Sam Rushworth MP: speeches

Speeches

• 16 Oct 2025 · Youth Services: Deprived Communities · Hansard source

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  As a young man who owes as much to youth theatre as to my schooling for giving me the confidence to speak in this place, I know the importance of youth services. I am really pleased that the Government have the better youth spaces fund, which organisations in my constituency have been engaging with, and I hope that the Government will look favourably at what comes from Bishop Auckland. The process has brought to light just how stripped bare our youth services are and how few meet the 50% threshold of youth services provision. Would the Secretary of State or one of her advisers meet me to discuss how we can ensure that we have the youth workers in order to actually bid for the funds in the first place?

• 15 Oct 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q11. Between 2021 and 2023, 41 mental health patients in the care of the Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust lost their lives. That led to a damning report from NHS England and calls from my constituents for a public inquiry. This is not just historic; my surgeries are still filled with harrowing stories of failure. Will the Prime Minister join my calls for that public inquiry, to get to the bottom of what went wrong and to rebuild confidence with new, more appropriately sized local NHS mental health trusts that are fit to serve our constituents?

• 14 Oct 2025 · Child Risk Disclosure Scheme · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for her excellent speech. Like all people around Durham, I have been deeply touched by Maya’s case. When I first heard about it, I have to admit that I asked myself whether the guidelines had been incorrectly followed or whether we needed a new law. My hon. Friend is making that point excellently, and I put on record my support for what she is doing and for the family. This place is about being a voice for people like Maya.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend raises an excellent point. Another great provision in the Bill is that right to sick pay, which is so important and would have been so important for many care workers during the pandemic. In my mind’s eye are those women sitting at that bus stop in the cold. Two other people I met who were also care workers—one lives in High Etherley and the other in Etherley Dene—told me similar stories. They did not vote for me. They did not vote for anybody, because they did not believe that anybody could fix their problems. They just told me that their lives were tough. They had to pay for their own uniforms. They were not really getting the minimum wage for their work. They felt disrespected by everybody. They felt vulnerable and left behind. But I made them a promise that if I came to this place, I would speak up for them. I am doing that today and I am voting for them today. Finally, the Employment Rights Bill is not just good for workers; it is also good for businesses. So many family businesses in Bishop Auckland, Shildon, Crook and Barnard Castle all tell me the same thing. They tell me how much they enjoy contributing to our local economy and how important it is to them that they are a responsible, decent employer. But they tell me how tough it is when there is a race to the bottom. They want employment rights strengthened. They do not want the watered-down version coming to us from the Lords. They want the full-fat version of this Bill, because they know it is good for their workers and good for their businesses.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  Does my hon. Friend agree that the Conservatives bequeathed us an economy in which more and more people were moving out of work and becoming long-term sick? A lot of that sickness was driven by mental health disorders— in particular, anxiety, worry and stress, which are driven by an insecure labour market. Does he also agree that the measures in the Bill to make people safer and more protected at work will improve mental wellbeing and productivity, and be good for economic growth?

