Sarah Green MP: speeches

Speeches

• 10 Mar 2025 · Schools: Exceptional Funding · Hansard source

  More

  1. What recent assessment she has made of the adequacy of exceptional funding for schools.

• 4 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Seventeenth sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  The hon. Lady will know that the Welsh Language Act 1993 put the Welsh language on an equal footing with the English language in Wales. Does she agree that it would be helpful to have clarity on whether the provisions in that Act apply to the Bill?

• 4 Mar 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Sixteenth sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  We have had a good debate on the amendments in this group. I do not intend to push amendment 278 to a vote, and I have nothing further to add to my previous remarks. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Amendment proposed : 8, in clause 4, page 2, line 16, leave out from “practitioner” to end of line 20 and insert “shall raise the subject of the provision of assistance in accordance with this Act with a person who has not indicated to that or another registered medical practitioner that they wish to seek assistance to end their own life”.— (Daniel Francis.) Question put, That the amendment be made.

• 26 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Fifteenth sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  I will be brief. Amendment 278, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Wells and Mendip Hills (Tessa Munt) has some merit. It seeks to offer a more formal protection to those who are certain that they do not, and will not, want to avail themselves of the choice to end their life if they are terminally ill at any point in the future. It attempts to do so through an advance decision recorded on their medical records. A person’s ability to record their wishes now, as opposed to at some future crisis point, might allay a number of concerns, in particular for those who are fearful of coercion. Being able to say, “This is not for me”, and knowing that it will not be raised with them, might offer some people a degree of reassurance, so I think that the amendment has some merit. It also allows for such an advance decision to be reversed—it allows for people to change their mind. What is not clear to me is how enforceable this provision would be, or what legal status such an advance decision would have. I have great sympathy with the aim of the amendment, so I am keen to hear from the Minister on the point. It may be that an alternative amendment that achieves a similar aim can be tabled to a later clause, if amendment 278, as drafted, is not workable.

