Siobhain McDonagh MP: speeches

104 published records · newest first.

Speeches

13 Nov 2024 · Facial Recognition: Police Use · Hansard source
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Order. Could I ask Members to keep interventions as interventions?
13 Nov 2024 · Facial Recognition: Police Use · Hansard source
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I see no other Back Benchers who wish to contribute, so I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
13 Nov 2024 · Facial Recognition: Police Use · Hansard source
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Order. I apologise, but could the hon. Member please explain briefly what his intervention is?
13 Nov 2024 · Facial Recognition: Police Use · Hansard source
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Before I call Sir John Whittingdale to move the motion, I would like to inform Members that the parliamentary digital communication team will be conducting secondary filming during this debate.
13 Nov 2024 · Facial Recognition: Police Use · Hansard source
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I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called in the debate, and it seems that everybody does.
13 Nov 2024 · Facial Recognition: Police Use · Hansard source
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Order. I apologise for interrupting the shadow Secretary of State, but I am looking at the time. I am sure hon. Members would like to hear from the Minister.
13 Nov 2024 · Rural Broadband · Hansard source
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Order. This is Sarah Dyke’s debate, and she can conduct it as she wishes, but it seems to me that it may be more appropriate to ask for a longer debate because of the number of interventions she is accepting and the difficulty that may cause the Minister in responding.
13 Nov 2024 · Rural Broadband · Hansard source
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I remind hon. Members that they can make speeches in this debate only with the agreement of the debate holder. Sarah Dyke will move the motion and then the Minister will respond. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.
13 Nov 2024 · Rural Broadband · Hansard source
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Does that include Portcullis House?
30 Oct 2024 · Children’s Hospices: Funding · Hansard source
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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. In my constituency, we are amazingly served by Shooting Star CHASE hospice, a children’s hospice that serves 14 London boroughs across south-west and north-west London—quite why that configuration exists, I am unsure—and boroughs and councils within Surrey. I calculate that that is around 1.5 million people. The service provides support to 544 children and their families. In essence, the funding crisis is due to the unique and specific services that that hospice provides to those children and families. No public body owns it, and those it serves are so dispersed that any integrated care board can simply ignore the tiny number of families in its area. Every social services department in those 14 London boroughs—all of them beset by the huge problems involved in looking after children—will have a tiny number of children and families, who can therefore be ignored. That is why, despite the desire to bring everything down to the most local area or unit, we would like the Minister to hear the strong argument for maintaining the ringfenced grant for children’s hospices. To bring that down to local level would be to give it to services that are already under pressure, where numbers and leverage are equally small. The breakdown in hospices and children’s hospices always has a cost. If a family cannot get support to look after a child with a life-limiting condition at home, in the end the NHS and social services will step in. I appreciate that it is difficult for Governments of all shades to look at issues in this way, but in the long term and in the round hospices save public money. They prevent family breakdown and ensure high standards of care. Few of us would argue anything but that the best place for a child with a short life is at home, supported by the wonderful professionals we have all met. I ask the Minister to support the continued central funding of children’s hospices, as well as to look at what can be done for those services with ICBs and social services departments to ensure that they are held to account for their funding and how they allocate it. Given that we have the opportunity of the 10-year plan for the NHS, is it not time to consider palliative care as part of that framework? Unlike some Members, I think there is a role for volunteers in raising funds, for instance in shops. I have seen the value of that for individuals who contribute, and I am sure that the amazing constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne) have all benefited greatly through what they have done to save his children’s hospice. However, hospice funding cannot be jeopardised by being left just to volunteers; the community and its Government, hand in hand, need to look after the most vulnerable children in our country.
9 Oct 2024 · Renters’ Rights Bill · Hansard source
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I stand to support the Second Reading of this Bill, particularly the abolition of section 21 no-fault evictions. It falls to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to introduce a Bill that will fulfil the hopes of the former Member for Surrey Heath to abolish section 21 evictions, which are the sole cause of crisis for homeless families right across our country. We currently have 117,450 families in temporary accommodation, including 151,630 children and—disgracefully—more than 20,000 babies under the age of one. That comes at a cost to the British taxpayer of £1.6 billion a year—all of it public money badly spent; all of it undermining the finances of local authorities of all sizes and in every part of this country. What bothers me most, however, is the families who present to me in my Mitcham and Morden constituency who are going through a section 21 eviction and know that temporary accommodation is on its way. Merton is a small south-west London borough and does not face the pressure that many others do, but those families know that they are going to be placed tens of miles away, if not hundreds of miles away, from their families and support networks.
9 Oct 2024 · Renters’ Rights Bill · Hansard source
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Does the right hon. Lady think that there is already gridlock in the county courts? As of today, a landlord who secures a possession order will wait 12 weeks to get a bailiff’s warrant. Our courts are gridlocked right now.
9 Oct 2024 · Renters’ Rights Bill · Hansard source
