Sam Carling MP: speeches

Speeches

• 30 Jun 2026 · Department of Health and Social Care · Hansard source

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  I, too, thank the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) for securing this debate, and I, too, wish we had more time. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan), who made some difficult, but really important points. This is a timely debate, because pharmaceuticals are core both to supporting a healthier population and to delivering economic growth. The main estimates memorandum outlines an expectation of just under £2 billion of R&D expenditure over the coming year from the DHSC, which is roughly equal to the figure in the previous estimates, and I welcome that. Of course, private investment also plays a significant role in drug development. That is why I am so pleased to see increasing confidence from the private sector in the UK as an environment in which to do impactful research. Last month, we saw AstraZeneca commit £300 million in investment across the UK, after this Government’s work to agree a pharmaceutical deal with the US enabled that investment. However, there is much more to do to create a regulatory environment that encourages investment into clinical research in the UK. I encourage the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to consider simplifying and consolidating our regulatory landscape. I am not here to criticise our regulators, who I believe do a very good job in their respective roles. I have regular engagement with research scientists, universities and professional bodies through my work as chair of the all-party parliamentary group known as the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee. This is the oldest APPG, which was established in 1939 to better connect scientists and parliamentarians in the interests of better policy. The overwhelming message is that, actually, regulators get it and want to enable research and growth, not hinder it, but that the overall landscape is just so complex that approvals are taking far longer than they need to. In a contribution to the King’s Speech debate last month, I listed a range of regulators: the MHRA, NICE, the Health and Safety Executive, the Human Tissue Authority, the Health Research Authority, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, the Animals in Science Regulation Unit, and so on. That is just too many regulators and that is not even all of them. I very much hope the Government will use the upcoming regulating for growth Bill to look at how to reduce overlap and streamline the environment. Having to get so many decisions slows down research and innovation enormously, particularly when researchers have to apply for clearance from them sequentially in most cases, rather than in tandem, stretching the overall timeline. I propose another solution. Why do we not create a single front door for study approvals: a unified application process that collects all the information that different regulators might need, so that researchers can fill in one form, and a team of recruited staff whose job it is to liaise with all the regulators, establish who needs to approve the individual study in question and pass along the information necessary, ideally in tandem rather than each approval being sequential and relying on the last? I hope the Minister will take some of those ideas on board. There are many reasons to be optimistic. The UK has been, and in many areas still is, a world leader in drug development. Let us keep building on that.

• 15 Jun 2026 · Royal Albert Hall Bill [Lords]: Revival · Hansard source

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  This is a process point, but will the Minister confirm to the House whether, if the revival motion fails, the promoters can bring in another Bill at a time that suits them, ideally with some of these issues resolved?

• 15 Jun 2026 · Social Media Ban for Under-16s · Hansard source

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  The Secretary of State knows that I have concerns about the enforceability of a platform-based ban, but I welcome the news about tackling infinite scrolling, which affects people of all ages. I am concerned about young LGBT people growing up in often unsupportive environments, who can find support online from others in similar circumstances—I know from personal experience how valuable that can be. Does the Secretary of State agree that such support is important, and if so, how will she ensure that it can continue?

• 1 Jun 2026 · Equality Act 2010: Code of Practice · Hansard source

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  The High Court judgment of February this year against the EHRC, when the initial guidance was challenged, stated: “there would, in principle, be scope for a strong argument that a rule or practice that permitted trans women to use the ‘female’ lavatory but required other biological men to use the male lavatory would comprise different but not less favourable treatment on grounds of sex.” The clear implication is that providers may choose to offer trans-inclusive services. Can the Minister explain how the EHRC’s code of practice is at all consistent with that?

