Cat Smith
MP for Lancaster and Wyre · Labour · United Kingdom
“The motions reflect the nature of us being a modern and welcoming workplace where MPs’ participation is supported, regardless of our health status—or, perhaps, parental leave—as such things, which can happen to any one of us, should not bar us from participating and representing our constituents’ views in this place.”
“On behalf of the Procedure Committee, I thank the Leader of the House for bringing forward these motions. I never had any doubt that he would be a radical and reforming Leader of the House, and the motions are evidence of that radical reforming nature that he has always had in him, which I am pleased to see.”
“Does the Leader of the House foresee us having a thorough and timely review of these schemes in time to assess whether they could be made permanent and whether reforms may need to be made to them at that stage? I welcome the motions and hope that the House will choose to support them.”
“I, too, am very much aware of this issue. In my constituency I have a property called Williamson Court, which is run by McCarthy & Stone, and everything that colleagues are saying sounds very familiar. Does the right hon.”
“Survivors of male violence often take a long time to rebuild their lives. I am supporting a constituent at the moment whose perpetrator is about to be released from prison but who is receiving no support from Lancaster city council, her housing provider, to enable her to relocate to another area so that the perpetrator is not released int…”
“The cause was never found—I will leave that hanging, and I pay tribute to them. There are a great many park home sites that are well run, and probably a lot of park home owners are listening to this and thinking, “Actually, I live somewhere that is pretty good.” But unfortunately, the rogue operators are now giving the entire industry a b…”
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“The Commission has continued to do research to identify key groups who are likely to need additional support to navigate the ID requirements, including the over-85s. Ahead of the May elections, the Commission worked with civil society organisations and local authorities to produce tailored resources to reach each group. However, the matter that the hon. Lady raised is for Government policymaking rather than the Commission, which supports electoral administrators.”
“On the comments to which the hon. Lady refers, the introduction of the voter ID requirement was debated and passed by Parliament. Policy decisions are rightly a matter for Parliament and not the Electoral Commission. It is for the Government to comment on the intentions of their policy.”
“The Electoral Commission will be publishing its responses and findings from the roll-out of voter ID at local elections in England that took place in May. A report on the ID aspect will be published very shortly and a full protocol report will be published in September, which will look at the evidence that has been found in information provided by returning officers across England.”
“The Committee has not had recent discussions with the Government or the commission on that subject. It is for the Government to comment on the equality impact assessments that they produce to accompany their legislation.”
“The Electoral Commission will shortly be publishing its report on the local government elections in May. It will include data collected by returning officers, but also public polling to catch the people who did not get as far as the polling station. The issue of equality impact assessments is a matter for the Government, and I would encourage the hon. Lady to raise it during the upcoming questions to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.”
“I thank the Minister for meeting my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), and me. Unfortunately, the hon. Gentleman cannot be here today, but he shares my concerns about the funding for Brian’s House Children’s Hospice. Can the Minister reassure him and me that this issue is on her radar and that she is doing all she can to ensure that no children’s hospice loses out on funding because of changes to formulas?”
“The Minister will also be aware of Brian House Children’s Hospice, which is part of the Trinity service. For many years, it has served families on the Fylde coast who have the joy, but also the challenges, of raising and loving a child with a life-limiting diagnosis. I want to press the Minister on the issue of children’s hospices. I have visited the hospice on many occasions and have seen the amazing work to support so many of my constituents living in the most unimaginable circumstances, yet Brian House has seen a huge challenge to its funding, with its grant cut by £50,000. It is already one of the children’s hospices with the least Government and health authority funding in the country: only 14% of its expected £1.6 million annual operating costs. A further loss of £185,000 next year is unimaginable.”
“St John’s Hospice in Lancaster costs more than £5.1 million a year to run, and only about a third of that is provided by Government funding. That is why I decided two months ago that I would run the 26.2-mile London marathon to try to plug that gap, but I only managed to raise £1,500. Hospice funding has never been a sustainable model. The crisis, rising energy costs and inflation are creating a perfect storm. The cost of living crisis is putting pressure on charitable donations. Hospices cannot simply reduce their energy use, and they need to remain competitive with NHS pay to recruit and retain staff. Trinity Hospice in Blackpool’s hospice-at-home service directly supported 70% of all those who died at home on the Fylde coast last year.”
