Mr Toby Perkins
MP for Chesterfield · Labour · United Kingdom
“The hon. Member for Bicester and Woodstock (Calum Miller) is absolutely right to say that what is behind this is the deep unpopularity of President Milei; it is not anything actually that the UK has done.”
“In Chesterfield, there will be unmitigated despair at the statement we have heard today from my right hon. Friend. For the authorities for which she is doing a review—the 14 that thought they had got their decision in July—could she clarify the basis of that review?”
“It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I congratulate the hon. Member for Waveney Valley (Adrian Ramsay) on securing this debate.”
“The report spells out the link between degradation overseas and the impact here. The assessment lays out the consequences: food insecurity, economic insecurity, increased migration and refugees, increased interstate competition, conflict and geopolitical instability, all of which will threaten us here at home.”
“The Government are right to take their time and make sure that they get this right—we saw what happened when the previous Government did not do the work that was needed. This is a delicately balanced decision.”
“Thirdly, will the Minister consider bringing forward the fourth national adaptation programme? NAP3, published by the previous Government in 2023, was deemed ineffective by the Climate Change Committee. NAP4 is not due until 2028, but can we afford to wait two more years before we have an adequate plan?”
The complete record
Every one of 3,898 lines we hold for Mr Toby Perkins, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 38 of 78.
“I had the pleasure of going over to Kenya as part of the armed forces parliamentary scheme to visit the British Army training unit Kenya—BATUK—but I know that many training courses have been cancelled over the past year or so and that that facility is being used a lot less than it was previously. That investment in the training of members of our armed forces to ensure that they are used to the different theatres they might face is incredibly important. My hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) mentioned the Tory manifesto pledge for the Army to be 82,000 strong. Will the Minister give us absolute clarity on whether the Government still consider themselves bound to that commitment, or whether, as it was not featured so explicitly in the 2017 manifesto, it is now more of an aspiration than a commitment?”
“As a member of the armed forces parliamentary scheme, I have had the privilege of speaking to members of the armed forces, and they absolutely want me to hold the Government to account over investment in equipment. They share many of the reservations that he has. They also share reservations about the level of experience of some of the people in our armed forces. Huge numbers are leaving, many of whom had been through engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq and were absolutely match fit. The people who are now in those roles, while well trained, are much less experienced than the people who would have been in those arenas eight or nine years ago. I absolutely express our admiration for the people in our armed forces, but we must never be complacent about what we actually have on the ground.”
“I absolutely recognise that working in the armed forces is not the same as any other job, but that does not let the Government off the hook when it comes to ensuring that the pay for members of our armed forces keeps pace with inflation and that they are no worse off at the end of the year than they were at the start of it. That is a very basic commitment. Another very basic commitment is that we make the necessary investment in equipment, in training, in deployments and in the commitment that we expect of members of the armed forces. We need to pose some serious questions to the Government about those things as well. The Minister said that we had the most professional armed forces in the world, but it is important that we should not be complacent. As he mentioned, the battle tank is 20 years old.”
“He introduced accommodation as another real bone of contention, and I support him entirely on tackling those issues. He and the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) both said that we should not regard a job in the armed forces as being similar to any other job, and I agree with them. Of course there is a level of commitment required from members of the armed forces that is not present in other jobs, but that does not let the Government off the hook when it comes to pay and pensions and to treating people who serve with the respect that they have the right to expect. When it comes to saying to the loved ones of members of the armed forces that we value their support, pay and pensions and accommodation are among the ways in which we can show that we recognise their commitment.”
“It does not seem to me that it is the public who are preventing the Government from spending more on our armed forces or meeting greater than the 2% spending commitment. We had a debate here about having greater spending on our armed forces and there was widespread agreement across the House that that should happen. I have never had a member of the public say to me in my surgeries or when I am out door knocking on a Saturday that they disagree with greater spending on the armed forces. I do not think that we need to convince the public of the need to spend more; in fact, it is the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Prime Minister who need to be persuaded to spend more money on our armed forces. The Minister spoke about his commitment to the armed forces community and his disappointment that there was such low morale on pay and pensions.”
“People will read the right hon. Gentleman’s speech and make up their own minds on whether he was urging the Government to take action in a different direction, but if he wants the advancement of policy, he is in exactly the right place to do that as a Defence Minister. He was right to say that we absolutely recognise the professionalism of those who serve and to point to the admiration he has—and I have, and Members right across the House have—for people who dedicate their lives to our armed forces, but we must also ask ourselves some serious questions about the way in which we support them, and I will come to those in a moment. If I was to have an area of disagreement with the Minister, it would be on his challenge to the public about the fact that we need to have an honest conversation with them.”
