Olivia Blake
MP for Sheffield Hallam · Labour · United Kingdom
“I thank the Minister for her statement. Despite what the shadow Minister said, this situation is unprecedented: the first time a severe drought has ever been declared in the UK. This is incredibly shocking for what has historically and famously been our wet island. Drought has just been declared in Yorkshire.”
House of Commons16 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Mr Evans applied for early release of his civil service pension on health grounds because of terminal illness in November 2025, but sadly passed away this May. His case is still not resolved, despite repeated urgent representations from my office. Capita has failed inexcusably.”
House of Commons6 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In my constituency, the consequences of the system are painfully clear, as has been mentioned by my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed).”
House of Commons2 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Under this system, people who have bought homes find themselves paying escalating service charges, opaque administration fees and arbitrary costs imposed by freeholders.”
House of Commons2 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“At present, leaseholders of houses do not have this right, while leaseholders of flats do. If a freeholder decides to sell the freehold of a house, the leaseholder has no guaranteed opportunity to buy it. They may learn of the sale only once it has occurred, several months later.”
House of Commons2 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I declare an interest as a leasehold homeowner, which is very common in Sheffield. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi) for securing this important debate. I agree wholeheartedly with the recommendations of her Committee, and of Lord Best, about a regulator.”
House of Commons2 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
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“Having lived in South Yorkshire for such a long time—I am from West Yorkshire originally, although I was born in North Yorkshire, which a lot of people do not realise and was a bit of an incident—I am wary of the cliff edge and the real challenges facing an industry that could decline quite quickly. We have heard about deindustrialisation and the long shadow it can cast over communities. On steel and coal, that shadow remains deep and causes issues for my area even today, which means that it takes us longer to recover from economic instability than other areas of the UK.”
House of Commons20 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a pleasure to serve under you again, Dr Huq. I will redeclare my interest, given what we are discussing: my husband is the company secretary of Sheffield Renewables, a community benefit society that funds, develops, owns and operates renewable energy systems in Sheffield and probably South Yorkshire as well. I rise to speak in defence of the clause, which will prevent the Coal Authority and its successors from opening any new coalmines. I am dismayed by the Government seeking to remove the clause. To be clear—this has not been in the debate so far—it is important to recognise that it will prohibit the opening of new coalmines, not mining as such.”
House of Commons20 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I know for a fact that people have schemes that are oven ready, or on the shelf and ready to go, but they do not have the confidence to introduce them because they do not have the support that they need from the Government, which the two clauses would provide.”
House of Commons20 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Government may say, “Well, it’s easy to say that in Opposition.” Being in a minority, on the Opposition Benches, means that I sadly do not hold much hope of stopping the Government removing the two clauses, but I hope that they will look at what the Labour party has proposed on community energy. Just this weekend, we proposed a major investment of £400 million in community energy and £600 million for local authorities to build clean-power cities, towns and villages. Our local power plan provides much more detail. This is about ensuring that we are kickstarting our local community energy projects, and helping to build skills, jobs and local supply chains. That can only be of benefit as we try to get to net zero as quickly as possible.”
House of Commons20 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“They have repeatedly shown that they are keen to try to find a way to work through some of the difficulties that the Government may have in this space, but so far every proposal has seemingly been refused, or not looked at objectively with any seriousness. In order to achieve the type of transformation that we are all ambitious for, I really hope that the Government can come back with some more options as the Bill moves forward. Removal of the clauses would be very challenging, and I have tabled some amendments to give the Government another opportunity to set out how they would achieve these aims. Assuming that all the schemes are unable to get off the ground, we are missing a massive opportunity. It is down to the Government to come up with more ideas in this space.”
House of Commons20 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There is also clear public support, with more than 60 businesses writing to the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero and the Minister to declare their support for community energy schemes and calling for the Government to support clauses 272 and 273. Despite all that support and the Government saying that they want this policy outcome, and despite the fact that the Bill provides the opportunity to do so, the response has been, “Computer says no.” That is not for want of trying on the part of campaign groups, such as Power for People, as well as MPs and peers who have been pushing for action.”