“I congratulate the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Paul Holmes) on securing this debate and on volunteering to join the community of those of us who do daft things to fundraise for our local hospices. Lancashire and South Cumbria hospices have been informed that our ICB has offered them a 0% uplift on their 2022-23 funding. Following on from last year’s 1.7% uplift, that results in significant pressure, with the cost of living crisis and the need to retain doctors and nurses and be competitive with the NHS. People often do not realise that our hospices rely on the good will of local communities and on fundraising. On average, two thirds of adult hospice income and four fifths of children’s hospice income is raised through fundraising.”
“I hope it is in order to ask the hon. Gentleman representing the Church Commissioners whether the Church of England has done a gender pay audit of clergy, and whether there is a gender pay gap.”
“The decision to make it harder for those on postgraduate courses to bring dependants will once again mean that Britain’s universities will be looking to China for international students. At a time of growing tension and concern about Chinese foreign policy, not least on the Secretary of State’s own Benches, is she confident that this is going to end well?”
“Our higher education institutions operate in a global market, which is why universities such as Lancaster University attract students from over 100 different countries, many of whom come, study and then return. The Minister raised the issue of pressure on public services, which makes me wonder who he thinks has been in charge for the past 13 years, but my question to him is: what consultation has he had with universities such as Lancaster University about the implications for them in respect of things like the global league tables for universities?”
“Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) pointed out, parents are accessing—putting their health at risk, too.”
“Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson), that parents worried about the state of their children’s school buildings have a right to know the scale of the problem? If Conservative MPs vote today to keep parents in the dark about the condition of school buildings, that means that in Lancashire, despite 236 buildings being categorised as bad and in urgent need of repair, those parents are being let down. Their children’s future is being let down. One of the greatest privileges of being a Member of Parliament is the opportunity to visit schools and see the amazing work that our teachers do. Often, it is also an opportunity to see the state of the buildings that teachers are working in, children are learning in and, as my hon.”
“Recently, we have appealed to parents who are plumbers/electricians/carpenters to make repairs for us to save money.” That is certainly a big step up from most parent teacher associations. Many schools are not fit for the future. Teachers cannot focus on education if they are having to manage inadequate facilities. Labour’s Building Schools for the Future programme, which ramped up capital funding in the late 2000s, was scrapped by this Government in 2010. Thirteen years later, we now have an entire generation of children who have seen nothing but decline in our school buildings. Does the Minister agree that it is impossible to give children a first-class education in second-class school buildings? Does he agree with the shadow Secretary of State, my hon.”
“It is really frustrating as we are not asking for luxury items—access to toilets which are fit for purpose is a basic need!” It is not just the roofs at risk of collapse, buckets in corridors and peeling paint that are the outward display of the lack of value the Government place on our children’s education. It is, frankly, even the state of the toilets, with all the health implications of that. The Secretary of State must publish detailed school-level data from the latest condition of school buildings survey. The challenge faced by small rural schools is exacerbated. A rural primary school headteacher from a school in Wyre told me today: “We can’t afford to employ a site supervisor for our federation of two small village schools. This means that we pay massively over the odds when we need repairs doing.”
“Education is one of the most precious gifts we give our children. At the very least, parents expect it to be delivered in a safe school building, and I think most would expect to see it delivered in buildings fit for the 21st century. How can we tell our children and young people that we value their education, when we offer them education in substandard buildings? I heard from one Lancaster primary school headteacher this week who told me: “We have, and continue to, really struggle to access any funding to refurbish our toilets, which are in a very poor state.”
“For over a year now, Ministers have known that school buildings posed “a risk to life”, and it has been more than a year since the Department for Education escalated the risk of building collapse to “very likely”, yet the Government will still not tell parents, teachers or pupils where those dangerous school buildings are. That is why this motion, which I support today, seeks to answer this question: where are our school buildings that are in dangerous condition and how severe is the disrepair of those buildings? Ministers know that buildings are at risk of collapse, yet they are still hiding the reality of this Conservative-made crisis from the public they supposedly serve. After the upheaval of the pandemic, crumbling school buildings neglected by the Conservatives could see even more disruption to our children’s learning and education.”
“The Royal Lancaster Infirmary is a 130-year-old crumbling hospital. It was meant to be one of the Government’s 40 new hospitals. However, the funding announcement has been delayed four times already. Can the Deputy Prime Minister reassure my constituents that this is not going to be another broken Tory promise?”