• 15 Sept 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  There is a difference. My hon. Friend is an expert in this field, having come to us from USDAW, and I know that those who worked on the Bill will have thought this through carefully. It certainly chimes with my experience. People should not need to have to request and assert their rights; they should be given those rights. That is what this Government are doing.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  It will, absolutely. We should not have people working in those kinds of conditions and that sort of poverty in 2025.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  It will not surprise my hon. Friend to hear that I completely agree with that assessment. They are clearly not on the side of my constituents or the people I am talking about, who just do not feel that they can assert their rights. Too many feel completely powerless, so it is right that we put the onus where it is. I will vote against the attempts in the Lords to water down that part of the Bill.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. That is what the Bill speaks to. There is a power gap between the ordinary working person who does not necessarily know their rights and is unable to assert them, and the sort of person who, for example, might buy a house in their girlfriend’s name. I will progress. I also oppose the attempt, in Lords amendment 106, to water down the Bill by requiring six months for protection from unfair dismissal. There is of course a difference between unfair dismissal and fair dismissal. No employer is prevented from using fair grounds to dismiss an employee. The previous Government extended the time before you could even claim unfair dismissal to two years. That left far too many people vulnerable to being dismissed at a whim, or dismissed because they had demanded their rights at work. I had an experience of that myself. I have never talked about it before, because I signed a non-disclosure agreement. Shortly after becoming the branch rep for the University and College Union when I was a college lecturer, I pointed out that the college I was teaching at was not paying the minimum wage to some of its staff. The college then attempted to dismiss me for bringing it into disrepute. Thankfully, I was able to take on one of the top employment lawyers in the area at the time—only because they had forced me to teach an HR course—and give myself a crash course in human rights law. I left that place with a payout. I remember the shame I felt at the time for signing the non-disclosure agreement. I wanted to fight for other people, but at the end of the day I was terrified that I was going to miss my next mortgage payment and I was thinking of my children. That is the position that far too many people find themselves in. So what we are doing on non-disclosure is right. I have to ask all Members, as they vote on whether to water this down, whose side they are on. Will they be on the side of those seeking to cover up sexual harassment, rather than on the side of the whistleblowers? In my mind’s eye, as I vote this evening, will be real people in my Bishop Auckland constituency. I want to tell the House about two or three of them. A few months ago, I received correspondence from a parish councillor who is also a local farmer and a member of the Labour party. He told me of his concern that every day he saw two women sitting in the bus shelter in a cold hilltop village. He approached them to ask them what they were doing there, because they were there for several hours. It turned out that they were care workers. They were dropped off in the morning and did a visit. At another point in the day they would do another visit, and another visit later. But they were only paid for the specific time that they were in people’s houses; they were not paid for the entirety of the day. That is a workaround to avoid paying them the minimum wage. The Bill makes provision for a fair pay agreement in adult social care to address such practices. By the way, he then opened the village hall for them and made sure they had a warm space to wait in each day between shifts.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  Does the shadow Minister understand the difference between fair dismissal and unfair dismissal?

• 15 Sept 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—like most Labour Members, I am proud to be supported by trade unions. Others have mentioned the absence of Reform Members from this debate, and of course we know why they are not here: they do not support the measures in the Employment Rights Bill, but they do not have the guts to say that to their voters. I am here to speak on behalf of my constituents, particularly those who feel insecure at work. They are the people who do not have assets and safety nets, who are not mobile and confident, who live pay day to pay day, and who feel that they must take whatever pay and conditions they are offered because they are terrified of the alternative. It is 12 years since this party announced a commitment to end exploitative zero-hours contracts as a means of controlling workers and avoiding employment obligations.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  The Bill absolutely will do so. I remember speaking to a young couple when I was canvassing 12 years ago. The young woman had just had a baby, but because she was on a zero-hours contract, she was unable to get the maternity rights to which she was otherwise entitled. Her young partner, who likewise was on a zero-hours contract, talked about his pay and conditions at work, and after asking him why he did not challenge his employer, I understood that so many young people do not feel able to do so because they feel so insecure and sometimes just so grateful to be in a job. That is why I am speaking against Lords amendment 1. It is absolutely right that the onus be placed on the employer to ensure that people are given regular contracts, and that we are not asking people who are often the most vulnerable and insecure workers to go to their employer and start asserting and demanding their rights. I have met many constituents over the past year or so, and I have learnt about the sheer vulnerability that, sadly, many working people feel, such as a tenant who tells me that they are frightened of demanding rights from their landlord because they fear they will be evicted. Of course, Reform also voted against our reforms banning no-fault evictions.

• 4 Sept 2025 · Early Education and Childcare · Hansard source

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  While the leader of Reform UK, the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), is off in America encouraging them to ruin the livelihoods of families in Bishop Auckland, I am really pleased that this Government are saving my constituents thousands of pounds in childcare, but this is not just about childcare. We know that the ages of nought to five are the most important in deciding a person’s outcomes later in life, which includes the interventions in the Best Start family hubs. The previous Government closed 13 Sure Start centres in my constituency; this Government are making a good start, but we will still only really have one hub. Will the Minister meet me to discuss some of our goals locally to open a couple more centres and see how we can support that best start for children in our area?

• 3 Sept 2025 · Hospitality Sector · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Small businesses in my constituency often tell me that they want to be really good employers. That is something that they take great pride in, but they get undercut by some of the bad employers. Does she agree that the Bill is good not only for the worker but for the business?