• 26 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Fifteenth sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  I beg to move amendment 278, in clause 4, page 2, line 16, leave out from beginning to “nothing” in line 16 and insert— “(1A) No registered medical practitioner may raise the subject of the provision of assistance in accordance with this Act with a person if that person has made an advanced decision which has been recorded in their medical records that they will not in future wish to seek assistance under this Act. (1B) The provisions in subsection (1A) do not prevent a person indicating to a registered medical practitioner that they wish to change their previous decision and seek assistance under the Act if they have the capacity to do so. (2) Other than the condition in subsection (1A),”. This amendment would prevent a doctor from raising assisted dying with a patient if that patient had previously recorded an advanced decision that they would not in future wish to seek assistance under the Act.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Twelfth sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  I have great sympathy with amendment 11 in particular, which is clearly motivated by a desire to ensure that having a mental illness or disability alone does not qualify someone for an assisted death under the Bill. It is worth saying that clause 2(3) already does that and, therefore, the amendment is not necessary. However, the hon. Member for Spen Valley has tabled amendment 181, which further tightens that language. In my view, amendment 181 strengthens the Bill by simplifying the language to make it absolutely clear that a person is not considered to be terminally ill if they have a mental disorder or a disability alone. The chief medical officer, Professor Whitty, encouraged us to keep this simple, and that is precisely what amendment 181 does. Therefore, I support the amendment.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Q Dr Ward, I am keen to hear about your work on the Bill in the Scottish Parliament and about how best practice in other jurisdictions has informed the legislation that is currently going through Holyrood. How has it influenced and informed that draft? Dr Ward: I was the adviser on the previous Bill in Scotland as well, under Margo MacDonald MSP and Patrick Harvie MSP. That was in session 4 of our Parliament; we then did not have a Bill in session 5, which is when we set up things like the cross-party working group on end-of-life choices and I did the PhD. Luckily, we saw a domino effect internationally in session 5; there were various jurisdictions legislating for it. When we came to draft this legislation in 2021, in session 6 of the Parliament, we had decades of data that we had not had when Margo made her first attempt back in 2010. With the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill, we have been working with international experts since 2021, and we have had various consultation processes. It is currently with the Health Committee of the Scottish Parliament. We set up a medical advisory group, chaired by Dr Sandesh Gulhane MSP: a group of almost a dozen practitioners in palliative care, mental health experts, geriatricians and other interested stakeholders. It produced a report for us on the medicinal aspects of the Bill. That has been a four-year process. I understand that concerns have been voiced in this Committee that things have proceeded at pace, but I would argue that you are not pioneers. There is 20 or 30 years’ worth of data, which we have drawn on in Scotland, and there is four years’ worth of work in Scotland that this Committee and this Parliament could look to. I would also make the point that the data is peer-reviewed and evidence-based. You really have to trust your international colleagues. The data is from Government bodies, from Health Departments, from independent academic peer-reviewed work and from independent review boards. We are now looking at fact rather than at falsehoods or concerns, as we were back in 2010.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Q To follow up on what you just said about legislative consent, in October of last year, the Senedd voted against Julie Morgan’s assisted dying motion. In your opinion, what implications does that have for the Bill and its progress? Professor Lewis: A motion was put forward by Julie Morgan that was supported by three or four Members of the Senedd, which was broadly in support not of this specific Bill, but of the purpose of this Bill, and it was defeated, as you say, after a full debate on the Floor of the Senedd. Formally, legally and constitutionally, that is of no consequence, because it was not a legislative consent motion, and of course, as I said earlier, this Parliament is able to do what it likes. It could totally disregard that. Whether that would be a prudent or an appropriate thing to do, or even what one might describe as a constitutionally appropriate thing to do, is another matter. I think it reinforces the point that there is a significance in making sure that scrutiny of the Bill has a Welsh focus. You might consider, for example, making different provision in Wales. How do you respect what was a democratic vote in the Senedd in Cardiff? Well, you might consider having different commencement provisions—I am not advocating this, it is just an example of what you might do. Commencement of the Bill in Wales might happen in a different way, on the assumption it was passed. You might put that in the hands of Welsh Ministers and the Senedd, just as an example.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Q On that point about palliative care, I will direct my question to Dr Furst. What has been the response from palliative care professionals to the introduction of assisted dying in Australia? We have heard evidence from people working in the sector in the UK, but I am keen to hear about your experience in Australia. I understand that Palliative Care Australia’s national workforce survey explicitly looked at this, so I am keen to hear what its findings were. Dr Furst: It has been a journey, certainly. Victoria started their voluntary assisted dying in 2019. I would be lying if I said that the palliative care community were completely on board with it at that point, but over the last five to six years there has been a real shift in mentality. We have seen that they can go hand in hand. Palliative care is about end-of-life choices. Voluntary assisted dying is about end-of-life choices. It is about putting the patient and the individual front and centre, and working with them. That is fundamental to palliative care. We have realised that voluntary assisted dying is a promotion of palliative care and it gives back choices. Probably some of the older palliative care clinicians have not embraced voluntary assisted dying quite as much. That is probably very generalised, but certainly new consultants and new doctors that are coming through really see this as something that they want to do. I do not think that there is any animosity any more between the practitioners that choose to work in this space and those that do not. I get huge amounts of support from other palliative care physicians that do not necessarily act as practitioners. There is no real divide. It has been embraced, to be honest. In another five years, I think there will probably be very few palliative care practitioners who do not support this, unless they are true conscientious objectors for their own reasons—I guess, probably religious reasons. Palliative Care Australia and the peak medical bodies in Australia have generally shifted to see this as part of patient choice. Alex Greenwich: The journey to voluntary assisted dying in New South Wales, and indeed across every Australian state, has benefited palliative care access and funding. In New South Wales, 85% of people who have accessed voluntary assisted dying are receiving palliative care. As part of the process, the co-ordinating and consulting practitioners also advise them on palliative care. The doctors are trained on the latest advances in palliative care. Baked into the principles of our legislation is access to palliative care for all citizens of New South Wales. Importantly, throughout our debate, whether Members supported or opposed the reform, our entire Parliament came together to ensure palliative care received an increase in funding and any access issues were addressed. The Australian experience with voluntary assisted dying is that it benefits and strengthens the palliative care system. Professor Blake: Can I can I add to that? The Voluntary Assisted Dying Board in WA, as in all the other jurisdictions, produces a report. The very strong sentiment of the Voluntary Assisted Dying Board, and indeed within the Western Australia community, is that voluntary assisted dying is seen as part of the end-of-life journey. The board’s report states that the statistics and experience of Western Australians “confirms…that voluntary assisted dying is an established and enduring end of life choice”. For that reason, there has been quite a significant awareness that practitioners should be able to bring up voluntary assisted dying with the patient as part of that suite of end-of-life choices. That has been something that the evidence has suggested is very important, because if the practitioners are feeling that they cannot raise it in that context, that is having a detrimental effect on the patients who would like information on it. That has been our experience in Western Australia.

