Sharon Hodgson MP: speeches 2024

Speeches

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

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  Do you want to give some guidance on how long is left, Mr Stringer, so I can cut my speech accordingly?

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

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  I am grateful to the hon. Lady for covering the recommendations, which I was not able to do. That has relieved me somewhat. We have at last seen some compensation for the victims of Windrush, the infected blood scandal and the Horizon scandal. Does she agree that it is incumbent on the Government to treat this scandal with the same seriousness, fully accept recommendation 4 and put the redress scheme in place?

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

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  In the short time I have available, I will try to make some important points. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. As co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for first do no harm—along with Baroness Cumberlege, who it is a pleasure to see in the Public Gallery—it is a pleasure to speak in this important debate. I also point out how many officers of the all-party group are here in the Chamber, on a Thursday and on a one-line Whip. That speaks for itself as to how important the issue is to the House and to all of us. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) for securing this important debate to shed further light on this still under-discussed scandal. Members present, campaigners watching at home, and especially patients, will all be aware of the extent of the injustice. I have had the privilege of working with wonderful campaigners over many years, and I take this opportunity to pay tribute to Kath Sansom from Sling the Mesh, who is a key campaigner for mesh victims and has been a great support to me and to colleagues over the years. I am glad that she is in the Public Gallery to watch the debate, alongside Debbie, who is the constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow, and who brought this scandal to his attention. My first contribution in this House on surgical mesh was in 2017, during my time as shadow Minister for Public Health, and I am glad to see the actual Minister for Public Health and Prevention in his place to hear this debate. I have continued to campaign tirelessly on the issue through debates and my work with the all-party group ever since. The issue is not only of political importance to me; it matters to me on a profoundly personal level. As I am sure some in the Chamber will know, among the thousands of women affected by mesh complications is my mam, who was one of the 617 mesh-damaged women who met, or made submissions to, Baroness Cumberlege for her review. I took my mam along to an evidence session in Gateshead, and she was able to meet Baroness Cumberlege and tell her story personally. She still talks about that to this day—she is very grateful. After suffering mild stress incontinence, as we have heard from a number of people who went through the procedure, my mam had SUI surgery to have some tension-free vaginal tape inserted, which was a quick and common treatment offered to women for incontinence. However, had she known the life-limiting complications she was about to suffer as a result, dealing with slight stress incontinence would not have seemed very bad at all. Two to three years post-surgery, my mam had one health complication after another. She suffered all sorts of autoimmune reactions, recurrent urinary tract infections, and was in constant pain in her groin, arms and legs. She became a shadow of her former self, and it took us quite a few years to work out what was causing the symptoms and pain. It was only through my research for that debate back in 2017 as the shadow Minister that I was able to join the dots together, and from that moment on we both wished constantly that she had never had the operation. My mam will be 80 in January, and she would say that she is one of the lucky ones. Since I first spoke on the topic, she has been able to get the mesh surgically removed. It was a long delicate operation, thankfully carried out by the amazing Suzy Elneil, which she had to undertake in London in order to avoid the surgeon who put it in her in the first place—something that the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) and others have spoken about. That is something that many mesh-damaged women will understand. With the removal of the mesh, many of her health complications vanished immediately. The road to recovery is far from smooth for many mesh-damage victims, however, and my mam is no exception. She is still recovering to this day and, in her words, “will never be the same again.” I sat next to my mam at her local hospital and watched her be gaslit and undermined by her original surgeon when she first sought help with her pain and symptoms. Our doctors, surgeons and healthcare providers are meant to protect us, not harm us. Hence, “first do no harm”—an unwritten contract between patients and healthcare providers that rightly makes us feel that when we seek medical help, we trust that we will be made better, not worse. Surely the least we can expect in cases where harm does happen is accountability and for wrongs to be righted. Instead, we see a culture of defensiveness and a lack of accountability. It is therefore shocking that the surgeons responsible for the implantation of this life-shattering mesh are the very same people tasked with removing it. I was going to talk about Baroness Cumberlege’s recommendations—which we have had success with and which we have not—but sadly the right hon. Member for New Forest East used up all the time, so I cannot.