“I agree entirely with what the hon. Gentleman is saying about recruitment, but that is only one side of the picture. The other side is the huge number of people who have left the armed forces in the past few years, and people left because they were kind of encouraged to do so by the Government, who made it absolutely clear that they were looking to reduce the size of the British Army. This is not just about recruitment, but about the skills we have lost.”
“T2. It has been reported that up to 300,000 Venezuelans could die if aid does not reach them shortly. Given that the Maduro regime will not allow aid from America, what can Britain do politically and practically to help Venezuelans on the ground?”
“The Food and Drink Federation has said today that the industry would face its biggest catastrophe since 1939 if we were to leave without a deal. Yet the Government have still not even reached a deal that we can agree on here, much less to take to Europe. Given all that, how do I justify to my constituents why this Parliament shut at 3.27 pm last Wednesday because the Government had literally nothing for MPs to discuss?”
“I am not so interested in the Minister’s terminology, but I am very interested in the consultation. In asking us to support the draft regulations, he is asking us to take quite a lot on faith. We all remember being told that the Government’s documentation was excruciatingly detailed, but it was subsequently exposed that there was very little detail at all. Opposition Members therefore want a little reassurance about the consultation with the industry, which we recognise is a very important one. On reflection, does the Minister think it would be useful to give us a bit more information about the feedback from the Government’s roundtable discussions, given the huge upheavals in their EU negotiations?”
“I thank the Minister for that answer. I am sure that the Minister does get out there, and I think we all have a strong sense of the sympathy with which she is attempting to make the case for colleges, but she has a Chancellor and a Prime Minister who seem to be entirely deaf to that case rather than responding to it. What more can Members on both sides of the House who recognise the scale of the financial crisis facing colleges do to ensure that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor start taking the action that is so desperately required?”
“I associate myself with the Prime Minister’s comments about the tragic situation in Brazil. My son is one of thousands of young people to have their life chances transformed by their studies at Chesterfield College. Its funding, like that of further education colleges across the country, is 30% down in real terms since this Government came to power. Further education funding is in crisis. Why is the education of young people in further education colleges worth so little to the Government?”
“Businesses in Chesterfield that I have spoken to that have had cause to query HMRC judgments have found the organisation monolithic and unresponsive to their queries. Does the Minister have any assessment of how many successful businesses go bankrupt or have a huge financial deficit as a result of a lack of experience in HMRC, and what will he do about that?”
“The right hon. Lady is not the first Prime Minister to discover that the Conservative party is un-uniteable and unleadable on Europe. Many others have learnt that lesson. However, as she celebrates having people on different sides of the argument coming together to support an amendment, does she not realise that she has been able to get them to agree to it only because it is so nebulous as to be meaningless?”
“My hon. Friend is starting to make a very strong case about further education. In answer to his question, my belief is that we have a Government who fundamentally do not understand what further education is for. We have a Government full of people who have never experienced the further education sector, which is why they so undermine it.”
“It also provides an important service to children who did well at school but want a different kind of study. It provides a kind of education with more freedom, much more like the university experience. It is also important for children who want to pursue non-academic study and to develop skills.”
“I am worried that the education system is becoming a one-chance saloon. Adolescents can, as we all know, go through all kinds of crises. It is important that they get a second chance. Chesterfield College plays an incredibly important role in the community, and not just through the services it provides at various levels to the 10,000 people who attend it. It is also as an employer and as a customer of Chesterfield’s businesses that it needs support. It also played the crucial role of providing my Christmas card this year—something that I am sure all those who received it will not have forgotten. Further education is important for children who did not do all that well at school, but who have huge potential for academic study after their love of learning is developed by the sector.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I congratulate the petitioners who got the petition going, and every one of the 70,000 people who signed it. It shows that when people get behind the further education sector, it can make an impact here. The quality and number of contributions to the debate says it all. I want to talk about the impact of further education in my family. My son recently completed his second year mid-term exams at the University of Hull, but when he left school at the age of 16 no one would have expected him to go to university. It was the contribution of the further education sector—specifically Chesterfield College—that enabled him to go on to do well at university. Many of us recognise that a lot of children do not do well at school, and further education can have a transformative impact on them.”
“We can all speak about the importance of further education, but it is important that, when the Minister gets to her feet, she demonstrates that the Government are willing to show that love with some cold, hard cash.”