• 29 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Q 157 I am keen to hear about the training, education and clinical supervision you have in place for assisted dying. Perhaps I will address that to Dr Fellingham, but I am sure you could all answer. Dr Fellingham: Certainly. The training is very stringently developed, and very rigorously tested. Our management training practice, which is required of all doctors who want to practice assisted dying, was developed by our colleagues in the Australian Centre for Health Law Research at the Queensland University of Technology. It drew on extensive research that the group had conducted around the world to create an online training package that takes at least a day to complete and covers a huge amount of things that are of great concern. Not unsurpris-ingly, it includes things like how to assess capacity, how to detect coercion, how to assess for voluntariness, and how to determine the various different eligibility criteria that apply in our Western Australian law. To be able to access that training and become a voluntary assisted dying practitioner, a person already has to be a doctor of quite some standing in their own specialty. They have to be a consultant in a specialty with at least one year of full-time practice under their belt, or a general practitioner with at least 10 years of broad experience. We are not talking about junior doctors being able to offer this; we are talking about doctors of significant clinical standing with a very broad range of patient experiences. They put themselves forwards and do that training, and then that training has to be refreshed and updated every three years. I have five hospitals in my health network, and together with my colleagues I developed a very comprehensive package of training, education and awareness that is tailored for people who may have a role in this at various different levels, from a nurse on the ward all the way through to someone who actively taking part in the process. A very wide range of documents and training packages have also been developed by our Department of Health. In addition, all practitioners who work in this space are invited to become members of our community of practice, where we share peer education and experiences. We also have guest speakers from national and international viewpoints to continue to educate us as a group, and to ensure that our practice is consistent and in line with local and international standards.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Q Dr Clarke, what are the existing statutory guidelines on end-of-life practice? How are those decisions logged, recorded and monitored? Dr Clarke: The fundamental principle is always that, by default, the patient has capacity unless there is clear evidence that they do not. We presume that patients have capacity. As doctors, we are obliged to ensure that patients have informed consent when deciding between different treatments. That means we need to lay out the whole array of treatment options, and the risks and benefits of each, to empower individual patients to make decisions for themselves. Regarding the issue that has been alluded to of whether doctors should be prohibited from raising the issue of assisted dying, it is my belief that that would fundamentally alter the doctor-patient relationship. If consent is not informed—and it is not informed if we are not laying out all the different options to a patient—we are denying patients the opportunity to make decisions for themselves. A patient is always able to refuse every treatment, and in particular every life-prolonging treatment, that they choose to, provided they have capacity. We, as doctors, may think that a decision is unwise, but that is irrelevant, because those days of bad old paternalistic medicine are gone. The patient makes the choice. If a patient says, “I do not want chemotherapy. I do not want to eat. I do not want anything at all—no treatment”, we respect that, unless they lack capacity. The elephant in the room with all of this is the capacity assessments. I would suggest that anybody who pretends that those assessments are easy and routinely done well in the NHS has not got enough experience of observing that happening. I teach capacity assessments to doctors and medical students, and it is often the case that they are very poorly conducted. The doctor often does not understand the criteria for assessing capacity. That is if it happens at all. Sometimes, a paternalistic doctor will decide that a patient is dying, and we should stop their antibiotics because they are clearly now at the end of their life. They have a chat with the family, who say, “Yes, we agree,” and nobody talks to 82-year-old Mrs. Smith and asks her what she feels about it, because they assume that she does not have capacity because she is old. I see that regularly. Sometimes, a palliative care team will intervene in those situations, because the professional and legal framework that is meant to guide this practice is just not happening. It is a very fraught and tricky area. If there is one thing that I would say to the Committee regarding making the Bill as robust, strong and safe as possible, it is: please consider seriously the matter of education and training from day one of medical school onwards. Death is at the periphery of a medical school curriculum. Death and dying are not taught. You might get a week of palliative care in five years, and that has knock-on effects all the way through, at every level of seniority in the medical workforce.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Q I have a follow-up question. The Bill introduces a monitoring and review process, including an annual report by the chief medical officer. Do you have any reflections on whether that needs strengthening? Dr Clarke : Yes, I think that in the spirit of transparency and making this as safe as possible, it needs to be significantly strengthened. I would suggest that there need to be more safeguards in place. For example, if anyone in a hospital—whether staff, patient or family member—has concerns around a particular case, there should be mechanisms for those to be raised in a proactive way. Just as we have guardians of safe working and freedom to speak up guardians in hospitals, those opportunities to assess and appraise the safety in real time once a Bill is in place—I just do not think they are robust enough at all. The more we can have of that, the more that will allay people’s fears.

