Rosie Duffield MP: speeches

Speeches

• 20 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Westminster is once again buzzing with the latest U-turns, speculation and briefings over the Chancellor’s policies on the winter fuel allowance and the two-child benefit cap. There is less of a buzz for the visitors to Canterbury food bank, however, which last month distributed enough food to make 13,545 meals, in a 47% rise on the same period last year. Will the Chancellor end the serious anxiety of those experiencing fuel and food poverty now and reverse those policies?

• 20 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.

• 24 Mar 2025 · European Union: UK Membership · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell. By parliamentary standards, this may not be an enormous petition, nor has it attracted almost 3 million signatures, like the recent one calling for another general election. However, it is still significant, and is on a subject that has gone from being all we ever talked about to one we now barely even mention. Those of us with dark red areas on the petition map will know, however, that this issue has not disappeared from our constituents’ hearts and minds. As far as many of us are concerned, Brexit is not and has never been a done deal, never to be spoken of again—almost 400 of my constituents have signed and written to me about it. From campaigning against Brexit during the referendum to working day and night, including on the first sitting Saturday in 40 years, many of us tried and came so close to securing a less awful deal and a people’s vote. Almost every Labour Member met to discuss and scrutinise every stage and every amendment, led in group meetings several times a day by the current Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology and the Secretary of State for Education; the now Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster; the Minister for Employment, the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Alison McGovern); and the now Minister of State for Europe and North America, the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty). I would love to believe that those Government Ministers are now applying our years of campaigning together against the damage we foresaw Brexit causing to our national security, economy and place in the world in their new roles, raising those issues in Cabinet and departmental meetings at every available opportunity. According to the recent YouGov survey that has been mentioned, 55% of Britons now say it was wrong to for the UK to leave the EU, and just 11% see Brexit as more of a success than a failure. That mirrors the 2016 referendum result in my constituency, where the University of Kent, our largest employer, enjoyed an extremely close working partnership with our neighbours across the English channel, not just on research projects, but with campuses on the continent that have sadly now been closed completely. Gone is the once proud sign that read, “University of Kent: the European university”. Gone, too, are many of our friends, neighbours, academics and language teachers, who made Canterbury their home for decades. The diverse demographic mix has changed. Group bookings at local restaurants, the cathedral, guest houses and tourist attractions have fallen dramatically, and our city centre just feels like a different place. Thankfully, we are a resourceful city, used to welcoming pilgrims of all kinds, and we are adjusting, but Brexit punched us heavily, and it hurt. Canterbury is closer to Europe than to many UK cities, and we have more in common with it than we do with many of them; we have such close ties in so many parts of our local economy. Aside from our social, economic and sentimental ties in east Kent, the national urgency for closer official ties could not be more timely, as shifting global alliances and instability are highlighted every day. We must get closer once again to our friends and allies in the EU. That is, of course, a political decision. It is a matter of leadership and of making the case politically and based on facts. Our trade opportunities and international standing, and our very security, depend on us showing political leadership. This is the basic requirement of political premiers—

• 24 Mar 2025 · European Union: UK Membership · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, but there are plenty of things that the Labour Government seem to be pushing through that were not in the manifesto. The people now in charge were campaigning, with those of us who were here then, against Brexit several years ago, and I would like them to stick to that. Our trade opportunities and international standing, and our very security, depend on us showing political leadership. This is the basic requirement of political premiers: taking decisions—not just tough decisions on the economy, but bold, swift, courageous decisions during shifting geopolitical circumstances. Our tourism, arts, farming, university and financial sectors need help. It is time that this Government took some of those bold decisions, not only to reflect the will of those they represent, but to protect and secure the best future for the generations who depend on us to deliver it.

