Sam Rushworth MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 14 Mar 2025 · Rare Cancers Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur) for bringing the Bill to the House, and join him in paying tribute to our hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh) for her campaigning, and for her powerful speech calling for a revolution in attitudes. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Josh Fenton-Glynn) for his very moving speech. As somebody who lost a brother much too young, I was deeply moved by his words. I have come here today to speak on behalf of my constituent, Katie Swinburne. She is a much-loved school teacher—in fact, she was the school teacher of one of my staff—and a mother of three who was diagnosed with invasive lobular breast cancer. As was mentioned a moment ago, lobular breast cancer is not classed as a rare cancer—in fact, it is the second most common type of breast cancer in the world, with 8,500 diagnoses annually in the UK alone—but it shares many characteristics of rare cancers in the sense that it is very difficult to detect. In Katie’s case, as in many others, it did not initially form as a lump in the breast, for example. It has distinct genetics, so is not detectable in genetic tests, and it is very easily missed in mammograms and ultrasounds. As a consequence, many of the women who get this form of cancer will not be diagnosed until long after it has already spread. I am also told—thankfully, Katie is watching today; I received a WhatsApp message from her a moment before speaking—that a key point that I should make to the Minister is that, because lobular breast cancer presents differently from other forms of breast cancer and is not separated out in clinical trials, there is very little trial data on it. I met recently on Zoom with Katie and others who have been campaigning for the moonshot. This is not a lot of money; it is simply £20 million of funding that the University of Manchester could use to better understand the biological architecture of this type of cancer. That would lead to the possibility of developing the right treatments, because it currently has no specific treatment. This is a gentle request, really, that in the next stage of the Bill lobular breast cancer be considered alongside the rare cancers for which it already provides. I finish by paying tribute to Katie and all the many brave individuals I have met. I cannot imagine what it is like to be young and have parenting responsibilities and be diagnosed with an advanced stage of cancer. Many of those campaigning know that they might not live to see the day when the better drugs and treatments are available, but they are bravely taking up this cause on behalf of those who come after them. Katie was bravely doing a mile a day sponsored walks. My predecessor in this place joined her on one of those miles, and although we disagree about many things politically, we have already seen today that this is a cause that unites, because there is little—in fact, there is nothing—more precious in life for any of us than time spent with the people we love. Money cannot buy that—nothing can buy that—and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden made clear, the decisions we make in this place can have a real impact in the lives of others.

• 14 Mar 2025 · Rare Cancers Bill · Hansard source

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  As the hon. Lady is explaining very well, invasive lobular breast cancer is not classed as a rare cancer. I am concerned that it would not come within the scope of this Bill, so I gently ask if it could be widened at the next stage. As she says, lobular breast cancer has many characteristics of a rare cancer.

• 14 Mar 2025 · Free School Meals (Automatic Registration of Eligible Children) Bill · Hansard source

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  We see in the bodies of children increased stunting, with the average 10-year-old 1 cm shorter than they were in 2010. How does that square with what the Minister is saying? We see a malnutrition crisis.

• 14 Mar 2025 · Free School Meals (Automatic Registration of Eligible Children) Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for the speech he is making and for putting child poverty at its heart. On educational outcomes, does he agree that auto-enrolling children would mean that schools could take advantage of many of the gateway supports that are premised on how many children at a school are on free school meals? I am sure that, like me, he will have spoken to schools carrying a heavy level of debt that is school dinner debt, because they are having to provide meals for hungry children.