• 20 May 2026 · Defence Readiness · Hansard source

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  Today’s debate theme is defence readiness, and I am pleased that we heard in His Majesty’s Speech the Government’s clear commitment to a sustained increase in defence spending. I also welcome the announcement of several Bills aimed at boosting national security, notably the tackling state threats Bill, intended to create a tougher operating environment for foreign intelligence services and their proxies. I also welcome the national security Bill to target those inciting terrorism—whether Islamist, linked to another religion, extreme right-wing or in any other form—and extreme violence online. We know that many of those threats are arriving from overseas, and their prevention is a key part of our defence. The establishment of a defence housing service, as laid out in the armed forces Bill, will be of huge benefit to the many military families in my constituency. We have to look after the people who devote their lives to serving our country. On housing more broadly, I am pleased to see the commonhold and leasehold reform Bill. Leasehold tenancies are a huge problem for so many in my area, and I look forward to a fairer system that limits ground rent as well as protecting my constituents from being exploited by poor managing agents. We need greater transparency over service charges and more powers for residents to challenge them. I have also had constituents approach me who have been victims of domestic abuse and have been unable to remove their abuser from their joint social tenancy due to a gap in legislation. I am therefore delighted that the Government have listened to representations on this and set out plans for the social housing Bill to address that issue. That will be a real change for my constituents who have had to live in fear and uncertainty, and it ties into the Government’s ambitions to tackle violence against women and girls. On that note, I raised a serious issue during the debate on the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill last year around taxis and private hire vehicles. The ability of many private hire vehicles to be licensed in any authority in the country yet operate far away from the authority that licenses them is creating an environment that allows shopping around for lower standards. This is affecting passenger safety and driver security, as well as penalising those drivers who do the right thing and register where they actually work. We have started to tackle this issue through the national minimum standards being brought in through that legislation, and I am pleased to see in this King’s Speech measures to go further. The taxi and private hire vehicle Bill announced in the King’s Speech will specifically deliver on the recommendations of the Casey report on child sexual exploitation and abuse, such as clear licensing requirements and stronger, more consistent enforcement powers. That will be a real positive for both passengers and drivers. I am going to focus the remainder of my speech on the regulating for growth Bill, which I hope will have significant potential to support British business and innovation and make us much more competitive on the international stage, including in defence. I am pleased that the Government have explicitly referenced this Bill being used to enable better testing of next-generation defence technology. Having a background in life sciences, I am keenly aware of the ever-faster progress our researchers are making in developing new drugs, therapies and medical technologies to fight disease. British science is often world-leading, and for good reason, but translating conceptual research into clinical trials and eventually into products and services is too difficult. That problem will increase as we move further into the world of personalised medicine, where we are using genetic data to create hyper-specific therapies that will specifically target individual patients’ cancers. This Government laid world-first regulations last July to make access to these therapies easier once approved, allowing them to be manufactured closer to patients so that they can be delivered far faster and save more lives. The appetite is there, but the regulatory environment needs an overhaul. That is not an attack on our regulators either. In my capacity as chair of the all-party parliamentary group known as the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee—the oldest APPG, set up in 1939—I regularly engage with research scientists and professional bodies, and we had a very well-attended discussion meeting as recently as Monday this week. They often express a lot of support for our life sciences regulators, most of whom get it, fully back our growth agenda and very much want to be facilitators rather than blockers, but there is too much fragmentation for that to work effectively. To name just a few regulators, we have the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency looking at safety and efficacy; the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence examining cost-effectiveness; the Health and Safety Executive examining hazardous substances and genetically modified organisms; the Human Tissue Authority regulating human tissue use; the Health Research Authority making assessments around ethics; the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which needs to sign off on some stem cell research projects; and the projects that require animal studies need to go to the Animals in Science Regulation Unit in the Home Office. That is not an exhaustive list, and I have not even touched on the plethora of NHS bodies that have to give approval for data sharing and usage, should research studies need that, as many do. These bodies all look at different and important features, but this is a crazy number of regulators. It is not that we need to deregulate; rather, we need to bring together regulators to streamline decisions without compromising on standards, and I hope that the Government will use this Bill to do that. The individual regulators usually have reasonable decision-making timelines, though some are prone to delays, but in totality, having to get so many decisions slows down research and innovation enormously, particularly when researchers have to apply for clearance from them sequentially in most cases, although this Government have taken the first steps to reduce that through a new combined pathway between NICE and the MHRA. Regulators often ask for very similar information in slightly different formats and timetables. That wastes time and money across industry and academia for knowledgeable people who want to be cracking on and actually doing their research. Why can we not have a single front door for approvals? There could be a unified approvals application process that collects all the relevant information in one go, so that researchers could submit one application and then have the regulators work out which of them needed to make the decisions, ideally doing so in tandem rather than each waiting for the previous one. We could also look to merge some of the regulators, and I would not object to that either, provided we can keep their expertise. I will be closely following how the legislation progresses.

• 22 Apr 2026 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is citing some shocking evidence, and I will be sure to listen to the Committee session later. On her comments about Meta not believing that its platforms are addictive, does she agree that the problem goes more broadly than just children? Lots of adults have issues with social media addiction, and a social media ban for children would not necessarily solve that. We need to look at broader solutions.