• 11 Mar 2025 · Gender Critical Beliefs: Equality Act 2010 · Hansard source

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  I thank the right hon. Gentleman so much for raising that important point. Just for speaking up, I, a left-wing member of the Labour party, have been called a Reform member and all kinds of names, and it has been suggested that I join a right-wing party, yet an awful lot of the articles I read agreeing with me are in the Morning Star . People do not really listen to the ideology behind our beliefs and why we speak up for the rights of working women, which is what the Labour party was founded to do. We have a duty in this place to ensure that people who hold gender critical beliefs are given the respect they are entitled to. We need to find a workable solution that respects everyone’s beliefs and protected characteristics. I finish by paying tribute to the brave and incredible women—and some men—who know that only women have a cervix and who have stood up to those hounding them at great personal and financial risk to themselves: Maya Forstater, Allison Bailey, Jo Phoenix, Rachel Meade, Roz Adams, Denise Fahmy, Eleanor Frances, Almut Gadow, Laura Favaro, Amelia Sparrow, Jenny Lindsay, Kathleen Stock, Rosie Kay, Selina Todd, Rosa Freedman, Lizzy Pitt and my dearest TERF friends Jo Rowling, Suzanne Moore and supreme shero pioneer Julie Bindel. Those women are just the tip of the iceberg. I was elected on a manifesto pledge to make the country work for working people. These are working people who are being persecuted for their legal and respectable beliefs. They continue to be let down by cowardly leadership. I have been hounded, harassed, sidelined and briefed against by a party now in government. It is time the Government got to grips with this issue, perhaps by following the lead of the incredibly brave women I have referenced here and the unsung foot soldiers who fight for women’s rights in the workplace the world over.

• 11 Mar 2025 · Gender Critical Beliefs: Equality Act 2010 · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for his point. I agree that all of those beliefs should be—and are—protected under the law. Our desire to be kind, inclusive and accepting are worthy and valuable human traits, and it is the pursuit of tolerance that underpins our law on discrimination. They are essential values in a pluralistic democracy where we can acknowledge, navigate and respect our differences. Yet a tendency has arisen in polarised debates, particularly around sex and gender, to treat holding a belief opposing one’s own as not merely a point of disagreement, but a moral defect in the person with whom one disagrees. That has been clearly demonstrated in the terms that have been used for women who think that our biological sex matters, that it is a material reality that cannot be changed and is entirely different from gender identity—that is, gender-critical women like me. Nasty, puerile terms, many unrepeatable in this place but repeated ad infinitum across social media, such as bigot, Nazi, fascist and TERF—trans-exclusionary radical feminist—are just some examples.