House of Commons20 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I would not have been surprised if the Government had gone further and proposed slightly different methods to increase the number of community energy schemes and their capacity. After all, Ministers have lined up to say that community energy is worth supporting and is important. They say that it is a good thing and that they want to see more of it, but those warm words have yet to translate into concrete actions. Instead, the number of schemes has stagnated and growth in the sector could at best be called anaemic. There is clear cross-party support for community energy schemes. In the Commons, a majority of MPs from all parties support them. It is important that we remember that the measure agreed in the Lords was a cross-party amendment. There is broad support for the issue in both Houses.”
House of Commons20 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a thin argument to say that that is necessary, given that there is clearly no demand. However, that is not deterring the minds currently responsible for planning and operation. I thank the Government for tabling new clause 52, though: it is a positive step and I am pleased to see it. On community energy, I am really disappointed that the Government want to remove clauses 272 and 273. The Bill could have been an opportunity to help community groups deliver useful schemes that could have provided the clean and green energy that we all want. Sometimes those things happen at a better rate at a local level. We know that a lot of delivery will happen through local authorities, as well as local groups and schemes. I expected Ministers to want to redraft the clauses, rather than to scupper them.”
House of Commons20 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I gave just one example but could have listed several steel experts who have said similar. I will not back down on that point. It is a very valid point and I have heard it made by many in the industry who are very confused by the Government’s approach to steel. The loan arrangement with Forgemasters was cancelled and the organisation nationalised, but the greening of that industry is not being pursued particularly quickly, even though we have some ownership of it. It is not right to argue that we need the coal for steel. Estimates show that 85% of it will be taken from ship to shore. We have had a conversation about our moral duty to prevent UK fossils fuels from being burned internationally, and we have had similar arguments about imported carbon being burned here.”
House of Commons20 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is quite clear that the Bill could do more to ensure that environmental protections exist and that we are not cutting our nose off to spite our face with some of our activity.”
House of Commons15 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I particularly support our amendments 166 and 167, because it is important to have that switch-off or death switch, I suppose—I am trying to think of a way of phrasing it. We need to keep those protections in place where we can. If we allow ourselves to be deluded into thinking that the impact on the environment off-sea will not affect us, we are really missing the point. It would have been nice if there had been a reference to blue carbon in the Bill. Obviously, that has not materialised—I understand why, because the Bill is predominantly to do with energy—but we are missing measures in that space as well. It is incredibly important that the Minister considers amendment 165, particularly as it outlines some of my concerns about the Bill’s alignment with the Environment Act.”
House of Commons15 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I fear that clause 248 provides wide powers to ignore habitat regulations, marine Acts and general duties around assessment, which is problematic. There is also something of a misalignment between some of the wording in the Bill and that in the Environment Act 2021. When that Act seeks to alter habitat regulations, there are a lot of caveats, and it might be worth the Minister considering whether it would be right to have those caveats in the Bill, given that both measures represent Government policy and strategy. I hope that the Bill does not conflict with 13 by 2030, which we have had a conversation about, and the protection of marine areas. I also hope that we will discuss protections.”
House of Commons15 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In fact, I agree with the words of an Environment Audit Committee report in relation to the development of offshore wind: we should “be extremely sensitive to biodiversity considerations given the obvious risks of disrupting important habitats”. That is important because the Bill represents an attempt to tackle not only the carbon crisis, but the nature crisis. What is bad for one is bad for the other, so it is important that we bear biodiversity in mind with every step we take through the Bill, not least because nature is a massive carbon sink. The UK already faces massive nature depletion—we have has some of the worst nature depletion in Europe—so it is right that we debate how the Bill takes such considerations into account.”
House of Commons15 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship again, Mr Gray. I declare an interest, given that we are now talking about renewables: my husband is a company secretary of an organisation called Sheffield Renewables, which is a community benefit society that funds, develops, owns and operates renewable energy systems in Sheffield. Although I hope that Sheffield will not become the coastline—if we do everything right so that vast swathes of east Yorkshire, including Selby, are not under water—I thought that it would be prudent for me to declare that interest at this stage. As a former shadow Minister for nature, this part of the Bill strikes a chord with me. There are things to welcome in the clauses, but I share some of the concerns that have been outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test.”
House of Commons15 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There have been great relationships within the industry for many years, and as it is such a critical industry when it comes to health and safety, the working rights of those employed in it are critical to maintaining that safety. I hope the Minister will look on the amendment kindly and understand the reasons for it.”
