Dame Chi Onwurah
MP for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West · Labour · United Kingdom
“T5. While knocking on doors in Denton Burn in Newcastle on Saturday, a resident said to me that we see these terrible images of families putting children on to small boats and of floods, wars and droughts all around the world, but we never hear what Britain is doing to help people stay and flourish where they are.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Two further key issues: we learned for the first time that the digital inter-ministerial group has been replaced by an official-level bimonthly digital executive committee, which sounds like a significant downgrade, just as digital is moved from the centre of Government—the Cabinet Office—to DCMS.”
House of Commons22 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“They agree it is an important tool against vendor lock-in, but reject our recommendation that public bodies prioritise open-source tools and technology over proprietary offerings, citing the “essential commercial accountability” offered by suppliers of proprietary software. So is open source a good or a bad thing?”
House of Commons22 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There are serious data hygiene failures across the public sector. Public bodies hold public data on trust; it needs to meet the highest standards. The fourth is delivery. We need a detailed and measurable plan to ensure the success of the digital transformation agenda.”
House of Commons22 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am a tech evangelist; I believe that technology should make the world work better for people, and my Committee welcomes and supports the Government’s ambitions, but our report raised serious concerns about how achievable they are. In our report, we identified four building blocks for successful digital transformation.”
House of Commons22 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The second barrier is legacy systems. Outdated, obsolete or unsupported IT infrastructure, systems, hardware or processes pose an unacceptable level of risk. Our report found that, without a plan to address legacy systems, the Government’s digital ambitions will struggle to be achieved. The third barrier is vendor lock-in.”
House of Commons22 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
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“The Competition and Markets Authority found that cloud services in Britain are dominated by AWS at 40% to 50%, and Microsoft at 30%. Crown Hosting is meant to be our sovereign hosting capability, but it only hosts 4% of Government legacy services. Both Amazon Web Services and Oracle claim to offer a sovereign cloud—they do say to deal with the difficult part in the title! The second issue I want to look at is the hot topic of AI. There is no Brit large language model but there is the ambition to transform our public services and industry through AI. The AI opportunities action plan repeatedly references sovereign AI and sovereign compute without defining them. The major AI companies Google, Anthropic, OpenEye, Microsoft and DeepSeek are all headquartered abroad.”
House of Commons10 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The level of interest shows just what an important issue this is. I will come on to discuss some aspects of collaboration as it relates to sovereignty, but I observe that the last time our sovereignty as a mid-sized power was seriously debated was during Brexit, and the slogan “Take back control” reflected the sense that too much sovereignty had been ceded to the European Union without an honest debate with the British people. As a member of the Labour party, I know that we are stronger together and that that can require some loss of autonomy to deliver results, which actually make people more secure, but that must not be done without an honest debate. Let us look at the four specific sovereignty challenges, the first of which is critical infrastructure and cloud data dependency.”
House of Commons10 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Minister’s Department has sign-off on all significant IT procurement. Is open source a requirement of it? Finally, can science diplomacy help us to negotiate technology sovereignty? A number of Members have raised the issue of collaboration. Can we build on our human capital strengths by collaborating and working with partners who have respect for our values, take collaborative approaches, and can share with us the financial capital needed to make our sovereign objectives a reality? Are we happy to share leadership, and perhaps sovereignty, with our allies?”
House of Commons10 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“AI is often thought of as having three layers: infrastructure, data and applications. Can the Minister tell us where in the AI stack we are aiming for control, leadership, sovereignty or whatever we want to call it? Also, does he agree that weak competition in the AI and digital sectors, caused by giant incumbents, reduces our ability to lead? Open source is often cited as at least part of the solution to sovereignty. I am a huge advocate for open source, open interfaces, transparent code and standard protocols, which can reduce or minimise dependence. Despite the policy ambitions, three quarters of NHS trusts’ development teams do not use open source approaches. None of the AI models currently being deployed within the public sector is an open ecosystem; all are proprietary in nature.”
