Esther McVey
MP for Tatton · Conservative · United Kingdom
“Why did they believe then that people under 18 could not make the decision to marry, but now believe that they can make the decision to vote? The same applies to property ownership and mortgages.”
“Yes, that is right. Things are changing continually. The Bill goes against the age of adulthood, with lawmakers raising the minimum age for many different things. As a country we collectively agree that the age of 18 is adulthood, and with that come rights and responsibilities, and things we can and cannot do.”
“If those in Scotland want to carry on with this vote rigging, they are fully entitled to do so, and I am sure that they will conjure up many other ways in which to do it.”
“I will carry on for a second. We are not saying that 16-year-olds would be sent off to combat, nor would we be saying that the inconsistencies about the age of marriage carry on. In England and Wales, the legal age for marriage and civil partnerships is 18. Arranging a marriage for anyone under 18 is illegal.”
“Friend the Member for Mid Leicestershire, which would tie the age at which people can buy alcohol to the age at which they are eligible to vote. The question is simple: why have the Government decided that in respect of voting the age of 16 is adulthood, while in many other areas it does not meet the threshold?”
“I rise to speak to amendments 49 to 55 and amendments 56 to 62 to clause 1, which are in my name, and in support of amendments 6 to 12 to clause 1 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford). Through the Bill, the Government have taken inconsistency to a new level.”
The complete record
Every one of 605 lines we hold for Esther McVey, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 12 of 13.
“Q8. The Prime Minister has made fixing illegal immigration across the channel one of his key top priorities. He has also said that legislation will be required to stop it, and I completely agree. So can he tell us when we can expect to see that legislation come forward—because time is of the essence—and can he explain why sorting out this issue did not feature in the Home Office permanent secretary’s stated top three priorities for his Department?”
“Symptoms of inattention have to have been present for at least six months and have to be inappropriate to the person’s development level—for example, often failing to pay close attention to detail; carelessness with homework, work or other activities; having trouble sustaining attention during tasks or play; often seeming not to listen when spoken to directly; often not following through on instructions; failing to finish chores or homework; and having trouble organising tasks and activities.”
“It is defined as “an ongoing pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity that interferes with functioning or development.” In 2000, three sub-types of ADHD were recognised and are now used by healthcare professionals: combined type ADHD; predominantly inattentive type ADHD; and predominantly hyperactive-impulsive type ADHD. Six or more symptoms of inattention need to be proved for children up to the age of 16, and five or more for adolescents aged 17 or over and adults.”
“To be honest with you, I have never felt better.” Tanya’s diagnosis was very late and that is why she made it her mission, along with others, to ensure that ADHD is diagnosed much earlier in life, in early years of education. ADHD was first mentioned in 1902, when a British paediatrician, Sir George Frederic Still, found that some children were affected but that they could not control their behaviour in the way that a typical child could. He also noted that it was not because they were not intelligent; it was because they could not control themselves. Over the past century, the understanding of ADHD has increased, as have diagnosis and treatments.”
“You’re living with this inner restlessness, which is exhausting and relentless.” So much was that the case that, even before Tanya was 15 years of age, she had tried to take her own life three times. From the age of 18, Tanya was given antidepressants for depression and anxiety. Tanya saw more than 20 doctors, who just kept changing her prescription, but the medication never worked. It was not until she eventually went to see a private psychiatrist specialising in anxiety that she was diagnosed with ADHD. Once Tanya got her diagnosis, she said, “Finally, I know what’s wrong with me. After years of struggling and on loads of different medications, it now all just makes sense.”
“She has been open about the amount of pain ADHD has caused her, her difficulty getting the condition diagnosed and, in particular, the added difficulty for girls and women in being diagnosed. She allowed herself to be filmed last year, and shared that in an ITV documentary, “Me and ADHD”. Today, Tanya is a very accomplished woman. She runs four businesses, a charity and a household, as well as being a mum and a wife. But it took her almost 40 years to understand her anxiety, depression and impulsivity. In fact, it took her to almost six weeks before her 40th birthday to get diagnosed. Tanya described her ADHD as like having “17 TVs on in your head. You can’t focus and there’s lots of noise in your head. You feel like you’re being smothered, overwhelmed, like you’re drowning in life.”
