Shockat Adam MP: speeches

Speeches

• 24 Jun 2026 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q9. My children, like millions of others, are kicking every ball of England’s world cup campaign, but as a parent I am really concerned about their security in this country, along with other Muslim parents. Let me explain why. When a Sikh lady was raped in Walsall, the perpetrator repeatedly called her an effing Muslim bitch. There was no condemnation by a Minister at the Dispatch Box and no outcry from Members in this Chamber who openly call out these matters when the perpetrators are of a different colour. When we had the Unite the Kingdom march calling openly for the expulsion of Muslims in this country, there was no ministerial statement condemning such statements. This weekend, five members of the Muslim community were stabbed on the streets of Edinburgh. There was no ministerial statement of condemnation, no Cobra meeting and no solidarity. What does this silence say to my children as they wait with bated breath for Harry Kane to bring it home?

• 8 Jun 2026 · Unite the Kingdom Rally: Policing · Hansard source

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  Many in the Muslim community are feeling bewildered, besieged and beleaguered. When they exercise their democratic right to vote and the results do not go a certain way, they are accused of sectarianism. When they take to the streets to protest peacefully against genocide, they are accused of going on hate marches, all the while witnessing not one but two Unite the Kingdom marches, where there were open calls for their expulsion from this country, which are met with apparent indifference. What steps is the Home Secretary taking to protect the Muslim community from further alienation and what message does she send to those who incite hatred against them?

• 2 Jun 2026 · Community Pharmacies · Hansard source

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  It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I thank the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) for securing this debate. She, the hon. Member for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan) and all colleagues have dispensed some great ideas today. [ Laughter. ] Sorry, but it does not end there. The Minister and Members may be aware—I might not have mentioned it enough—that I am one of the only practising optometrists to be a Member of Parliament, and optometrists share many of the concerns and challenges that our pharmacy colleagues face. I surpass the hon. Member for North Somerset in having been a community-based optometrist for nearly three decades. I want to address many of the points that have been made. First, our GPs are facing real burnout. There is a lag in the number of GPs who are qualifying and taking up positions. In lower socioeconomic areas, of which there are many in my Leicester South constituency, there are 1,985 patients per GP. There are 300 more patients per GP in those areas and, as has been mentioned, pharmacists really do plug the gap, saving 38 million GP appointments and doing incredible work. The Government’s 10-year health plan is built on the bold premise of shifting care out of hospitals and into our communities. We all support that ambition—of course we do—but we cannot deliver care in the community if we are not allowing community infrastructure to thrive, and that is precisely what is happening to pharmacies at the moment. Since 2017, England has lost more than 1,400 bricks-and-mortar pharmacies, which is a net loss of 15% of the entire network. In Leicester, five pharmacies have shut down in the last calendar year alone. There are now fewer than 10,000 pharmacies open in England, and nearly 64,000 opening hours a week have disappeared since 2022. Between 2021 and 2025, the sector lost 3,000 full-time equivalent pharmacists. Funding was cut in 2016 and held flat for eight years, and the sector has absorbed real-terms cuts of 30%. Pharmacies, unlike other businesses, cannot pass on their costs to their customers. They cannot manage demand by extending their waiting lists, and 90% to 95% of their income comes from the NHS. They are, in effect, trapped. We all welcome the £340 million uplift announced for 2026-27 and the decision to begin integrating independent prescribing into Pharmacy First and the Pharmacy Contraception Service. Those are welcome steps, and everything of that nature is going in the right direction. However, NPA analysis shows that 8.9% is needed simply to allow pharmacy budgets to stand still—to absorb the national living wage, employers’ national insurance contributions, inflation and business rates. The settlement is just 1.3 percentage points above that threshold; it does not close the £2 billion funding gap that the NHS’s independent review identified a year ago. Much of the uplift will be swallowed by costs before a single patient sees any benefit. I am not just here to outline the problems, as there are positives. Community pharmacies represent one of the greatest untapped opportunities in modern healthcare, and I say that as someone who has seen community-based clinical practice at work. Independent prescribing is, as the sector rightly calls it, a generational opportunity. Pharmacists already have the clinical skills. With the right framework and investment, they can manage long-term conditions, initiate and adjust medicines and take pressure directly off GPs—not as a stopgap, but as a genuine, permanent part of the primary care team. Beyond prescribing, pharmacies are ideally placed to deliver integrated healthcare and lifestyle services, such as smoking cessation, weight management, hypertension case-finding and alcohol interventions. In my experience in community eye care, the closer we embed clinical services in high street settings, the better the uptake by patients who would never otherwise engage with the NHS. Pharmacies are trusted, accessible and visited regularly—far more than any GP surgery. Medicine optimisation is another point. With an ageing population on complex polypharmacy regimes, pharmacists conducting structured medication reviews can reduce harm, cut millions of pounds in waste and improve outcomes. This is not aspirational; it is proven. We are simply failing to fund it at scale. I have a repeat prescription for the Minister. First, publish a road map to close the pharmacy funding gap with above-inflation increases—not in one year, but as a sustained multi-year commitment. Pharmacies cannot plan, invest or recruit without it. Secondly, match investment in retained margins with real action on medicine pricing. The UK is an unattractive market for global suppliers, and medicine shortages flow directly from that. That is a patient safety issue. Thirdly, be genuinely ambitious on independent prescribing. The autumn roll-out into Pharmacy First is a start, but we need a shared vision of what full deployment looks like in this Parliament, with the funding to match. Finally, address the workforce crisis by setting out concrete steps to grow the pharmacy workforce in parallel with any expansion of services. New services on the backs of a depleted workforce will fail.

• 2 Jun 2026 · Murder of Henry Nowak · Hansard source

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  Henry’s heartbroken father has said that Henry’s family do not want his murder to “be used to create further division, hatred or tension.” I pray that we all heed those words in this House. This heinous crime is made worse by the shocking police response, and lessons must be learnt. What will the Home Secretary do differently to crack down on the epidemic of knife crime, such as creating a dedicated knife crime Minister? What steps will she take to ensure that our Sikh community, who are overwhelmingly peaceful and integrated, are not held collectively responsible by those who wish to divide us?

