Rishi Sunak MP: speeches

Speeches

• 14 Sept 2026 · Young People not in Education, Employment or Training · Hansard source

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  I thank the Secretary of State for her commitment to this issue, and the hon. Member for Glasgow East (John Grady) for his focus on maths. On Friday, I visited Allerton Steel, a steel fabricator in Northallerton. That business does a great job of providing high-quality apprenticeships for young people every year, regardless of the cycle, and I was lucky to meet David, Oliver and Jacob—it was wonderful to see their passion and excitement about their futures. Will the Secretary of State join me in wishing them well, but also commend businesses such as Allerton Steel and the local companies up and down the country that are ultimately the ones providing these opportunities for our young people?

• 9 Sept 2026 · Pharmacies: Government Funding · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. It takes me back to the days when as a junior Minister I had to answer to you as chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee. It is also a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan), who has spoken repeatedly with enormous authority on these matters. He deserves all our thanks for championing pharmacies. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Shivani Raja) on securing the debate and for her detailed compelling speech. I know she does a terrific job representing her constituents locally because my mum is from Leicester and my family are still there, so I get regular reports. I am here today because my mum was a pharmacist and I spent my childhood working in her pharmacy. I saw at first hand the incredible role that independent community pharmacies play in their local area. With flexible opening hours, their location and no need for an appointment, they can be an easy first port of call for families when they need help, care and advice. I am struck that community pharmacists always want to go above and beyond for their patients. One of my first jobs for my mum was to ride around on my bike in the evenings delivering prescriptions to elderly patients who could not make it in or needed them urgently. That was a sign for me of the role that pharmacists play in their local areas. That is why, extraordinarily, about 80% of those over the age of 65 have visited their local pharmacy over the past three months, which speaks to the role they play. I see that in my constituency. We have great national pharmacies as well as brilliant independent ones, such as Coopers in Great Ayton, the Village Pharmacy in Catterick, Stokesley pharmacy and Central Dales pharmacy in Hawes, providing vital healthcare in a sparsely populated rural area and reinforcing the lifeline that pharmacies provide. A benefit of knowing pharmacists for the majority of my life is that I have seen the transformation in the role they play. Originally, they just dispensed prescriptions for GPs. My dad was a GP, so I also saw that side of it. They have transformed to being the first port of call for primary healthcare and treatment for minor illnesses. That evolution had various moments, which the hon. Member for North Somerset will also have experienced. Starting in about 2000, the introduction of hypertension and blood pressure services made a difference. Medicine use reviews were a big statement of trust in what pharmacists could do. The ability to dispense urgent repeat prescriptions made a huge difference to patients. More recently, there has been the introduction of oral contraception and smoking cessation services, as well as flu jabs, catalysed by covid and now accounting for about 30% of those dispensed, which is a huge increase. That evolution over the past 25 years demonstrates the faith that successive Governments of all stripes have had in pharmacies. Patients and local communities place faith in their pharmacists because they trust them and value what they do; they know that they can provide healthcare in an accessible way. That is why, when in government, we introduced Pharmacy First, of which I am very proud. Pharmacists were enabled to provide medication for seven common conditions, including sinusitis, sore throats, ear infections and urinary tract infections. Obviously, that got off to a slower start than we would have liked, but it now has almost 100% take-up among pharmacies. When I last checked the stats, something like 7 million consultations had taken place and more than 5 million prescriptions had been supplied. High satisfaction in the service is growing by 30% to 40% year over year. It has continued the evolution of increasing trust in pharmacies and providing care closer to people in their communities. I have three questions for the Minister about how to continue that journey and re-emphasise support for pharmacies. The first is about raising awareness and trust. In the last debate on pharmacies here, which I think the hon. Member for North Somerset secured, the Minister gave some stats about the high awareness of the Pharmacy First scheme. Anecdotally, that did not quite jibe with my personal experience. Is there something we can do collectively to raise awareness of Pharmacy First and, as was touched on, make sure that the healthcare system is on the same page, so that people get the same message from 111, their GP or the hospital about what is available at the pharmacy, and so they can trust their pharmacist to deliver that service? Secondly, we should look at expanding Pharmacy First, which, in a welcome fashion, the Government have indicated they are minded to do. There are a couple of options for that: we could consider whether the existing restrictions for the seven services, which are limited in part by gender or age, can be expanded. We could also look across the border to Scotland to see what other conditions the service could be expanded to.