• 14 Mar 2025 · Free School Meals (Automatic Registration of Eligible Children) Bill · Hansard source

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  I am grateful for the opportunity that the Bill provides to put on record the importance of discussing the scourge of child poverty in our country, particularly as it relates to children’s nutrition. It is a simple fact that the height of an average five-year-old increased progressively until 2013 but has since reversed; children aged five are shorter today than in the past. We face a dual burden: not only stunting, but obesity. We have seen a 30% increase in obesity since 2006 and a 22% increase in teenagers with type 2 diabetes since 2017. All of this points to the poverty of children’s diets in this country. When we have this conversation, for me it is never a matter of what we can afford to do; we cannot afford not to do something about it, because the knock-on in the NHS is immense, and the knock-on in future work days missed by the next generation will be immense. It is a sad reality that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Peter Lamb) said, in a typical UK classroom one third of children will be living in relative poverty. Children are also the group most likely to be living in cold homes in this country. Probably the most startling statistic from my county of Durham, which really shows what austerity has done to our children over the last decade and a half, is the 250% increase in the number of children in the care system. The cost of that for the local taxpayer is immense, as is the human and social cost for those children. But somewhere between being in the care system and being a happy child with a healthy life are many children who live in conditions of neglect. That is why it is so important that the state and schools sometimes do the work to provide what children are not getting in the home. I hope that the child poverty taskforce will report soon, and we will see some positive change. I welcome the breakfast clubs introduced by the Government, which will make a difference not only to ensuring that children start the day well fed and having settled, but to the cost of living. I met a constituent a few months ago who shared with me that it cost her £400 a month just to pay for her children to be looked after from 7.30 till the start of the school day. That was having a massive impact on her, so for her, that breakfast club is an extra £400 a month, and I am grateful for that. What is being proposed today is a modest and sensible tweak that addresses the challenge of children not being enrolled. I am grateful to the Minister for saying that the Government will look at this issue, because we cannot afford to allow a generation of children to grow up as they are right now.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Sustainable Farming Incentive · Hansard source

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  I am sure that the Minister shares my wish to see a bit more humility from Conservative Members, given their failure to get the agricultural budget out of the door. [Interruption.] I would ask the Minister—if I could hear myself think—to ensure that every penny in SFI arrangements will be paid to farmers, and also that those who have already applied and who are eligible for the scheme will have their applications taken forward.

• 10 Mar 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is doing a great job in explaining some of the new powers that the Bill will give our police. Police officers in my area to whom I have spoken find it absurd that it has taken until now to do so. Does my hon. Friend agree that these measures are such common sense that no reasonable party in the House should vote against them?

• 4 Mar 2025 · Palestinian Rights: Government Support · Hansard source

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  I thank the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) for securing this debate; I got to know him well recently on our visit to the region. I also thank everybody who has spoken in the debate. I am rapidly rewriting my speech, because many things that I would have said have already been covered. I start by paying my respects to the more than 1,200 people who were killed on 7 October 2023 in those horrific and barbaric attacks by Hamas, whose intent was genocidal, in the sense that they saw anybody who was in that space as a legitimate target. Hamas are completely against the existence of the state of Israel. I have always been a believer in Israel; I believe in a homeland for the Jewish people. However, what I discovered while I was in the region is that Hamas are not the only organisation within that space who are opposed to a two-state solution; extremist elements in the Israeli Government are seemingly opposed to a two-state solution as well. When we met Mohammad Mustafa, the Prime Minister of Palestine, it became clear to me that he was the only political actor I met who is committed to that two-state solution. Other Members have already spoken well on the settler violence that we witnessed, which was horrific. It is horrific to see people living under decades of occupation. One thing that struck me is the challenge that the Palestinian Authority face to give hope to people, and persuade them not to use armed resistance but to be peaceful after decades living under occupation in a situation where they do not have the same political rights as others, and where Palestinian families are driven away from their villages. The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Pippa Heylings) described well a school that we saw had been smashed to pieces; the remains of children’s workbooks were still strewn across the floor. I was grateful this week to see our Prime Minister literally put an arm around President Zelensky. I feel that the time has also come that we need to put an arm around the Palestinian people—indeed, not just the Palestinian people but all people in that region who are moderates but whose voices are being drowned out. I will briefly suggest three or four things that we need to look at. One is the ICJ ruling. We know that last summer the ICJ gave an advisory opinion that there is an unlawful occupation, and that the prolonged presence of Israel is unlawful and breaches principles of international law, including the fourth Geneva convention, which prohibits an occupying power from transferring civilian population into the territory that it occupies. That ICJ ruling also put obligations on states to recognise the illegal situation. It is disappointing that the United Kingdom Government abstained in the UN General Assembly on this issue. Can we please revisit that, because as Israel’s position shifts our position needs to shift as well? I used to be of the opinion that recognition of the state of Palestine should come as part of a negotiated settlement, but it is now clear to me that a Palestinian Authority who are committed to a two-state solution needs that recognition sooner rather than later. Could the Minister set out a road map for that? It is also deeply concerning that the access of the International Committee of the Red Cross to Israeli prisons is being blocked, because we know that human rights abuses and torture are occurring in those prisons. Can we please do something about that? The economy of Palestine is in a terrible state. When we visited the Bank of Palestine, a specific ask was to include Palestine within the mandate of British international investment, to strengthen the Palestinian economy. Finally, can we do more on sanctions to address settler violence? Can we please put an arm around those people and say, “enough is enough”?