• 1 Jun 2026 · Health Bill · Hansard source

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  We all cherish the NHS, and all of us in this Chamber have a duty to ensure that anybody who does not believe in the basic principle that care should follow need, not wealth, must be nowhere near the jewel in our crown that is the NHS. I begin with primary care—or, indeed, the glaring inequality in primary care. Practices in the most deprived areas carry, on average, 300 more patients per fully qualified GP than those in the least deprived. That gap has grown by 50% since 2018. In Leicester—my constituency and my home—there are 1,985 patients per GP, which is significantly above the national average. The Bill introduces a statutory duty to reduce health inequalities and, under clause 24, to produce neighbourhood health plans, but a plan without the workforce to deliver it is a plan in name only. I must also declare my interest as a practising optometrist. Clause 14 gives integrated care boards new responsibilities over primary care services, and the Bill transfers commissioning of NHS sight tests from a national framework to individual ICBs. I completely understand the logic of localisation, but I have already seen what happens in practice. In Coventry and Warwickshire, a community urgent eye care service that was diverting more than 13,000 A&E attendances per year was withdrawn at the end of 2025. In Hampshire, community glaucoma schemes have been moved back into hospitals. This is the postcode lottery in action. Glaucoma affects approximately 700,000 people in the UK, with about half of them walking around undiagnosed. It causes irreversible sight loss, it increases the risk of falls, and it carries serious long-term costs for both the NHS and social care, and we now have the technology to address it more efficiently than ever. The iStent inject device can be inserted during routine cataract surgery in a single procedure, treating both conditions simultaneously. This is exactly the kind of innovation that the 10-year health plan calls for, yet uptake is inconsistent because there is no national commissioning guidance. I urge the Government to ensure that the single patient record supports consistent clinical decision making across the glaucoma pathway, and that integrated care boards are required, not merely permitted, to commission those procedures. The Bill also abolishes NHS England, and we have heard much about that. History gives us cause for concern, especially when it comes to private finance initiative arrangements, which have cost the NHS tens of billions of pounds over decades. Let me end by saying something about the Palantir question. The creation of a single patient record is welcome, but the vessel matters as much as the vision. The £330 million NHS federated data platform contract, awarded by the last Government and inherited by this one, raises serious and unresolved questions, and it must be addressed.

• 16 Apr 2026 · NHS Federated Data Platform · Hansard source

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  Let me be clear: as a practising optometrist, there is nothing more wonderful than touching a button and a patient’s data going to the right people, and I am sure that the Minister will agree. The patient can then be treated appropriately and on time. However, the Darzi and Sudlow reviews, which were published last year, confirmed that our health data system is broken and fragmented, which costs patients dearly. The public overwhelmingly supports better data sharing and so do I. In my opinion, the question is not whether we need data sharing, but who is responsible for this modern-day oil? As has already been said, Palantir was named after the seeing stones from the book “The Lord of the Rings”, the palantíri. Those stones possessed enormous power. However, I want to be fair about them. The stones themselves were not good or evil; they were powerful instruments of vision. In the right hands, they brought clarity and wisdom. The problem, as Tolkien understood it, is never the stone itself; it is who is holding it. Let us have a look at who is holding these stones. As has already been mentioned, Alex Karp said this year that Palantir wants “to scare our enemies and on occasion kill them.” The co-founder of Palantir, Peter Thiel, has written that he no longer believes that freedom and democracy are compatible. He has said that the NHS is making people sick and that the British public’s love for the jewel in our crown—the national health service—is a form of Stockholm syndrome. Those are the stated beliefs of the men at the top of a company that we have handed £330 million to, and a £1.5 billion strategic partnership with the British state. And Palantir’s ambitions do not stop there. Its chief operating officer has spoken of a future where Palantir software is inside every missile and every drone. In Gaza, Amnesty International has named Palantir as a contributor to the war crimes and genocide being committed there. In fact, when a protester confronted Palantir’s CEO about the killing of Palestinians—100,000 and counting—in Gaza, he replied that the dead were “mostly terrorists, that’s true.” Over 20,000 children have been killed in Gaza and the CEO of the company that holds our NHS data calls them “mostly terrorists.” It is not just the NHS that is affected. Palantir is the second largest AI supplier to the UK public sector by contract value. It has contracts with the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government, the Cabinet Office, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, local authorities and local police services, including those in Leicester South. The Palantir contract review comes in early 2027, so the window is still open. I want to share a scan with a specialist and get an answer before my patient leaves the room; every clinician in this country wants that and every patient deserves it. But the seeing stone is only as safe as the hands that hold it. Choose those hands carefully.

• 13 Apr 2026 · Local Youth Services · Hansard source

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  There is a direct link between youth services and housing in communities. In fact, it has been shown that once we invest in our youth services, there is reduced homelessness and fewer young people in temporary accommodation. However, the cut in real terms—close to £1 billion—means that the whole sector has been decimated. Does the Minister agree with me that when we lose our youth services and our centres, our whole community suffers? How are this Government going to make youth working a viable career going forward?