• 11 Mar 2025 · Gender Critical Beliefs: Equality Act 2010 · Hansard source

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  Absolutely, and I thank the hon. Member so much for raising that case. It shocked and peaked quite a lot of people that just asking for single-sex services when they are more vital than ever got Roz Adams into so much hot water. It is absolutely unbelievable, and good luck to her in her fight. Ironically, the name calling—the extreme, nasty and degrading names used for women and sometimes men who do not accept that biological men can be women—is often under the guise of “being kind”. Gender critical women are frequently shut down, told to be quiet, or told that it is not right to use accurate language to describe our bodies. Words and language matter, and material reality matters infinitely. There are situations where sex matters and the rights of women and girls must take precedence. Women and girls must be able to use language to describe our experiences and not be persecuted for causing offence or distress. To believe in women’s sex-based rights and publicly advocate for them results in being readily labelled as hateful or transphobic. However, I am gender critical because I am a feminist and care deeply about the rights of women and girls. I do not seek to destroy the rights of trans-identifying people or any other group, and never have done. My sex-based rights as a woman have nothing to do with those other groups of people. Gender critical beliefs are legally protected philosophical beliefs under the Equality Act 2010, following the Forstater employment tribunal case in 2021. The tribunal found that Maya Forstater’s beliefs, which she sincerely holds, are widely shared, based on fact, and are reflective of the law of the land, yet despite that judgment, in the four years since there has been an unprecedented run—a steady stream—of similar high-profile and costly employment tribunal cases involving gender critical beliefs that point to a problem that many in this place refuse to acknowledge, including, I am afraid, the Minister responding to this debate. The normalisation of visible hostility towards anyone expressing widely held gender critical beliefs, even on our own green Benches, has been framed as an expression of solidarity with trans and non-binary people. Those within organisations that sign up to expensive re-education programmes, many of which misrepresent the law, and diktats on all employees signing off emails with pronouns, legitimise the constant, passive-aggressive and soft—or even aggressive and open—bullying of those who refuse to comply. Those who disagree with gender critical beliefs routinely stigmatise women like me as bigoted, a view that arises from a total misunderstanding of what our beliefs are or the motivations of many of those who share them. The social and financial costs of voicing gender critical beliefs, and of challenging assumptions in their workplace, mean that many are afraid and feel they cannot afford to speak up. Still, day after day people who raise concerns about boundaries around single-sex spaces such as changing rooms are being disciplined, dismissed, and hounded from their workplaces. Two such cases currently attracting huge attention are those of the Darlington nurses and the Fife nurse, Sandie Peggie. Their tribunals have brought the clash of rights into sharp relief. Few people reading that when adult female nurses challenged their employers to stop biological men changing in the women’s changing room could believe that they were disciplined. I have yet to speak to a single British voter who believes that a man should have whatever access he desires to spaces where women are getting dressed or undressed for work. . Our evidence base is limited, as academics are afraid to research this area for fear of ending up hounded out of their jobs, as academics Kathleen Stock, Jo Phoenix, Laura Favaro and many others have been. None the less, the body of evidence is growing. In its rapid evidence review on harassment and censorship to inform the Khan review published in March last year, More in Common found significant anecdotal evidence of harassment faced by groups of gender critical activists. Gender critical people face high levels of harassment in their everyday lives, leading to self-censorship on a scale that should alarm anyone who believes in liberal democracy—including gender critical MPs who have yet to speak up in public. Gender critical people face severe consequences for engaging in the debate, ranging from social ostracization to loss of employment and livelihood, all for holding three core beliefs: that women—adult human females—are materially definable as a class of human being; that women are culturally, legislatively and politically important, with our own set of needs, rights and concerns; and that women have the right to meet and discuss freely that which affects our lives profoundly.

• 11 Mar 2025 · Gender Critical Beliefs: Equality Act 2010 · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered gender critical beliefs and the Equality Act 2010. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. The Equality Act, passed by a Labour Government in 2010, protects people from discrimination based on nine protected characteristics: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation. The Act has a commendable objective: to prevent people from acting on their prejudices and disagreements in a way that results in the discriminatory treatment of others. It exists not to eliminate difference or ensure conformity, but to foster good relations and tolerance between different groups. Sometimes rights clash. Very few examples of that clash have played out as publicly and discordantly as that between sex and gender identity: that is, the rights of biological women, and sometimes men, and the rights of those who change their social gender to transition to women. Significant feminist gains have been made in policy and law since the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s. Those gains include recognition of specific rights and services for women on the basis of their sex, be that in hospital wards, prisons, rape services, domestic abuse shelters, lesbian dating sites and clubs, women’s health organisations and women’s sports teams—spaces that meet our specific requirements as women. Those gains are being eroded by the blind acceptance by some, including policy makers in this place, that anybody who identifies as a woman de facto becomes one. At a time when male violence against women and girls is at epidemic levels in the UK, women’s single-sex spaces could not be more important. Our desire to be kind, inclusive and accepting are worthy and valuable human traits. It is that pursuit of tolerance that underpins our law on discrimination.

• 10 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T9. The University of Kent, which is the largest employer in my constituency, is making yet more redundancies due to the enormous debt it owes to international banks. Will the Secretary of State commit to holding crisis meetings with desperate universities and their creditors, to help secure more sustainable terms and a potential way out of the financial emergency that they face?

• 5 Mar 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q13. Under his Labour Government, does the Prime Minister believe that the UK’s estimated 3 million millionaires should contribute more to our vital national security, or is it just the world’s poorest, by no longer benefiting from our international aid programmes, or the shameful almost 6 million children living in poverty in this country who should pay for it? What happened to the wealth tax, Prime Minister?