“Instead of having a life in which they feel lost and alone, they can find and understand themselves, and gain a feeling of belonging and control. It is believed that one in 20 adults in the UK has ADHD, according to ADHD Foundation, but only 120,000 have had a formal diagnosis. The charity says that that is because of a combination of poor understanding of the condition, stigma and delays in diagnosis. Diagnosis is essential, especially when there is an identifiable link between ADHD and suicide: one in 10 boys and one in four girls who have ADHD attempt to take their own life. Early diagnosis can prevent those tragedies and offer an answer to those suffering from the condition. Today’s debate has come about because of the tenacity of a constituent of mine, Tanya Bardsley.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered attention deficit hyperactivity disorder diagnosis waiting times. It is pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Nokes, and an honour to open this debate to recognise the importance of early diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and to draw attention to the current severe delay in the diagnosis of it. An early diagnosis of ADHD will have a significant impact on an individual’s life: on their development, self-confidence and self-awareness, and their physical and mental wellbeing. For someone with ADHD, a diagnosis can help them understand why they are struggling with life. It allows them to understand their impulsivity, hyperactivity, inattention and sensitivity to the simplest distractions, even to everyday noises.”
“I thank the Minister for her time today and ADHD UK for all its hard work in getting this data about Cheshire to me and, of course, to Tanya Bardsley.”
“In the last three years, 84% of girls put forward for assessment in one part of Cheshire were removed following a local health authority assessment, despite girls being known to be under-diagnosed and despite the higher suicide risks for young girls. To obtain that information, ADHD UK had to submit a freedom of information request to each integrated care board. That is how we found out. The problem is significant, it is sizeable and it needs to be sorted out, so these are my questions for the Minister. First, will she meet me and my constituent Tanya Bardsley to discuss ADHD and what steps the Government can take to ensure earlier diagnosis? Secondly, will the Government start collecting national data, as is the case for autism, and introduce an ADHD wait list dashboard, as there also is for autism?”
“Tanya was diagnosed when she went private, a luxury that most of my constituents cannot afford. The process usually involves a 60 to 90-minute consultation with a psychiatrist. There is not a scan or diagnostic test as such; people need to meet somebody who can look at their condition. However, even if a referral is made by a professional, people risk being screened out. Thanks to ADHD UK, I have some local data on the screening out of referrals from the Cheshire area. The reason could be that, because screening is not part of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines, people are blocked from receiving an assessment. However, blocking people from an assessment, despite a qualified referral, does not make sense. As we know, it will stop people getting the care they need.”
“Boys display a sort of naughtiness—a disruptive way of acting, being the class joker or trying to disrupt others. That gets them noticed. However, the symptoms for women and girls do not involve being naughty; rather, they seem more as though they are “away with the fairies” or distracted. Because their behaviour is non-disruptive, they do not get the attention they deserve and therefore remain untreated. ADHD impacts the lives of those living with it very differently, and they all cope with it differently. However, its impact is significant. Adults with ADHD are five times more likely to try to take their own lives than those without it. That is a tragedy in and of itself, and why a diagnosis needs to be made. Given the impact of ADHD on people’s lives, Tanya and many others are calling for early diagnosis.”
“I note that in the papers only this week, concerns were expressed by some in the scientific and medical profession about overdiagnosis, as parents and individuals go online to self-diagnose, but I would say that self-diagnosis possibly came about because people have not been able to see a GP or a specialist and they have gone online. Yes, there could be overdiagnosis, but the bigger concerns are underdiagnosis of those who need a diagnosis, and securing rapid access to a professional to establish what they have and what treatment they need. I note, too, that the journey for girls and the outward signs for them are very different from those for boys. As such, ADHD tends to be picked up in boys and not so much in girls. The symptoms for boys are more well known.”