• 5 Mar 2026 · Commonwealth Troops: First World War · Hansard source

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  I would like to congratulate the hon. Member for Ilford South (Jas Athwal)—for stealing most of my speech. It was absolutely wonderful and very powerful. We live in very polarising times. As the hon. Member for Bolton South and Walkden (Yasmin Qureshi) mentioned, all debates seem to be along the lines of our differences—what religion we are, what colour we are, what creed we are and where we come from. These debates are sadly not just on the airwaves or the news channels, but in this Chamber. It is all about what divides us, and not what brings us together. That is why I thank the hon. Member for Ilford South, in all seriousness, for bringing this debate to the Chamber; it gives us an important opportunity. Many people from my community or background, or from the empire, are not aware of their own history, and so do not have the knowledge to debate these matters coherently. The contributions made by Commonwealth soldiers in the first world war have been mentioned already by many speakers. They were men of every faith and no faith, and of every colour. Can we imagine living in Africa or British India at a time where there were no televisions and very few photographs, and being sent abroad to a foreign land? It must have been very frightening for them. Some may have seen it as an adventure, but as soon as they landed on this shore, with climates they were unaccustomed to, it must have been a real shock to them. More than 1.3 million soldiers from British India served in the first world war, including over 400,000 Muslims, 53,000 of whom gave their lives. In total, more than 2.5 million Muslim soldiers and labourers from across the globe supported the allied war effort. The work of the National Muslim War Memorial Trust reminds us that their sacrifice was immense, yet, as we have mentioned already, it is not spoken about very often. Commonwealth soldiers of all faiths served in the trenches of Europe, in the deserts of north and east Africa, in Madagascar and in the far east. Together, they faced unimaginable hardships, enduring gas attacks, machine gun fire, waterlogged trenches, hunger and fear. We remember that the war was won not only by Britain, but by the Commonwealth united in purpose. Yet it is painful to acknowledge that the story told through our memorials has been incomplete. Animal sacrifices in the war effort were honoured with a national memorial in Hyde Park in 2004, and rightly so. However, that was way before the black and Asian soldiers who fought, bled and died for Britain were recognised. It is only recently that they have begun to receive that recognition. This is a truth we cannot shy away from. Why did it happen? We have already heard the story of Khudadad Khan, who was born in 1888 in Punjab and served with the 129th Baluchis, becoming the first Indian soldier to receive the Victoria Cross. We have heard of his bravery in Belgium in 1914, when his regiment was completely outnumbered. Knowing he was the only one alive, he pretended to be dead and slid away in the darkness of the night; he later came back and, as the hon. Member for Ilford South said, changed the destiny of that battle. Now, his descendants live in Leeds. This is not somebody else’s history; it is our history. Consider Walter Tull, one of the most celebrated black British soldiers of the first world war. He enlisted in 1914, endured shellshock, returned to fight at the Somme and was commissioned as an officer in 1917, despite regulations that should have barred him because of his race. He continued to fight and was mentioned in dispatches for “gallantry and coolness” in Italy in 1918. Sadly, two months later, he died in no man’s land. Think of Lionel Turpin, a 19-year-old from Guyana who travelled to the mother country, as he called it, to serve on the western front. He survived the Somme, but not the effects of gas attacks. Think, too, of the 60,000 black South Africans and 120,000 other Africans who served in the labour units, and of the men of the British West Indies Regiment who, in 1915, sailed all the way from Jamaica to train on the Sussex coast before being deployed to Egypt and beyond. These people are not and should never be footnotes in history. They were part of the very fabric of our armed forces. They should not be footnotes, but headlines. That is why, when Laurence Fox questioned the inclusion of a Sikh soldier in the fantastic first world war film “1917”, it exposed not diversity gone too far, but history not yet understood deeply enough. Sikh soldiers made up more than 20% of the British Indian Army during the war. In my city of Leicester, a statue unveiled in 2022 now commemorates their service—long-overdue recognition of their extraordinary loyalty and courage. We recognise their bravery, we honour their sacrifice and we commit to remembering them. What does their service teach us today? It teaches us that courage knows no nationality, religion or race. If we allow polarisation to divide us along lines of colour or creed, we dishonour those who stood shoulder to shoulder in the mud of Flanders. If we forget the global nature of their sacrifice, we shrink our own national story. Let us tell that story fully, teach it honestly and commemorate it properly. For lest we forget—by forgetting, we dishonour not only what those troops endured, but the legacy that they pass to us: a nation strengthened, not diminished, by the diversity of those who defended it.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Gaza Healthcare System · Hansard source

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  It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. I thank the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Opher) not only for securing this debate but for his impassioned speech introducing the topic, which was really appreciated. Last week, I and over 2 billion other people welcomed Ramadan, a month of fasting, reflection and prayer. In the Muslim community across the globe, Ramadan is generally treated as a guest: it comes, we appreciate and enjoy it, it gives us a lot of blessings, and then it leaves us. That is no different for the people of Gaza. Speaking to the Independent , a young man by the name of Ibrahim described Ramadan in Gaza before the war as having “a softness to it”. He explained how he remembered the “warm glow of lanterns”—my house is in fact lit up as well—hanging in the narrow streets of Gaza, the “smell of freshly baked bread before maghrib”, which is the prayer just before we break our fast, and the “sound of children laughing” during tarawih, the evening prayer. In Ramadan, Muslim families come alive in the evening: they gather in large numbers, doors are open and visits are constant. Ibrahim explained how, this year, the “tables are modest”, but his prayers are still heavy. People break their fast with what is available, but they “still welcome it, not because life is easy, but because it remains.” Let us have a look at what remains. If anybody has seen the scenes, it is like a dystopian disaster movie, with people breaking their fast against a backdrop of utter, apocalyptic devastation. They are breaking bread among 60 million tonnes of rubble because of the destruction of more than 90% of their homes. They are eating their dates, which is what we traditionally break our fast with, but I can assure hon. Members that the sweetness of those dates cannot mask the bitterness of the death, destruction and decay that surrounds each and every one of those people. Minister, imagine breaking your fast while sitting just metres from collapsed buildings where your friends and family lived. Imagine knowing that beneath the debris, according to reports, there are more than 10,000 unidentified people—loved ones, friends, family and teachers. People pray beside them and they eat beside them. Although the official death toll in Gaza has reached 72,000—equivalent to one out of every 33 people—a further 171,000, or roughly one in four, have been injured, and we expect the true number to be much higher. I can truly say that the joy of Ramadan has disappeared for most of the Muslim world. Even after the so-called ceasefire that came into effect on 10 October 2025, at least 603 Palestinians have been killed and 1,600 have been wounded, rendering it a ceasefire in name only. If 603 Israelis had been killed in the past four months, would we all be grateful and welcoming a ceasefire? In the short time I have, I will briefly focus on the children—who have already been mentioned—and on the sanctity of their healthcare and the right of every child to be treated when they are sick. Children are innocent bystanders who have faced the brunt of the IDF carnage. As reported by Save the Children, they are telling aid workers that “they want to die because there is food and water in heaven and because their parents are there.” Death has visited many of the children of Gaza: 20,000 Palestinian children have been killed—more than 100 of them since the so-called ceasefire. That is a child every single day. Those that death has spared have been plagued with more than 40,500 injuries. As has been mentioned, children account for a quarter of all the amputations in Gaza over the past two years, making it the place with the highest number of child amputees per capita, according to the International Rescue Committee. Let us consider this: children have seen their neighbourhoods, schools, colleges, universities and homes destroyed. They have seen their parents pulverised in front of their eyes and their siblings shredded into a million pieces, and now their own bodies are being destroyed. In whose arms are those children going to find solace? How do we envision a peaceful co-existence when these young souls have witnessed such barbaric, brutal horrors? We must act now, because more than 18,500 people require urgent medical care, while only 2,700 have been evacuated, according to Physicians for Human Rights. Since October 2025, only 235 patients have been evacuated and many have died just waiting. For the first time since May 2024, the Rafah crossing finally opened on 2 February this year, but on average only 12 patients a day have been allowed to leave, despite Israel’s commitment to allowing 50 people needing medical care to leave each day. The current rate of evacuation means it will take four and half years for people needing medical care to leave Gaza. Children are dying waiting for basic medical care. The hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) mentioned that hospitals in Jerusalem—a mere 70 km away—have the facilities to treat those patients with trauma. We must facilitate the opening of the humanitarian corridor to East Jerusalem for urgent medical evacuation. We must ensure that international medical NGOs can operate freely and bring equipment, medication and personnel without obstruction. The weaponisation of bureaucracy by insisting on the registration of aid workers by the IDF is costing lives. As has been mentioned, we must ensure that children are prioritised. In addition to tackling their health needs, we must ensure that they get access to rehab hospitals and clinicians who can provide comprehensive mental health and psychosocial support—particularly the most vulnerable children, such as those who have been orphaned, separated or disabled. We must advocate for an independent, rather than Israeli-controlled, aid access mechanism for Gaza moving forward. We owe it to the children, we owe it to all the healthcare workers who did not abandon their duty and we owe it to ourselves if we claim to uphold international law. Without health, there is no recovery. Without recovery, there is no peace. And without peace, this cycle will simply begin again. Minister, the time to act is now.