• 28 Nov 2024 · Pimping websites and paying for sex · Hansard source

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  On the third day of the UN’s 16 days of activism against gender-based violence, I rise to present a petition on behalf of my Washington and Gateshead South constituents on commercial sexual exploitation. The trafficking and exploitation of women is actively facilitated by pimping websites that advertise these women, free for anyone to view. The sex trade has never been more accessible or more centralised than it is now. Following is the full text of the petition: [ The petition of residents of the constituency of Washington and Gateshead South, Declares that demand from the minority of men who pay for sex is driving the prostitution and sex trafficking trade, and this sexual exploitation is being facilitated by pimping websites that operate with impunity. The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to outlaw pimping websites and paying for sex, and provide support, not sanctions, to victims of sexual exploitation. And the petitioners remain, etc. ] [P003023]

• 24 Oct 2024 · Secondary Ticketing Market · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

• 24 Oct 2024 · Secondary Ticketing Market · Hansard source

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  The shadow Minister—sorry. He pointed out that with dynamic pricing the price can go up but also come down. That might happen when it is Uber, airline prices or hotel rooms, but at yesterday’s meeting of the all-party parliamentary group on ticket abuse we heard from experts in the room, FanFair Alliance and Reg Walker, that that never happens with regard to ticketing. They never come down. The only way is up.

• 24 Oct 2024 · Secondary Ticketing Market · Hansard source

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  I do not want this debate to end without mentioning Ed Sheeran and how much he has done to try to tackle the scourge of ticket touting. Lots of other artists, such as Iron Maiden, Arctic Monkeys, Mumford & Sons and many others have tried, but Ed Sheeran went above and beyond by cancelling tickets when they had been resold. Taylor Swift never did that because she did not want to break the hearts of all her fans, but Ed Sheeran has been a real warrior in that regard.

• 24 Oct 2024 · Secondary Ticketing Market · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech. When fans are forced to pay way over the odds, they are not able to then go to 10, 20 or 30 other concerts or sporting events, because they may have spent their budget for the year on that one special event that they really wanted to go to. Does he recognise that this issue robs the fans of those multiple opportunities?