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I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Local authorities have to rehouse those families in identical accommodation, only in worse repair, because there are not the same legal provisions for temporary accommodation. Children lose their places at school and their educational attainment falls, parents lose their employment, and babies die. We know through the work of Dr Laura Neilson, who works with me on the all-party parliamentary group for households in temporary accommodation, that between 2019 and 2023, 55 babies in temporary accommodation—in the 21st century, in the fifth biggest economy in the world—died for the want of a cot. Members right across the House know this, because we see the families and we talk to them, but most of our friends and neighbours would be shocked to the core that these things happen in our country. I will give two examples from my last surgery. Mrs S is a nurse at St Helier hospital and Mr S works morning shifts at a local supermarket. They have three children, one of whom is non-verbal and has autism. Following a section 21 eviction from their home, they were placed 31 miles away from Merton, in Windsor—but only after they had spent eight hours in the reception of the civic centre and got their accommodation so late that when they turned up at Windsor, the estate agent was closed and they had nowhere to go. Mr S had to pay £300 for them to be in a hotel that night. Next day, when they turned up at the house, there were no beds, because nobody from the local authority—nobody from any local authority—checks the accommodation before the families move in. I say to hon. Members, “Don’t believe your local authority if they tell you they do, because they simply can’t do it.” My second example is just in case anybody thinks this issue only affects families. Mr H has dementia. When he was evicted, he was placed 8 miles away, in Croydon. That is not far, but it caused South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust to remove him from its list and he lost the support he got from the geriatrician. We are doing these things to the most vulnerable people. That keeps me awake at night, and I think it should keep all of us awake at night.
9 Oct 2024 · Renters’ Rights Bill · Hansard source
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On that point, will the right hon. Lady give way?
7 Oct 2024 · NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation · Hansard source
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The right hon. Lady makes the point that cancer is the biggest killer of people under 40, but glioblastoma brain tumours are the biggest killer of people under the age of 40. What progress has there been in the last 30 years in the treatment and diagnosis of glioblastoma brain tumours?
7 Oct 2024 · NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation · Hansard source
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Members from across the House will have their own experience of the NHS, but in my case, after caring for my late sister Margaret, who was diagnosed with a glioblastoma brain tumour in 2021, I can say with regret that the NHS failed her, forcing us to travel to Germany when she was at her sickest in order to find some treatment that might extend her life. In his summary letter published before the report, Lord Darzi told us that he was “shocked” by what he had found, but the 3,200 people who are diagnosed with a glioblastoma brain tumour every year are not shocked. They know just how bad things are. The report has told us that the UK has higher cancer death rates than our European neighbours. For patients with a glioblastoma brain tumour, that is news to no one. In comparison to 33 similar countries, the UK ranks 25th for five-year survival rates. Life expectancy for somebody diagnosed with a glioblastoma is just nine months. There has not been a new treatment in the NHS for more than 30 years, and the diagnosis is still a death sentence. In 2018, after Tessa Jowell sadly passed away with a glioblastoma, £40 million of ringfenced Government funding was promised for brain tumour research. Of that £40 million, just £11.3 million has been spent. Six years on, and the National Institute for Health and Care Research cannot even get the money out of the door. That is a real failure of Government. In June 2024, just before the election, a roundtable discussed how to spend £15 million of this money, and I have been trying to find out what it decided. Last week, I received a letter from Professor Lucy Chappell, the NIHR’s chief scientific adviser. Disturbingly, she told me that the NIHR largely funds research based on the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services, value for money and scientific quality, but it does not “allocate funding for specific disease areas.” The pharmaceutical industry does not work on glioblastoma. If the NHS also does not, who will? Do we keep on baking cakes?
7 Oct 2024 · Hamas Attacks: First Anniversary · Hansard source
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I thank my hon. Friend for being so generous with his time in this really important Adjournment debate. I, too, had the opportunity to meet Mandy Damari, who wanted our Government to acknowledge that her daughter Emily is a British citizen and requires the support of her Government to do everything they can to allow for her release as a hostage.
12 Sept 2024 · Business of the House · Hansard source
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Will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on glioblastoma drug treatments? As Mr Speaker and she will know, 3,200 people each year are diagnosed with this death sentence. It is the largest killer of the under-40s, and life expectancy at five years is just 5%. Without Government intervention in the pharmaceutical industry and the NHS, there will be no improvement for another 40 years, and we will continue to see the same number of people traumatised, dead and scandalised.
11 Sept 2024 · Rural Bus Services · Hansard source
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Order. Could I ask the Member to stand?
11 Sept 2024 · Rural Bus Services · Hansard source
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I will call Sarah Dyke to move the motion, and I will then call the Minister to respond. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.
11 Sept 2024 · Rural Bus Services · Hansard source
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Order. The hon. Member needs to sit down. This issue is clearly of much concern in many constituencies across the country. It could be appropriate for a group of Members to get together and submit an application for a 60 or 90-minute debate in Westminster Hall, which would give Members the opportunity to make their cases and the Minister enough time to respond to their concerns. I am not formally requiring that of anybody, but I suggest that it might be a useful mechanism. Question put and agreed to.
11 Sept 2024 · Planning Policy: Traveller Sites · Hansard source
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I call Kevin Hollinrake to wind up.
23 Jul 2024 · Commercial Sexual Exploitation · Hansard source
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Order. I ask that Members leave the Chamber quietly, out of respect for the Adjournment debate.
23 Jul 2024 · Immigration and Home Affairs · Hansard source
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Order. I draw the hon. Member’s attention to the fact that when we use the word “you” in this House, we are referring to the Chair.
23 Jul 2024 · Immigration and Home Affairs · Hansard source
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I call Helena Dollimore to make her maiden speech.

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