• 24 Feb 2025 · Social Media Use: Minimum Age · Hansard source

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  I thank the British public for bringing this petition forward so that we can debate it today, and thank those who have led on this issue. The petition comes from a place of real strong feeling among parents. This is not some blind moral panic; it is the lived experience of anybody who has raised a teenager in the last few years. My wife and I spend a lot of our time discussing our own parenting. Like many parents, we agonise over whether we are getting it right—on the one hand, wanting not to be too autocratic and to give our children the freedom to engage in a social space which their friends are in, while, on the other, knowing that we are allowing them access to something that we believe is causing them damage. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister) for an excellent speech setting out the strong evidence base for why it is imperative that we, as a Parliament, act. There have been some excellent speeches from Members across all the parties in this place today. I was reflecting, were I ever fortunate enough to place where my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington did in the private Member’s ballot, and to be able to one thing to improve our country right now, what I would do. I think that he has got it right—it has to be about what we do to protect the next generation. It is not a cliché to say that they are all our futures and that we face an epidemic of youth mental unwellness today that is holding back a generation. Many people have spoken well about the damage that we know social media is causing to our children: apps that are designed to addict, requiring users to get streaks, which we know affects concentration; an over-connectedness that is driving anxiety and disrupting children’s sleep; content that distorts children’s relationships with reality on bodies and lifestyles, which is damaging to self-esteem, and, while some of these sites do not host explicitly pornographic material, in the sense that certain body parts are covered, children are often overexposed to a general timbre of content that is still sexualising the human body and causing them to think in sexualised terms at a young age. There is also the challenge of apps that are designed for children to communicate through images, which are driving the phenomenon known as sexting. Despite schools’ valiant efforts to teach children not to do that, we know it is happening—and happening at a worrying scale. We also know that children are overconnected to a social space, which is completely unsupervised, where they can encounter humiliation and bullying. I had a conversation not long ago with a child and asked the question, “Well, why don’t you just not go online?” The response came back, “Because I need to know what people are saying about me.” As the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) suggested earlier, if young people were asked, “If you could switch this off for everyone, would you?” lots of them would actually say, “Yes, I would.” However, there is a phenomenon, which my teenagers tell me is called FOMO—fear of missing out—that means that they have to be in a space, while simultaneously not wanting to be in that space, all the time. In our generation, we might have found school life difficult, but we could go home from school and switch off. For many children today, the first thing they experience when they wake up in the morning is the notifications from the night before, and those notifications are the last thing they see when they go to bed at night. Therefore, I think we do need to regulate. We already regulate childhood in various ways to protect children, such as with laws that prevent children from going to nightclubs, the requirement for disclosure and barring service checks to protect children from coming into contact with adults around whom they would not be safe, and even film classification ratings. There is a huge industry around those ratings—yet, were the content that children can access on Facebook to be classified by film standards, we would often say that they were not old enough to be seeing that regular content. As my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Luke Murphy) said earlier, many children and young people actually agree about the benefits of limiting social media. Before I was in this place, one of the roles I had was tutoring in various north-east high schools, and often our conversations in seminars would turn to this challenge of mental health. A lot of young people talked to me about how they can simultaneously feel lonely while also being overly connected and not having a place to switch off. Girls at Teesdale school, which was my first visit as a new Member of Parliament, also talked to me about a change in attitudes that they saw among many of the young men that they go to school with and the increasing misogyny in the way that they would treat them, because of far-right content that those young men were accessing. What can be done? People have spoken for and against an outright ban, and I think all their arguments have merits, and some have highlighted the challenge of simply banning things. Having said that, I think we do need to consider an age of consent; we need not just a legal shift, but a cultural shift, with greater parental controls and greater support for parents to supervise what their children are viewing. Perhaps we could have time-limit controls that would force a child to switch off. Education around social media already exists, but we know that it is not yet effective. Perhaps we need education that looks not just at the don’ts, the warnings to young people, but at the do’s and reimagines childhood. We need to provide fewer virtual experiences and more real experiences for our children. I think back to my own childhood and remember learning an instrument, playing after-school sports, riding my bike around the block, attending a weekly youth club, going for a walk and bopping along to my Walkman, and yes, it also involved being bored and just being able to take in the world around me. Children need more family time. We need to be real and acknowledge the fact that one of the things driving smartphone use in children is that parents are often less present in their children’s lives, and every parent feels guilt about this. That is why I was proud to support the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers’ “Keep Sunday Special” campaign on Sunday trading laws. It is why I support flexible working and laws in the world of work to make sure that families can have time together. There are many things to be considered, but what we can all agree on is that we cannot allow the status quo to continue. It is imperative that we as a Parliament and the Government consider how to better safeguard our children’s future.