• 22 Apr 2026 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  Does the right hon. Lady not recognise that action and a ban will not necessarily be the same thing? This is a really nuanced policy area. Quite recently, there was a huge online joint letter published by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the Molly Rose Foundation, the Internet Watch Foundation and many others. It argued that although serious action is needed to tackle addictive features, safeguarding problems and violent content online, as we all agree and as she is saying, a blanket ban has significant drawbacks. It is right that we really look at the evidence, consult nationally and get this right.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Knife Crime · Hansard source

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  On Sunday, there was a horrific attack in my constituency; a 16-year-old boy was fatally stabbed in Orton. My thoughts—and those of the House, I am sure—are with his family. I welcome the Government’s ambition to halve knife crime. How will that help to tackle the issue in Peterborough and across Cambridgeshire? What work is under way on understanding the root causes of why, in certain regions, knife crime is not following the national trend and decreasing, so that we can better address those root causes?

• 25 Mar 2026 · Nuclear Test Veterans · Hansard source

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  Would my hon. Friend join me in commemorating the life and legacy of Alan Dowson? Until very recently, he was a councillor in my constituency. He was first elected in 1971, and served as a Labour councillor for most of the intervening years. He was 19 years old when he was on Christmas Island, and he was one of the veterans who observed—he spoke about this several times— how he could see the bones in his hands due to the level of light coming through them. He has campaigned on this issue for so many years, and I just wanted to get his name into the parliamentary record.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Defence · Hansard source

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  I am not 100% sure what point the hon. Gentleman is trying to make, but he has put it on the record. There is a huge amount of drone activity going on, and a lot of ways in which that needs to be dealt with. I am heartened by what this Government have done so far, including, to name just a few achievements: the largest pay rise in two decades for armed forces personnel, many of whom are my constituents; the first veterans’ strategy in seven years; the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the cold war, including a pledge to reach 3% of spending on defence by the end of the Parliament; and a £9 billion plan to renew those 36,000 military homes. Again, that last one has been so critical for my constituents working at RAF Wittering. Life in the services has to be made rewarding—a rewarding career and a rewarding life—and I am afraid to say that for too long, that has not been the case. It is no wonder, therefore, that the number of troops plummeted on the previous Government’s watch. Some comments were made about trying to boost the reserves, which I very much agreed with—we need to do some work in that area. We also need to sort out the ongoing issues with recruitment, which again became significantly worse under the previous Government. I have spoken to a number of people who have tried to join the military and found that the bureaucratic process is incredibly difficult, and we have heard about that on several occasions through the armed forces parliamentary scheme. I hope we will make some progress in tackling those issues soon, because we have a Government who are willing to invest in our forces and improve the quality of life for those serving. My constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty), is in the Chamber, and I notice that his name is on the motion as well. I found some of his criticisms of this Government’s record on defence surprising, given that so much work is going on in our own area of Huntingdonshire around defence. The local council and the Ministry of Defence—represented by the two Ministers who are in the Chamber right now, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns) and my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Louise Sandher-Jones)—visited RAF Wyton in December and signed a statement of intent, committing to work together to support the growth of Project Fairfax and establish Wyton as a nationally significant area for defence intelligence and innovation. With that will come the redevelopment of the North Hunts growth cluster, which will deliver new homes, jobs and investment. That will be brilliant for the local area. Very briefly, I will respond to something that my hon. Friend the Member for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman) said about investment in defence being spent on weapons and bombs. Those are not the only things that defence investment goes on—military intelligence is a huge part of the local economy in my area, and ideally it will make up more of our local economy. I think it is useful to recognise that there is a broad spectrum of things that we spend funding on, but of course I respect the points that he made. I am very glad that the Conservative party has called this debate, as it is a great opportunity to highlight the good work we are doing and remind us all of the many ways in which the Conservatives let our armed forces down for a decade and a half. It is a good thing that they can only comment on policy rather than make it, a fact for which I am sighing in relief.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Defence · Hansard source

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  I, too, will start by agreeing with a member of the Opposition, specifically the former Defence Secretary Ben Wallace. He was quoted as saying that under his own party, our armed forces had been “hollowed out”.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Defence · Hansard source

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  What I am very happy to say about defence spending is that when we last hit 2.5%, it was under a Labour Government. The right hon. Gentleman’s party failed to do so throughout their time in office. Although it has been quite entertaining in some respects watching old marital woes play out on the Opposition Benches today, it sounds like everyone agrees that bad things happened, but the two former partners—the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats—are evidently more interested in taking chunks out of each other than owning up to leaving the mess. The motion before us today also calls for some of the Government’s legislation to not proceed on the basis that it is “a threat to morale”. The reference to morale is quite interesting, given that satisfaction with life in the services fell from 60% in 2010 to 40% in 2024. When it comes to satisfaction, one key issue is housing, so I welcomed the Labour Government’s decision to insource a huge number of houses that were wrongly privatised by a previous Conservative Government back into our ownership. Some 431 of those houses are in my constituency, and I hope we will be able to radically improve their condition, particularly through the work we have done to make defence housing subject to the decent homes standard at long last, which I welcome. Unfortunately, we have a Leader of the Opposition who appears able to shoot from the hip without thinking too much about the consequences, and who has now changed to a very unclear position that none of us seems able to grasp. In contrast, this Government have taken the right decisions at the right time.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Defence · Hansard source