“The Minister will know, as we all do, that trust in democracy and our electoral law is precious and should be kept. Today’s revelations come on top of revelations yesterday by a Government MP that the voter ID laws were an attempt at gerrymandering. The public’s trust is precious; it is easily lost and hard to gain. The Minister mentioned aspects of the Elections Act 2022. Parts of that Act make it easier for foreign actors with bad intentions to influence British politics, so will he look again particularly at the overseas electors loopholes included in that legislation, to ensure that our democracy remains safe and secure?”
“The Speaker’s Committee has not held recent discussions on the matter. The Electoral Commission has highlighted that voting by post is a safe and popular method of voting, with safeguards in place to protect against fraud. The voluntary code of conduct makes it clear that political parties and campaigners should not assist in completing a ballot paper or handle completed ballot papers. The commission encourages campaigners to follow this code.”
“The code of conduct is of course voluntary, but the code of conduct for campaigners states that parties can provide applications for postal votes but the forms must include the address for the electoral registration officer as the preferred address, even if an alternative address is provided. Campaigners should send on any application forms they receive to the relevant address within two working days, and the commission recommends that any concerns that the code has been breached should be raised first with the candidate, political party or campaigner in question, and any further concerns should be drawn to the attention of the commission. The commission is aware of the Conservative party leaflet in Norwich and has had conversations with the party.”
“The commission will run further public awareness activities and provide guidance for electoral administrators ahead of future elections, including in Scotland.”
“The Committee discussed the commission’s work supporting the implementation of the voter ID requirement at its recent public evidence session in March. A transcript of that session is available on the Committee’s website. The commission continues to support voters, campaigners and electoral administrators ahead of the implementation of the voter ID requirement at local elections in England next week. Its research shows that public awareness of the requirement increased from 22% in December to 76% at the end of March. Voter ID will also be required at police and crime commissioner elections in England and Wales, UK parliamentary by-elections, and recall petitions from 3 May, and in general elections from October.”
“The commission has been working with key groups who have been identified as needing additional support to navigate voter ID requirements, including the over-85s; people with sight loss or learning disabilities; Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities; people experiencing homelessness or living in refuges; trans and non-binary people; and anonymous voters.”
“The commission has said that voter authority certificate applications were lower than might have been expected. That may reflect the number of people wishing to vote in the elections, the take-up of postal or proxy voting, or some voters not having taken action in time to meet the deadline, as the hon. Lady suggests. The commission will consider the levels of take-up and the reasons for them in its evaluation of the implementation of the requirement for voter ID, and that will include detailed public survey work.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for that interesting question. The guidance that the Electoral Commission has given to polling clerks is that face coverings will need to be removed so that identity can be verified. If he wishes to arrange a meeting with the Electoral Commission, I would be happy to co-ordinate that, as I know that this is an issue that he feels passionately about.”
“My hon. Friend is entirely correct: electoral administrators have been reporting difficulties to the Electoral Commission in recruiting polling station staff. That was the case in recent elections, too, but the issue has been exacerbated by the new role that there will be in administering voter ID requirements. Local authorities are working to address recruitment difficulties, including by calling on staff who work in areas that do not have elections in May to work in the areas that do. Of course, there is the additional challenge of needing a woman at every polling station to verify the identity of women who wear face coverings for religious reasons.”
“Evie asks: “Is it acceptable to put raw sewage into our lakes…or should the government put a stop it to it?” My view is that the Government should put a stop to it, and I would be grateful if the Minister answered Evie’s question in her response. No one should have to worry about whether they can enjoy areas of outstanding natural beauty or whether they will encounter raw sewage by taking a dip in our waters. No business should have to worry about Tory-sanctioned sewage dumping impacting their trade. If Tory MPs fail to support today’s motion, they will be voting again to continue dumping sewage, and it is clear from the letters I have received from more 80 children in my constituency that they can see that that would stink.”
“They accept that United Utilities is investing £40 million in trying to address some of the problems, but, as James from year 5 perceptively highlights, “intelligent people know that they could be investing a lot more”, especially given their profits, and Anya says it is “too little too late”. The pupils highlight that the spills do not only affect animals; while they are worried for their pets, especially the dogs who wade in Lake Windermere, they are also worried about the impact on people. As Freya highlights, “innocent little children who go paddling in the sewage filled lake could end up becoming sick and have diarrhoea and end up going to hospital”.”