House of Commons10 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Technology sovereignty solutions that focus on technological leadership, such as in the Secretary of State’s definition, reflect the basic idea that if the UK leads on, say, protein folding then Google may be less inclined to switch off ChatGPT if we side with Denmark when the US tries to seize Greenland. Whether I agree with that approach or not, it certainly resonates with the evidence that the Committee heard from witnesses in so many domains regarding how important it is for the science and business community to understand where the Government are seeking to lead, so that resources can be focused and skills built there. Can the Minister say whether the Government plan to decide which aspects of AI, quantum, space or bioengineering we will seek to lead in?”
House of Commons10 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The US has just declared Anthropic a supply chain risk for US companies, so will Palantir break UK workflows that are using Anthropic? I am certain that President Trump would not allow British companies to control US defence datasets, so why are we allowing American ones to control ours? I could go on about civil nuclear, telecoms infrastructure, subsea cables, quantum, space and drones, but I will stop there, and finish by looking at possible solutions. Technology sovereignty was a big theme at the Munich security conference, and the US-Europe trust gap was a yawning chasm following the shock realisation that we could not always count on the US as an ally.”
House of Commons10 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In addition—this, for me, is a key point of sovereignty—Palantir’s founder and controlling stakeholder, Peter Thiel, has a political worldview which is at odds with British values. The same is true of Elon Musk. It does our constituents’ sense of agency no good to see their Government so dependent on these companies. Nearly half of adults say that they would opt out of NHS data sharing if the platform was operated by a private foreign provider. The second example is also to do with Palantir. Its recent defence contract also raised many questions. The strategic defence review emphasised AI as a core enabler of military capability. Reports suggest that Palantir serves primarily as a vehicle for integrating Anthropic’s AI models.”
House of Commons10 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That is a really quick canter through just a few of the technology sovereignty issues. I want to look at two specific examples in more detail. First, the NHS has the largest and most comprehensive longitudinal and structured patient level datasets in the world. I support the push for digital integration as we transition the NHS from analogue to digital, with interoperability and standardisation bringing faster access and better analytics, yet a growing share of NHS data flows through US companies. The federated data platform contract places core NHS data operations on Palantir’s proprietary systems. Why? There have been numerous reports of irregularities in the way the contract was awarded.”
House of Commons10 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“By adding UK companies to the entity list, the US can immediately cut them off from cloud services, software and AI tools, while the Cloud and Patriot Acts expand data access powers to compel US companies to hand over data even if held overseas—that is, in the UK. Has the Minister discussed those powers with Microsoft, AWS and Palantir? Fourthly and finally, we have the UK’s reliance on global supply chains. Critical minerals are an obvious example, but because I am a bit of a geek I want to mention the common information models that enable the things in the internet of things to talk to each other. By 2030, there will be 6 billion CIM connections globally. China controls 70% of the market, creating a huge possibility for the disruption of everything from traffic systems to energy grid operations.”
House of Commons10 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I agree with my right hon. Friend that we certainly need to work with like-minded countries. The third area is cyber-security and data governance. Some argue that we are already at war in the cyber-sphere. Last year’s strategic defence review emphasised cyber and electromagnetic domains, and established a new UK cyber and electromagnetic command to enhance that, with £1 billion in new funding for homeland air missile defence and cyber-security initiatives. Should these be British suppliers? Should they be European? Should they be exclusively NATO suppliers? On data governance, the foreign direct product rule allows the United States to restrict access to advanced computing chips and AI-related software.”
House of Commons10 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I have asked the Minister many questions; if he cannot answer them all, he can write to me. In summary, we need to understand what we can own, control or lead on ourselves, what we can access that is in the hands of allies we trust, and how we can manage the things we must get from those we do not trust. We must always remember that how we develop and deploy our human capital will be critical to our ability to achieve any kind of technological sovereignty. I urge the Minister to be honest about where we are. We do not want to sleepwalk into technological serfdom and/or some kind of techxit—a technology Brexit.”
House of Commons10 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is an important question. I am not in a position to choose our allies, but I agree in principle that we should be working with the European Union. I do not think it should be a choice between the European Union and the US, though they may make that the choice. I certainly think that we should be working with our European allies in order to form a large market for secure and ethical technology, which is in the interests of everyone. Finally, we need to monitor the future sovereignty implications of current research, so that that can influence our investment and mergers and acquisitions policy, and so that key technologies and companies are not easily allowed to go abroad. This debate has attracted a large amount of interest, so I have tried to be as brief as possible.”