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  The shadow Secretary of State says, “Under successive Governments”—that includes his own, for 14 years. It is not often that I agree with Ministers from the last Government, but the former Defence Secretary was absolutely right. The smallest Army since the Napoleonic era, a record 13,000 complaints about defence housing in a single year, and investment grievously cut under austerity—that is the legacy we are looking at, no matter how much the Opposition want us to forget it. As was recognised by my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Michelle Scrogham), the shadow Defence Secretary is criticising delays, but he was the Procurement Minister when 47 out of 49 major programmes were not on time or on budget, so we need to take what he says with a little bit of salt.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Defence · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman has just made a point about the concentration of defence investment in the south-east. Can he remind us where Trident is based?

• 10 Mar 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T9. Young people in North West Cambridgeshire and across the country are struggling to access mortgages and get on to the housing ladder due to thin credit files. Will the Minister explore requiring lettings agents and large landlords, with the consent of tenants, to report rental payment data to credit reference agencies so that a record of paying rent on time can contribute to tenants’ credit histories and help them access mortgages?

• 9 Mar 2026 · Social Cohesion Action Plan · Hansard source

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  I have long been arguing that we need an overhaul of charity regulation to tackle rogue operators who are exploiting charity status to peddle extremism and hate, so I am thrilled that the Government have listened and are starting that today with new powers for the Charity Commission—I look forward to seeing the detail. Will the Secretary of State confirm that the Charity Commission will have a range of sanctions to impose where needed, and that there will be clear communication with HMRC to ensure that sanctioned and shutdown charities can no longer abuse public money through Gift Aid?

• 2 Mar 2026 · Small Religious Organisations: Safeguarding · Hansard source

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  I am very grateful to the hon. Lady, who I know has done a lot of work on this matter, in particular on making sure that the seal of confession is not exempted from mandatory reporting. I very much appreciate her work on that, which is really important. She says—I am sure that she has the correct figure—that it takes on average 26 years for someone, having been a victim, to report child sexual abuse. That goes to show that we cannot have a duty that relies on that reporting. We must ensure that people are empowered and will report their reasonable suspicion. I met all the stakeholders I have just cited and many more, and not all back the Government position. The NSPCC is deeply concerned that the professional sanctions proposed by the Government as the only consequence for non-compliance are not enough. It does not want sanctions that could lead to a criminal record, but very much wants stronger civil sanctions, including potential fines, so I would argue that there is ample space for a well-thought-through compromise here. I have drafted an exemplar amendment, showing how civil sanctions could work. It is based on the Home Office fine-issuing powers in the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006, and Baroness Grey-Thompson tabled the amendment in the Lords, for debate earlier today. Similarly, the NSPCC feels strongly that the mandatory reporting duty should include reasonable suspicion as a trigger. That raises concerns about why the Home Office said to me that the NSPCC did not hold that position, and used that point to bolster the Government position. Some other stakeholders cited as agreeing with the Government have also expressed a much more nuanced position to me, accepting that the position is finely balanced, and that their concerns could be ameliorated through effective training—there have been amendments on that previously. On these issues, the international evidence is so clear. Many countries with mandatory reporting have criminal sanctions, including a significant majority of US states, France, Australia, Croatia and Canada.

• 2 Mar 2026 · Small Religious Organisations: Safeguarding · Hansard source

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  I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that point. It sounds like really helpful evidence and a really good example, and I will certainly go away and have a look at it. I will not rehash the arguments I made in June, but I will say that IICSA was clear, having examined the issue in huge depth over many years, that both strong sanctions and the inclusion of reasonable suspicion were essential to create a duty that works, and its views have not changed. On Friday, two of the four IICSA panel members, Sir Malcolm Evans and Ivor Frank, wrote to the Home Secretary, pressing for the duty in the Crime and Policing Bill to be strengthened, so that it complies with their original recommendations.