“Quite strict conditions must be met, and we know what the symptoms are. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, there needs to be an early diagnosis. Indeed, the stipulation is that the symptoms have to have been present before the age of 12, so we need that early diagnosis. To enable early diagnosis for a child, there needs to be a clear pathway for referrals from the school or GP to the specialist, but that is not working swiftly enough, although it is essential. The number of people in the UK affected by ADHD is 2.6 million, according to the ADHD UK website. Of those, 708,000 are children and 1.9 million are adults. More than 117,000 individuals receive a prescription for ADHD medicine.”
“That means a person fidgets, taps hands or feet, squirms on a seat, often leaves a seat in situations in which remaining on the seat would have been expected, often runs or climbs in situations where that is not appropriate, is often unable to play or take part in leisure activities quietly, is often “on the go” and “driven by a motor”, and talks excessively. In addition, the following conditions must be met: several inattention or hyperactive-impulse systems were present before the age of 12; several symptoms are present in two or more settings, whether that be the home, school or work, with friends or relatives, or during other activities; there is clear evidence that the symptoms interfere with, or reduce the quality of, social, school or work functioning; and the symptoms are not better explained by a different mental disorder.”
“I do indeed, and I believe the Minister will respond positively. As well as early diagnosis in respect of inattention, which the hon. Gentleman and I are saying is important, hyperactivity and impulsivity also need to be seen and recognised. The criterion is six or more symptoms of hyperactivity or impulsivity for children up to the age of 16, and five or more for adolescents aged 17 or over and adults. Those symptoms have to have been present for at least six months to the extent that they are causing disruption and are inappropriate to the person’s development level.”
“The Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme is not working as intended in the smaller rural villages of Tatton. The community groups have found that the scope of the local authority contract includes commercially viable areas, but excludes the remote areas. I thank the Minister for being very helpful, but, ironically, the more work that we did, the more we exposed the weaknesses. Will she meet me, representatives of Lower Peover and Building Digital UK to solve the issue?”
“I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called to speak. We will go to the Front Benchers no later than 10.33 am, mindful of the fact that Mick Whitley will need time to wind up the debate.”
“I will call Dr Lisa Cameron to move the motion and then call the Minister to respond. As is the convention in 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up,.”
“The chief medical officer recently warned that non-covid excess deaths are being driven in part by patients not getting statins or blood pressure medicines during the pandemic. However, when looking at the data on statins on OpenPrescribing.net, which is based on monthly NHS prescribing, there appears not to be a drop, so where is the evidence? If there is none, what is causing these excess deaths? Will the Minister commit to an urgent and thorough investigation on the matter?”
“While understanding the concerns of Opposition Members, can I ask the Minister, when making changes to the benefits system, always to be mindful of ensuring that work pays, given the need to get more people back into the workforce?”
“During the lockdowns, conditionality was, understandably, relaxed, but I fear that it has not returned to its pre-covid levels. Can the Secretary of State assure me that those pre-covid levels of conditionality, which are so vital to getting people back into work, will return as a matter of urgency?”
“There are a great number of Members wanting to speak in this debate, so I will have to impose a maximum limit on speeches of three and a half minutes, to allow everybody to get in. I will remind people of the times. I will call the Front Benchers just before 3.40 pm, to allow Richard Graham to wind up at about 3.58 pm. I also want to mention that there could be a vote; if so, I will suspend the sitting for that.”
“I will call Mr John Baron to move the motion and then call the Minister. There will not be an opportunity for John Baron to wind up, because it is just for the Minister to respond.”
“Order. We look forward to future debates on other junctions on the M1, but the question today is that this House has considered the potential merits of improvements to junction 28 of the M1. We will go to the Front-Bench speakers at 5.25 pm, with the winding-up speech at 5.40 pm. For now, I call Nigel Mills.”