• 13 Feb 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Next month, railway enthusiasts from around the world will come to my constituency, where we will mark the 200th anniversary of the Stockton and Darlington railway, which took off from the town of Shildon. Will my right hon. Friend ask the Rail Minister to meet me and other MPs along that route to talk about how the Government can be part of those celebrations?

• 13 Feb 2025 · Local Bus Services · Hansard source

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  3. What steps she is taking to help improve local bus services.

• 13 Feb 2025 · Local Bus Services · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for that answer. The cost of transport is a huge cost of living pressure for children and young people in my constituency who are trying to access education and social and leisure opportunities. What assurance can the Minister give me that the buses Bill will end a system in which bus services are controlled by ideology, and make it a system that puts them at the service of local people?

• 10 Feb 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T9. I thank the Government for improving the pay and housing conditions of our armed forces. Bishop Auckland has turned out some excellent young men and women into the armed forces, many of whom first went through our brilliant volunteer-led cadet forces. Without wishing to pre-empt the strategic defence review, will the Government commit to ensuring strong funding for our local cadets?

• 10 Feb 2025 · Inheritance Tax Relief: Farms · Hansard source

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  I am here to speak up for the farmers in my constituency of Bishop Auckland, which is a Labour farming community. Farmers in my area are worried. They put their trust in us at the general election, and why did they do so? Because they had been so badly let down for 14 years and they knew that the previous Government could have done more on things like trade deals, supply chains, flood defences and crime. Let me tell the House what farmers in my constituency are telling me. They say that they have no problem with the principle that we should be closing tax loopholes. To quote the Telegraph , they want to stop billionaires “hoovering up agricultural land”, which they know is pushing up land prices. They even support the principle of paying tax and raising revenue for the Treasury, because they know that Treasury revenue is necessary to improve the NHS and improve schools in their communities, as well as having a strong agricultural budget. They are not asking for a full U-turn, by the way; they are asking for some meaningful tweaks that will help the policy to better target the goals that it intends to achieve.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Inheritance Tax Relief: Farms · Hansard source

