one of many, and it is a story unfolding for countless others across the country. Behind these tragedies are systemic failures, often overlooked and hidden behind a lack of national data, questionable legal decision making and cost-saving agendas. In many parts of the UK, the treatments available to patients are not supported by evidence and can even be harmful, rather than providing integrated and evidence-based care. Underfunded services and poorly trained staff often leave high-risk patients institutionalised or without any meaningful or appropriate support. The system currently fails to listen to those who matter most—the patients, their families and supporters. Too often, it fosters a harmful culture of patient blaming rather than delivering compassionate, personalised care that supports recovery. We now know that eating disorders do not discriminate, and neither should our services.

• 2 Sept 2025 · Eating Disorders: Prevention of Deaths · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is entirely correct. Our experience of private equity is that it is selective in terms of the patients accepted. It profits from misery. We were put in the awful position of having to choose to send our youngest child to a hospital that had just seen the tragic death of Ruth Szymankiewicz—I take this opportunity to pay tribute to Ruth’s parents. Our second trip to a private equity-run hospital led to them forgetting to feed my daughter 11 times. My hon. Friend’s point is, unfortunately, well made. More concerning still is that I do not believe that our approach to treatment is changing year on year to confront the heightened demand. If these admission increases were associated with a disease such as cancer, the treatment would quite rightly adapt. Our approach to mental health treatment, especially eating disorders, remains stagnant, outdated and alarmingly resistant to progress. Another deeply concerning issue is how we respond when patients with severe anorexia refuse treatment and are subsequently diagnosed as terminally anorexic, a classification that holds precedent in UK Court of Protection rulings. In such cases, treatment may be withdrawn entirely, resulting in preventable deaths, such as that of a young patient known as BG who tragically died aged 19 in 2022. For those who may argue that treatment will be withdrawn only when a patient is terminally ill, I point to the case of Patricia, previously deemed untreatable by the Court of Protection, only to have the judgment overturned last month—August 2025. That reversal highlights not only the fallibility of such decisions but the danger in labelling eating disorder patients as beyond help. We cannot ignore the fact that eating disorder deaths are most likely to occur due to suicide. Following an evidence session of the eating disorders all-party parliamentary group, one expert stated that their research found that anorexia sufferers are 18 times more likely and bulimia sufferers seven times more likely to die from suicide than the average patient, due to a combination of pre-existing and untreated mental health conditions, early discharge and the physical effects of eating disorder recovery triggering suicidal ideation. I do not wish to pre-empt the response from the Minister, who I know is keen to make improvements in this area, but I believe that eating disorders must be included in the suicide prevention strategy if we are to meaningfully tackle this worrying trend and stop patients from falling between the gaps in the already patchy world of child and adolescent mental health service provision. The eating disorders APPG and campaigners from Dump the Scales are urgently calling for a confidential inquiry into avoidable deaths of eating disorder patients. Eating disorders are treatable illnesses. They are dangerous and life-threatening when untreated, under-treated or poorly treated. The risk to life is entirely preventable; deaths from eating disorders are not inevitable. With integrated, well-resourced and evidence-based treatment, recovery is possible, even in the most severe cases and after many years of suffering. Despite that, coroners, families and communities continue to see too many lives needlessly lost. That should not happen, and it does not need to be that way. Although the facts I have set out today are difficult and harrowing, they must be heard. I also believe, however, that there are reasons to remain hopeful. I know at first hand that the Department, right up to the Secretary of State, is committed to improving outcomes and getting this right. As a Back Bencher, and more importantly as a father, I see it as my responsibility to push for this change to go further and faster.

• 2 Sept 2025 · Eating Disorders: Prevention of Deaths · Hansard source

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  It is true that a lack of understanding among professionals about the severity of the problem contributes to the situation. To have it put down to a lack of collaboration would be infuriating for that parent, as well as truly tragic. We know well by now that early intervention is crucial for identifying and supporting recovery in patients with eating disorders. However, as a parent of someone affected, I must say that has not been my experience on the ground. Hospital admissions for eating disorders have surged, exceeding 30,000 for the first time in 2023-24, which is a 60% increase compared with pre-pandemic levels. While the NHS struggles to meet this growing demand, private equity firms are profiting from the crisis by owning many of the in-patient units the NHS depends on.

• 22 Jul 2025 · Mental Health Research Funding: Eating Disorders · Hansard source

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  Eating disorders cost the UK an estimated £9 billion each year, yet research into these serious conditions receives just 1% of all mental health research funding. That is despite eating disorders affecting around 9% of people with mental health conditions, the consequences of which are delayed diagnosis and treatment and often lengthy hospital admissions. Will the Minister agree to meet me and the eating disorder charity Beat to discuss how the Government can break this cycle and ensure that eating disorder research receives the attention and investment that it urgently needs?

• 22 Jul 2025 · Mental Health Research Funding: Eating Disorders · Hansard source

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  5. What recent estimate his Department has made of the proportion of mental health research funding allocated to eating disorders.

• 22 Jul 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T8. Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am so delighted to have two questions on health this week that I am not even going to mention ferries! As my hon. Friend will know, the process for securing an education, health and care plan is complex and can lead to delays in accessing vital support. That can have a serious impact on the health and wellbeing of young people and children. What steps is the Minister taking to improve the health element of EHCPs for families navigating the process, including those in my constituency?

• 8 Jul 2025 · Football Governance Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  While the facial expressions of Opposition Members are worth an intervention all on their own, does my hon. Friend agree that this Bill provides stronger financial oversight and increased fan involvement, promotes equity and inclusion, protects club heritage, and increases transparency and accountability? The reason the Opposition oppose it is because those are alien concepts to them.