“The question is, is there no end to Mark Fletcher’s buttering up? Question put and agreed to. Resolved , That this House has considered the potential merits of improvements to junction 28 of the M1.”
“The hon. Lady is giving a very powerful speech. As she recognised, the number of Members here shows that she has brought forward such an important issue. Does she agree that the very least we can do when people have given the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty is to recognise them with an award?”
“So here is an idea to make our railway system reliable, regular and well-maintained: let us stop wasting those billions of pounds that are going into HS2 and get a proper train system working right across the country, locally and nationally, for all of the citizens of this country.”
“Sadly for its customers, Avanti West Coast had the fewest trains on time, at just 38.8%, making it the least punctual operator in the country. As for the part that runs through my patch, Avanti says that 87% of its trains from 16 October 2022 to 12 November 2022 were 15 minutes or more late. That is a huge amount that are unreliable. So I guess there are a couple of messages for the Minister. Avanti has to get its house in order or lose its contract to somebody who can run a better rail service. We need to get our rail system back up and running. It has been knocked sideways during the lockdown and it is being battered now by industrial action, but we do not want any more excuses. We need to get our rail system back on track.”
“I often get to the station and find that even the guards do not know whether a train is coming or not. Then, I jump on the train to Crewe and perhaps on another one to Stafford and then I go on to London. Instead of a one hour 50 minute journey, it can take four and a half hours or even six hours, each way. Let us look at the other side of the coin. Only last week, I had an insufferable journey to Crewe, only to find that a direct train from London had been put on at the last minute, which nobody knew about. So an empty train pulled into Crewe to give me the last leg of my journey to Wilmslow. We call these ghost trains; they are empty trains that travel up the line, pretending to get the numbers right, which they are not because nobody is on them.”
“It said that it had acted in the wake of industrial action “to ensure a reliable service is delivered, so customers can travel with greater certainty.” I am still waiting for that greater certainty, as are my constituents. Life is difficult enough, but not to be able to get to work, to school, or to see families is unacceptable, especially at the prices that we pay to travel by train. Looking at the cancellation figures between 4 November 2021 to 12 November 2022, it appears that the average cancelled by Avanti was 5.5%, and those cancelled by other causes 6.8%—so, about 12% altogether. However, that is not the full story, because 33% of our trains have already been cancelled and so what we are saying is that 45% of trains have been cancelled.”
“It is as if the unions want to push these private train operating companies over the edge to make them fail. The RMT’s latest act of sabotage—48-hour strikes between 13 December and 7 January, wiping £1.2 billion off the UK’s economy over Christmas—is hurting travellers, businesses and local communities. I am not excusing the management of these railway companies—certainly not—but between them and the unions, they will force people to travel by other means. It will be anything other than the trains. The people who will suffer the most will be those who work on the railways. Since August 2022, Avanti has cut the number of trains between London, Euston and Manchester Piccadilly from one every 20 minutes to one an hour “until further notice”.”
“It is an unreliable system that has gone backwards to such an extent that it is probably as bad as British Rail used to be when it was the butt of every comedian’s joke. Trains might or might not arrive. There are delays, staff shortages, staff late for work, or just random cancellations. I have been a lover of rail travel ever since I was young when I travelled everywhere on trains with my granddad, who started work on the railways at Lime Street station in Liverpool, aged 12, as a bag carrier, and stayed there until he retired. I am a railway lover and I have been brought up on trains, so to see the rail industry in such a mess makes me want to weep. It is being made worse, without doubt, by industrial action and the excessive strike action.”
“A few weeks ago, Bee Rowland, a rail traveller, caused a Twitter storm by posting a picture of her child whom she had stuffed in a luggage rack. I sympathised with her, because I had done exactly the same thing, only it was not a child that I had stuffed in the luggage rack—it was me, for the full two-hour journey. That was because people from several trains had had to cram into one train. Most people were standing, but, fortunately—I say fortunately, but it was ironically—I managed to squeeze into the travel rack and sat there for the full journey. Bee Rowland’s experience was on Grand Central, mine on Avanti. The travelling public are being taken for fools. We no longer have a rail service; it is a rail sufferance.”