• 3 Sept 2025 · Hospitality Sector · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member mentioned costs on businesses. One of those costs is the cost of sick days, which has increased by £30 billion since 2018. I visited a business recently in my constituency, and I am not going to lie: they said, “Yes, it’s a bit of a squeeze having to pay an increase in national insurance,” but then they said, “But we’re saving money on sick days because people are getting the appointments they need in the NHS.” He will know that there have been 7 million more GP appointments. Does he welcome that investment in the NHS and the fact that there were nearly 14 million fewer sick days in the last year?

• 2 Sept 2025 · Defibrillators · Hansard source

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  I thank everybody who has participated today. There have been 22 Back-Bench contributions from across six political groups, all in broad agreement with each other. We have heard some strong calls about VAT; I am grateful for the Minister’s commitment to raise that with Treasury colleagues, but that is just the start—the common-sense, no-brainer stuff about not having a tax on restarting hearts. I really appreciated the contributions on working to ensure that more defibrillators are external and that more are registered; on preventing theft; on ensuring they are in working order; on the potential to add other medical devices; and on ensuring that more people are trained. I also appreciated the contribution from the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) about the propensity to act, which can be challenging in the circumstances. I thank all the people who have spoken about different community groups in their areas. In a month when the media have been focused on the meaning of patriotism, nothing is more patriotic to me than the group mentioned by the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine), the Friends of Frome Hospital, who no doubt are baking cakes and running jumble sales to provide vital lifesaving equipment. That is true patriotism from the British public. But it should not just be left to the British public—

• 2 Sept 2025 · Defibrillators · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered defibrillator access. I thank everyone for being here. We often hear it said that people are generous with their time when they take interventions, but I think it is extremely generous for everyone to show up at 9.30 am for a debate like this. I will deliberately keep my comments brief so we can get as many people in as possible. I am grateful for this opportunity to talk about the need to build more national resilience by increasing access to defibrillators. May I begin my remarks by paying tribute to my friend George Smith, who died yesterday from a heart attack? George was chair of the parish council in West Auckland and a former Durham county councillor. To everybody who knew him, he was a great man who always had a twinkle in his eye and an energy and desire to serve others. I do not know whether access to a defibrillator would have saved George, but I do know that the national survival rate of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in the UK is just 8%. Let that sink in: only 8% of people survive. But we also know that the chances of survival increase by 70% where people have rapid access to a defibrillator within three to five minutes, saving the lives of our friends, family and neighbours. In Bishop Auckland, which I represent, 51% of postcodes are outside the recommended distance for timely access to a defibrillator. We have 17 defibrillators per 10,000 people, which is above the national average, but that still falls far below the recommended 50 to 100 per 100,000 people. I ask the Minister what plans there are to address the stark regional disparities in coverage, particularly in rural areas and disadvantaged communities. A constituent wrote to me recently to share the experience of her father. He had a cardiac arrest at work and his life was saved by rapid access to a defibrillator. She explained, though, that had he had that cardiac arrest at home—she looked this up—it would have taken her 30 minutes to get to the nearest defibrillator. So we know that there are huge gaps—defibrillator deserts—in national provision. The Government’s community automated external defibrillator fund has been exhausted and all funds are allocated, with no plans for expansion. That fund delivered 3,000 defibrillators—a small fraction of the 100,000 defibrillators registered on the Circuit. Costs remain a major barrier, with community groups facing a cost of £2,500 per device and not getting VAT relief on that, which is a campaign we have fought previously. Will the Government therefore finally commit—I appreciate the Minister cannot comment on tax affairs, but she can pass this on to her colleagues—to removing VAT on defibrillator purchases, as has been done for other lifesaving equipment? It is also important to note that registration on the Circuit is not the same as being accessible, because many devices are locked away in offices, schools or businesses and are not available 24/7. That makes survival even less likely for cardiac arrests outside of working hours. What steps are being taken to ensure that the national defibrillator database is accurate, up to date and reflects actual availability? Will the Department work with local authorities and community groups to ensure that placement is in genuinely accessible locations—outside buildings, in community hubs and transport stations? Last year, I had the opportunity to host Jack Hurley here in Parliament. Jack is an outstanding young man. He had a cardiac arrest while playing football and his friends were able to access a defibrillator and perform CPR on him. It was great to see him standing tall and back doing the things that he loves. Jack has been campaigning for some time, and I want to pay tribute to him and his campaign. His story reminds us that behind every statistic is a family, including a young life that could be cut short or saved depending on access to a defibrillator. Every Member here will have similar stories and will no doubt have been contacted by constituents asking for help in acquiring defibrillators. Many will have experienced seeing a loved one in a moment of peril. When I was just 11 years old, my mum collapsed with a seizure while we were at church. It was only by the good fortune of there being a paramedic in the congregation that her life was saved. Had that not been the case, I would have grown up without a mother. This is about not only survival, but recovery. Early defibrillation means better neurological outcomes, shorter hospital stays, lower long-term costs to the NHS and a chance to turn the UK’s poor survival rate into something far more hopeful. We all know what works, so will the Government please act to ensure equitable access across every constituency?