• 27 Feb 2025 · Women’s Health · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Helena Dollimore) on securing this debate, which is one of only a handful to tackle women’s health in general. Since I came to this place, a big focus for me has been women’s health, whether it is the devastating and shocking findings of the Kirkup review of East Kent Hospitals maternity care; the setting up of the APPG for birth trauma; the plight of women who now have no recourse to any healthcare or medical treatment in Afghanistan; the women whose health and wellbeing means precisely nothing to the warring factions in places such as Tigray; the tenacious mothers who have tirelessly fought for changes to sodium valproate labelling; female cancers; vaginal mesh; menopause; the mental stress and health toll on WASPI—Women Against State Pension Inequality —or 1950s women; female genital mutilation; or domestic abuse survivors. All of those and so many more are health issues that affect the majority of the population, who are female. And for the avoidance of doubt, let me be clear: by female I mean women, adult human females, the kind who have a cervix and who definitely do not have a penis. Despite women being 51% of the population, women’s health services are frequently deprioritised, with the healthcare model based on a default male, and women existing within a system built around men. The inequalities in health outcomes between men and women are scandalous. Compared with men, women are more likely to experience common mental health conditions, more likely to be misdiagnosed, more likely to receive less pain medication after identical procedures and more likely to be undertreated for pain by doctors. A perfect example of how women must exist within a healthcare system built for men is that of heart attacks. I have recent experience of this, with my dear friend Nicky Clark experiencing a heart attack in January. She is now tirelessly campaigning, because compared with men, women are less likely to be admitted to hospital when they complain of chest pain and they have more than double the rate of death within 30 days following a heart attack. Medical professionals know that heart attacks present very differently in women, compared with men, and yet the classic symptoms listed in campaigns are specific to men only. Recent trends in the collection of data highlight how vital the accurate recording of this is in a medical context. Women’s health issues all arise from our specific biology. A man cannot get ovarian cancer and a woman cannot get prostate cancer, for example. It may be considered good manners, kind and courteous to refer to those who identify as a different gender in the way they prefer, but for the specific purposes of recording vital and potentially lifesaving data, we must accurately record patients’ biological sex. Otherwise, trans patients may miss being called for screening for sex-specific conditions, and that has potentially fatal consequences. That has been highlighted by Professor Alice Sullivan, who was commissioned by the last Government to tackle the issue of recording sex data, including in the NHS. Her review is due to be published, and I would be grateful if the Government could confirm the date for that as soon as possible. In the last seven years, we have had seven Secretaries of State for Health and Social Care. It is very hard to get even on the second rung of a ladder when we have to start all over again with explanations, evidence and examples relating to a campaign or specific health issue every few months because the departmental personnel and teams change so often, so women here will keep campaigning and holding debates to push women’s health further up the agenda. I will keep working with the Birth Trauma Association, the MASIC Foundation and others to help to end the postcode lottery and extreme inequalities for black and south Asian mothers experiencing what should be straightforward and perfectly safe childbirth. I again thank all those parliamentarians, campaigners and activists who just will not take no for an answer and who fight every day to bring about better experiences for other women.

• 27 Feb 2025 · Archbishop of Canterbury Appointment · Hansard source

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  Recent headlines about safeguarding failures have badly eroded trust in the Church. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, with whom I have had the pleasure of working closely, resigned his position in recognition of that so that the Church could move forward. I congratulate the Second Church Estates Commissioner on her powerful speech at the most recent Synod. Does she agree that those selecting our next archbishop must not be implicated in safeguarding failures of any kind?

• 27 Feb 2025 · Archbishop of Canterbury Appointment · Hansard source

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  11. What progress the Church has made on appointing a new Archbishop of Canterbury.

• 11 Feb 2025 · Nursing: Career Progression Inequalities · Hansard source

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  Does the Minister believe that the NHS should expect biologically female nursing staff to get changed in front of biologically male colleagues who identify as female?