“The Department for Transport describes the west coast main line as “one of our most important rail corridors.” It links four of Britain’s biggest conurbations and serves all rail markets—inter-city, commuter, regional and freight—and there are 11 train operating companies using the line. However, I wish to keep my comments to the Manchester to London route and to Avanti. The train service between Wilmslow and London, on that Manchester to London line, used to be hourly, direct and took one hour and 50 minutes. Since the pandemic, the rise in industrial action and the start of Avanti operating the line, the service has gone shockingly downhill, ending now in the substandard service that we have today.”
“I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie) on securing this important debate today. Those of us who travel on this line sympathise with all the tales we have heard today and everything that she has said, because we are all suffering the same terrible journeys. As someone who has travelled pretty much every week from Wilmslow in my constituency to London since 2017, when I became the MP for the area, I have a wide knowledge of the service on which to draw and plenty of first-hand experience of the journey. The west coast main line is one of the major routes in Great Britain, stretching 399 miles from London to Glasgow and Edinburgh via the west midlands and the north-west of England.”
“Q12. The train service between Wilmslow in my constituency and London was always hourly, direct and took one hour and 50 minutes. Now, we would be very lucky if we got a direct train and the journey time is often double that. And that is not restricted to strike days; it is day in, day out on Avanti trains. Will the Prime Minister tell my constituents what the Government are going to do to sort this out and get the west coast service back to what it used to be, because the service at the moment is completely unacceptable?”
“As the country and world opened up after lockdown, there were sharp increases in the cost of essential goods and energy as the world emerged unprepared for such rapid demand, putting prices up, from the fuel pumps to the goods on supermarket shelves.”
“Yet their results in terms of both cases and deaths were a lot better than ours. We are paying the price of panic, populism and poorly thought-out knee-jerk decision-making. At least the current Prime Minister can point to his warnings as chancellor that lockdowns were unaffordable if extended over any significant period of time. Boris Johnson’s indifference to mere money ensured that the cost was not even considered. All that can be said in his favour is that, if the Labour Party had had its way, the lockdowns would have been even longer and more costly.” Let us look at the inflationary pressures we are now suffering from.”
“In 2020-21, Government had income of £794 billion in tax receipts and other revenues, which is £79 billion less than forecast, and spent more than £1,107 billion. The budget deficit was £312 billion, or 15% of GDP, which is a peacetime record. The financial cost for every man, woman and child in this country has been estimated at £5,500. Former Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption, writing in The Daily Telegraph on 18 November, said: “Compare the modest financial hit experienced by Sweden, the only European country to see through the hype by which other governments sought to justify their measures. Sweden operated a largely voluntary system and refused to lock down. Pandemic-related measures cost 60 billion kronor in 2020 and 2021, according to government figures. This works about at about £460 a head, less than a tenth of the UK figure.”
“During the first lockdown, UK GDP was 26% lower in April than only two months earlier in February. More than 8 million workers were furloughed during April and May 2020, peaking at 8.9 million—roughly a third of all employees—in May 2020. Overall, 11.7 million jobs were furloughed. In response, the Bank of England cut interest rates to 0.1% and more than doubled its quantitative easing programme by £450 billion, taking the total value of assets it owned to a peak of £895 billion by December 2021. The total amount of public money calculated to have been spent on tackling the pandemic ranges from £376 billion by the National Audit Office in June 2022 to £407 billion by the International Monetary Fund in September 2021.”