• 23 Feb 2026 · Leasehold Reform · Hansard source

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  I refer Members to my entry on the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. An acute increase in service charges of 78% has knocked the residents of Phoenix House in my constituency. The council is the freeholder, and it has overseen a complex arrangement with a private head leaseholder and various commercial managing agents below it. Due to the complexities of these arrangements, the residents have no idea where this 78% increase has come from. Will the Minister commit to introducing a duty of candour so that leaseholders know exactly what they are paying for, and will he further consider a threshold for acute service charge increases?

• 12 Feb 2026 · Onshoring: Fashion and Textiles · Hansard source

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  It is wonderful to see you in this place, Ms Ghani. I thank the hon. Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West) not just for securing this important debate but for her commitment in travelling all the way to Leicester, my home town. That shows how seriously she takes this matter. I will focus my speech on my home town. Leicester is a city rooted in textile heritage, from Tudor hosiery knitters working in their homes to the industrial expansion of the 19th century. In fact, Leicester once proudly claimed to clothe the world. By 1936, it was recognised as the second richest city in Europe, and at its height had more than 1,500 factories employing tens of thousands of people. As a young boy—this is not just nostalgia—I grew up in the shadows of those factories. I saw at first hand how they powered enterprise, created family wealth for people who had just come to this country, and fostered a culture of community entrepreneurship and philanthropy. The businesses did not just produce garments; they sponsored local events, supported charities, built places of worship and invested in the city. Manufacturing was woven into the social fabric of Leicester, shaping not just livelihoods but lives. Today, across the county, the garment sector still supports approximately 11,000 jobs. Every component needed to make a complete garment is still available in the city. Leicester offers true end-to-end production— from design concept to finished product—with a speed, flexibility and technical capability that many overseas supply chains simply cannot match. Yet garment manufacturing now accounts for just £375 million of the UK textiles sector’s £25.6 billion; that is less than 2%. Meanwhile, tens of millions of our public procurement pounds are leaving our shores. We surely have to ask why. The economic case for onshoring is really strong. The British Army clothing budget alone is worth nearly £80 million annually. In previous years—as the hon. Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet mentioned, figures are available only from 2013—only a small fraction, 6%, was manufactured in Britain. That means that an overwhelming 94% was being manufactured abroad. NHS uniform frameworks are worth £125 million over five years. During covid, the Department of Health and Social Care spent more than £13 billion on personal protective equipment, with billions-worth written off as unusable and millions more spent on storage. During the pandemic, we saw that UK factories could pivot rapidly to produce PPE and scrubs at scale. The capacity and skills exist; what is missing is a clear mandate. Other nations understand this very clearly. In fact, in the United States, military uniforms must be made domestically, for national security reasons. I believe the UK should adopt a similar principle. Military uniforms and NHS clothing should be manufactured in Britain wherever possible. I am not promoting protectionism; it makes perfect economic and strategic sense. The environmental case for onshoring is also extremely strong, because it reduces carbon miles naturally and allows tighter environmental oversight. Leicester innovators such as Nanofique and Shibori dye house, working alongside De Montfort University, are pioneering waste water treatment methods that demonstrate how environmental responsibility and industry can work hand in hand. There is also a powerful social case. Garment manufacturing provides flexible employment. That is valuable for all, but particularly for women, enabling many to rejoin the workforce after having children, combating isolation and providing financial independence. I recently met trainees at Fashion Enter’s Leicester hub, alongside Jenny Holloway, and saw at first hand the appetite for skilled ethical production. Community organisations—they have joined me today—such as Wesley Hall and the Shama Women’s Centre offer sewing classes that serve as a pathway to work for many disadvantaged women. Leicester does not lack workforce readiness; it has that in abundance. I appreciate that the industry in my city has faced negative headlines. We cannot shy away from that, and I agree wholeheartedly that any form of exploitative behaviour must be addressed and rooted out. The Operation Tacit review, launched after those serious allegations, found, yes, some cases of non-compliance, but it made it perfectly clear that the portrayal of an industry dominated by widespread modern slavery was overstated. Enforcement bodies found no evidence of prosecutable modern day slavery offences. The vast majority of Leicester factories are hard-working, skilled and ethical, and they certainly deserve recognition for that, not stigma. If we are serious about ethical supply chains, we must also be serious about ethical purchasing. That is why proposals for a garment trading adjudicator—a fashion watchdog modelled on the Groceries Code Adjudicator—deserve serious consideration. Research recently presented at a Fair Work and Supply Chains in the UK Garment Industry event showed the strain that purchasers are put under by brands: 100% of suppliers pay for audits, yet only 6% are guaranteed future orders. Lead times can drop at the drop of a hat, halving from 30 days to 14 days, and payment terms are lengthened without warning. Orders are cancelled or altered mid-production. In fact, 67% of manufacturers are reporting that brands refuse to cover the cost of any of these changes. That volatility destabilises factories and workers alike and is simply not fair or sustainable. [Christine Jardine in the Chair ] Leicester Made, through its Leicester Textiles Renewal project, is already bringing together expertise to strengthen UK supply chains, celebrate regional skills and accelerate sustainable, tech-driven onshore production. Fashion Enter is leading calls for public procurement reform. These are not abstract campaigns, but practical and deliverable solutions. We must also target packaging waste and introduce penalties for firms that produce large volumes to bring down unit costs, only for much of it to remain unsold 12 months later. Changing what waste means may force retailers and brands to stop volume of production, because the current carrots are simply not working. Let us incentivise our manufacturers by creating tax breaks for companies that are making clothing from waste and deadstock. The cost of dealing with fashion waste, especially from low-cost Chinese retailers such as Shein, is rising exponentially. Introducing an incentive for UK manufacturers to create garments from deadstock would help to tackle that issue and create a steady stream of business for UK companies. We need to create a uniform national body to advocate for the sector, and a national director of manufacturers. That would help to join the dots to create competitive clusters. It is already happening at the Sheffield and Manchester city councils, which are developing local cluster productions and competitive local supply chains. We must also ensure awareness; we must fund a consumer awareness campaign. Multiple research projects show that people will pay more to support local communities and businesses. We should create a new “Made in the UK” trademark that only the businesses making clothes in the UK can use. Currently, “Made in the UK” does not mean that something is made in the UK; it can be made somewhere else and packaged here, and still count. Onshoring increases our economic prosperity, reduces carbon footprint, strengthens labour standards, enhances national security and restores community pride. Leicester and other garment manufacturers do not need charity, they need fair enforcement, responsible sourcing and Government leadership in procurement. A modest increase, raising the share of UK-manufactured clothing sold domestically to just 10%, would be transformational. It would create thousands of skilled jobs, rebuild capacity and create enormous revenue for the Treasury. Leicester once clothed the world. With the right policy direction, it can clothe Britain again, ethically, sustainably and proudly.