“Apprenticeships are not just about the Rolls-Royces of this world, and colleges play an important role in enabling apprenticeships to happen in our small business sector. I am also worried about the huge numbers of experienced lecturers who are leaving the sector, which other hon. Members have spoken about. We heard from the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) that 25,000 have left the profession. That is a huge number of dedicated, skilled, experienced people lost from this crucial sector. Today’s debate is about loving our colleges; we have had the call and we have heard from Members of Parliament on both sides of the Chamber that we all love our colleges, but it is important that the Government give some meaning to those words and ensure that the money backs that love.”
“It might be a flower-arranging course, first aid or any number of things that do not end up being a job, but that offer a starting point for people who are at a moment in their lives where they need something to give them a sense of hope. Of course, further education is also important for people looking to boost their skills and accelerate their career development. Further education colleges play a core role in providing apprenticeship starts, particularly in the small business sector, where businesses do not have all the skills that our major employers have. I am worried that much of the progress made in the last 12 or 15 years on apprenticeships is being lost because of the apprenticeship reforms.”
“I agree entirely. A diverse education system is incredibly important for any country that wants to be competitive in the global race. I am worried that we are leaving far too many people behind, which I think is the point the hon. Lady is making. Further education is important for many people with special educational needs who leave school but are not yet ready for the world of work, and who want to develop their skills. It is important to see education as not purely about the jobs people will do, but about their development in a variety of ways. That relates to FE’s role in supporting people who are recovering from a crisis. The right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) spoke about that. Often the move to do a further education course is a step towards the world of work.”
“Members to attend or to speak out about fibromyalgia. I was proud to present a petition in Parliament, which reached more than 100,000 signatures on change.org, calling for fibromyalgia to be recognised as a disability and for greater awareness of and investment in treatment. I recognise that the context of the debate spans the responsibilities of both the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department of Health and Social Care, and I hope that the Minister will be able to pass on to her counterpart the topics raised in the debate that do not fall within her purview. Many in this country are ignorant about what fibromyalgia is, but it is a condition that many people suffer from. It is one of a group of conditions often referred to as invisible illnesses, but sufferers live with its consequences every day of their lives.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered the recognition of fibromyalgia as a disability. It is a pleasure to open the debate and to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. I am delighted that so many hon. Members have come to support the raising of awareness of a crucial issue. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for selecting the topic for debate, and particularly the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess), for his support in obtaining and promoting the debate. I want to pay tribute to two of my constituents, Adrienne and Leann Lakin of Chesterfield, and all the fibromyalgia campaigners who bang the drum relentlessly to ensure that sufferers’ voices are heard. Many intend to come to witness the debate. Their campaigning has been instrumental in persuading other hon.”
“A panoply of symptoms means that people have a terrible time. However, often, when those symptoms are dealt with in general practice they are masked as other conditions. Many time-consuming treatments are undergone, but they do not get to the root of things.”
“That is an excellent point, to which I shall return. One of the major problems that fibromyalgia sufferers experience is that it takes so long for their condition to be diagnosed. I shall talk more about what we can do to get earlier diagnosis and better understanding throughout general practice. Fibromyalgia sufferers experience many different kinds of symptoms. Often there is a heightened sensitivity to pain and extreme muscle stiffness. They often struggle to sleep, which exacerbates their muscular difficulties, and experience extreme fatigue. Sufferers also experience cognitive difficulties—not just headaches but problems with mental processes, known as fibro-fog, and an inability to process things as they did previously. As if those things were not enough, fibromyalgia sufferers can be struck down with irritable bowel syndrome too.”
“I absolutely agree. My hon. Friend has given a powerful example. Meeting someone with fibromyalgia—this is even more true of those who live with a sufferer—we get to understand what it is like to walk a mile in their shoes. One reason why we asked the DWP to respond to the debate is that, on the face of it, sufferers do not appear to be very ill, but when we hear testimony such as that of my hon. Friend’s constituent we may understand what it is really like.”
“I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. I think that there are many hon. Members here for the debate, on such an important day in Parliament when there are many alternative demands on our time, because we have had a powerful experience of what our constituents go through.”
“I agree, and I think that that hints at a wider problem in the benefits system assessment regime, which finds it difficult to deal with fluctuating conditions, whether mental health conditions or muscular problems along the lines of fibromyalgia, that are better on some days, or manageable with a huge amount of medication, so that people can get out of the house and may appear better than usual on the assessment day.”
“Many fibromyalgia sufferers have taken pills to help to manage the pain and support them through an ESA assessment, only to discover that the assessment outcome bears little relationship to their daily experience of living with fibromyalgia. I have had constituents speak to me about the fact that the tablets they took to enable them to get in a taxi to travel to their assessment and get through that assessment for an hour meant that, when they got home, they were in bed for days afterwards. I think they thought to themselves, “If only the assessor could see me now, half an hour or an hour after the assessment, they would see why I’m unable to work. I’ve been able to get myself through that assessment, trying to comply with the system, but to my own disadvantage.””
