Tessa Munt MP: speeches

Speeches

• 18 Mar 2026 · Student Loans · Hansard source

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  Would the Minister consider doing something about the cost of accommodation in university towns and cities? Where I come from in north Somerset there is no university, and at the moment people do not really have the option to go anywhere except a city, which is incredibly expensive. Would she give some consideration to reducing those costs on ordinary working families?

• 17 Mar 2026 · Foreign National Prisoners: Sentences · Hansard source

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  I am not sure that that really answers my question. Let me set out the details of what I am asking about. One of my constituents was murdered by a foreign national, which robbed her mother of her daughter and her mother’s grandsons of their much-loved mother. Her mother is very distressed to discover that the murderer is being repatriated a short while into his sentence, which was over 14 years, at which juncture she will lose what remaining input the family has into his parole arrangements, which was promised to her when the man was sentenced. What can the Minister say to reassure my constituents that, as victims, they will not see him released early in the country where he was born? What voice will victims have in situations like that in future?

• 17 Mar 2026 · Foreign National Prisoners: Sentences · Hansard source

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  3. What discussions he has had with his counterparts in countries to which foreign national prisoners will be returned on ensuring that prisoners serve the full term of a sentence handed down by the UK courts.

• 16 Mar 2026 · Lord Mandelson: Response to Humble Address · Hansard source

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  It has been revealed that Peter Mandelson was given top-level briefings before his vetting was finalised. Who did that, and who will hold those people to account? Will the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister write to me if he is not able to answer that question now?

• 16 Mar 2026 · GP Contract · Hansard source

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  Serious concerns have been raised about GPs being offered incentives to prescribe particular branded drugs. We cannot have a situation where prescribing decisions are made to balance the books; they should be made on a purely clinical basis, as I am sure the Minister agrees. With many GP practices seriously strapped for cash, does the Department of Health and Social Care have a clear picture of the situation, and what consideration has the Minister given to banning incentives so that the very best drugs are prescribed, not those produced by the most influential companies?

• 12 Mar 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  I am seriously concerned about the lack of progress on the Public Office (Accountability) Bill. I served on the Committee in November, and the issue was urgent then. Will the Leader of the House write to me to explain why the Government have not adopted the common-sense and victim-centred amendment 23? Bearing in mind that the Bill is about openness and transparency, it is ironic that Ministers seem completely unable to explain their objections to the amendment. Will he investigate what is blocking progress?

• 12 Mar 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Last time we were here for Business and Trade questions, I asked about exports of paraquat—the use of which is forbidden here—to other countries, and I live in hope that I will get an answer to that question. To update the ministerial team, Syngenta—the company that makes paraquat—put out a press release on 3 March to say that it would stop production this year. May I therefore expand my previous question to ensure that the response includes the export of pesticides and other products whose use is banned in the UK?

• 12 Mar 2026 · Carnivals · Hansard source

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  Almost the whole of the way east of Wells is without any wi-fi, even for those who live there. That makes things incredibly difficult. Does my hon. Friend agree?

• 12 Mar 2026 · Carnivals · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Harris. I do not know whether you have had the opportunity to visit any of the Somerset carnivals, but they are spectacular and huge. One of the magnificent seven is, of course, Wells, and the second in my patch is Shepton Mallet. As my hon. Friend was saying, they not only contribute to cultural life but have an absolutely huge number of volunteers. They work on making carnival carts all year round, engaging young people in the activity. It is fantastic that so many young people—literally hundreds and hundreds—get involved in building the carts. They really are a spectacle, and I invite you to come down to Somerset to have a look. You will not see anything else like it anywhere else in the country.

• 12 Mar 2026 · Carnivals · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is making a brilliant speech. I thank her and my friend the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Dan Aldridge) for bringing this debate to Westminster Hall, because it is a really important issue. I have been a carnival collector for years. I carry two buckets. In years gone past, it was almost impossible to carry them because they were so heavy with coins. Everyone used to save their pennies, tuppences and fivepence and tenpence pieces, but now there is very little of that money saved across a year. First, that is because things are tight: it is hard to live, so people need every penny that they can get. Secondly, as my hon. Friend mentioned, there is a lack of wi-fi. In fact, in parts of Shepton Mallet and particularly in the city of Wells—

• 11 Mar 2026 · Commonwealth Day 2026 · Hansard source

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  We are celebrating Commonwealth Week. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is absolutely shocking to discover that the Government made the decision to freeze UK state pensions for 430,000 British citizens overseas, of whom 90% are in Commonwealth countries? It is particularly cynical of them to have introduced the legislation enforcing that freeze last Friday, using a mechanism that does not provide for parliamentary debate or votes, although the policy affects so many people who live overseas.