• 2 Mar 2026 · Small Religious Organisations: Safeguarding · Hansard source

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  I agree completely with my hon. Friend. In the debate in the House of Lords earlier today, Baroness Grey-Thompson gave a good example from when she was a younger athlete of sports coaches’ behaviour that she had observed. She believes that if there had been a duty relating to reasonable suspicion, it could have helped in dealing with some of that. In none of the countries I named earlier has the feared chilling effect arisen, despite strong sanctions for failure to report. Nevertheless, as I have set out, firm civil sanctions would be a fair compromise, supported by virtually all stakeholders. On the concerns about floods of reports, we just have to look at the international evidence. Those floods just do not happen. Extensive research by Professor Ben Mathews in Western Australia, which has both criminal sanctions and the inclusion of reasonable suspicion, found that while there was an increase, the number of substantiated investigations—those with a finding of abuse—doubled, from an annual mean of 160 in the pre-law period to 327 in the post-law period. That indicates that twice as many sexually abused children were being identified. Compare that to Wales, where IICSA was told that the introduction of a weaker duty in 2016 had “not led to a substantive change in practice”. At this point, I want to highlight that the NSPCC, the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse and the Lucy Faithfull Foundation all clearly want the Government to criminalise the intentional concealment of abuse. Clause 79 of the Bill criminalises stopping a mandated reporter from carrying out their duty to report. That is welcome, but it needs to be broader. In the Jehovah’s Witnesses and other small religious groups, there is ample evidence that religious leaders regularly stop victims or their parents reporting abuse to police because it will “bring reproach on God’s name”. As parents and victims will not be mandated reporters, that will remain completely legal. Once again, I urge the Government to close these loopholes. The Government’s own impact assessment indicates that the duty will increase the number of child sexual offences recorded by police by just 0.3%. Vulnerable children need us to create a much stronger duty to report this abuse, as IICSA recommended. By doing so, we can shine much-needed light on safeguarding failings in small religious groups and others, and protect so many children. I will now move on to discuss other safeguarding issues in small religious groups, beginning with shunning. In the Jehovah’s Witnesses, this has long been called “disfellowshipping”. When someone commits a serious sin in the eyes of the religion, their believing family and friends are ordered to shut them off entirely and treat them as though they are dead. The same applies when someone voluntarily leaves. The Australian royal commission looked at this too, through the lens of the position in which it places victims of abuse, saying: “The Jehovah’s Witness organisation’s practice of shunning members who disassociate from the organisation has the very real potential of putting a survivor in the untenable position of having to choose between constant re-traumatisation at having to share a community with their abuser and losing that entire community altogether.” It happens all the time. The culture of non-reporting and forgiveness for child abusers leads to them remaining at large. Victims are silenced, told that their abusers have been forgiven by God; many leave, and then it is they who lose their entire families. It is victim blaming taken to extremes. Let us consider those removed involuntarily for apparent “grave sins”. What might constitute a grave sin? Well, how about being gay? Religious teachings regularly equate homosexuality with paedophilia—they are lumped together. Let me read a brief quote from the Jehovah’s Witness “Awake!” magazine, a key publication intended to teach believers: “True, some individuals may very well be prone to homosexuality… but…a Christian cannot excuse immoral behaviour by saying he was ‘born that way.’ Child molesters invoke the same pathetic excuse when they say their craving for children is ‘innate’. But can anyone deny that their sexual appetite is perverted? So is the desire for someone of the same sex.” Children growing up in that religion are subjected to this bile constantly. I would know—I was one of them. But at least I survived. Lots do not; people like Stephen, the nephew of one of the religion’s governing body members, who died by suicide in January 2020, having been disfellowshipped and ostracised for being gay. Yet the organisation is considered a charity in the UK. It holds tax exemptions and is eligible for direct UK Government funding through Gift Aid. How can that be right? How can an organisation that causes so much harm be charitable? It is not the only example. There are many small religious organisations active in the UK that expose children to horrific teachings, particularly about women and girls. At Prime Minister’s questions recently, I highlighted the National Secular Society’s “Mission and Misogyny” report, which is full of such examples. There was a recent example near the Minister’s constituency; in January, the NSS reported that the Green Lane masjid and community centre in Birmingham streamed a sermon in which listeners were told that “discipline in the case of rebellion” is one of the “rights of the husband over the wife”, that husbands have a right to “obedience” as well as a right to “intimacy”. I must be clear at this point, as I hope I have been throughout, that these extremist examples happen across faith traditions. This example is Islamic; I have equally spent a lot of time up to now talking about a Christian example. These organisations must not cloud our view of the many religious charities that do brilliant work to support people, but they point to a broken charity system in need of repair. That is why I have been calling for a review into charity law and regulation. We must have ways to ensure that organisations that promote harm towards vulnerable people, particularly through mandated shunning, cannot gain the tax, reputational and funding benefits of a charity. The Charity Commission must also seriously step up its game as a regulator, as there is a serious pattern of failing to take action despite repeated requests, which the “Mission and Misogyny” report lays bare. I want to also put on the record my shock at the recent case in which the Charity Commission took legal action against the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman to stop the ombudsman laying before this House reports detailing complaints upheld against the commission. The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, on which I sit, had to bring a privilege motion to force the ombudsman to release the files—which it wanted to do—because of the commission’s legal threats blocking it. I understand that the commission has still pursued that legal action. It is not on. I ask the Minister whether she will make herself popular with the Treasury by agreeing that organisations promoting hate and abusive practices such as shunning should not be eligible for public money, and therefore support my calls for a thorough review of charity status. Will she also agree that either the Government or the relevant Select Committee should consider a thorough deep dive into the Charity Commission’s approach to safeguarding issues? Finally, I want to briefly touch on a third issue: safeguarding and coercion in medical settings. Again, the Jehovah’s Witnesses are the clearest example. As many people will know, their religion teaches not to accept blood transfusions, which is described as a “personal choice” that they make. But when the consequence for not taking that choice is shunning and the permanent cutting off of family and friends, is it a choice? Maybe—and religious freedoms of adults to make medical decisions must always be allowed. Similarly, people must always be free to request visits from religious ministers during medical treatment or a hospital stay. In the Jehovah’s Witnesses, though, requests for religious ministers will be met with the arrival of a hospital liaison committee. This is a group of elders whose role is simple: to enforce the rules on blood transfusions. They will “help” patients by advocating for their “personal choice” not to accept blood and will always claim that decisions are for the patient to make. However, the elders’ handbook, which I have here, clearly states that Witnesses should be strongly encouraged to fill out durable powers of attorney for someone else to refuse blood on their behalf. Either way, the hospital liaison committee will be there, watching. If the patient does not comply with the no-blood rule, they can expect to be disfellowshipped and shunned promptly. With the HLC there, there is little hope of being able to make a real “personal choice” in private if it differs from religious teaching. That really is coercion. Ministers of religion can no doubt provide huge support and relief to patients of all faiths, and they do so, but I would argue that they should not be allowed to advocate for patients’ medical wishes where there is a clear conflict of interest, as in these cases. Furthermore, these bodies must only be allowed in when the patient requests them. A former HLC elder has approached me with allegations that some NHS trusts have established policies to call the HLC by default when a Jehovah’s Witness is admitted. No doubt it is done with the best of intentions, as they do not want to do anything wrong, but given that those HLCs exist to push an agenda that may not be the patient’s, that is a serious problem. I will close by asking the Minister if she will liaise with Department of Health and Social Care colleagues and push for a review of NHS trust policies towards these bodies to ensure that they are called only when a patient requests it, and that patients have clear opportunities to articulate their final decision in respect of any treatment and receive treatment away from the HLC if they so wish.