“Often employers are baffled as to why on some days an apparently healthy member of staff is the life and soul of the party, but on others cannot turn up for work because they are crippled by their condition. By the same token, those employees often feel tremendous guilt that a condition that decimates their ability to contribute keeps striking them down. That often leads them to conclude that they must go into work even though they are in extreme pain, frequently making themselves even more ill in the process. It truly is a vicious circle. Fibromyalgia sufferers are also misunderstood, as we have already heard, by those who assess them for benefits such as PIP and employment and support allowance, as their conditions are variable and can often be managed in the very short term.”
“I entirely agree. The impact on the rest of the family includes caring responsibilities that fall on them, restricting their ability to develop their earning potential. The consequence is that the entire family of a fibromyalgia sufferer will suffer too. It is a powerful point. Estimates suggest that as many as one in 20 people suffer from fibromyalgia. Since I secured the debate I have been contacted by many MPs—there have been many interventions in the debate—and by constituents and other members of the public. People say that at last someone is talking about the condition, which they or their partner have suffered with for so long, feeling that no one understood. The feeling of being misunderstood is familiar to many fibromyalgia sufferers.”
“That is something that is known much more widely in our benefits system, but fibromyalgia sufferers are very familiar with it.”
“That point is spot on, and made from the powerful perspective of someone who knows what it is like to live with someone experiencing fibromyalgia. I will come on in a moment to some of the other things that are believed to be triggers for fibromyalgia, but the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We all know—it is one of our worries about the assessment regime within benefits—the stress of that process: the stress of going through the assessment, of believing that benefits will be taken away or of wondering how they will feel the next day. It is an incredibly unhelpful situation where people’s income is tied to their being ill, so they wake up almost hoping to be ill to justify the income, while simultaneously wishing they were better because they want to be able to contribute.”
“I am very happy to take interventions, but I also do not want to cut into other people’s time, so I will crack on a little bit. Obviously, if there are other pressing issues, hon. Members are free to raise them. It is hardly surprising that so many employers and assessment staff misunderstand fibromyalgia when, as has been reflected on already, it is so often misdiagnosed by the medical profession. Most fibromyalgia sufferers will live with the condition for over a year before it is diagnosed, and it is often the diagnosis of last resort, which means that sufferers will often have gone through many painful months of ruling out various other explanations and taking other kinds of drugs not relevant to their circumstances before the true cause of their pain is articulated.”
“I pay tribute to the voluntary group that my hon. Friend speaks of. We all recognise the incredibly important role that voluntary groups of that sort play, and it is true that, when someone has a condition that is so misunderstood, speaking to other people who have experienced it and to families supporting people who have experienced it is important. I think we are also all conscious that, in an era where local government funding has been cut, often charitable and voluntary groups are the ones seeing their funding cut. Those groups often do not require a lot of funding, but a small amount of core funding enables them to function. That is something that many of us are concerned about. I am conscious that there are a number of people who have put in to speak.”
“With over 70,000 diagnosed patients having made claims for PIP, it is clear that this is a widespread problem, but that number is estimated to understate the number of fibromyalgia sufferers by at least 90%.”
“There are many factors thought to contribute to the condition, including abnormal processing of pain due to chemical changes in the nervous system or imbalances in chemicals in the brain such as serotonin, dopamine and noradrenaline. The condition often appears to run in families, suggesting that there is a genetic predisposition to it and, as we have just heard from the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards), stressful events can be a trigger. Many people who are concerned that general practice training, which by its very nature is general, is inadequate on fibromyalgia and that that is a cause of the delays in diagnosis. The petition also calls for greater research into fibromyalgia.”
“I do. My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that I will be hot-footing it from this debate to health questions, where I have tabled a question about diagnosis of fibromyalgia in general practice. Other hon. Members might wish to leap on the back of that question and make their own contributions, and the one that my hon. Friend has just made is powerful. There is variability of diagnosis, and I have met a number of different sufferers who have had different kinds of treatment and, as a result of the treatment they have had, present very differently now. That is something I have seen with my own eyes. Even with all the medical advancements that have been made, fibromyalgia is a condition without a known cause or a known cure.”
“In the Library note we received before the debate, we were told that in the past five years, funding applications for around £1.8 million worth of research were approved. In a single year—I appreciate why this is a false comparison, but it provides some context none the less—the UK spends over £400 million on cancer research. Of course, I do not for a second underestimate the value of research into cancer, but given the problems that fibromyalgia causes and how long patients will live with it, surely we should be spending more than 0.5% of the investment into cancer research on researching the grave and widespread menace that is fibromyalgia.”