• 22 Jan 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Sadly, on Boxing day Leicester learned that it had lost one of its finest: Councillor Manjula Sood MBE. Manjula Sood had been a Labour councillor for 25 years, worked for countless charities and worked so hard for community cohesion. In 2008, she had the honour of becoming the UK’s first female Asian Lord Mayor, but for me, she will always be known as Mrs Sood, my junior school teacher. Will the Leader of the House commemorate Mrs Sood and also make time in this Chamber for an annual debate where we can commemorate all local champions who truly put the great in Great Britain?

• 20 Jan 2026 · Glaucoma Care (England) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision about the detection, treatment and monitoring of glaucoma by optometrists in England; to make provision about the full integration of optometry and ophthalmology services for the purpose of glaucoma care in England; and for connected purposes. I refer hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests; I am a practising NHS optometrist. I also thank the Minister for Care for coming to the Chamber for this valuable debate. As a practising optometrist of many years, one of the heartaches of the role is this: during a routine examination, I can detect a condition that will forever change the life of the person who is sitting in my chair, and the patient is blissfully unaware of it. That is exactly what glaucoma does—it changes lives quietly, and often without warning. Glaucoma is known as the thief of sight, and for a very good reason. It damages the optic nerve at the back of the eye, with each nerve fibre representing a different point in the visual field. Because the loss begins in the peripheral vision, people often do not realise that anything is wrong until it is too late. If Members would like a glimpse of what an advanced glaucoma sufferer sees, may I ask them to cover one eye completely and, with the other eye, to look through an aperture created by their hands and touch their fingertips to their palms? As the condition progresses, the aperture gets smaller and smaller and smaller, until eventually nothing is left. Imagine trying to navigate a busy high street, to cross a road or simply to move safely around one’s own home. This is not simply theoretical; let me give the House two brief but very real examples from my experience. I saw a woman who on two separate occasions was hit by a car from the side while driving her own car, before she finally came in for an eye test. She was unaware that there was a problem, because she could see number plates and road signs perfectly. What she could not see was the side of her vision eroding. Another heartbreaking experience when a pensioner came to me with a handbag packed with what looked like her life savings. Cash in hand, she explained that she would spend whatever it took if I could just give her a pair of glasses that would allow her to see her two loves: her love of painting and her grandchildren. Unfortunately, no amount of money would be able to restore her sight, because glaucoma, as well as being silent, is usually irreversible. Glaucoma is the leading cause of preventable blindness in the UK. Over 700,000 people are affected by it, and, even more concerningly, more than half of them are undiagnosed. That is 350,000 people walking and driving around, not knowing. It could be any one of us, or someone we love or work with. Indeed, a former Liberal Democrat Member of this House, Paul Tyler, was not diagnosed until a routine eye test. In its early stages, glaucoma rarely has symptoms, and there are rarely any warning signs—just a silent, slow theft. By the time it is noticed, the damage is usually permanent, and the loss has far-reaching consequences. People lose not only their sight, but their independence and their ability to drive, read, cook and even leave their house. Falls increase and isolation grows, and then come the emotional and mental health impacts: fear, depression and the loss of identity. Furthermore, with an ageing population, we face a growing crisis. Glaucoma cases are expected to rise dramatically in the coming decades, with a growth rate that outstrips the ageing population. A study from 2017 suggests that over the next 20 years, glaucoma cases will rise by 44%. That is hundreds of thousands more people who will need care, follow-up and support, and I fear that data will prove to be an underestimate. Let me be blunt. Patients are losing their sight not because care does not exist, but because the pathway is broken and the follow-up is delayed. I recently saw a patient who was referred to the hospital and diagnosed with glaucoma. That bit was absolutely fine—the initial appointment happened—but the follow-up was postponed and then they missed an appointment. This meant that, by the time they came to see me again a year later, they had lost a significant amount of their visual field, to such an extent that even their central vision—their acuity—was affected. That anecdotal example corroborates the findings of major chains such as Specsavers. The problem is that current waiting list data provides a measure only of first appointments, not of the ongoing care that is vital to chronic conditions like glaucoma. We need published data on follow-up waiting times, because that is where sight is being lost. Here is the reality. Hospital ophthalmology is one of the largest out-patient specialities in the NHS, with 8.9 million appointments a year in England between 2023 and 2024. It is estimated that glaucoma care accounts for about 20% of all hospital eye service appointments, with around 1 million visits annually across England alone. In 2024-25, it was reported that 600,000 people were on a hospital waiting list for an ophthalmology appointment. However, the ongoing care, such as the need for regular planned follow-ups for glaucoma patients, is often overlooked, with the numbers not hitting the headlines like those waiting for an initial assessment or surgery. NHS hospitals cannot carry this load alone. Thankfully, this is where the Government’s own NHS 10-year plan—in particular its ambition to shift care out of hospitals and into the community, and its focus on prevention, not sickness—closely aligns with the transformation needed in glaucoma care. There are over 14,000 qualified optometrists in England, providing more than 13 million NHS-funded eye tests. They are trained, regulated and ready to help. Community glaucoma services, led by appropriately qualified optometrists with the approved equipment, have already demonstrated the ability to reduce hospital appointment referrals by up to 71%. If implemented nationally alongside an optometry-based glaucoma monitoring service, it may be possible to release 300,000 hospital appointments every year. That is not a one-time saving; glaucoma is a chronic condition, and these are recurring appointments for people who are living with the condition, not cured of it. Making full use of the skills and capacity already in primary care takes significant pressure off hospital services, enabling them to focus on tasks that can be managed only in a hospital. This could save the NHS an estimated £12 million annually. At present, 10 integrated care boards have no glaucoma case-finding or referral management services. Many patients in those areas who are referred to hospital could instead be retained in primary care optometry with appropriate commissioning, rather than being added to the existing waiting lists. Even more concerningly, 21 ICBs—half of them—do not commission a glaucoma monitoring service in the community and rely simply on the hospital eye service to follow up glaucoma patients for the rest of their lives. That is where the sight loss occurs, as the hospitals simply do not have the required capacity. This is a postcode lottery that punishes the vulnerable, especially when people from black and Asian communities are up to four times more likely to develop glaucoma and often have the least access to timely care. Unlike in Wales and Scotland, where a “shared care” service for glaucoma is commissioned by every health board, optometry-led and properly integrated between primary care optometry and ophthalmology, often the approach of NHS commissioners in England is hospital-led. The recent draft “Getting It Right First Time” model, developed with minimal input from primary care optometry, risks reinforcing England’s hospital-led approach and undermining the Government’s own ambition to shift care from hospitals to the community. We also see worrying behaviour at ICB level, with several ICBs removing the limited community glaucoma services that they had in place to make short-term savings. That is extremely myopic. Given the ongoing financial pressures on ICBs, we do not expect individual ICBs to make significant progress in commissioning optometry-led glaucoma pathways that fully integrate optometry and ophthalmology without clear direction from the Government. The total cost of visual impairment in the UK is estimated to be £26.5 billion, and it is set to rise to £33.5 billion by 2032. Glaucoma alone accounts for £750 million. That is not just a cost to the NHS, but a cost of lost productivity, informal care and diminished quality of life. This is a silent epidemic, but it is not inevitable. What am I asking for? What can be done to begin to tackle this silent epidemic? Fundamentally, I am asking for a national direction from the Department of Health and Social Care to ICBs that they should commission a uniform primary care glaucoma service that utilises qualified high street optician practices. Only by doing so will we end the postcode lottery in glaucoma care. We already know what works, we already have the workforce, and we already have the technology. We now need clear direction and political will. Question put and agreed to. Ordered, That Shockat Adam, Marsha De Cordova, Jim Shannon, Brian Leishman, Jeremy Corbyn, Ayoub Khan, Iqbal Mohamed, Mr Adnan Hussain, Paulette Hamilton, Mark Pritchard and Adrian Ramsay present the Bill. Shockat Adam accordingly presented the Bill. Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 13 March, and to be printed (Bill 369).