• 24 Oct 2024 · Secondary Ticketing Market · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cramlington and Killingworth (Emma Foody) for securing this important debate. I am glad to hear that she is as passionate as I am about sorting out this broken market. I am happy to see the Minister for Creative Industries, Arts and Tourism in his place. We have been on quite a journey together to get to this point and I very much look forward to him fixing all these wrongs in due course. A lot has happened in the campaign to regulate the secondary ticketing market since I first introduced my private Member’s Bill on the topic back in 2010, which was before the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman) suffered the problems she did in 2012. The problem would have been sorted if the then Member for Shipley had not talked out my private Member’s Bill. However, because of constant lobbying by yours truly and the growing scourge of parasitic touts becoming increasingly sophisticated and ruthless, the new Labour Government have decided to act, as we promised we would in our manifesto. We now have the watershed opportunity to create the change we desperately need. Over many years in this place we have tried to regulate the market. We have tweaked legislation, first with the Consumer Rights Act 2015, to bring in more transparency because it was said that that was what was needed. But that did not work. Then, with the successful Ban the Bots campaign, we secured an amendment to the Digital Economy Bill in 2017. However, that did not work either: we know that the use of bots and the profits of those using bots for sales are exploding. For a recent Sabrina Carpenter ticket pre-sale of just 10,000 tickets, there were 380,000 bots in the queue attempting to harvest them. Research published last month by O2, which sells 1 million tickets per year through its priority scheme, estimates that touts cost British music fans an extra £145 million a year, but I suspect that is just the tip of the iceberg. That money is taken from the back pockets of UK audiences and deposited into the bank accounts of offshore retail platforms and the touts who supply their inventory. Despite uncontrolled touting taking place on an industrial scale, with tickets resold through sites such as Viagogo—there is that name on my lips again—prosecutions were few and far between under the last Government. Led by National Trading Standards, the precedent-setting convictions of just two groups of ticket touts worth millions of pounds each should have opened the floodgates to more action against those who flout the law and use platforms like Viagogo to put profits before fans, but sadly they have not, because resources have run dry. There has not been a single prosecution under the Breaching of Limits on Ticket Sales Regulations 2018 and nor have there been any prosecutions for using bots under the Digital Economy Act 2017, despite our securing the Ban the Bots amendment. The details of the prosecutions are extraordinary, with touts fraudulently acquiring tens of thousands of tickets and then reselling them through websites such as Viagogo and GetMeIn—which does not exist any more—that were not compliant with UK consumer law. In both cases, it was strongly suggested that the resale platforms were complicit in the touts’ illegal activities. Incredibly, although the touts were prosecuted and jailed, the resale platforms faced no such sanctions. They kept their cumulative 25% service fees from the illegal transactions—if we do the numbers, we see that means millions of pounds—and they continue to profit from further illicit trading. Where are all the illegal proceeds of crime? Why have they never been recovered? As the CMA highlighted in 2021, this remains an unregulated market where stronger laws are desperately needed to protect audiences. As stated in the 2016 Waterson review, changes must include properly funding National Trading Standards, which, despite having a budget of only just under £15 million and so much more than just ticket abuse to look at, is the only body to have successfully prosecuted touts. Sadly, despite the mountains of evidence that campaigners such as Adam from FanFair Alliance and myself have provided the CMA with, it has carried out no such prosecutions and is in desperate need of clearer ministerial oversight. I hope that the Minister takes note of that point in particular. We can see that legislation to outlaw resale for profit or to cap resale prices works in other countries. This is a golden opportunity to ensure that UK audiences receive similar protections and enjoy a capped, consumer-friendly and ethical resale market that works in their interests. Companies such as Viagogo pretend to be legitimate businesses, but the resales are not from fan to fan: they are absolutely dependent on touts committing criminal offences to harvest tickets on an industrial scale then resell them through the website. Citing research from FanFair Alliance just last month, which looked at all the Viagogo listings for 28 shows over the past year at Liverpool’s main mid-size venue, the 1,200-capacity O2 Academy, I can tell hon. Members that only one ticket was listed by a consumer. This very morning, Sam Fender shows went on sale —we all know him from my region—including