• 2 Mar 2026 · Small Religious Organisations: Safeguarding · Hansard source

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  Over this Labour Government’s term in office so far, we have spent a lot of time discussing and highlighting the evils of child abuse and the exploitation of women and girls, and there has been a lot of progress. The audit from Baroness Casey on grooming gangs made several recommendations that we have already put into motion; the reforms that we are making to taxi licensing and safety through the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill are a key example. However, I want to open today’s debate by talking about an issue that I have previously discussed with the Minister: the mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse, which is one of the key recommendations from the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. I approach this issue as someone who grew up in a small religious organisation, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, which IICSA recognised as having a serious problem with child sexual abuse. Last June, I stood here and highlighted my concerns that the Government’s proposals to introduce mandatory reporting in the Crime and Policing Bill have been significantly watered down from IICSA’s recommendations. I raised three issues: first, a lack of proper sanctions for non-compliance; secondly, the fact that the duty proposed applies only when someone receives a direct disclosure or witnesses abuse happening, and not when they have strong reasons to suspect it; and thirdly, loopholes in who is included; in particular, the drafting required religious leaders who have “unsupervised” contact with children to come under the duty to report. I set out why that would allow most lay religious leaders to escape the duty, despite their holding enormous power and influence over their followers, using the particular example of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. To begin with, I do have some good news. Just a few hours ago, the House of Lords approved a Government amendment to remove the word “unsupervised” from that definition of religious leaders. I want to thank the Minister, as well as her Lords counterpart, Lord Hanson, for listening to my lobbying on that front. That small change could make a real difference in protecting children from abuse in small religious organisations, but it will make the most difference only if we fix the other two issues, on which there has not been as much progress. I will not rehash my arguments in detail about why they are so critical.