House of Commons10 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank the Minister for setting out his sovereignty stack. Just as an example, is an LLM a critical input or another level in the stack—and does it need to be British?”
House of Commons10 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I welcome the Government’s decision to remove the mandatory element of digital ID, so that we can all focus on the benefits that easier access to public services should deliver for everyone. Usefulness, security and inclusivity are good principles, and I urge my constituents to take part in the consultation in any way they can. The Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, which I chair, has heard really worrying evidence of lax data practices across Government, persistent IT failures and lock-in to expensive proprietary systems. Digital ID will be built in-house, as I understand it, by the Government Digital Service in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. Can my right hon. Friend commit that it will not be built on bad data and bad data practices?”
House of Commons10 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“T6. It was a pleasure to see the Foreign Secretary at last month’s Munich security conference, where, despite warm words on all sides, the trust gap between the European Union and the United States was absolutely palpable, impacting discussions on defence, procurement, technology, sovereignty, Greenland, the middle east and so on. Could she tell me how she sees the UK’s role: should we be trying to restore trust, because we have our own trust gap, should we pick a side—the European Union versus the United States—or do we forge an independent path dependent on neither?”
House of Commons3 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There are direct flights from Newcastle to Dubai, and many Geordies in the region, including in the armed forces, so I thank the Prime Minister for the steps he is taking to support and protect them, and particularly for acting within international law. Iran is a murderous, despotic state that has frequently threatened, and does threaten, UK security, but the sight of bombs raining down across the Gulf will not make my constituents feel more secure, especially when the impact on democracy and human rights in the region—and, indeed, on the Iranian regime itself—is unclear, to put it mildly. What steps is the Prime Minister taking to help bring this conflict to an end and restore some semblance of security in the region?”
House of Commons2 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Northern industries built this nation, but the previous Government did not care about our industrial heritage, which is one reason why Newcastle’s iconic swing bridge no longer swings. On her recent visit, the Minister for Heritage encouraged us to take the steps necessary to safeguard its future, but what help can the Secretary of State provide to support the funding necessary to get the swing bridge swinging?”
House of Commons26 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank the hon. Member for that answer. I believe that Parliament can—indeed must—use AI to improve our productivity, but it must be used securely, ethically, effectively and in the public interest. A poll by Brunel University has said that 80% of the public reject the idea of AI assisting parliamentarians or replacing our judgment. What progress has been made on shaping Copilot—the only AI that we are allowed to use—to reflect Parliament’s priorities, rather than Microsoft’s? I am thinking specifically about inbox management, which I have raised and the hon. Member has mentioned.”
House of Commons26 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We need evidence to drive policy and regulation based on principles that the public can have confidence in.”
House of Commons24 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. How can I assess what is orderly for my contribution to the debate given that the substance of the motion is about process? To be frank, I do not want to speak about process; I want to speak about protections for children.”
House of Commons24 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I say that to illustrate that tech platforms have their origins in a libertarian, small/no-government tech bro bubble that has spread globally. TikTok, as a Chinese company, has a different background, but public accountability is not necessarily part of it. Unfortunately for all of us, the Conservative-Lib Dem Government of 2010 and their successors shared the view that Government should not be a part of it, which is how we arrived in 2024—20 years later—without online harms regulation, while at the same time the use of social media and life online has exploded. That is why I consider the Tory position in this debate to be a superb example of hypocrisy.”
House of Commons24 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The key online players range in age from pre-teen—TikTok was founded in 2016—to their late 20s, as Google was founded in 1998. In human terms, these platforms are just entering or leaving adolescence, and it shows. As hon. Members across the House may have heard me mention, I am an engineer—chartered, as it happens; thanks for asking—and my last job before entering this place was head of telecoms technology for Ofcom. I remember meeting people from a US platform, which shall remain nameless, around 2005. The company executive commented that they had come to the UK from silicon valley on a six-month contract to sort out Government affairs, and they could not understand why, two years later, discussions were still ongoing. Did we not realise that Government had no role in what they did?”