• 8 Jan 2026 · Myanmar: Religious Minority Persecution · Hansard source

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  It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Betts. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for bringing this vital and unfortunately forgotten issue to the fore with this debate. When we speak about conflict, we sometimes look at the numbers and forget the nuances and the people who matter. As the saying goes, one death is a tragedy but a million deaths is a statistic, and so it goes with this tragedy, because behind every number are real people. One case particularly puts that into perspective. On new year’s day, a Rohingya man by the name of Mohammed Faruque woke up in a bamboo shelter in camp 7 in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh. His phone was full of birthday messages wishing him a happy birthday. It was also his wife’s birthday, his parents’ birthdays, his siblings’ birthday, his friends’ birthday and the birthdays of hundreds and thousands of other people in that camp. We all know it was not their birthday, but when they fled the massacres, arson and rape in February 2017 the poor, frankly overwhelmed care workers just entered 1 January on everybody’s refugee cards. Mohammed Faruque said: “When I see this date, I feel like I am no one.” That single sentence answers the question that the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) asked: why is this being done? It is because the people of Myanmar and the junta are trying to deprive people of other ethnicities of any form of identity. They are erasing their identities and who they are. In Myanmar, faith and identity are intertwined. Since the coup in 2021, as mentioned by all those who have spoken in this debate, persecution has escalated dramatically. More than 200 religious institutions, including Buddhist monasteries, Christian churches, mosques and even Hindu temples have been destroyed or looted, and at least 41 religious leaders have been killed, including monks, Christian clergymen and Muslim imams, not just because of their faith but because of the overlap between faith and ethnicity. The Rohingya Muslims have suffered the most extreme violence. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has called their treatment “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”, and a United Nations expert has identified “the hallmarks of genocide”, but this persecution, as has been mentioned, does not just stop with one community. Ethnic Christian populations, particularly in Chin and Kachin states, have seen churches bombed and pastors killed, and religious identity has become a marker for punishment. They have been tortured, raped and executed on a daily basis. The cause is that the military junta is holding power through fear. It is a regime that has scapegoated minority communities and weaponised religion. That has been in the playbook for brutal and insecure regimes for millennia. It is being employed now in other parts of the world, and I am afraid that it will continue to be used in the future as well. There may be a light at the end of the tunnel, because the junta has never been weaker. It is only controlling about 20% of the country’s territory at the moment and thousands of soldiers have defected. There is a possible future for democracy, but the international community must step in if that is to happen, because in the meantime, civilians are paying the price. Overall, more than 2.6 million people have been internally displaced in Myanmar and about 1.3 million have fled abroad. Nearly 1 million Rohingya now live in Bangladesh, a country that already has 170 million people of its own, while 40,000 Rohingya—the number may be even greater than that—have sought refuge in India. Therefore, in addition to all the incredible aid agencies and aid workers who deserve recognition, India and Bangladesh also deserve some credit, because they have accepted large numbers of refugees despite facing their own population pressures and resource constraints. Those pressures have unfortunately led to horrifying consequences, as was maybe to be expected. There have been stories of refugees being pushed back into the sea and of families being separated. There have been reports of Rohingya men, women and children allegedly being forced to jump from a naval vessel and asked to swim for their lives in the Andaman sea. Camps in Bangladesh are dangerously overcrowded, and fires, disease, violence and rape are unfortunately becoming routine. This is a failure not just of humanity and compassion, but of international burden sharing. That brings me to our responsibility. I want to put a few of the issues to the Minister. First, we must confront the enablers of the crisis. The junta survives because it is propped up militarily, diplomatically and economically by external actors. Some of those countries may even have veto powers at the United Nations. The proxy enablers must be named, challenged and pressured. Secondly, we must seek justice. We should actively support the international legal action, joining Gambia’s case against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice, backing the ICC investigation to ensure that the junta is held accountable for genocide and crimes against humanity. Thirdly, we must support democracy wherever we can. I feel that the future depends on a genuine federal democracy, which protects religious freedoms, recognises ethnic equality and ends decades of civil war. Finally I say to the Minister, we must match our words with actions and resources. Cutting the humanitarian aid to the Rohingya refugees and other displaced communities will have, and is having, catastrophic consequences. Aid to the region has dropped by 85% in the past five years, from more than £112 million to just £16.9 million. That is why we must make a commitment to ringfence overseas aid for that region, not just out of charity, but as prevention—prevention of further displacement, further regional instability and future atrocities. This is not just a moral issue, but a strategic one. We should ensure that Britain remains a reliable partner, that the humanitarian system does not collapse, and that countries such as Bangladesh, India, Thailand and Vietnam are not left to manage the international crisis alone. I ask the Minister, what aid will we provide for the crisis? Mohammed Faruque does not want a different birthday; he wants recognition that his life, his history and his identity matter.