• 2 Mar 2026 · Small Religious Organisations: Safeguarding · Hansard source

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  I am really grateful for that contribution from my hon. Friend, and I absolutely agree with her. It is really important that we listen to IICSA, which spent many years on this, and deliver what it recommended. When it comes to religious organisations in which there is a strong culture of distrusting secular authorities, there is no other way to make them do the right thing. I again highlight the work of the Australian royal commission, which found that the Jehovah’s Witnesses in that country had documented 1,006 cases of child sexual abuse and reported not even one to the police—not one. That is not an accident; it is a systemic cover-up on a catastrophic level. The Government’s case for not fully complying with IICSA seems to rest on two arguments: first, that strong sanctions for a failure to report child sexual abuse would create a chilling effect, which would stop people wanting to go into professions that work with children; and, secondly, that widening the duty to include reasonable suspicion would produce a flood of reports that would overwhelm our system. The Government have written to me to say that their position on these issues is supported by expert stakeholders, including the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the Lucy Faithfull Foundation and the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Online Harm: Child Protection · Hansard source

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  I commend the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) on bringing forward this debate, which is a really valuable opportunity to talk about this issue. I also thank the many hundreds of my own constituents who have written to me about this from a variety of perspectives—if I have not got back to them yet, I will do so shortly. Social media has rightly been described as a wild west. I come to this debate as someone who grew up with it—it has been there all my life—but who thoroughly dislikes traditional social media. Were it not for the importance of it in my job, I would spend very little time looking at it. We must start by clarifying what problem we are trying to solve when we talk about online harms. The way I see it, there are three main categories. First, there is harmful online content itself. Algorithms are feeding people things that they never asked for, and the evidence that misogynistic and other extreme and deeply wrong content is being pushed on to people is overwhelming. Secondly, there is the online grooming of children. Everyone knows how serious an issue that is, particularly on some online gaming platforms aimed at younger children, such as Roblox, which has been mentioned previously. It is so bad, and the reaction of the relevant company is so poor, that vigilantes are now active on some of these platforms, conducting sting operations to catch paedophiles. Appallingly, Roblox responded to one such user, who has a YouTube channel under the name Schlep and got six child predators arrested, by banning him from the platform and threatening legal action. Clearly we cannot encourage vigilantism, but if that is the platform’s response when someone is trying to deal with their own failures, something is deeply wrong. There is also the problem of addictive content. That has gotten far worse in recent years, with the rise of short-form content and the algorithms that fuel it. Apps such as YouTube can in some circumstances automatically default to their “shorts” function when opened to be maximally addictive. Other addictive features are rampant, such as Snapchat streaks, which encourage children to open the app first thing in the morning and last thing at night to keep them going. As the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) just mentioned, there are rampant drug-dealing problems on Snapchat. Some of that is due to the way that it recommends friends to people. There are accounts with the most obvious pseudonyms that we imagine, such as “snowforsale”, which clearly mean, “Add this account if you want to buy drugs from someone.” So little action is being taken on that issue. Snapchat is not the only platform with this problem; it is rampant on Instagram as well. I remember quite recently that I came across an account that was so clearly selling marijuana-infused food, so I reported it, and Instagram did absolutely nothing. There is a real complacency and a lack of willingness to act in these companies that we have to deal with. I should mention the rise of AI-generated fake content, designed either to mislead people or keep them hooked by showing fantastical things that do not work in reality. There is also the related issue of faked content more generally. There are horrendous examples of viral fake cooking recipes that do not work and could cause serious harm to people, such as by encouraging them to use a microwave in a way that could create something explosive. Online content creators such as Ann Reardon, who is an Australian YouTube creator, are doing amazing work to call that out and try to educate people, but the platforms do not have their backs; in many cases, they are actively undermining those creators’ work because the content they are trying to deal with is what is generating the most money for those platforms, due to its addictive nature. I was very impressed by a video that my hon. Friend the Member for Bangor Aberconwy (Claire Hughes) put out the other day, exposing—if memory serves—a situation in which people working for an estate agent were recording videos in the homes of people who are from ethnic minorities, then packaging them to look like they are asylum seekers and saying, “Look at the great lives that asylum seekers have.” I encourage everyone to have a look at that video. The way that that content has been able to propagate online is atrocious, and I am so glad that my hon. Friend has been able to call it out. All of these issues point to a situation that cannot go on. However, like my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington), I am concerned that trying to solve them in one fell swoop with a ban for young people will not work, and could make some of the issues worse. Young people are incredibly digitally literate and digitally agile, and I am afraid to say that when a platform becomes unavailable to them, they can rapidly switch to another. A recent letter—I was glad to hear the Minister mention it in his speech—signed by the NSPCC, the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse, the Molly Rose