House of Commons24 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am grateful to the Liberal Democrats for bringing forward this debate on protecting children from online harms, although I remain uncertain as to the measures they are proposing. This debate is happening up and down the country, in homes and at school gates—indeed, wherever people gather—so it is right that we debate it here. If the Conservatives had done something during their critical 14 years of power, our children would be better protected now, but they did not, so it falls to us to take action. I am going to speak about three things: online platforms, their history and approach; the work of my Select Committee, the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, on algorithms; and the work of the Committee on digital childhood, all within the context of protecting children from online harms.”
House of Commons24 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I agree that AI chatbots are a further evolution, and I think we should learn from the lack of effective regulation under the Conservatives during that critical period in the evolution of the internet in how we approach AI. I agree with the hon. Lady that AI chatbots should be brought into the regulatory environment of the Online Safety Act.”
House of Commons24 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We spoke about AI as an evolution, and one of the main failings of the Online Safety Act is that it regulates particular services rather than establishing principles that remain true and can be part of a social consensus as technology evolves.”
House of Commons24 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As part of my Committee’s inquiry into social media and algorithms, Google, Meta, TikTok and X told us that they accepted their responsibility to be accountable to the British people through Parliament, which I thought was quite a step forward from previous utterances, and ongoing utterances, by some tech billionaires who shall remain nameless. Our inquiry found that our online safety regime should be based on principles that remain sound in the face of technological development. Social media has many important and positive contributions, including helping to democratise access to a public voice and to connect people far and wide, but it also has significant risks—and those risks can evolve with the technology.”
House of Commons24 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Some 20 years later, 13-year-olds and younger are having their lives and brains formed by almost uninhibited access to social media. In the UK, the number of social media users has gone from practically zero to four fifths of the population. I have worked with the Molly Rose Foundation, a charity established by the Russell family after their daughter Molly took her own life at the age of 14 following exposure to self-harm content online; I have spoken to the bereaved parents of children bullied to death online; and I have spoken to the Internet Watch Foundation about the horrendous images its staff see of child exploitation. The fact that the Conservatives did nothing in all those years in government is, in my view, a form of political negligence of the highest order.”
House of Commons24 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. It is for that exact reason that I support a consultation: this is part of a debate, and we all need to improve our understanding of the impacts of this technology. Parents are in a difficult position. I do not believe parents should have to be technology experts in order to give their children the best start in life, but unfortunately there is so much pressure in the online world that that seems to be the case right now, and that is why it is right that Government take action and consult on the action they take. Let us think about the evolution of these technologies. I remember that when I joined Facebook in 2005 I had to use my university email address to join—that meant I had to be over 18.”
House of Commons24 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Government accepted all our conclusions but none of our recommendations. I urge them to look again at our recommendations and to consider implementing them, or at least to respond and tell me why they are still not to be implemented. I welcome the Government’s recent actions and interventions and their readiness to intervene. As I said, the consultation is critical. I welcome the desire to promote a consensus and to take measures to ensure swift delivery of the consultation conclusions through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. The consideration of the inclusion of AI chatbots is important, as is addressing the risky features in certain models, as well as providing support for bereaved parents. The Committee looks forward to working with the Government to try to achieve their aims.”
House of Commons24 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Public safety matters; I hope it is not necessary to debate that. The second is free and safe expression, which is also very important. The third is responsibility on the part of the platforms. Right now, they have no legal responsibility for the content they amplify; they just have to follow their own processes in certain specific cases. Our fourth principle involves control, and the fifth and final principle is transparency. We made detailed recommendations on regulating the advertising-based business model so that amplification would not be incentivised in the way that was outlined by the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Bobby Dean). We also recommended a right to reset—the right of a person to remove their data from any algorithm. Our report came out not long before the Minister took up his position.”
House of Commons24 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I really thank the hon. Member for that intervention, because that is exactly one of the recommendations of the Committee’s inquiry. As he says, the advertisement-based business models of most social media companies mean that they promote addictive content regardless of authenticity. This spills out across the entire internet via the unclear, under-regulated digital advertising market, incentivising the creation of content that will perform well on social media, as we saw during the 2024 unrest following the horrendous Southport attacks. This is not just a social media problem, though. It is a systemic issue that promotes harmful content and undermines public trust. The Committee identified five key principles that we believe are crucial for building public trust. The first is public safety.”