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  There are a variety of things that could be looked at. I met the NFU this morning and we discussed various points. I feel that these are all things that should be considered. I reiterate that I believe that the community I represent still has good will toward this Government and the intentions of this Government, but there are aspects of the policy that could be tweaked to better achieve their intentions.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Inheritance Tax Relief: Farms · Hansard source

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  There is absolutely nothing timid about what I am telling the right hon. Gentleman: farmers in my community were massively let down by the previous Government.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Inheritance Tax Relief: Farms · Hansard source

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  I welcome that intervention. There are two areas in particular on which I think farmers in my constituency would like some answers. One is thresholds. Because the policy still keeps the 50% agricultural property relief, it does not actually close a tax loophole at all for the very wealthiest. My constituents would like to see the modelling from the Treasury that says that it would. Meanwhile, because the threshold is quite low, it means that sadly some of the family farms in my constituency will really struggle to pay their inheritance tax bill. They would like to see what modelling has been done around the thresholds; they are not asking for a U-turn, because they understand that it should be neutral for the Treasury, but they would be interested to know whether we could lift the threshold but go to 40% tax at another threshold. Would that better protect the small family farms and do a better job of closing the tax loophole at the same time? Another point on which my constituents would welcome some consideration is the proposal for a clawback. Someone who inherits a £5 million farm is not a millionaire; they are the custodian of agricultural land, with a responsibility to farm it to produce food for the nation. If they sell a £5 million farm they become a millionaire, but they do not become one simply by inheriting it. Farmers in my constituency would be interested to look at the proposal, and it would be helpful for them to understand the modelling that the Treasury has done. Among that Labour farming community, there is good will for this Government on many things we are trying to achieve. That good will can be retained. There would be no shame in looking at this again.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Inheritance Tax Relief: Farms · Hansard source

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  Will the right hon. Member give way?

• 10 Feb 2025 · Inheritance Tax Relief: Farms · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member is making an excellent speech, but some of the farmers in my constituents are concerned that the Liberal Democrats have talked about a land tax and a wealth tax. Will she tell us how that would affect the farmers in her constituency and mine?

• 10 Feb 2025 · Inheritance Tax Relief: Farms · Hansard source

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  I do not know why the right hon. Lady keeps saying that. We have not voted on the policy yet. There was a vote against a motion that was put forward by the Opposition. It was a cynical motion that was designed to make us want to vote against it, because it was so ridiculous.

• 5 Feb 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T5. Working-class boys in the north-east are being held back by an attainment gap, based on gender and income. The previous Government had no strategy for dealing with such attainment gaps. What will this Government do? Will the Minister commit to a strategy on this issue?

• 5 Feb 2025 · Children’s Social Care: North-east England · Hansard source

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  One of the biggest cost savings for children’s social care is kinship carers. These unsung heroes do a great deal to care for children, often in very difficult circumstances, but they often feel that the state is not there to support them in that work. Does my hon. Friend agree that more needs to be done to properly recognise the contribution that is made by kinship carers?

• 5 Feb 2025 · Children’s Social Care: North-east England · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for highlighting the rise in the number of children in care. Will she acknowledge the link between the growing number of children in care and the effects of 14 years of austerity?

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  I have visited more than a dozen schools in my constituency since being elected, and I am always overwhelmed by the passion of the teachers who have to work in really trying circumstances. They are often very under-resourced to deal with children who are ill-prepared for school and a growing caseload of children with special educational needs, so I really welcome the additional investment with the RISE teams. As the Minister will know, Conservative Members are fond of quoting our improvement in the PISA rankings, which is the legacy of the generation who experienced Sure Start—where children had a Sure Start centre nearby, that generation achieved 0.8 grades higher at GCSE. What will the Government do to ensure that we have more children coming to school who are prepared for school?

• 22 Jan 2025 · Public Services: Rural Areas · Hansard source

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  People from primary schools in rural areas of my constituency have come to me, and one of the challenges they face is a falling population because of the declining number of jobs. Although they have both fixed and variable costs, they lose per pupil funding as a result, and some of those primary schools are becoming unviable. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need a different funding settlement for schools in rural areas?