• 29 Jan 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q10. Since 2012, the Drax power station has been given £7 billion of green subsidies by the Government for burning 27 million trees per year. That is enough money for five years of pensioners’ winter fuel payments. While Ofgem has been asleep at the wheel, a recent KPMG report has concluded that Drax claimed those subsidies illegally. Will the Prime Minister demand to see that KPMG report before giving another pound of taxpayers’ money to Drax?

• 28 Jan 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  Last week, the Domestic Abuse Commissioner found that just 5% of reported domestic abuse results in a conviction. Does the Minister share my concerns that lengthy investigations into non-crime hate incidents are potentially diverting vital resources from the criminal justice system and from prosecuting actual violence against women and girls?

• 28 Jan 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  21. What steps her Department is taking through the criminal justice system to help tackle violence against women and girls.

• 13 Jan 2025 · Antisocial Behaviour · Hansard source

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  10. What steps her Department is taking to help tackle antisocial behaviour.

• 13 Jan 2025 · Antisocial Behaviour · Hansard source

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  Last year, on average, at least three instances of antisocial behaviour per day were reported to Kent police in the city centre of Canterbury alone. We have great beat officers who I know keep our city as safe as they can, but given that the economy of our historic UNESCO city relies so heavily on tourism, how will the Government work with Kent police to further tackle this issue so that residents, businesses and visitors feel safer?

• 7 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T4. Since 2017 I have been raising the crisis facing East Kent hospitals university NHS foundation trust. Seven different Health Secretaries across those seven years have promised much but delivered nothing at all. Patients continue to face unacceptably long waits on trolleys in corridors, and last month the Kent Online paper compared these conditions to a war zone, with an average of 40 very ill patients a day facing more than 12-hour waits. Will the Secretary of State meet me and the CEO of our trust, who is desperate for even the most basic diagnostic equipment, to ensure that this does not continue to be the case for another seven years?

• 10 Dec 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T9. Elizabeth Fry first began her work to create sex-specific prison facilities for women in 1813, with the primary aim of protecting female prisoners from rape, and the Gaols Act 1823 put this into statute. Yet 200 years later, Fry’s legacy is being betrayed as girls and women continue to be housed with boys and men. One such example is Wetherby. Does the Secretary of State agree with me and the Women’s Rights Network that Susannah Hancock’s work on this is urgently needed, and can she give any indication of when Susannah will conclude her review?

• 9 Dec 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T7. My constituent, 14-year-old Lewis, has been out of school for two years and his education has been disrupted for four. He is yet another child whose parents have been told by Kent county council that he must attend a particular school despite the school saying that it is unable to meet his specific educational needs. This is typical of the battle that many families I see have to go through for years, costing them time and money and causing infinite stress. Will the Minister meet me and the parents to ensure that he is one of the last children to suffer from Kent county council’s continual neglect of SEN children?

• 11 Nov 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Given the new Government’s collective condemnation of the two-child limit over the eight years since it was introduced, which includes condemnation from many Government Members on Select Committees, will they at the very least commit to scrapping its heinous, sexist and frankly disgusting rape clause element?

• 23 Oct 2024 · Water Companies: Regulation and Financial Stability · Hansard source

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  Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the 285,000 people who signed the petition about renationalisation that I helped to present to Downing Street a couple of years ago, particularly those in the beautiful coastal town of Whitstable, have been badly let down by Southern Water on a daily basis?

• 17 Oct 2024 · Ordination of Women: 30th Anniversary · Hansard source

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  I welcome my dear friend to her position, and I know she will be absolutely brilliant. I was thrilled to attend the 30-year anniversary of the first women ordained at Canterbury cathedral earlier this year. The service was conducted by our dear Bishop Rose, our much-loved former chaplain to the Speaker. Will my friend join me in congratulating those pioneering women, including my partner’s mother, Canon Eileen Routh, who faced a degree of hostility when entering into their new vocations some 30 years ago?