“They worry that the situation is getting worse and highlight the fact that in 2016 there were around 100,000 hours of spills by water companies in England, but by 2021 that had increased to 2.5 million. My constituents are troubled by the impact on local wildlife, especially the number of dead fish that have been seen in the area and the knock-on impact that will have on birds such as kingfishers. My young constituents are angry about the £600 million in profits made by United Utilities, which they feel should be spent on addressing sewage spills in Lake Windermere.”
“Last year in my constituency there were 685 sewage spills, the total duration of which came to more than 2,000 hours. Needless to say, my constituents have noticed them. I was recently contacted by 85 year 5 pupils from Moorside Primary School in Lancaster who are particularly concerned about pollution in Lake Windermere and the impact it is having on wildlife and the environment. I want to give a voice to those young constituents of mine today. One pupil, Karina, says that it feels as if “the lake is no longer a tranquil body of water it is just a mass of raw grotesque sewage”. They inform me that the Ambleside treatment works is built for 5,000 people, even though millions visit the area every single year.”
“Q2. Despite Royal Mail posting record profits, management are threatening to put it into administration. What conversations are the Government having with Royal Mail? What are they doing to protect the universal postal service?”
“6. What assessment he has made of the potential impact of the introduction of voter identification requirements on voter turnout for local elections in May 2023.”
“Was the Department’s decision earlier this month to give the Electoral Commission an extra £1.5 million to promote voter ID made before or after the Department realised that take-up of voter authority certificates was very low?”
“I assume from the Secretary of State’s earlier comments that he is aware of my Twitter thread about my cancelled and then delayed journey to London this morning. It will have come as no surprise to my constituents, whose lives have been disrupted by this train company for far, far too long. Today’s announcement of the contract extension has been met with anger by my constituents. I have to say that Avanti really did take the biscuit today when it even managed to serve mouldy food in its on-board shop. My constituents would like to know what on earth Avanti has to do, other than be the worst-performing rail operator in the country, to actually lose the contract.”
“Frankly, this is a sticking-plaster Budget that does nothing to address the needs of my constituents and does nothing to address poverty in this country. I think it is a terrible Budget, and I hope the Chancellor will look again at his priorities.”
“Poverty was not mentioned in the Budget. Frankly, I feel incredibly let down. I would have liked to say more about childcare. Frankly, if we are increasingly to rely on private childminders without new state provision, prices will be pushed up and demand will outstrip supply, which could create a huge childcare crisis for many parents. People are already having to put their child’s name down before they are born in order to be confident of getting a nursery place. Without that supply, it is difficult to know how working parents will be able to rely on this measure. Investment zones have been heralded as levelling up all parts of the United Kingdom, but how can the Government suggest they are doing that when there are only 12 new investment zones? There is nothing for Lancashire, as we do not fall into any of the zones.”
“Instead, people on universal credit were promised more sanctions. There is no evidence that sanctions have any impact on encouraging people. All they do is make life more difficult when people know they do not have the money, so they have to rely on food banks. I give credit to all the volunteers who work in food banks across my constituency, but why do we have to have food banks? Why are they now so accepted? I find it shocking. I support my local food banks, I ran the London marathon for them and I will do what I can to support my community, but food banks should not exist. It feels like they are now an established part of our society’s structure. We fundraise for them all over the place, and we have donation boxes in all our supermarkets, but I find it completely unacceptable that we have normalised poverty in that way.”
“HS2 suddenly will not reach the north of England, and the money we have been promised to fix potholes is a fraction of what was taken away by the cut to the roads budget. Active transport has also been cut, even though it is good for both people and the planet. It is something about which many of my constituents feel incredibly strongly, but there was no mention of it in the Budget. I spoke about the issues of poverty on a recent visit to North Lancashire citizens advice bureau. Poverty was not mentioned at all in the Budget, but it affects a growing number of our constituents. For people who are on the brink of homelessness, who are unable to feed their children or who are in constant fear of being evicted by their landlord during these cycles of poverty, there was nothing in the Budget to reassure them that they will be any better off.”