• 10 Mar 2026 · Extreme Climate and Weather Events: National Resilience · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady mentions the Environment Agency, which is causing quite high levels of stress. I should declare an interest: my partner is a farmer, and we had an 80-acre lake for some weeks on the farm. The Environment Agency started thinking about bringing the pumps only after the storms had come. What we need is for the pumps to be there already, so that they can start to pump water away as the storms come in. Otherwise, everybody gets flooded and it is really catastrophic.

• 9 Mar 2026 · Funeral Directors: Regulation · Hansard source

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  When the Minister replies, can he be clear about whether it is the Department of Health and Social Care or the Ministry of Justice that has control over this area? There seems to be a bit of a wrestling match going on between the two. I am sure the hon. Lady agrees that responsibility needs to sit in one place, so that there is definite control over this sector.

• 2 Mar 2026 · Small Religious Organisations: Safeguarding · Hansard source

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  If I may, I would like to explore what happens with the Minister. There is mistrust of external agencies, and in a lot of these small, high-demand religious organisations—those that look like cults—people may not realise that they have any capacity or agency to report.

• 2 Mar 2026 · Small Religious Organisations: Safeguarding · Hansard source

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  I think it takes an average of 26 years for children to disclose that they were victims of sexual abuse, so it is absolutely critical that the provision on the reasonable suspicion of abuse is included in the Bill, as well as the trigger for the duty to report. In small, high-demand religious organisations, cultural norms prevent open discussion of sexual harm and discourage mandatory reporting. That needs to be overturned.

• 26 Feb 2026 · Gibraltar Treaty · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Minister’s statement. What role will Parliaments have in the ongoing oversight and scrutiny of the operation and implementation of the Gibraltar agreement? Will the Government commit to having a vote in both the UK Parliament and the Gibraltarian Parliament?

• 26 Feb 2026 · Bereaved Children: Government Support · Hansard source

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  In 2024, my constituent Claire lost her husband—a personal tragedy. Overnight, she became the sole parent to her three-year-old son. [ Interruption. ] Sorry, this is personal as well. I was going to talk about me, but I am not going to talk about me. She rightly points out that the fixed 18-month limit on bereavement support payments creates a financial cliff edge for widowed parents, to which my hon. Friend has already referred. Does she, and the Minister too, agree that the grief, permanent loss of income and parenting responsibilities to all children, particularly very young children, do not end at that arbitrary 18-month period, that cut-off point, and that it should be rethought?

• 26 Feb 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Specialist hospitals—by which I mean major trauma centres, trauma units, cardiac centres, burns centres, stroke units and some children’s hospitals—are the main destinations for the most time-critical, seriously injured and ill patients. Those are the same patients that our amazing air ambulance services routinely treat and take to hospital. Will the Leader of the House speak with his Health and planning colleagues to ensure that helipads with 24/7 access are mandated for all specialist hospitals? The national guidelines for planning neither protect hospital helipads nor include hospitals and aircraft operators or ambulance charities as statutory consultees on development in proximity to existing helipads, which can affect their utility for safety reasons.

• 25 Feb 2026 · Minister for Men and Boys · Hansard source

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  We need to do more than watch out; that is completely unacceptable. I know so many men who have been the victims of domestic abuse. That is shockingly bad.

• 25 Feb 2026 · Minister for Men and Boys · Hansard source

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  Talking about positive role models, in preparation for this debate I looked at the number of people in teacher training who were male. Although the numbers are going up, the proportion of men is going marginally down. I had the advantage—as did my children—of having teachers who were positive role models. What does the hon. Gentleman say about making sure that young people have teachers who are positive role models?