• 17 Jul 2025 · RAF Photographic Reconnaissance Unit · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. She has said that approximately one in two of those in the reconnaissance unit lost their lives. Of the two from the Bishop Auckland constituency, one did not survive: 20-year-old Flight Sergeant Peter Charles Wells from Whorlton village. He was shot down over Malta just two days before Christmas in 1941. His grave is inscribed with psalm 139:9: “If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me”. My hon. Friend emphasises the loss that we have experienced, and the absolute need to honour those people. I hope that Peter Wells’s family will have more than just a grave in Malta.

• 17 Jul 2025 · Freedom of Religion or Belief: UK Foreign Policy · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Northumberland (David Smith) for securing this debate. I was with him the day that his appointment was announced. It was after many weeks of us all wondering whether Downing Street would appoint an envoy. He kept it quiet until it was announced, but I was so pleased that it was my friend who was given that responsibility, because I cannot think of anybody better to take on that role. I thank everyone who has spoken today. Every speech has moved me in some way. It is a testament to the way that freedom of religion or belief goes to the heart of our British values that we sit in cross-party consensus on this. And it is a testament to our nation that we can have this level of civility in our debate. I can look across to Opposition Members and see people I hold in high regard, notwithstanding our different views on various aspects of policy. I join the right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen) in his tribute to Fiona Bruce in the role that she played. I had the privilege of working with Fiona when she organised the FORB ministerial conference in 2022. The fact that I was a Labour candidate at the time and she a Conservative MP never came into it, because we were both absolutely unified in a sense of purpose. I had the blessing of being able to work briefly for about a year and a half on freedom of religion or belief. My background is in conflict prevention and human rights. Despite a decade in that space, when a friend asked me whether I would be willing to come and support Government relations around FORB, I thought I was being asked to work for a US business magazine because I had not actually heard that phrase before, which shows that we have some work to do. But I soon came to grips with the brief and came to develop a deep appreciation of the importance of freedom of religion or belief within human rights work and the work that we do around the world to prevent identity-based violence. As I entered this new world, however, I did so with a critical eye. I will just mention a few things that I have noted as a call to all of us who care about FORB. One is that we need to look outwards and not inwards. We need to avoid a competition over which group is the most persecuted, and instead recognise that establishing the universal principles of FORB is the best way to secure freedoms and rights for everybody. Secondly, FORB does not give a right to impose one’s religion or beliefs on others. My hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) spoke so well about the importance of combating anti-blasphemy laws and the crucial right to be able to not believe in a deity. Thirdly, those of us who do come from a background of faith need also to recognise that the price of the freedom to practise our religion is to do no harm and to take responsibility. I think we need to do more sometimes to reach out to the LGBT community and others who have been historically marginalised and excluded, and that includes internationally. In Uganda, near where I used to work, a community is suffering intense persecution. It is in the name, sadly, of the God I worship that that persecution is being meted out. People from Afghanistan regularly reach out to me and tell me that they are living in a state of hiding akin to Anne Frank and her family, for fear of being exposed. We need to emphasise the belief aspect of freedom of religion or belief, which includes humanism—the right not to believe. The right to share one’s faith must also entail the right to criticise that faith. I am a Latter-day Saint. I see that “The Book of Mormon” musical is on in the west end all the time. I am comfortable with that. I absolutely defend the right for people to criticise me or my faith, but there is a difference between criticising theological beliefs and stereotyping, or ascribing negative traits without evidence to the holders of those beliefs. Likewise, there is a difference between mocking a religion in its abstract or organised form and discriminating against an individual who identifies with it. I want to speak to the strategy for a moment. This is a small point, but I think it is a really consequential one. We tend to think about our commitment to freedom of religion or belief in terms of negative rights—of protecting people against interference and infringements of their freedoms of conscience, speech or assembly—but I would suggest that for the UK truly to lead the world with our values, we need to assume our positive duty to enable those who are marginalised and persecuted to live in accordance with their faith and belief. We recognise that in our humanitarian response to war and disaster. We recognise the need for food, water, medicine and shelter, but could we also recognise the need for dignity, and the emotional and psychological need to live one’s faith? Could we not only allow people to live their religions, but actively assist them to do so? I have seen great examples of that around the world, from the Muslim and Christian youth in the Central African Republic who work together to rebuild each other’s mosques and churches, to the AMAR Foundation in Iraq helping Yazidi refugees, particularly women and girls, find healing and empowerment through traditional religious clothing that they had to leave behind in their flight from ISIS.