“I am delighted that its representatives are coming to Westminster in a few weeks’ time and I am glad that you will be able to meet them with me. This community benefit society was sick of waiting for the big players to deliver fibre broadband to our rural communities, and it decided in 2012 that it could wait no longer. Starting in Quernmore, a village I am sure many Members have not heard of, it started something big. It is now rolling out superfast broadband, including to very isolated farmhouses, which just goes to show that the standard size does not fit all. I found the Budget to be quite deaf to a lot of rural issues. When it comes to things such as transport, I feel that my constituency is losing out.”
“I recently visited Scorton Primary School, whose headteacher is struggling because there is no school hall, which means that there is no space for the children to eat lunch, so they have to eat at their desks. There is no school kitchen, so the school lunches are brought in by taxi. The idea that a primary school such as Scorton is going to be able to make a decision to provide the wraparound childcare offer proposed by the Chancellor, when the school budget is so tight that it is having to look at making savings elsewhere, is frankly for the birds. I also saw children from another fantastic primary school my constituency, Abbeystead Primary School. I was visiting it as part of a visit with a company called Broadband for the Rural North, which I am sure you are familiar with, Mr Deputy Speaker.”
“My constituency has two universities in it—Lancaster University and the University of Cumbria—but the Budget did not mention students. I am currently surveying students across my constituency, and I am hearing from them how they are struggling with the cost of living crisis. There was nothing in the Budget for students facing the cost of living crisis. Many of them are working two or three jobs in order to be able to live and to pay their rent. Many of them are in the private rented sector, but there was nothing in the Budget to improve conditions for people who are privately renting. Looking at education for younger children, I am privileged and lucky to have so many wonderful rural primary schools in my constituency.”
“I will keep my comments tightly focused on how I see the Budget impacting my constituents. When I hear from them in advice surgeries, I hear that their lives are not better now than they were 13 years ago. In fact, wages are lower now than they were then. It was telling that when the Chancellor stood up and delivered his Budget statement, it was against the backdrop of quite widely supported industrial action across many different sectors, so if he wants to see a high-wage, high-growth economy, perhaps the best place to start would be to give our public sector workers the pay rise they deserve. I was pleased that a lot of emphasis in the Budget was on education. However, I want to make a few points about where I think the Chancellor may have been getting it slightly wrong.”
“The Speaker’s Committee has not had discussions with the Electoral Commission on the matter referred to. The commission will publish a full report on how the May elections were delivered. That will cover how voters found taking part and any lessons that can be learned for the future. As part of that process, the commission will examine evidence about how the new voter ID requirement was implemented. It will collect data from every local authority that held elections, including about the number of voters who did not bring an accepted form of ID to the polling station and were therefore unable to vote.”
“My hon. Friend, who is a seasoned campaigner and is familiar with the scenes outside polling stations, has identified the potential gap in the data. Of course, polling station staff will not be able to collect data from people who do not go into the polling station. However, the commission has identified that as a potential issue and will undertake public opinion research on the reasons why people did or did not vote in the elections.”
“It is clear that the issue of elections being challenged in electoral courts would be a matter for the courts, not the commission. The commission is doing everything possible to ensure that the polls are delivered as successfully as possible and to the highest standard. There does remain the established petition process to challenge the result of elections in the circumstances that the hon. Lady identifies.”
“The Speaker’s Committee has not held recent discussions on the matters raised. The UK has one of the most transparent political finance regimes in the world. However, the Electoral Commission has highlighted that modernisation and additional safeguards are needed so that voters can have greater confidence in the system. Its recommendations include new duties for parties to conduct risk assessments of donations and “know your donor” checks, and a requirement for companies to have made enough profit in the UK to fund any donations that they make.”
“The Electoral Commission has highlighted the weaknesses in the transparency requirements for political donations by unincorporated associations. They are not required to ensure that those who donate to them are permissible donors; there are also no transparency requirements in law for unincorporated associations that donate to candidates, rather than political parties or campaigners. The commission will continue to recommend changes to the law to ensure that voters can have greater confidence in political finance in the UK.”
“The Speaker’s Committee has not held recent discussions on the matters raised. The Electoral Commission regulates the spending of organisations campaigning during the regulated period ahead of an election or referendum. It also regulates donations to political parties, candidates and campaigners. Unless a think tank is engaged in regulated campaign activity or itself makes donations, it will fall outside of the commission’s remit. The commission does not have a role in regulating spending on political activity more generally.”