a gig in Newcastle’s Utilita arena. Coming from the north-east, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cramlington and Killingworth and I do, we know that Sam’s shows are highly sought after. It is a balloted event, with four tickets per person and only for local postcodes, to try to restrict it and ensure that north-eastern fans get to go. But guess what? There is already a Dubai-based business selling 54 tickets in a single listing. On what site? Viagogo. As I have stressed time and again, Viagogo has never been penalised in the UK, despite regularly flouting UK legislation, and it has shown repeatedly that it cannot be trusted to mark its own homework. Listen to this: it was fined 7 million Australian dollars for misleading consumers, €20 million for breaking the law in Italy and €400,000 in France for breaking the law around rugby world cup tickets, but it has never been fined a penny here. Capping ticket resales is a common-sense, cost-free benefit for fans across the country. In fact, cracking down on fraud, which is the most common crime in the UK, could be a net benefit for the country through the proceeds of crime. Although the two cannot be linked precisely, Ireland saw a large drop in fraud after it implemented a version of—guess what?—my private Member’s Bill. For the upcoming Oasis world tour, the only shows for which tickets are not being touted on Viagogo, StubHub and Gigsberg are the two at Croke Park in Dublin. Although long-term impact reports are still under way, the Irish Government’s official post-enactment report on the Sale of Tickets (Cultural, Entertainment, Recreational and Sporting Events) Act 2021—essentially my private Member’s Bill—concludes: “This is a positive endorsement of the operation of the Act and means that the objectives of the Act are being met whereby genuine fans can attend events at affordable prices.” That is what we all seek and what artists and sporting events want to happen when they price their tickets. They know that tickets are worth more, but they do not want to rip off their own fans: they want grassroots sport and the players of the future to be able to attend. My private Member’s Bill argued for capping resales at face value plus 10%. The 10% exists to account for booking and postage fees. I have never wanted any fans to be out of pocket, not even for the booking fees. I have only ever believed that we need to take out of the reselling of tickets any opportunity to profit, to stop them becoming a commodity that is sold to the highest bidder. I was happy to see, therefore, Michael Rapino, the chief executive officer of Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, urge Governments in a recent interview with Bloomberg to regulate the business by capping resale. He said that resale prices are 20% above face value, and: “You shouldn’t have a middleman that has nothing invested in the business make any money from it”— hallelujah! I have been saying that for years. A 20% cap, though, is still too high, because it leaves room for touts to operate by still harvesting large numbers of tickets to make large amounts of money. That extra 10%, if someone buys enough tickets, will make them a lot of money, especially if dynamic pricing is used as well. But that is recognition from the top of the industry that change is desperately needed—Michael Rapino never said anything like that before we got into government three short months ago. Furthermore, disagreement over what constitutes face value must also be addressed, given Ticketmaster’s roll-out of dynamic pricing. In February, which was before the recent Oasis debacle, Live Nation unveiled a 36% increase in its annual revenues, to £22.7 billion, and Rapino said: “Outside of the US, we’re in the first inning…We’re just rolling this out around the world. So that’s the great growth opportunity, obviously.” Remember, where did they get their money? Fans—off the back of fans, regular people just wanting to see their favourite artist and to take part in the culture. I am so pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Cramlington and Killingworth made all those points about what it is that makes our heart glad and what it is we want to do in our spare time. We want to see our favourite artist or attend our favourite sporting event, which is why people are so willing to press “Buy” when they see that crazy price. Something within us drives us to that, but culture and enjoyment should be accessible to all of us, no matter how deep or not deep our pockets are. I am so glad that the Government immediately agreed to include dynamic pricing in their autumn review of ticket resales. I will continue to engage actively with them on this issue and the wider issues in the secondary ticketing market. We must take action to protect fans, venues, artists and athletes. Existing legislation is not good enough. For years we have said, “If we could only enforce what we have,” but we have tried that and it is just not working. I have been campaigning on this issue for more than 15 years. I have worked closely with industry experts and I presented Parliament with the solution back in 2010, with my private Member’s Bill—it is still the only solution. I therefore look forward to this Government making it, or a revision of it, law very soon.