“I recognise that, and I also recognise how stretched our national health service is more generally and the need for us to have that specialist help as early as possible. One thing that is becoming clear is that the delay in diagnosis allows the condition to get worse, which adds to the cost of treating it further down the line. Anything that can be done to speed up the diagnosis will have many economic benefits, as well as medical ones, down the line. While the suffering and economic cost of treating and supporting fibromyalgia sufferers is so large and the knowledge base on what causes it and how to treat it is so small, this is an area that is ripe for further research.”
“Collectively, we as a country need to do more to ensure that we not only understand but support them in their illness and in their desire to lead productive lives.”
“Once diagnosed, fibromyalgia sufferers would like the Government and the Department for Work and Pensions to recognise them as disabled under the Equality Act, ensuring that they get any support that they need to lead productive lives. Of course different patients will have different attributes and needs, but it is a chronic condition that will not get better. Ensuring that they do not have to fight to be taken seriously would be of real value. We heard previously that fibromyalgia may affect as many as 5% of the population, yet less than 0.2% receive PIP due to having it. I am delighted to set the ball rolling on this important debate and look forward to hearing the perspectives of other hon. Members. Fibromyalgia sufferers need greater certainty, greater research and greater awareness.”
“Many fibromyalgia sufferers would qualify as disabled in their own right, but each sufferer has to prove their own disability. Given that, as we have heard, the condition can take more than a year to diagnose in the first place, it is often quite a bit after that before sufferers are actually recognised as disabled. While many people manage their symptoms and go on to enjoy productive lives, the invisibility of fibromyalgia and the difficulty of diagnosis means that many patients are not recognised as disabled and are often invisible sufferers. As we have heard, that has a knock-on impact on their families, who often attempt to manage caring responsibilities alongside their responsibilities as breadwinners, trying to keep food on the table.”
“We have already had the presentation of the petition, and the fibro campaigners also held a reception in Portcullis House. Around 25 MPs came along to hear more about what life with fibromyalgia is like, and I was delighted that Adrienne Lakin and Billy Mansell were able to present at that reception and to get across to Members a little bit about the impact that it has had. The debate is another important step, and we look forward to hearing more about the Government’s strategy on recognising the effects of fibromyalgia on sufferers and what more they will do to raise awareness. The petition was also specific about recognising fibromyalgia as a disability under the Equality Act 2010, which is an important and contentious issue. Providers of public services are required to make accommodations for people with disabilities.”
“I do. While Sweden and America have very different kinds of healthcare system, the hon. Gentleman is right that they both have world-leading research capabilities. Clearly, there is a big question for future UK medical research about our leaving the European Union; a great deal of medical research is much easier to do when we have 28 countries paying into it, rather than just one. However, whether collectively with other countries or individually, we have absolutely world-class medical research capabilities in this country and we should contribute towards the global knowledge base on fibromyalgia. The hon. Gentleman makes an important point in saying that. What can we do to raise awareness of fibromyalgia? Today’s debate is the latest step towards doing just that.”
“When Members secure a debate, they always worry about whether they will fill the time, so it is great that this has been one of those debates that could have filled twice as much time. It is hard to pick out any particular contributions, but what the hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Andrea Jenkyns) said was particularly compelling and, as the Minister said, the contributions from my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) and the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) about the impact on families were also powerful. We will take the Minister up on her generous offer. Thank you. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the recognition of fibromyalgia as a disability.”
“I am grateful to the Minister for that answer. I just hot-footed it here from Westminster Hall, where an excellent debate on fibromyalgia took place this morning. We heard a huge amount of evidence about people who suffer with fibromyalgia having waited more than a year to be diagnosed and having received treatments irrelevant to their condition. Clearly, diagnosis is not working at the moment. What more can the Minister tell us about investment in research to improve diagnosis and to try to get better outcomes for fibromyalgia sufferers?”
“The right hon. Gentleman is raising an important point about the obligation of Members of Parliament as a result of the referendum, but we have also had a general election since that day. That general election could have given the Government an overwhelming majority, which would have seen Brexit move one way, but it did not; it ended up with a very tight House. As a result, we have a Prime Minister who could have sought to bring all of us along with her, but instead seems to have taken a very tribal view. What advice has the right hon. Gentleman given to the Prime Minister?”
“I am grateful that the right hon. Gentleman could not find any better alternatives. Does he accept that the deal has been painstakingly negotiated on the basis of the red lines that the Prime Minister set out right at the start, and that if we had different red lines, we could end up at a different destination?”