• 22 Jan 2025 · Education, Health and Care Plans · Hansard source

  More

  Only 49% of children in Buckinghamshire receive their EHCP plan within the statutory limit, which means that more than half are waiting way beyond that time frame. There are hidden impacts to those delays: one family in my constituency faces a three-year waitlist for autism spectrum disorder and ADHD assessments. They have serious concerns about their current accommodation, but the lack of diagnosis for their son is delaying their eligibility for suitable housing. That is three years in unsuitable housing with no additional support. I have spoken to schools in my area that say they have children with EHCPs who would be better served in a specialist setting. The demand for places means that they remain in mainstream education, where, in the words of one local headteacher, that the SENCO workload is unsustainable for staff. The Department for Education’s own survey showed that only 63% of classroom teachers felt able to meet the needs of pupils with SEND. I am keen to hear from the Minister on what work is ongoing to help give the current teaching workforce the training and confidence they need to meet the demand in our mainstream schools.

• 14 Jan 2025 · Sudan: Humanitarian Situation · Hansard source

  More

  The Liberal Democrats welcome the humanitarian support that the Government are giving to Sudan. We also recognise that greater protections are needed for women, children and ethnic minority groups. In the light of the failure of the United Nations to back safe areas, what is the UK doing to create safe zones for schools and hospitals in Sudan?

• 14 Jan 2025 · Sudan: Humanitarian Situation · Hansard source

  More

  4. What steps his Department is taking to support the victims of the humanitarian crisis in Sudan.

• 9 Dec 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

  More

  T5. What steps are under way to recruit and retain more educational psychologists so that children, including in Chesham and Amersham, do not have to wait as long as they currently are for the assessment they need?

• 9 Dec 2024 · SEN Provision: Funding · Hansard source

  More

  6. What steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to ensure that SEN provision is adequately funded.

• 9 Dec 2024 · SEN Provision: Funding · Hansard source

  More

  A recent National Audit Office report makes it clear that, without reform, the SEN system is financially unsustainable. The Minister will know that, since 2020, local authorities such as Buckinghamshire council have been able to exclude their dedicated school grant deficits from their main revenue budgets. That statutory override means that local authorities do not breach their duty to set a balanced budget, but it is due to end in March 2026, and there is currently no identified solution. Can the Minister share more on what urgent conversations she is having with colleagues to ensure that local authorities get the certainty they need?