• 7 Oct 2024 · Hamas Attacks: First Anniversary · Hansard source

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  I also visited Kfar Aza just a few weeks before the horrific attacks by Hamas on 7 October. The visit had a profound impact on me, especially in the light of what followed just a few short weeks later. I listened to Emily Damari’s mum Mandy at the memorial in Hyde park yesterday, pleading with us all who were present to do something to help her daughter. As a mum to an Emily, who is exactly the same age as her Emily will be now, I am here tonight to ask if my hon. Friend will join me in pleading with the Minister and our Government to work night and day to ensure that Emily and the other 100 hostages still being held in unimaginable horror in Gaza are released as soon as humanly possible.

• 5 Sept 2024 · SEND Provision · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Betts. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) on securing this very important debate. It has been widely noted that SEND provision came up significantly on the doorsteps during the general election. The statement from the then Conservative Education Secretary earlier this year that SEND provision had reached a crisis point only further reinforced what we already knew—but it was under their watch. No one wants to say, “I told you so,” but as the shadow Minister during the passage of the Bill that became the Children and Families Act 2014—the Act that brought in education, health and care plans—I did, many times. This crisis is exactly what I, as shadow Minister, along with many from the education, voluntary and charity sectors who supported me with many amendments, all predicted. The crisis we are in now was entirely predictable. It is a damning indictment that, after 14 years in power, this is the state that the Conservatives left SEND provision in. Between 2019 and 2023, the number of EHCPs issued rose by 72%, but shockingly, dedicated SEND funding only rose by 42%. That is just one stat of many that I could give. The lack of funding, the delays and the de-prioritisation of children with SEND is a stain on our society. I know from the challenges I face in my own family that the impact on children’s self-confidence, self-esteem and education can be life-changing. I, like many here, have had first-hand experience of the impact that underfunded and disjointed SEND support can have, because my son Joseph is severely dyslexic. His experience opened my eyes and has given me a lifelong passion, throughout my 19 years as an MP, to do something about the challenges that children with SEND experience in accessing support, and the variation in the quality of support that children experience across the country. It really is a postcode lottery. Joseph was eventually statemented aged 10. I will not go into his journey, but two decades on, children who are now entering the education system are having the same experiences as he did. Nothing has improved. I have had many conversations with the British Dyslexia Association recently—I was chair of the all-party parliamentary group for dyslexia and other specific learning difficulties. One of the reasons that teachers struggle is the lack of training. Due to time I cannot expand on that, but I am sure others will.

• 4 Sept 2024 · Preventable Baby Loss · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I thank the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) for securing this important debate and for his moving opening speech. My thanks also go to Bliss for the briefing that it provided. This is an incredibly important debate for me and, I have no doubt, for all of us here today. As some Members will know, I—like many others here today, sadly—have experienced the devastation of baby loss. Having not spoken about my experience of baby loss until 2016, 11 years after I became an MP, I know how difficult this can be to talk about openly. I want to thank all colleagues for being here, some of whom have personal motivations, as we have heard. I want to tell you a little bit about my daughter Lucy and about my experience of baby loss. My daughter Lucy was born at 23 and a half weeks, and sadly she was stillborn. Her heart beat throughout my labour until just minutes before she was born. The experience of giving birth to a stillborn child is incredibly traumatic, as we have heard and as I have spoken about previously. It feels weird that the world around you is not responding as it would if you had given birth to a live baby. I felt that I made everyone around me, or anyone I met, feel very uncomfortable: it is one of the last taboos, as the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) spoke about. No one knows what to say to you when you have lost a baby or given birth to a stillborn baby—it is everyone’s worst nightmare—so I did not talk about it, and I certainly did not tell anyone new to my life who had not known me before I lost Lucy. When I became an MP in 2005, it took me until 2016 to actually talk about it in this place, or to anyone from my post-baby-loss life. What compounded this grief was the fact that Lucy did not receive a birth or death certificate. Even more upsettingly, in my records it was not recorded as a stillbirth; it was recorded as a miscarriage. Because she was just days away from being 24 weeks, she was three or four days short of the required legal age to be eligible for a death certificate. Because of that, she does not officially exist in any official records other than our own family records. We did name Lucy during a blessing in a private room, which I was moved to after she was born, when I had to give birth in the maternity ward among all the live babies. She was then taken to the chapel of rest and we held a very small funeral service for her, organised by the chaplain at the hospital and the Co-op, which funded everything. I will be forever grateful for that: it meant a lot at the time and still does. The acknowledgment of Lucy’s existence that they provided us with was truly invaluable, particularly when it had been denied to us by the lack of a death or a birth certificate. After my experience, I knew things had to change, even though I could not talk about it for a long time. Alongside the former Members Will Quince, Antoinette Sandbach and Victoria Prentis—some of us here will remember Victoria, who left the House at the last election—I became one of the founding members of the all-party parliamentary group on baby loss in 2016. I am pleased that the APPG is still going; I hope it gets reformed. It has become a vehicle for making great progress with regard to baby loss, in particular for securing bereavement suites across the country, improved patient pathways and better recording of data, among many more improvements. Still more are needed, sadly. I then became one of only two MPs on the pregnancy loss review, alongside our former colleague Tim Loughton, following his private Member’s Bill. The review’s work resulted in significant changes—not least the decision, announced just earlier this year, that parents who lose a baby before 24 weeks of pregnancy in England can now receive a certificate in recognition of their loss. I know that this has been a great source of comfort for many who now feel they can finally get a formal recognition and acknowledgment that their baby existed. I am certain that it would have made a huge difference to me and my family.