House of Commons15 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I should say that I am a member of the GMB union. I rise to support the amendment, which is very reasonable and is an attempt to help the Minister. I am sure he will stand up and say that the Secretary of State would never knowingly try to give directions in contradiction to the measure that we have tabled, but the point of the amendment is to get that on the statute book and make it clear to the industry, and those who are employed in it, that that safety net would be there, because “anything” is a very broad word, as outlined by the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test.”
House of Commons15 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We should be making massive efforts and strides to improve in this policy area, yet energy efficiency programmes have been cut and home insulation rates have plummeted over the past decade. In 2013, the coalition cut energy efficiency programmes, after which insulation rates fell by 92%. The number of energy efficiency insulations peaked at 2.3 million in 2012, yet fewer than 100,000 upgrades were installed in 2021. That is rather pathetic, it has to be said. The Bill and clause 204 in particular provide a golden opportunity to put in place the financial structures and programme to give the necessary upgrades to the 19 million homes in our country that are below band C on the EPC scale. Clearly, that is what a Labour Government would do.”
House of Commons13 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Nokes. I rise to speak in defence of clause 204, and I agree with the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test, that the Government have suggested an interesting tactic. Our housing stock has been described as the least energy-efficient in Europe. That means we are the least prepared to absorb future price hikes, like those experienced in recent years, and to address future temperature changes. In England alone, more than 13 million homes—59% of them—are below a C rating on the energy performance certificate standard. As a result, housing is one of the main sources of carbon emissions in the UK, accounting for around 20% of total emissions.”
House of Commons13 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Those are the exact problems. In recent years a number of Government schemes have either failed because they have not had the workforce to deliver them, or experienced challenges because people have been drawn into other roles, particularly in the building sector and in relation to cladding issues and so on. That is exactly why the Opposition would be very pleased if the clause were protected. We need that action plan. Delivery is only worth something when it happens. We cannot just have targets that we repeatedly continue to miss. It would be exceedingly challenging to argue to the public that we should not prioritise getting their bills down by £1,000 a year or come up with an action plan to deliver that.”
House of Commons13 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Absolutely, and I will come to that point. This issue is so significant: it is important that we find the funding for these sorts of interventions because almost 9,000 neighbourhoods in England and Wales have very low incomes but higher than average energy costs because of poor insulation. That requires Government action, and I fully support Labour’s plans, which I believe would cost £12 billion a year—I might be wrong about that.”
House of Commons13 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Without the clause, the Bill will be another missed opportunity to tackle the cost of living crisis, to bring forward the emergency energy efficiency measures we need, and to start a national 10-year mission for home insulation. Delivery is important, and without an action plan I am not clear how those millions of homes, and the millions of people living in them, will benefit from better energy efficiency. We need to get on top of our carbon emissions and we need to ensure that housing is not forgotten, given its vast contribution to emissions. It would be a mistake for the Government to remove the clause. All it is asking for is a warmer homes and a business action plan to set out how His Majesty’s Government intend to deliver energy efficiency. It is important to keep that clear ask in the Bill.”
House of Commons13 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Sorry, £6 billion—I have doubled my ambition. That is a large amount of money, but it would be very welcome in meeting the challenges we face. I am not alone in my concerns about delivery in this space. In January, the Environmental Audit Committee rightly said that we need a national war mobilisation to improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon. The public are crying out for action to address fuel poverty and household emissions: 80% of respondents to National Energy Action’s polling supported funding retrofits for those on low incomes and, according to the New Economics Foundation, 64% of Conservative voters and 65% of people in the north support a national retrofitting taskforce.”
House of Commons13 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Absolutely. There is a risk in this House of us talking about GCSE biology rather than actually biology. The aneuploidies XXX occurs in one in 1,000 women, and XXY occurs in one in 500 men. These are very common biological differences that do complicate the matter—and those are not intersex individuals, to be clear.”
House of Commons12 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Nokes. I rise to support the amendment, because this is a fundamental issue. The Minister talked about households only, but will the offer that he outlined be available to businesses? That is important, because businesses have different energy needs, even in residential areas. It is important that we take people with us. They must have the option to say no to such trials and get low-carbon heating by another means. That is all I wanted to say on the amendment.”