• 5 Dec 2024 · Cumberlege Review: Pelvic Mesh · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) for securing today’s debate. We are here because four years after being published, the Cumberlege review has not been implemented and there is still no redress scheme. I will turn in more detail to the progress made on those recommendations, but first I pay tribute to the many individuals who have campaigned so hard for so long to be heard, for their experiences to be taken seriously, to receive some sort of justice, and to know that the same harm will not be done to others. Some of them are in the Public Gallery today and I thank them for their tireless campaigning. I also pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Jeremy Hunt), when he was Health and Social Care Secretary, and to the former Member for Maidenhead, when she was Prime Minister, for commissioning the review in the first place in February 2018. Baroness Cumberlege has never stopped giving voice to those she encountered during the two years she led that review. She has gone to great lengths to keep this issue on the agenda. She is due to retire shortly and we will miss her. I would like to say how grateful I am, as I know others will be, not just for her advocacy on this issue but for her encouragement and support of hon. Members in this place to do the same. If I may be so bold, Baroness Cumberlege has played her part. It is now up to us in this place to hold this new Government to account and to ensure that her recommendations are implemented in full. Let us not forget that the Cumberlege review was called “First Do No Harm”, because at its centre are people who suffered avoidable harm—harm done to them by our health system. I was first introduced to this issue by my constituent Carol. I have shared her story before and remain in awe of her dignity and desire to help others despite having experienced the most devastating medical trauma. She needed her MP to help her get a visa for the United States for urgent medical treatment during the pandemic because of the travel restrictions that hon. Members will remember. She had undergone a hysteropexy and a rectopexy using surgical mesh. Instead of resolving Carol’s pelvic organ prolapse, the procedures left her with a serious autoimmune disease, struggling to walk and unable to continue her normal daily life. She had to take long-term sick leave from her job as a doctor and could not remember a day without pain. When she contacted me for help with her visa, she was seriously unwell and had been told that she urgently needed her mesh removed or her prognosis was not good. We managed to get her the visa she needed. She is now mesh-free following a successful removal, and she is the first person in England to have undergone successful rectal mesh removal. She is still suffering, but is no longer in the same danger that she was. She is clear that she was able to look outside the NHS and the UK only because her medical training and personal resources enabled her to find Dr Veronikis, who treated her successfully. I should say at this point that there needs to be more awareness of rectopexy mesh, which affects men, women and children. Carol and others like her were given hope when the Cumberlege review was initiated, and again when it was published in July 2020 with its nine recommendations. I am sorry that to say that not enough progress has been made on those recommendations since. The reality is that only two of the nine recommendations have been implemented in full. The first was an apology, which was given as soon as the report was published. The second was to establish the office of the Patient Safety Commissioner. Beyond that, things have stalled. Recommendations 3 and 4 called for an independent redress agency, and for redress schemes to be established for all three interventions. After originally rejecting those two recommendations, the Health Minister at the time asked the Patient Safety Commissioner in late 2022 to look at the options for providing redress for those who had been harmed by mesh and valproate. The commissioner’s report—the Hughes report—was published in February. I was present at its launch, and it really felt like a milestone; it felt as though progress had been made. Surely the Department would not commission that work if it had no intention of following through on a redress scheme. That was in February this year. By the summer, when the election was called, the previous Government were still saying that they would respond to the report, so they never gave a formal response. To date, there has been no official response from the new Government to the Hughes report. In the words of the Patient Safety Commissioner: “it is now urgent for the government to give those families some clarity. Many of them live with pressing financial hardship, as well as physical pain and disability…we must not compound the physical and mental harms experienced by these families by setting and raising false expectations if there is no intention to deliver on redress.”

• 5 Dec 2024 · Cumberlege Review: Pelvic Mesh · Hansard source

  More

  I could not agree more. This is where I must pick up Carol’s story again. She tried to pursue her claim against her original surgeons through the courts, and she hit on an unexpected problem. She approached multiple legal firms who would not take her case because one or both of the surgeons were advising them on other cases and, as such, it would have been a conflict of interest. Indeed, the same surgeon who caused Carol life-changing injuries acted as an expert witness in an unrelated surgical mesh negligence case. The judge in that case said: “he had cherry-picked those parts of the evidence which were supportive of the Defendant’s case and did not comment on those parts which were consistent to the Claimant’s. That is not the correct approach to be taken by an independent expert, whose duty is to the court. His evidence lacked balance and was unpersuasive.” On this occasion, the judge called it out, but that is not the only instance of the medical profession closing ranks—it is not a unique occurrence. Such clear bias and conflicts of interest are a huge barrier to justice for mesh victims around the country. The point of recommendation 3 in the Cumberlege review was to establish a non-adversarial avenue for redress after someone has been harmed in a healthcare setting. Both the Hughes report and, more recently, the Darzi report found that the current clinical negligence system is difficult for patients to navigate and prevents the healthcare system from learning from its mistakes. It is also eye-wateringly expensive for the taxpayer. If it is the dead hand of the Treasury blocking a redress scheme, Ministers would do well to reflect on that. As the Patient Safety Commissioner points out, the clinical negligence system is behind only nuclear disarmament and pensions on the list of liabilities on the Government’s balance sheet. I must ask the Minister when the Department will respond to the options outlined in the Hughes report, and when families can expect to see redress schemes up and running. Recommendation 5 relates to the establishment of mesh centres around the country, and while such centres have been established, they get mixed reports from patients. My question on the mesh centres is about their outcomes. How is the Department ensuring a consistent service across them all, and how are outcomes being measured? With so many people reporting dissatisfaction with the centres, it is not enough that they exist; they need to be working well for the patients they are there to serve. Recommendation 6 relates to the MHRA, and it is clear that we still need the yellow card reporting system to improve. I would also welcome the Minister’s thoughts on progress against recommendation 7, which is about creating a central patient-identifiable database. To my understanding, it is still a work in progress. The previous Government’s decision not to take forward the eighth recommendation, which is for a mandatory register, is disappointing. The recommendation called for “Transparency of payments made to clinicians” and “mandatory reporting for pharmaceutical and medical device industries of payments made to teaching hospitals, research institutions and individual clinicians.” I fail to understand why more progress has not been made on that. I know that campaigners have written to the Department asking it to consider a sunset Act that speaks to that recommendation, and I urge the Minister to chase a response to them.