• 25 Feb 2026 · Minister for Men and Boys · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree. That goes back to the business of data. We need to have the data, and I ask the Minister to look at that issue as well. I have made several points about data and statistics. If we do not know what is going on, we cannot possibly make an intelligent assumption about anything. Another area—to criticise my own gender—is that of children so often being used as a weapon against men. Again, this is something that I have seen in the groups in which I have been involved and in my work in the past: the use of children, most often—though not always—by women is a shocking indictment. We have not got to grips with that, and we absolutely need to. I have listened to all the comments about education, and I want to make a quick observation about macho male culture. The President of the United States seems to typify what people might think of as an alpha male leader. His version of masculinity seems to see dominance, subordination of others and aggression as desirable and socially valued traits. His politics has been explicitly endorsed by Andrew Tate—I can hardly bring myself to say his name—but in that context, I thank Gareth Southgate. He raised the alarm in his public lecture that young men definitely do not have positive role models, which makes them vulnerable to the influence of online personalities who promote negative ideologies about women and the world generally. The world is not against men and boys, in my view, and people saying that that is the case is unhelpful. That is why we should laud the efforts of Gareth Southgate to rebalance that. I will quickly comment on prostate cancer. One in eight men gets prostate cancer, and black men are twice as likely to get it as those of other colours, so screening for men with the relevant genetic variants is good—but that is for a very small group. Last weekend, I was pleased to be at Wells town hall in my constituency, where the Cheddar Rotary and the Wells Lions club, and a whole group of fantastic health professionals spent the day testing 320 men. The misfortune was that about 38 of them could not turn up, for one reason or another, but it is brilliant when that sort of stuff happens in our communities. That is a start, but we need Government to step up on prostate cancer. I want to talk very briefly about male suicide. Some 14 men a day take their own lives. Again, there are some amazing things that happen. The all-party parliamentary group on men and boys’ issues, co-chaired by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth), identified that many men view suicide as a rational solution to life’s events that they cannot solve any longer, whether that is relationship breakdown or financial pressures. Rather than viewing suicide as a clinical condition and a health issue, they see it as a life problem. Here, I pay tribute to the late Derek Mead, who provides a room at the cattle market at Junction 24 on the M5 where health checks for farmers are available. There is also a lady called Susie Wilkinson in my constituency, who is part of the Farming Community Network. Those are people who support people in the community. I will write to the Minister with several things that my party has asked for to promote mental health. There are so many things. There should be an MOT at key points in men’s lives, and in people’s lives generally. In conclusion I think that we probably need to have a Minister for men and boys in the short term.

• 25 Feb 2026 · Minister for Men and Boys · Hansard source

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  Does the Minister believe that men can bring up children really well as well?

• 25 Feb 2026 · Minister for Men and Boys · Hansard source

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  I am particularly grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point, because it is an area of interest to me. I have been a long-term supporter of Families Need Fathers, although not necessarily Fathers4Justice, which pinged off out of that. I tried to work out exactly how many times judges have allowed child arrangements orders to be given to fathers, but no data is kept. If we do not have data about how many children live with which parent—or about where there are shared parental orders, which in my view have to be the route forward, except in exceptional circumstances—how can we possibly know what is happening?

• 25 Feb 2026 · Minister for Men and Boys · Hansard source

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  It is good to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Twigg, and I am sorry that I did not have the chance to say that in my earlier intervention. I commend the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) for securing this debate. When I looked at it, I was amazed at how many different topics might come into scope of this debate, and many of them have been mentioned already. Following all I have heard today, I suspect that we probably do need a Minister for men and boys to make sure there is some focus, because when there is a Minister, people tend to sit up and pay attention to what is going on. I know the Prime Minister said, in response to the focus on “Adolescence”, that he did not want such a Minister, but I think it would not be a bad thing, even if for a trial period of three or five years. I will briefly summarise. I have already mentioned the data on teacher training, but there are all sorts of other areas that particularly concern men and boys. There is, as far as I can tell, no data on child arrangements orders, referred to by the hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood), so we do not know what is happening. Shared parenting has to be a really good thing, with the requisite exclusions where it is not safe. Paternity leave was introduced in 1999 and paternity pay in 2003, but again there are very few public statistics, and the statistics that exist are not comparable, so we cannot see in which direction we are going. We have isolated islands of data that are not particularly helpful. From 2010 to 2015, I was part of the Administration that introduced shared parental leave and pay under the Children and Families Act 2014. I am glad that the Government reviewed parental leave and pay last year, but as far as I can see, it opened in July and closed in August, when loads of people are on holiday, so I do not know how much of a response there was. Is the Minister able to enlighten us on when the outcome of that consultation might be published? I cannot see any information on that, but she may correct me. Given my life experience, through the various groups I have worked with over time, I want to put a flag in the ground on another serious problem: men as victims of domestic violence perpetrated by women. It is definitely not cool and definitely difficult for men to report. They do not think they are going to be believed—there is that fear of not being believed.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T2. Earlier this month, I joined South Western Ambulance Service for a shift, which was an incredibly humbling experience. At the hospital, I met paramedic science students who told me that it is almost impossible for them to get a job: only eight of last year’s 120 paramedic science students got a job. The university has assured students that they can definitely get employment as a graduate, but the ambulance services have a massive pool—of 200, in my local area—to draw from and it has not advertised a single job in the past six months. What is the Minister going to do about that?