Foundation and a long list of other child safety experts raised exactly that concern, and referred to blanket bans as “a blunt response that fails to address the successive shortcomings of tech companies and governments to act decisively and sooner.” In my view, taking a named-platform approach to a ban is unworkable. I fear that young people and Ofcom will end up in a perpetual game of whack-a-mole, with children moving to other apps as Ofcom tries to follow and shut them down. I know which side I would have my money on in that game; our regulator is nowhere near quick enough. In March last year, I spoke in this Chamber about an app I was aware of others using from when I was a teenager, which essentially functions as a dating app for children but masquerades as social media. The app I refer to has now finally had its age limit increased to 18, but it took 10 years. This is not just about Ofcom, either—I do not wish to criticise just Ofcom. Regardless of how quickly a regulator moves, I guarantee that our country’s children will move more quickly. Their digital literacy is far higher than they are often given credit for, which will make it much harder to regulate platforms and deal with harms. It will likely become easier for groomers to hide and to find victims, while it will become harder to regulate addictive features and to take action on harmful content. Even if that turns out to be less of an issue than I fear, arbitrarily setting the age at 16 just shifts the cliff edge that we already have to deal with—it does not teach people to deal with and recognise the problems. Frankly, the problems that social media creates are by no means limited to young people. I talked previously about AI-generated and faked content; it is primarily older people who are struggling to identify that content and are not equipped with some of the necessary skills. In my view, blanket bans also risk serious damage to children aged between 13 and 16 for whom the ability to connect with others online is particularly important. Let me give a very personal example. Around the age of 13, I started to realise that my sexuality was not like those around me—I was not straight—but I was living in a rural community where there was not really anyone else to talk to about that who would understand. It was made worse by some of my early childhood being immersed in a deeply homophobic religious community. As such, finding people with similar experiences online to talk to and be able to provide mutual support was incredibly valuable for me, as it is for other LGBT people, as well as for neurodiverse children and others. So what do I believe is the solution? We need a functionality-based approach. Through limiting certain functions and features, I am of the view that we can deal with harms without creating a situation where children—they are going to seek out ways to connect online regardless of the law—move on to less regulated platforms. In my view, we should look to restrict addictive functionality on those platforms; that might be linked to age, or it might be something we want to consider for people of all ages, because as I said, it is affecting people of all ages. The explosion of addictive, algorithmically driven short-form content over the past few years, as well as features such as Snapchat streaks that are actively designed to keep people hooked, provide no discernible benefit to society. Social media companies have proven unwilling to act on that front, so we must. We also need to enforce existing age restrictions much better. We all know that plenty of people under 13—which is usually accepted as the current limit—are already using social media platforms that they should not be using. Earlier, my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central mentioned the example of children on their parents’ accounts, which is so widespread. There is a definitional problem about what actually is social media. Are we counting online gaming platforms such as Roblox? That can be joined from age five. There are ways to prevent children from accessing chat functions—parents can prevent younger children from doing so—but with the continuing prevalence of child abusers on the platform, those measures are clearly not working. We need to be very clear on what we mean by social media because of how much the definitions differ. To conclude, I really agree with the Government’s approach in opening a meaningful consultation—a national conversation—on how we tackle online harms and on where the pitfalls in workability are, so that we can identify and deal with them. I look forward to engaging further with it alongside my constituents.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Online Harm: Child Protection · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady has been very clear that she wished the Government had just charged forward in some direction or other. I have had hundreds of constituents email me about this, from various perspectives and various concerns about the workability of certain solutions. I would like to listen to them, and I think it would be really helpful if the opposition parties tried to do likewise and to engage with this process, rather than just criticising whatever approach we take.

• 23 Feb 2026 · Kinship Carer Identification · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend was a big advocate for kinship carers before becoming a Minister, and he still is. Kinship care is incredibly hard for everyone involved. It often arises from really difficult circumstances, and the family members who make that commitment often give up a lot to do so. Will the Minister join me in paying tribute to Sue Nash, a local volunteer in my constituency who runs the Peterborough Kinship Care Group, which provides support to kinship carers all across Peterborough and North West Cambridgeshire and assists them in sharing best practice and learning among one another?

• 27 Jan 2026 · Commonhold and Leasehold Reform · Hansard source

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  I commend the Minister for bringing forward these brilliant measures to protect leaseholders. Constituents across Hampton own the freehold to their homes but pay several levels of service charge—first, to managing agents such as FirstPort, which is supposed to be responsible for unadopted roads, and secondly, to Hampton Estates, which covers lots of the public open space, parks and drainage. As part of our reforms, how will the Government ensure that multi-level service charges like those are addressed, particularly in areas for which they were never supposed to be adopted?