• 18 Dec 2025 · Christmas Adjournment · Hansard source

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  This year has sadly seen a continuation of the rise of those who wish to divide us, amplify our fault lines and sow division. That is happening across Europe and also, unfortunately, domestically, with the rise of racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and antisemitism. As we approach the festive season, however, I want to share a message of hope and mention some excellent groups and individuals who are working to bring our communities together rather than spreading division. First, I will mention a young boy by the name of Joshua Harris, or the Joshie-Man as he is commonly known. He is a young boy with autism and he set up a campaign along with his father Dan called “Cake Not Hate”. Following an Islamophobic attack on a mosque, he now travels up and down the country visiting places of worship and shares cakes with the local community. Secondly, I will quickly mention Ruth Sinhal and her Leicester Schools Linking Project, which is an excellent initiative that brings together schools from different areas, with children from different ethnicities and religions, to learn that we have much more that unites us than divides us. Finally, in these cold winter months, there is the charity One Roof Leicester. Salma Ravat, along with Leicester cathedral, ensures that no one is left in the cold in these long nights, and they all deserve our appreciation. However, all these wonderful people face constant, vile hate speech on social media, just because they are trying to bring communities together. I would like to thank everyone who does not give in to vile rhetoric and instead chooses to stand with their neighbours in solidarity, which is the true message of Christmas. To everybody here, I wish a happy Christmas.

• 16 Dec 2025 · Grassroots Cricket Clubs · Hansard source

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  It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Turner. I thank the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Andrew Lewin) for securing the debate. Cricket is our heritage. It has probably been played since the mid-1500s and was formalised in the late 1700s. The sport likely originated with shepherd children using shepherd’s crooks as bats and rags or wool as a ball. It is a legacy of the empire and is enjoyed globally. Cricket is also a major business, generating billions in revenue when done right, mainly from the Indian premier league. But fundamentally, for many, cricket is more than a sport; it is a passion. As the hon. Member alluded to, nothing says England more than a green with players in white and the sound of leather hitting willow. In the summer I am blessed, because there are so many cricket clubs in my constituency that barely a weekend goes by when I am not invited to a tournament to hand out a trophy. I would like to mention SASA cricket club, just because it provides really great food and hundreds of people of all ages come—it is fantastic to see. In April 2024, the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), made a pledge to invest £35 million in grassroots cricket. It was much needed, given that 80 school cricket pitches had been lost over the decade since the Conservatives came to power in 2010, and 150 publicly accessible cricket pitches had also been lost. This is part of a larger erasure of grassroots sporting facilities, including 2,488 school grass pitches. I know it is a different sport altogether, but 677 publicly accessible tennis courts were also lost. Unfortunately, in October 2024 the present Government reversed that promise, citing the financial black hole and saying that the pledge belonged in fantasy land. Simply, we need more cricket facilities, ranging from dedicated facilities with well-manicured lawns, changing rooms and scoreboards, to the strip of synthetic turf that is all some people need. All such facilities are unfortunately in short supply in my city and my constituency. That is a shame, as the city of Leicester is cricket mad. The issue is that countless grassroots teams are competing with minimal resources. Teams that play just for fun come to play on one solitary turf—the only one available for miles around. If one team cannot play, hostilities sometimes arise, and then, if the teams are from different ethnicities, races or religions, an issue of resource constraints suddenly escalates into something much bigger. Sacco, the largest cricket club representing south Asian players in Leicester, unfortunately has no home to play in at the moment and may have to face extinction, while the wonderful SASA team that I described earlier just needs a piece of turf and would be delighted with a small changing room. Small investments now will sustain these clubs and save us millions in terms of community cohesion and other issues in the future, while delivering the benefits that we all know only sports can deliver. I also want to speak briefly about women’s cricket. It is expanding but, again, a lack of infrastructure, volunteers, coaches and ground shares could put a halt to that. What are the Minister’s plans for the growth of women’s cricket in this country? My final points are on a slightly darker subject: the lessons learned from the horrendous racism and discrimination faced by Azeem Rafiq. Many will know the young, talented cricketer who paid the price for his honesty. It ruined his career, but it could have been a lot worse. I spoke with the former Yorkshire county cricketer this morning. It would be fair to say that he is somewhat disappointed that the implementation of the findings of the “State of Equity in Cricket” report, which was instigated after his case, has not matched their intention, but he remains hopeful and so do I. The report speaks of opening “access to the talent pathways through reducing financial barriers”. Cricket is very expensive, and talent is everywhere but opportunities are not. Children from poorer and ethnic backgrounds are literally paying the price. They need support and we need to reverse the trend—I think we are going some way towards doing so—whereby over 30% of recreational cricket is played by south Asian children but only 3% of professional players are south Asian. We have to bridge that gap somehow. We also need more diverse boards across the county game. It is difficult to obtain information about diversity on our county cricket boards. Women in senior roles are few, so it was wonderful for me to meet the new Leicestershire county cricket club chief executive officer, Emma White, who has strong ideas and plans to bring the club back to the community. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Leicestershire county cricket club—the mighty Foxes—on their promotion to division 1. A “hear, hear” would be nice. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Thank you very much. However, there is a real lack of representation of black people on cricket boards, and much further to go to ensure that the recreational game has the capacity and expertise to deal with discrimination issues. Disability cricket also requires deeper integration within county and club systems, and more work is needed to develop disability cricket for women and girls. Grassroots cricket is the lifeblood of the future of the game. We must invest in it or, simply, it won’t be cricket.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Youth Services · Hansard source

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  Many youth services and clubs in my constituency rely on indoor sports facilities in the winter, but due to poorly maintained and financed buildings and decades of chronic underfunding, those youth buildings are now unsafe to use. For example, on St Matthew’s estate, the youth have been left without any community sports hall, after the only facility was forced to shut down due to reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete. What is the Department doing to ensure that provisions and services for our youth get support, so that our children can play during the cold winter months?

• 16 Oct 2025 · Youth Services: Funding · Hansard source

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  Youth services deliver huge benefits to our community, both socially and economically, reducing knife crime and antisocial behaviour and, in turn, saving the country £500 million a year. Yet the clubs that I meet in my constituency, including Wesley Hall youth club and Eyres Monsell club for young people, tell me that there is a real recruitment and retention crisis in the sector. With over 4,500 workers leaving in the past decade, what measures is the Minister taking to address this issue?

• 13 Oct 2025 · Manchester Terrorism Attack · Hansard source

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  I recently visited a synagogue in my constituency to celebrate Sukkot, but this year our celebration was drowned in sadness as we paid our respects following the terrorist attacks on two very brave men. We all condemn those attacks because, as the Home Secretary said, an attack on our Jewish community is an attack against us all and we are indeed stronger together. However, does she agree that acts of terrorism should not be used to pit communities against each other, and that by conflating the right to peaceful protest with the actions of a crazed terrorist we are in danger of doing just that? What steps is she taking to ensure that there is greater community cohesion which will build bridges and not wars?