• 24 Oct 2024 · Special Educational Needs and Disabilities · Hansard source

  More

  Other Members have asked about educational psychologists. There is a real shortage right now. Are the Government considering enabling other professionals to undertake some of the assessments to help unblock the waiting lists?

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

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I begin by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) for securing this debate on something I know matters to a great many of my own constituents in Chesham and Amersham. The appalling examples of sewage-filled floodwater blighting lives in my constituency are part of a much bigger picture: a water industry that is not held to account by a regulatory system that is not fit for purpose. I therefore welcome today’s announcement of the independent water commission. As a report published last year by Surfers Against Sewage states, part of the problem is the “severe budget cuts” that regulators have experienced, which have meant that even reported pollution events go uninvestigated and unpunished. Indeed, in 2022, the Environment Agency instructed its staff to ignore reports of low-impact pollution events as it did not have sufficient resources to investigate them. To the extent that that is the case, we get the environment we pay for—but that is only part of the problem. A report published by the previous Government in May this year makes clear that regulators must avoid drifting into unnecessary risk aversion. Internal culture should challenge excessive risk aversion, not promote it. One former employee of the Environment Agency described to me how some of those the agency regulates see it as a toothless tiger. I suggest to the Minister that fixing the regulatory framework is not the only area worth looking at. There is also a need to make sure we are not creating more problems with our sewage system in the future. At present, our water companies are not statutory consultees on planning applications. Instead of asking whether the existing sewage infrastructure can support new developments, the right to connect means that water companies are required to make it work after the fact. That is surely nonsensical and something the Government can address as part of the work they are currently doing on the national planning policy framework. I will close by thanking the many campaigners in Chesham and Amersham, including the River Chess Association, the Chiltern Society, Misbourne River Action and others, that have worked tirelessly on this issue. I pay particular tribute to local parish councillors who have found themselves at the forefront of these issues, becoming citizen scientists and experts in a way they never expected. I have been so impressed by their diligence and their dedication to doing their best to help their residents. However, they are volunteers committed to their environment and their communities; they should not be responsible for holding the water industry to account. That is what our regulators are for.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

  More

  Will the Minister update the House on the grim situation in Sudan? In particular, what pressure is being put on regional actors to stop fuelling the crisis, and what is the UK doing to help the 16 million children who, according to an estimate from Save the Children, face severe food shortages right now?

• 8 Oct 2024 · Chalk Streams: Sewage Discharge · Hansard source

  More

  The Minister is making the point, rightly, about individual projects that water companies such as Affinity Water have invested in. What is missing is a strategy across the country for all chalk streams. That is why I am calling on her, in her position as a Minister, to give chalk streams the designation and special status they need so that this is not treated in a piecemeal way.

• 8 Oct 2024 · Chalk Streams: Sewage Discharge · Hansard source

  More

  Given that one has to go through quite an onerous process to get the SSSI status and that we recognise that chalk streams are rare, does my hon. Friend agree that a recognised special status and designation for chalk streams is needed, so that they can get the protections they actually need?