• 17 Jul 2025 · Freedom of Religion or Belief: UK Foreign Policy · Hansard source

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  Apologies—I have almost finished. Members of my own church, the Latter-day Saints here in London, give out copies of the Quran to refugees. As we do this, let Britain continue to be a beacon for religious freedom around the world in an active sense.

• 11 Jul 2025 · Rare Cancers Bill · Hansard source

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  I rise to support the Bill, which will make a real difference by improving the detection and treatment of rare cancers. We heard really moving contributions on Second Reading, particularly from my hon. Friends the Members for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh) and for Calder Valley (Josh Fenton-Glynn). With permission from my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur), I will take this opportunity to press the Minister on research into lobular breast cancer, echoing the comments of the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford). Twenty-two people a day are diagnosed with lobular breast cancer in the UK; at around 30 in 2,000, it falls outside the scope of the Bill. However, with a UK population of 70 million, 22 a day would popularly be deemed to be rare. More importantly, it has unmet clinical need, and that is what really matters. Lobular breast cancer was first identified as a separate type of breast cancer 50 years ago, and while breast cancer survival rates have generally improved, research specifically into lobular has been rare and grossly underfunded, and the basic biology of the disease remains mostly unknown. That has led to two effects. First, it is difficult to detect as its web-like structure means that it does not have the typical lump, so it often spreads before it gets detected. Secondly, there is no bespoke treatment, so doctors will throw the kitchen sink at it—radio and chemo—and hope for the best. Scientists say that a treatment for lobular can be developed; the only reason it has not is lack of funding for research. In May 2023, Dr Susan Michaelis, who had been diagnosed with lobular 12 years earlier, launched the lobular moonshot project. One of the moonshot campaigners is my constituent Katie Swinburne: a mother of three and a popular local school teacher. I met Katie recently in her home, along with Susan and her husband Tristan Loraine. Susan had deteriorated since we had met on Zoom. She explained that her cancer was terminal—it was too late to save her—but she was determined to spend her last years campaigning for change. We hoped that she would have years to come. Katie, however, still has a hope for treatment and a cure in her lifetime. She hopes to see her children grow old and to carry grandchildren. This coming Monday, as has been said, we were due to meet the Secretary of State to press the case for £20 million for the lobular moonshot project, which is just £240 for every person diagnosed. We will still press ahead with that meeting, but two days ago Dr Susan Michaelis, the founder of the moonshot project, sadly passed away 14 years after her initial diagnosis. She died peacefully at 5 pm, proudly wearing her lobular moonshot project T-shirt. She was surrounded by her husband Tristan Loraine and some close friends. The lobular moonshot project is the most bipartisan, politically supported campaign in the nation right now, with 370 MPs from across all parties having called on the Government to fund this vital research. During her 14 years’ suffering with this cruel and brutal illness, Susan was given eight different forms of breast cancer treatment, but none of them was able to stop the disease progressing. None of the treatments she received was based on the basic biology of lobular breast cancer because, as I said, it has not yet been explored. In the last couple of years, Susan and a team of campaigning women who have been touched by the disease have already raised £125,000 to set up the infrastructure to carry out research at the Manchester breast centre led by Professor Robert Clarke. Her remarkable campaign has touched women across the country. If I may, I will share a few comments about Susan. As a young girl, Susan always dreamed of being a pilot, but there were few opportunities for women to become commercial pilots in Australia at the time so she completed a degree in marketing and saved up the money to become a private pilot. After teaching people to fly, she finally became an airline pilot, starting off in the challenging Northern Territory of Australia flying to remote communities. In 1994, when she was 32, Susan started flying the British Aerospace 146 and immediately noticed a strange smell in the aircraft. The breathing air supply was being contaminated with jet engine oil decomposition products. Despite being told that there was nothing to be concerned about, she suffered increasing health effects from those exposures, and three years later in 1997 she collapsed after a flight. She felt like she was having a stroke. Three years of exposure to a complex mix of chemicals including organophosphates, carbon monoxide and endocrine disrupting chemicals had seriously affected her health, and she lost her airline pilot medical certificate. She never flew as an airline pilot again. Two years later, Susan was partly responsible for the Australian Senate carrying out a year-long investigation into the problem, which concluded that the chemical exposures were affecting flight safety and crew and public health. She was determined that the aviation industry should resolve the problem so she undertook the first ever PhD into the subject, and later qualified as an air accident investigator. She published numerous scientific papers on the subject, and briefed airlines, oil manufacturers, Governments and countless others on the topics. In 2007, 10 years after her first flight as an airline pilot, Australian Senator O’Brien revealed a secret agreement between British Aerospace, the aircraft engine manufacturer, and two Australian airlines, in which a large sum of money and aircraft parts were given in a settlement for problems relating to oil contaminating the breathing air supply on the aircraft model that Susan flew. After her injuries, sustained as an airline pilot, Susan completed Half Ironman triathlons and became the first Australian to receive the British citizen award for her and Tristan’s work on aviation safety. Last year, the Dr Susan Michaelis rose was launched by Harkness Roses at the Chelsea flower show. Susan has appeared or been portrayed in numerous documentaries and films. She will be greatly missed, but the campaign that she founded will live on.