• 16 Jul 2026 · Changing Places Toilets: Capital Funding · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec. I will do my best to keep standing—if nothing else, it will make me speak for a lot less time than I might otherwise, which will be a relief to everyone. I both congratulate the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis) and thank him for securing this important debate. He speaks from personal experience, and he spoke very movingly and powerfully about the situation we are discussing today. I am grateful to him for giving us the opportunity to discuss this important topic. Politics is often about addressing the great matters of state. We often talk about war and peace in this House. However, politics is also about making people’s everyday lives that little bit easier. One of the things all MPs discover is that we learn a lot from our constituents—certainly if those constituents are from Yorkshire, as the Chairman will appreciate. I was profoundly moved after a meeting I had with a group of my constituents in 2017. I had called in at the Dales School in Morton-on-Swale near Northallerton, and a group of parents of the most severely disabled children at the school wanted to talk to me. They told me about the difficulties they faced as families when they went out. and explained how a lack of suitable toilets and changing facilities meant that visiting the majority of leisure attractions and destinations across the country on a day out, which most families would take for granted, was nigh-on impossible for them. I vividly remember one mum putting in front of me a magazine with all the events and attractions happening across the region in the summer holidays. She had gone through them and crossed out 99% because they did not have the facilities that her child required. As a parent myself, I looked at that list, saw all the places she had crossed out and realised that those were the very places I had taken my two young daughters to, to help them fall in love with Yorkshire after we first moved there. I reflected on the huge unfairness of that situation and how it compounded the difficulties that that family and many others faced—difficulties that most of us will never encounter—and how most of those places were just off limits for them. As I sat there, I felt that the situation was just not right. Another parent, Andrew, spoke—similarly to the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford—of the physical difficulty and the indignity of having on occasion to change his 10-year-old daughter Aniela on rough ground behind a shed or on the dirty floor of a public bathroom, because those were the only places available to them in the circumstances. I admit that, going into my meeting with those parents, I had complacently assumed that we had largely resolved the issue of access to and provision of disabled toilets in this country. I had not realised, until I met and listened to them, that for young children or adults who require the help of a carer to use a toilet, a disabled toilet is not sufficient. They need a Changing Places facility with a bench, a hoist and a privacy screen. After that meeting, I vowed to those parents that I would do whatever I could to raise and highlight the issue, which I began to do as a Back-Bench MP in Parliament. Fortuitously, a year later, I was lucky to be appointed Minister for Local Government. In that role, I was inspired by my predecessor as Member of Parliament for Richmond (Yorks), William Hague. As Minister for disabled people, which was one of his first ministerial jobs, he was instrumental in bringing into law, under John Major’s Government, the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. That legislation enshrined in law the principle that institutions must make reasonable adjustments to ensure equality of opportunity for disabled people. Twenty years after the introduction of the 1995 Act, I felt that we needed to renew that spirit to address the issue of Changing Places. As a junior Minister, I therefore set about changing building regulations to make it mandatory to install Changing Places facilities in new large public buildings such as shopping centres, cinemas and theme parks. At about that time, I happened to meet Zack Kerr, a young campaigner with cerebral palsy—I am sure the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford knows him well. Zack told me then: “Life can be difficult enough in many ways, but when there are no accessible toilet facilities where I can be hoisted safely from my wheelchair and changed in privacy and with dignity, I face the choice between staying at home or restricting my social life because of my needs...that’s just not fair.” Zack rightly also pointed out the need for Changing Place facilities at motorway service stations, so that families could travel freely across the country. I am glad that, when the Conservatives were in Government, we made £4 million available not just to install Changing Places at motorway service stations, but to make a better start on installing them in NHS hospitals. In 2020—fortuitously or not, depending on your point of view—I then became Chancellor of the Exchequer. In my first Budget, I launched the £30 million Changing Places fund, which match funded the cost of installing the toilets in existing buildings, where the need is, as we have heard, significant. I am delighted that over the subsequent years, the fund has made possible almost 500 different Changing Places facilities across the nation, including in Leyburn and at the Dales Countryside Museum in Hawes in my constituency. As we have heard, more than 2,500 Changing Places are now installed across the country. We should take a moment to reflect that that is three times as many as there were a decade or so ago, when I first became aware of the issue. Now landmark attractions such as Alton Towers, Madame Tussauds and the Tower of London, as well as most Premier League stadiums and cinemas and shopping centres right across the country, all have that vital facility in place. Of course, the job is not done. We need more Changing Places facilities; almost a quarter of a million people rely on them. We have made real progress, and it is worth taking a moment to thank the people who deserve praise for that. The consortium, as we have heard, is now run by PAMIS and the Centre for Accessible Environments, but previously, when I was in post, it was run by Mencap and Muscular Dystrophy UK, supported by many others. They deserve enormous credit for their co-ordination and campaigning on this issue. So do the tireless campaigners up and down the country—families with severely disabled children and other family members, like dad Andrew Newton and his daughter Aniela, who came to see me all those years ago. Certainly for my part, as I reflect on my political career, it will remain one of my proudest achievements to have played a small part in supporting all their efforts. Every time a parent gets in touch to say they have been able to enjoy a family day out that most of us take for granted, I feel a real sense of pride. We all know there is much wrong with our politics, but this issue shows the value of our constituency system: communities are able to raise issues directly with their elected representatives and see them turned into action. It also shows the benefit of working across party lines over years to make changes, and to make people’s lives that bit easier. I associate myself with the powerful speech by the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford. I know the Minister will have listened hard to what he said about the need for capital funding for existing buildings, and I am sure she will do what she can to make colleagues in Government aware of that issue, and to make representations to them. I know she will do that because all of us here are deeply committed to ensuring that these families can enjoy more opportunities and the better quality of life that they deserve, and most importantly, have the chance to live with dignity.

• 9 Jul 2026 · Farm Business Sustainability · Hansard source

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  Attracting the next generation of farmers is key to the long-term sustainability of the sector. I recently visited Great Smeaton young farmers’ club, and it was wonderful to see both their contribution to the local community and their commitment to farming. Groups like that are vital to engaging young people in farming. Will the Secretary of State join me in paying tribute to Great Smeaton YFC and the National Federation of Young Farmers’ Clubs for their important contribution to our national life?