House of Commons8 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am a biomedical scientist by background, so I come to this with a medical perspective. The issue with tritium is that it produces beta waves, which are a more damaging form of radiation to human tissues—only in a minor way, as it has a score of 1 compared with 20 for alpha waves, but there is an underlying risk. Exposure of the workforce to that level continuously could put DNA stability at risk, because it is an ionising form of radiation. If there is a problem—containment is always a big challenge that gets raised by scientists—hopefully we will overcome it, but it is right to have the protections, particularly for the workforce. That is why I welcome new clause 51.”
House of Commons8 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I have a few concerns about clause 117, which would, as the Minister outlined, allow fossil fuel waste to be reclassified as renewable energy in the form of fuels for policies including the proposed sustainable aviation fuel mandate, which is currently being consulted on by the Department for Transport. It seems the Department would like to be able to include recycled carbon fuels, including unrecyclable plastic, as eligible fuels under the sustainable aviation fuel mandate. That is why the Bill will permit recycled carbon fuel to be treated as renewable, to help us to meet our sustainability targets.”
House of Commons8 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We know that such incidents will probably become increasingly likely and with climate change there are likely to be more problems with water ingress—although hopefully not at the scale we had in my constituency, which left constituents without hot water and gas for many weeks during a very cold snap when there was snow on the ground.”
House of Commons8 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Some measure cubic metres and some measure cubic feet, which means that some people are getting a very good deal at the moment on their energy, because their energy company does not know that they changed the unit, and some people are getting awfully ripped off. It is very complicated, but because Cadent, which did a fantastic job during the crisis to make people’s homes safe and to ensure that the faulty gas meters were immediately replaced—I have no problem with that—did not have any agency providing smart meters, there was a missed opportunity to upgrade or keep them. We have actually seen a decline in the number of smart meters in my constituency because of that major incident.”
House of Commons8 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The amendment is eminently sensible. I speak with the experience in my constituency before Christmas of what is now referred to as the great gas flood of Stannington. Hundreds of millions of litres of water entered the gas system, causing 3,000 properties to have water ingress, in some cases it was so harsh that water was coming through gas appliances and hitting the ceiling with force, or wrecking the whole interior of people’s properties. I mention that because almost every property involved in the crisis had to have its meter replaced. To the exasperation of some of my constituents, their smart meters had to be replaced with refurbished meters. We had issues with the second-hand meters that were put in. I am still carrying out conversations with the energy companies because there were differences in the units of some of the meters.”
House of Commons8 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We know from safeguarding failures that have been reported both historically and more recently that safeguarding must be everyone’s top priority. The Government cannot pass the buck on this; they must intervene to keep children safe and to ensure that these children are found and then made safe.”
House of Commons7 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The cruelty in that is evident, especially when we are considering children. Others have touched on how the Illegal Migration Bill will affect children and significantly undermine the Children Act. When will the Government finally produce their impact assessment of the Bill and why, after all the failings the Government have presided over in this space, does the Home Office intend to legislate for new powers to house asylum-seeking children outside the provisions of the Children Act? Will the Minister look again at the individual approach to safeguarding that is necessary for each child? Will he recognise that children can, and do, often have other vulnerabilities such as disability? What actions are being taken to ensure that those are being taken into account? We all have a responsibility to keep children safe.”
House of Commons7 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I have spoken in this place before about the current extreme costs of placements for local authorities, where £15,000 is not enough and will not cover months or weeks of many of the placements that local authorities are trying to procure from the private sector. More needs to be done in that space. A recent report in the UK on the implementation of the UN convention on the rights of the child found a serious regression in the rights and protections of refugee children in the UK. That is shocking and forms part of a worrying trend that the Government are providing substandard care and potentially dangerous accommodation to refugees, whether that be through overcrowded hotel rooms, disused army barracks in which diseases spread or now a new masterplan for barges that essentially detain people offshore.”
House of Commons7 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Will the Minister clarify whether that is due to the Home Office’s failure to systematically record the data that has been requested, or whether it simply constitutes a refusal to provide the information? Two years after the Home Office began using hotels, there is still no strategy for moving children into suitable accommodation. It is business as usual and that is unacceptable. Will the Minister provide an update on the plans to develop a strategy to move the children out of hotels and into the care of social services through the national transfer scheme? Will he outline the steps taken to support local authorities with procuring additional placements for children?”