• 10 Jul 2025 · Educational Attainment of Boys · Hansard source

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  Absolutely—that is a point well made, and I hope that we will have more contributions of that nature during the debate. Boys are not the problem: it is the system that is failing them. Of course we need to help boys to develop empathy, respect for those who are different, self-control, and awareness about how their words and actions affect others, but can we please be more careful not to tell boys that they are, by nature, toxic, or that, in 2025, they are privileged simply by being male, when many feel anything but that? They feel undervalued, distrusted and anxious that they will never live up to society’s expectations.

• 10 Jul 2025 · Educational Attainment of Boys · Hansard source

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  I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention and I hope he will continue to contribute to the debate. Boys feel undervalued, distrusted and anxious that they will not live up to society’s expectations. Sam Fender, an icon of the north-east, recently put it: “We are very good at talking about privileges—white, male or straight privilege. We rarely talk about class, though. And that’s a lot of the reason that all the young lads are seduced by demagogues like Andrew Tate. They’re being shamed all the time and made to feel like they’re a problem. It’s this narrative being told to white boys from nowhere towns. People preach to some kid in a pit town in Durham who’s got—” nothing— “and tell him he’s privileged? Then Tate tells him he’s worth something? It’s seductive.” We cannot leave that space to be filled by online influencers selling toxic answers. We have to offer something better—belonging, purpose and hope. Evidence shows that boys thrive when, rather than being treated as a problem, they are trusted within a culture of high expectations, when we set them up to succeed, and when they know that their learning is relevant and will take them somewhere. The coded message in our current curriculum is that society values academic excellence over development of technical skills and know-how. It is as if we have replaced the 11-plus with a 16-plus exam, where those who get good GCSE results go on to sit A-levels, which are given higher esteem, and those who fail are pushed towards vocational courses, as though those skills are lesser. A good example of a school that is bucking that trend, which is attended by some of the young people from my constituency, is the University Technical College South Durham, in Newton Aycliffe, which Ofsted recently rated as one of the happiest schools in the country. I have met some of its students. They all have familiar stories about how they were previously suspended and in trouble all the time at school, but when they attended the UTC they found purpose. They build relationships, promote leadership and make a child feel known, and that works—the children are thriving, boys included. Elsewhere, schools working with the Yes He Can programme or applying the “Taking Boys Seriously” framework from Ulster University are closing gaps and rebuilding trust with disengaged boys, not coddling but understanding them—I looked up to see where the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) was when I mentioned Ulster, and he is not in his place. Other examples are Hays Travel and Nissan, which will take young people from the age of 14 to give them vocational work experience. I welcome the Government’s industrial strategy. It is really exciting that, for the first time in a long time, we are seeing a real effort to create meaningful career pathways into the sorts of secure jobs that young people in the north-east used to be able to aspire to. Another good example is the plan to build 1.5 million homes. We know that we cannot do that unless we have more skilled young people coming into those professions. Last week, I spent half a day with some young apprentices from Bishop Auckland college bricklaying with Gleeson Homes in my constituency. It was fabulous to see these young men who really had a sense of direction: they knew that in a few years’ time, they would be earning good salaries and able to build good family lives.