House of Commons24 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Tech companies are not going to put them to work on protecting and keeping our children safe unless the House puts the right incentives in place. With all due respect to the Minister and the Online Safety Act, which he inherited, they are not in place now.”
House of Commons24 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There is a consensus on the need to do something, but not on what needs to be done. That is why we are seeking to provide evidence. I always say to the platform companies that the opposite of regulation is not no regulation, but bad regulation. More regulation is coming. Several US states, such as California, have brought in new regulation on big tech. The Spanish Prime Minister has called social media a “failed state where laws are ignored and crimes are tolerated”. There is also the increasingly significant issue of technology sovereignty and whether we are too dependent on foreign companies for our online environment. I call myself a tech evangelist, and I am, but I also know how much an engineer costs. The starting salary of an AI engineer—if companies can find one—is well over £100,000 a year.”
House of Commons24 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We will be hearing from major social media and technology companies in a follow-up to our algorithms and misinformation inquiry, and we will ask for their views on the proposed age limits. Finally, the work on social media age restrictions will feed into a larger inquiry on the neuroscience of digital childhood, which we will launch in the coming weeks. We want to find out how young people spending their formative years online affects their brains and what the Government should do to protect them from any negative impact. That could cover the impact of social media and other screentime on brain development, behaviour, and physical and mental health, whether positive or negative. It could also cover the physiological impact on eye development, the impact on socialisation and what actions Governments should take.”
House of Commons24 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Science, Innovation and Technology Committee will be holding a one-off session on social media age restrictions on 11 March to feed into the Government’s consultation on measures to keep children safe online and to hear from social media companies on their progress in the last year. We will also gauge the strength of the evidence for and against an age-based ban on social media, as well as any evidence relating to proposed alternatives to a ban. In doing so, we will hear from experts and representatives of those with direct experience of harms. We want to hear from both sides of the debate in the UK and will be seeking evidence from Australia on the first few months of the ban that is already in force there.”
House of Commons24 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My hon. Friend makes an important point; the insight she brings from her career in the media is critical. For many years, while the platforms were just that—platforms on which other people placed content—there was an argument that they should not be regulated and that they did not have a responsibility for the content on them, but they are at the very least active curators of that content now. Algorithms effectively form digital twins of individuals and then drive individualised content at them. That requires a responsibility. The time is right, as our Committee recommended, to ensure that platforms have responsibility for their content.”
House of Commons24 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Does my right hon. Friend share my disappointment that, in this debate on protecting children from some of the most obscene abuse, not one Reform Member is present?”
House of Commons24 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank the Minister for that response. For 100 years and more, skilled workers in the north-east have relied on high-paid energy jobs, be they in coal, gas or oil in mines, factories, ports and rigs. Labour’s clean power mission can bring new jobs to existing supply chains, but companies and workers need help to transition. Will the Minister tell me how she plans to future-proof the north-east’s energy supply chain and deliver secure, well-paid and unionised jobs?”
House of Commons10 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“One year ago, Meta, TikTok, X, and Google all confirmed to my Committee that they hold themselves accountable to the British people through Parliament, and before Easter we will revisit the findings of our social media and algorithms inquiry in an evidence session with them. I mention that because it is clear that Governments across the world are urgently seeking ways to make tech platforms more accountable. As the Secretary of State consults on children and social media, will she confirm that any eventual ban should be in addition to and not instead of more effective regulation of those powerful platforms?”
House of Commons4 February 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Secretary of State knows just how disappointing many will find this statement, particularly the WASPI women who feel so strongly the injustice that they have suffered. I appreciate that the he has set out the reasons in principle and in practice and explained how the Labour Government will support low-income pensioners, but I want to talk about the personal aspect. I suspect that the Secretary of State, like me and many other Members, started full-time work in his twenties that was not physically arduous. I think of a constituent of mine who started work aged 15—hard, physical work—and found herself required to continue working many years after she expected to have retired and as her health deteriorated. What help and support can the Secretary of State offer her?”