House of Commons7 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The matter needs to be thoroughly looked at because it is clear under section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 that the Home Secretary is obliged “to safeguard and promote the welfare of children who are in the United Kingdom”. Children in Home Office hotels must be treated like all resident UK children in the statutory children’s protection framework. Does the Minister seriously believe that accommodating children in hotels is compatible with that obligation? The Children’s Commissioner has been mentioned. The Home Secretary was given a hard deadline of 17 April to provide a response to the Children’s Commissioner about her concerns around the appropriateness of care and I am surprised that that has not been provided. That is highly unusual.”
House of Commons7 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The policy of accommodating children in hotels was supposed to be temporary, but as is so often the case with the Government, a crisis has turned into business as usual. To my knowledge, since 2021, 4,500 unaccompanied children, some aged as young as 10, have been placed in hotels. Will the Minister make available as soon as possible the latest figures on how many unaccompanied children are currently housed in Home Office hotels? According to the Refugee Council, those hotels essentially operate outside the child protection system and that is a fundamental point in this debate. Local authorities are often not involved in looking after those children’s welfare or their best interests. They are not classed as looked-after children, but children are children both morally and under the law.”
House of Commons7 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“When a child first goes missing, those crucial early hours and days can help in finding them quickly and preventing further harm. Will the Minister give clear assurances that the protocol has been followed for every missing child? Will he also say whether there are instances in which the full guidance was not completely followed? If so, why that was the case? Can he give any new update on the number of children who have gone missing since the start of this year? If we do not understand how it is possible for that to happen in the first place, we cannot prevent it from happening again. Therefore, will the Minister commit to publishing a report on the circumstances around the disappearances, including lessons learned and immediate steps to prevent a repeat?”
House of Commons7 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is alarming that the Government seem interested in the horrific crime of people trafficking only when it can be used as an opening to restrict the rights of people claiming asylum in this country. When we deal with missing children who are in real danger of ending up in the hands of traffickers, it seems that the Home Office is not concerned enough to act swiftly and thoroughly. Will the Minister update us on what steps he is taking to ensure that children in Home Office care are given the care and support they need and that they are safe? What actions have been taken to find the lost children? Some organisations I have spoken to have raised concerns about whether the missing persons protocol has been properly followed. That is an important point.”
House of Commons7 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) for securing this important debate. Before I begin, I point Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and the support that I receive from the Refugee, Asylum and Migration Policy project for my work on these issues. I also co-chair the all-party parliamentary group on migration. It is an absolute scandal that 440 asylum-seeking children have gone missing from Home Office hotels and that, according to the Home Office, there are still 186 who have not been found. But that is only half the question. Are the children who have been found safe, and what is happening about the remaining 186?”
House of Commons7 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I ask her to think again about closing that loophole so that, no matter where a person is in the system, they have the same rights around restraint and that it gets recorded.”
House of Commons7 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“To be clear, it is not just the people I have described who are suffering because they must wait for access to the care they need; it is also causing tension between psychiatric staff and medical staff on wards because these people are getting inappropriate care. It is shameful that in such settings the use of restraint does not need to be recorded. Its use is heavily regulated in mental health settings for a reason. The use of restraint and restrictive practice is really consequential to the conditions that people go on to develop and their ability to recover. I am disappointed that in a letter and in response to me following a debate, the Minister refused to act and close the loophole.”
House of Commons7 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Members that these are not nice experiences to relay, but they should be shouted from the rooftops because they are the human consequences of a system that is understaffed, under-resourced and under strain. One person told me that, as a 17-year-old, they were restrained for feeding via a nasogastric tube three or four times a day by five people; that went on for about 10 months. Another person told me that they were restrained for daily NG feeds by five to six staff at a time for six months. Sometimes, they were held for an hour after the feed and would come out with bruises, despite their screams during the restraint. I have heard stories of 15-year-olds being restrained at 11 o’clock at night for NG feeding.”