• 10 Jul 2025 · Educational Attainment of Boys · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered the attainment and engagement of boys in education. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting the debate, and I thank colleagues from across the House for their interest in what I believe is one of the most overlooked and consequential challenges of our time: the underachievement of boys at every stage of education. This debate is not about grievance—it is about evidence. I hope that today we can focus on the data, the consequences and the things that must change to do better by our boys, not instead of girls, but alongside them. I am proud to have Cian and Alex, work experience students from my constituency of Bishop Auckland, with us in the Gallery this afternoon. Working alongside my parliamentary assistant, they have helped me to prepare for today’s debate with thoughtfulness, curiosity and maturity. I hope that their presence is a reminder of the promise that exists in young men in County Durham and beyond. We cannot ignore the reality that too many of our boys are being left behind by a system that does not fully see them, expect much from them or equip them with the tools to thrive. Let us start with the facts: by key stage 2, only 57% of boys meet expected standards in reading, writing and maths, which is seven percentage points behind girls; when looking at the writing gap alone, boys are 13 percentage points behind girls; in their GCSE exams, boys, on average, achieve half a grade lower than girls across every subject; at A-level, girls outperform boys by an average of over a grade and half across their best three subjects; and girls are even pulling ahead in the new T-level qualification. Just 30.4% of 18-year-old boys went into higher education last year, compared with 42% of girls. Boys make up over 70% of permanent school exclusions and 95% of young people in custody.

• 10 Jul 2025 · Educational Attainment of Boys · Hansard source

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  I do share that concern. We should have a debate about the way in which we address that issue, as well as about the issues facing young care leavers. The hon. Lady makes an excellent point about what the prison population looks like. The issue is not just about adolescents, because the problem begins in early years. By the end of reception, just 60.7% of boys are assessed to be “school-ready”, compared with 75% of girls, a point that I will return to later. Where does it end? A quarter of a million young men, aged 16 to 24, are classed as NEETs—not in education, employment or training—which is 78% higher than the number for young women. That is a post-covid increase of 40% for young males, compared with an increase of just 7% for young females. What is more, as the Centre for Social Justice reported recently: “For those young men who are in work, the…gender pay gap has been reversed. Young men are now out-earned by their female peers, including among the university educated.” This national challenge is especially acute in constituencies like mine, of Bishop Auckland, and across former coalfield communities in the north-east, where too often working-class boys start behind, and stay behind. I did not call the debate today merely to highlight an issue—I want it to lead to action and I am calling for real change. That begins with taking the issue seriously, because what concerns me most is not the data, but the absence of outrage and lack of urgency. It was not always this way. In the 1970s and 1980s, it was girls who were lagging behind. The Government rightly took action to improve outcomes for girls, introducing targeted support, challenging curriculum bias, expanding grammar schools for girls and promoting girls’ access to science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Those were not small tweaks, but deliberate strategic interventions, and they worked. Now that the situation is reversed, with boys persistently underachieving, where is the strategy? I am not talking about a general strategy to address deprivation or educational disadvantage, but a specific, evidence-based, deliverable strategy around boys and young men that addresses the gender-based aspects of underachievement. At the foundation of that strategy must be a resolve to stop blaming boys and to start rebuilding their self-worth. There was a time in the 1970s when society did the same for girls. It became known as “the deficit approach” because it attributed girls’ underachievement, relative to boys, to a lack of effort or a deficiency in them, rather than the failures and limitations of the education system or prevalent socioeconomic trends. So-called “biological determinists” argued that gender differences were natural and unalterable, and, simply put, girls were not as bright. Thankfully, those nonsense theories have been well and truly debunked when it comes to girls, yet too often, when we talk about boys, the tone shifts to blame. It is as if boys’ underachievement is seen as self-inflicted, a product of laziness or of so-called “toxic masculinity”.