House of Commons29 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“T2. The three-year local government funding settlement is a welcome return to long-term planning. Newcastle city council faces a 34% rise in adult social care costs, compared with only a 15% rise in core spending power. That is taking more and more money away from the many services that my constituents depend upon. Will the Chancellor work across Government to consider changes to the adult social care funding formula and/or an increase to the recovery grant so that Newcastle city council can meet the costs of adult social care?”
House of Commons27 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I congratulate my hon. Friend on freeing so many of my constituents from the historical and, indeed, feudal injustice of the leasehold system. I urge him to ignore the clarion complaints of those freeholders who predicated their business model on the continued exploitation of working people through extortionate ground rents. The Minister is familiar with the predicament of my constituents who are unable to extend their leasehold or buy their freehold because of the actions of the St Mary Magdalene and Holy Jesus Trust. What hope can he offer them?”
House of Commons27 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I see that Tory MPs are too scared to turn up to hear how we are cleaning up their mess. As a Newcastle MP, as an engineer and as a cold water swimmer—the North sea is very cold—I welcome the Government’s new vision for water, which will deliver the water my constituents deserve at a price they can afford. I am, quite frankly, tired of the continual chorus that whatever the failure, whatever the fault, the costs must be passed on to the consumer. In a competitive market, consumers can go elsewhere if they do not like the service they are receiving. With water, we have no choice. Will the Minister confirm that if there is a failure or a mess-up by the companies, either they, their shareholders or their management will pay for it, not my constituents?”
House of Commons21 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“May I ask her to review her Department’s refusal to accept the recommendations of my Committee’s inquiry into social media and algorithms, particularly with regard to platform responsibility, user control, digital advertising and social media business models?”
House of Commons20 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I welcome the consultation. We know that technology has changed childhood, we believe that it has changed child socialisation and we think that it may have changed brain development, perhaps even motor neurone skills, but there is little concrete evidence beyond the individual terrible stories and, of course, the profits of the big tech platforms. That is why my Committee will soon be launching a digital childhood inquiry to examine these issues, hopefully in time to respond to the consultation. May I, however, urge the Secretary of State not to assume that a ban will be the answer to the challenges that technology poses? We need to make tech work for all of us now.”
House of Commons20 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The brutal regime in Iran has destroyed so many lives, and as a woman and a feminist I want to pay particular tribute to the brave women of Iran fighting for their freedom against such odds. They were promised support by President Trump. Can the Minister say what form that support may take, and what involvement the UK may or may not have, and whether it is dependent on executions taking place? On the technical front, will he write to me in my role as Chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee explaining exactly how the Iranian regime was able to turn off access to the internet? Do they have some switch somewhere? With our unique technical expertise, what is the UK doing to address that?”
House of Commons19 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Knocking on doors in Denton, Westerhope, Arthur’s Hill and Wingrove, I found that, for the first time in my 15 years as an MP, the No. 1 issue was global insecurity. President Trump has succeeded in uniting the British people against his unwarranted attack on a close ally. My right hon. Friend is right to be calm and diplomatic, but will she reassure us that given the current President’s volatility, she and her Government will ensure that our sovereignty is not dependent on US capability, and specifically that our technology procurement —both civil and defence—will reflect this?”
House of Commons19 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this really important debate, and on his excellent and inspirational speech. The Centre for Life in Newcastle celebrated its 25th birthday last year. I have been inspired by its openness and how it supports young people from all backgrounds and different areas of the north-east to engage with life sciences. As an engineer from an impoverished background, knowing that the Centre for Life in Newcastle is opening up the huge universe of science and scientific curiosity is so reassuring.”
House of Commons14 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank my hon. Friend for the passionate points that he is making. I want to support him by pointing out that the answer to a parliamentary question of mine in October stated that the Minister for Science, Lord Vallance, was following up “with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to explore a coordinated approach to supporting these centres.” Just before Christmas, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology wrote to me to say that “officials from across departments with an interest in SDCs are meeting to discuss options for sustainable support.” Does my hon. Friend agree that it is time we had an answer to the question of where sustainable support—which, as he said, DSIT should lead—would come from?”
House of Commons14 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“and do more to explicitly plug the gaps in the Act, particularly regarding generative AI, as well as tackling the social media business models that incentivise the content that we are talking about?”
House of Commons12 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