• 4 Sept 2024 · Preventable Baby Loss · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree. The hon. Member makes a very valuable point: resources matter, but it is also about how they are implemented. Human interaction and professional training is so important. I am hopeful for the future and proud of the change that has been made so far. Looking at all colleagues in the Chamber today, I know that together we are a powerful voice that can make such a difference to families during that terrible time and can help to improve outcomes for others, so that fewer people experience this most dreadful loss in future.

• 4 Sept 2024 · Preventable Baby Loss · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree. I only realised that the certificates were just for England when we were pulling together my remarks for today. That is remiss; I encourage the devolved nations to follow the example of England and bring the certificates in, because they really make a massive difference to parents suffering early baby loss. Despite these improvements, we still have a long way to go to provide the care and respect that all families need during such a difficult time, as well as to ensure that we take steps to reduce stillbirth rates. As expressed by Bliss, an organisation that campaigns for change for babies born premature or sick, there has been a concerning increase in the neonatal mortality rate and the pre-term birth rate. It points to a high variation in care as a factor that can be addressed to reduce that worrying increase. As the MP for Washington and Gateshead South in the north-east, I know just how damaging the impact of inequality can be as we experience the acute end of regional inequality, which can manifest itself through less investment and less access to the resources we need. In relation to baby loss, inequality prevails and, as Bliss highlights, the number of babies lost to mothers from the most deprived areas has increased at a rate twice that of babies lost to mothers living in the least deprived areas. It would be remiss of me not to mention that neonatal mortality rates are much higher for babies from an ethnic minority. Babies of black ethnicity are twice as likely to be stillborn as babies of white ethnicity. It is a failure of our healthcare system that babies of black and Asian ethnicity continue to have much higher rates of neonatal mortality. Disgracefully, that disparity is also seen in maternal healthcare. Maternal mortality for black women is currently almost four times higher than for white women. As some Members may have heard, the tennis star Serena Williams has spoken in great detail about her awful experience in that regard. I encourage Members to read her article in Elle magazine, which is still available online. Even as a very wealthy and globally recognised figure, Serena’s voice was dismissed during pregnancy and childbirth. We must ensure that there is the right training and support for healthcare professionals to ensure that all those terrible disparities are addressed. The cases that we have heard today are so traumatic. Crucially, we must centre the voices of patients—usually mothers, but sometimes their partners as well—and listen to what they are saying about their own bodies and experiences. As we have seen with the high level of disparity in neonatal healthcare outcomes, we will fail to achieve change if we are not listening to those at the heart of this crisis. If we are to effect change, we must also increase our midwifery workforce, as well as increasing the capacity in our NHS to allow the necessary training to be delivered. I am pleased that Labour is taking strong action to get our NHS back on its feet. In our manifesto, we committed to training thousands more midwives as part of the NHS workforce plan. It is also significant that Labour has said that we will ensure that trusts failing on maternity care are robustly supported into rapid improvement, and we will set an explicit target to close the black and Asian maternal mortality gap.

• 19 Jul 2024 · Israel and Gaza · Hansard source

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  I welcome my right hon. Friend to his position. What discussions has he had on a deal to secure the release of the hostages? Can he inform the House of the welfare of the remaining hostages?