• 2 Sept 2025 · Defibrillators · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth) for securing this debate on what is literally a matter of life and death. Last week, I was fortunate enough to unveil a new community defibrillator in the Evington ward of my constituency, thanks to the dedicated work of community champions such as Teej and organisations such as the Evington Road Neighbourhood Association, and to the generosity of the local pharmacy, Pearl Chemist, which allowed them to use its wall. That work shows that when people get together they can achieve anything, but it also highlights the wider crisis that access remains a postcode lottery. A quarter of the postcodes in my constituency are not within easy reach of a defibrillator. Every single day, 80 to 90 people die from a cardiac arrest out of hospital. However, when a defib is used quickly, not only does it save lives, but recovery is faster and the risk of comorbidities, including brain damage, and the need for long-term care are dramatically reduced. An intensive care unit bed costs around £2,300 a night, but a patient treated with a defibrillator within one minute will often avoid intensive care altogether and suffer far fewer longer-term complications. Early access to a defibrillator therefore saves the NHS and the Government significant amounts of money, as well as saving lives. Defibrillators should be readily available everywhere, but one area where they are not is places of worship. I ask Ministers to scrap the VAT and give peace of mind to our communities.

• 22 Jul 2025 · Birmingham Bin Strikes · Hansard source

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  I, too, thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Perry Barr (Ayoub Khan) for tabling this urgent question. I also thank the Minister for his answers, and I sympathise with his position, but replacing this workforce, policing the dispute and paying the legal fees has cost the already overstretched council £4 million. All the while, the good people of Birmingham—the very people who voted in a Labour council and many Labour Members of Parliament—are living in foul misery. Does the Minister agree that it would save millions of pounds, improve our relationship with the dedicated bin workers and restore a basic necessity to the people of Birmingham if he intervened to get us out of this stink?

• 17 Jul 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Autism and other neurodiversity conditions in children present challenges to any parents, but sadly stigma and ignorance remain particularly high in some communities, including some parts of the South Asian community. This already adds deep emotional strain to families suffering and navigating complex journeys. That is why the Leader of the House will join me, I am sure, in congratulating sisters Shamina and Hawa Khan, who have just opened Café Neuro in Leicester South. It is a warm welcoming space that is offering not just tea, samosas and sweet treats but training, advocacy and community support. If the Leader of the House is ever in Leicester South, I would be delighted to share a masala chai and samosa with her there.

• 17 Jul 2025 · High Street Businesses · Hansard source

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  I refer the House to my registered interest as a small business owner. Retailers in my constituency, including city centre retailers, tell me that they are on their knees, crippled by soaring costs, rising national insurance contributions, rising antisocial behaviour, expensive and poor parking, and a lack of any city centre regeneration. These long-standing independent businesses—the lifeblood of our community—are now considering closure. Has the Minister considered their clear ask, which is reducing or freezing business rates, and having affordable and accessible parking and community-focused events to revive our high streets?

• 9 Jul 2025 · Glaucoma Awareness · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman may have read my speech when I was not looking, as I am coming to that point in a little while. Regular eye exams are the frontline of glaucoma detection, yet one in four people in the UK is not accessing any form of eye care at all. Minister, we should begin with a mandatory sight test for drivers. The UK is the only country in Europe that gives lifelong licences until the age of 70 without requiring an eye exam. Earlier this year, a coroner in Lancashire issued a prevention of future deaths report linking a fatal crash to undiagnosed sight loss. This is no longer just a health issue; it is a public safety one. We can also incentivise eye tests, perhaps through reduced insurance premiums, employer wellbeing programmes or GP-led initiatives. For those over 40, when glaucoma risks are higher, every routine health check should include a simple question: “When did you last have your eyes tested?” Finally, we must consider innovation. Most glaucoma patients are prescribed lifelong eye drops, but there is poor compliance. Mr Pritchard, imagine that you were elderly and trying to open up a bottle of eye drops and bring it to your eyes. It is very difficult, especially with arthritis and tremors; difficulty inserting the drops remains a major challenge. But new options are now available. One is called minimally invasive glaucoma surgery, which can delay or even eliminate the need for drops. I urge the Minister to explore commissioning MIGS, especially for suitable patients undergoing cataract surgery. Everybody who lives long enough will need to have a cataract operation. If they are also suffering with glaucoma, we can stop the disease in its tracks before it causes irreversible harms. It is critical that patients with glaucoma who need cataract surgery are able to discuss options with their glaucoma consultant, because if MIGS is not performed during cataract surgery, it may be eliminated as a future option. The total cost of visual impairment in the UK is now £26.5 billion. That is projected to rise to £33.5 billion by 2032. Glaucoma alone accounts for £750 million, according to the College of Optometrists, and most of that burden falls outside the national health service in lost productivity, in formal care, in people having to give up work to look after family who have lost their sight and in a completely diminished quality of life. In fact, 41% of people surveyed reported severe financial impact due to sight loss, often followed by depression, anxiety and social withdrawal. This is a silent epidemic and it all leads to a low score in every perceivable index. But it is not inevitable. We already know what works and we already have the workforce and technology. What we need now is collaboration from the optical and ophthalmic industry and a political will. That will help us shift care from hospitals into the community, bring eye care into the digital age and help us prevent sickness such as glaucoma, saving the sight of millions in the future. Let us act now while we can still see what is around us.

• 9 Jul 2025 · Glaucoma Awareness · Hansard source

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  It has been a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard. I thank each and every hon. Member for their contribution. I think we have achieved the first objective, which was to raise awareness of glaucoma, and we should keep the conversation going. As my neighbour, the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) said, we have an ageing population. If nothing is done, very soon there will be more than half a million people walking around with this condition. That is why it was pleasing to hear that the Minister remembered our meeting, which was early on in our tenure; I can assure him we will continue to have that meeting every time he sees me about eye health. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the people in the Public Gallery: we have people from the Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers, the General Optical Council, the College of Optometrists and Glaukos —my apologies if I have forgotten anybody there. We must utilise optometry as the primary eyecare provider that it is, and treat it as such, equivalent to how we treat our GPs and pharmacy colleagues. We need a statutory framework to regulate the whole process of detection, monitoring and treating glaucoma. Working collectively with the optical and ophthalmic bodies and the Government, we can surely do our best to keep people from suffering preventable sight loss and the devasting impact that that has on their lives. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered glaucoma awareness.