“It is estimated that school closures and lockdowns will lead to £40,000 being lost from lifetime earnings for each individual. A report by UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Bank finds that students now risk “losing $17 trillion in lifetime earnings, or the equivalent of 14 percent of today’s global GDP, as a result of COVID-19 pandemic-related school closures” and economic shocks. Let us look back at some of the economic shocks of lockdown. The House of Commons Library notes explain that “The magnitude of the recession caused by the pandemic is unprecedented in modern times.” GDP declined by 11% in 2020, the steepest drop since consistent records began in 1948 and, based on less precise estimates of GDP going back further, the contraction in 2020 was the largest since 1709.”
“Debates are now occurring on the unintended consequences of lockdown, from the mental health issues suffered by our children, to increased deaths of dementia patients, and the lack of visiting rights in care centres and hospitals still happening, even now. A big thank you has to go to the academics and scientists who initially raised concerns in those areas, including Professor Townsend, Professor Carl Heneghan and Professor Robert Dingwall, who asked those all-important questions. Today, however, our focus is on the economic consequences of lockdown: rising financial hardship; increased poverty levels in the UK; the hundreds of thousands of people since lockdown now classed as economically inactive; the impact on them, their families and local communities; and the economic impact on the next generation’s wealth and earning capacity.”
“My hon. Friend and near neighbour raises an important point. This House is about debate and questioning things, and I am afraid that that did not happen. As he rightly says, we should ensure that Parliament never closes down again, as it did under the pandemic. Even back then, the figures from the Office for National Statistics pointed out that lockdowns and anti-covid measures would lead to the deaths of 200,000 in the medium to long term, due to missed treatments, under-diagnosis, loss of jobs and tax revenue, with disadvantaged people suffering the most. Bristol University in 2020 put that figure much higher, at 560,000 deaths.”
“I welcome my hon. Friend to this debate today. He might be one of those who voted for continuous lockdowns, but it is important that we are all together in a sense of open debate and conversation. The point he raised is correct. If subsequently, after the Government had intervened to close things down, there were effects on otherwise viable businesses, the Government had to step in and support them. Indeed, the Government have given unprecedented support, but I wish we could have had discussions beforehand so that when people voted for lockdown, they knew what would befall them. At the time, too many colleagues did not want to do that.”
“I was quoting Lord Sumption, the former Supreme Court judge, who was talking about the way governments were led at that time—those were his words. What we need to take from them is the question of why those decisions were not questioned or challenged by Members of Parliament. Why were those decisions not challenged? If we look at the record of the House, the decision appears popular because MPs voted for it pretty much unanimously, when there should have been greater debate.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point. That is why I quoted Neil Ferguson at the start of the debate, who said that he never thought a western democracy would lock down, and why I posed the question about whether a campaign of fear was then brought forward, creating an atmosphere in which no one could dissent or ask questions. Going back to the question raised by the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson), there appeared to be a giant consensus across all political parties, leading to that word “popular” at the time.”
“However, the Federation of Small Businesses still warned of a ticking time-bomb, with 500,000 owners of small businesses—the backbone of our economy—at risk of going bust within weeks.”
“The Government have spent in the region of £400 billion on the covid-19 response, which has taken the national debt to over £2.1 trillion. To make matters worse, we know vast sums of money were wasted. For example, seven Nightingale hospitals were built in England, which was an impressive achievement completed in record time. However, most of them were hardly used in the way intended and they cost more than £530 million. The Yorkshire Nightingale closed before ever seeing a patient. Elsewhere, an eye-watering £673 million was spent on unusable personal protective equipment items. The £70 billion spent on furlough and £84 billion on business support schemes softened the blow for a while.”
“My hon. Friend makes the point eloquently; I hope he will make a speech later, fleshing out his comments. By February 2022, inflation had already surged, with the consumer price index hitting 6.2% in February, after which, without doubt, the war in Ukraine added to the problem. As it stands today, we have unprecedented inflation and costs of living. None of that should come as a surprise. In fact, the Imperial College report of March 2020 that recommended lockdowns specifically said that the “economic effects of the measures which are needed to achieve this policy goal will be profound.” While many people talk about the cost of covid, it is actually the cost of lockdown and lockdown rules that need to be questioned.”