• 19 Jul 2024 · Planning, the Green Belt and Rural Affairs · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Gordon and Buchan (Harriet Cross), who made an excellent maiden speech, which I enjoyed. I also have to mention the excellent maiden speeches from my north-east colleagues, my hon. Friend the Member for Cramlington and Killingworth (Emma Foody)—she represents a new constituency—and my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth). I look forward to hearing more from them in the weeks, months and years to come. Having entered the House 19 years ago, I am honoured to have once again been elected to serve my constituents in Washington and Gateshead South—another new constituency name. It is fantastic to see so many new faces around the estate, and my door is always open if new Members, or indeed old ones, want to pop in for a bit of advice, a cup of tea, or just to see a friendly face. This King’s Speech ushers in a new era of government—one based on service of the people, and focused on building back trust in politics, which is greatly needed, by, as stated in the King's Speech, adhering to “the principles of security, fairness and opportunity for all.” We will start that process by bringing in legislation to transform the rights of every worker in this country. As a trade unionist, I believe that workers must have the right to access trade union representation, as well as the repeal of the disastrous minimum service levels legislation, which failed to protect public service users and workers alike. We will ban all exploitative zero-hours contracts that leave people in uncertain and unstable employment. We will definitively ban fire and rehire practices, which my hon. Friend the Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner) led the way on tackling with his excellent private Member’s Bill, which sadly did not make it. We will protect workers’ wellbeing by ending short-notice shift cancellations, and we will introduce the right to switch off, so that workers can enjoy a healthier, structured work-life balance—I think we could do with a bit of that sometimes as well. Finally, we will establish rights such as paternity pay and the right to challenge unfair dismissal as rights from day one. The basic rights of a worker are not a reward earned after years of service; they are rights from day one. The Government have already got the ball rolling, building on the excellent work of former Labour Governments to truly deliver devolved power. It was excellent to see that, just days after moving in, the Prime Minister welcomed all Labour and Conservative metro mayors—thankfully, they were mostly Labour—to Downing Street to discuss how to kick-start growth in all parts of the country. Nine times out of 10, local knowledge is superior to departmental control, so it is only right that we bring power back to communities. Among the mayors invited to meet the Prime Minister was our excellent new Mayor of the North East, Kim McGuinness, who I have worked with in my long-running campaign to reopen the Leamside line and extend the metro to Washington. I am sure that Members have all heard me say this, but Washington is one of the largest towns in the UK without a direct rail link. [Interruption.] It is. We see wasted opportunities, with people unable to travel easily for work, school or university or even to see loved ones. To quote the former Conservative Member for Sedgefield, with whom I co-chaired the Leamside line all-party parliamentary group, “Without physical mobility, there can be no social mobility”—now that he is not here, I am going to nick that line. I am pleased that, with a Labour Government and a Labour mayor, that project will at long last become a reality. I grew up in a council house, and my family was totally reliant on social security. Free school meals were a lifeline for us, but I know that, in many ways, it is more important to have a warm, safe and secure house; that is what saved my family more than anything else. That is why, throughout this general election campaign and when I was listening to the King’s Speech, I was so pleased to see Labour’s commitment to building 1.5 million new homes—not just houses, but social and affordable housing—based on five key principles that will enable those houses to turn into secure homes, and those homes to turn into stable and thriving communities. We will also deliver for our children, with policies intended to tackle childhood health and obesity head-on. Our plans to deliver free breakfast clubs in every primary school in England will ensure that kids can start school with a meal in their bellies, ready to learn. But we know that child feeding does not start and end with the school day, so we will also tackle the crisis of youth nutrition outside school by restricting the advertisement of junk food and the sale of high-caffeine energy drinks to children—both things I long called for when I was shadow Minister for public health for four years, and shadow Minister for children and families for four years, and as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on school food from 2010. I could not welcome these developments more fervently. We cannot shy away from protecting our children’s health, which is why I also welcome our tobacco and vapes Bill—carrying on the work of the former Government, I have to say—to phase out smoking. That will ensure that our children live a healthier future. As we look to the coming years of our Government, I am excited not only to see these policies, and more, come to fruition and deliver the change that this Government were elected to bring, but to work with Members across the House to deliver these things together, because we need them for the benefit of all our constituents.