House of Commons7 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“They would have gone anywhere in the country to get their child seen given the care they received while they were waiting. They needed urgent in-patient mental healthcare, but no tier 4 beds were available, so they had to be admitted to a general ward instead. When the parents first contacted me, their child was being restrained most days to be fed. They were worried that, without specialist support, repetitive restraint was only making things worse. I have since spoken to numerous eating disorder specialists, researchers and medical staff who have all told me about the rising number of children with eating disorders being restrained—often unnecessarily —by staff in general medical wards without training, recording or following guidance. I have heard more first-hand stories. I warn hon.”
House of Commons7 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Many of those who cannot access the mental health care that they need are children. A quarter of 17 to 19-year-olds have a probable mental illness. Nearly one in 10 seven to 16-year-olds and a third of 17 to 24-year-olds have tried to self-harm. My own NHS South Yorkshire integrated care board has a waiting list of 10,015 children. If those figures were not horrific enough, I want to talk about one further horrifying effect: that of people with eating disorders—often children or young people—having to wait to be given a tier 4 bed in a specialist ward owing to the acuity of their condition and because of the lack of preventive care available. Last year, a parent wrote to tell me that they were struggling to secure a mental health bed for their child, who had been diagnosed with anorexia.”
House of Commons7 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As an officer of the all-party parliamentary group on eating disorders—an issue that I will raise in my speech—I thank the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) for her bravery in sharing her experience. The statistics on the crisis in the NHS, as raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) and others, speak for themselves. The 5.4 million hours that people with mental health problems are waiting in A&E is a scandal. We know that the longer patients wait for treatment, the worse and more dangerous their conditions can become. While I would love to make this speech about the importance of prevention, unfortunately we see a crisis in the NHS, so I will focus on the issues of acuity mentioned by the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper).”
House of Commons7 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell. I know that this is not really a declaration of interest, but my mother, Baroness Blake, was actually the person who moved the amendment in the other place. It is interesting that mother and daughter are both working on this Bill in different ways.”
House of Commons6 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I urge them to think again for the benefit of all those who struggle to pay their energy bills now and for those who may struggle in future if the levy comes in.”
House of Commons6 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell set out, it is really important that we bring the public with us. Government amendment 12 is almost a wrecking motion for net zero, because the opposition to this will be huge. I ask the Minister to think hard about whether the Government want to champion such a burden on households when it is not clear whether the benefit will ever fall on households. We do not yet know the questions about hydrogen, let alone the answers, or what the benefits to home heating will be, if that is the path we go down as a nation when there are many alternatives growing at speed, as we have discussed. I think the Government’s amendment is very challenging.”
House of Commons6 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The figure of £118 that the shadow Minister mentioned came from Onward, which is a Conservative think-tank. The discussion is also about who has the broadest shoulders to help with the changes that desperately need to be made to our energy system. I completely agree with the shadow Minister that the Bill gives the public all the risk and potentially none of the benefits. There are 37 independently published reports that set out that they do not believe that the UK will move fully to hydrogen for home heating. Obviously there are massive benefits for steel—Sheffield is the city of steel—that could be unlocked through hydrogen, and there are many benefits for industry, but it seems wrong for Government amendment 12 to remove the protections given in the other place to the levy to prevent that cost from falling so dramatically on households.”
House of Commons6 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Possibly a record. Who knows? I rise to defend the amendments made in the Lords and to speak against Government amendment 12, predominantly because of the aims of the Bill that the Secretary of State outlined when it was brought forward. Those aims were about security, but also about tackling fuel poverty. The facts about fuel poverty in the UK at the moment are very telling. I will cite the End Fuel Poverty Coalition’s numbers: 1,000 people died in 2022 as a result of living in cold, damp homes, unable to heat them because of costs. We also know that 7 million people in the UK last winter were living in fuel poverty. Taken together, those are staggering numbers, and it is important that they are at the forefront of our minds when we discuss the levy. It is telling that there seem to be unified voices against the policy.”
House of Commons6 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It would enable us to reach the goals we need to protect us from a 1.5°C increase in global temperature. We need to bring about a democratic transition. We urgently need to protect our precious natural environment and expand our democracy when talking about these issues, not curtail it. The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill will do the exact opposite, concentrating power even further into the hands of a few Ministers. That should concern everyone in the House who claims to represent their constituents. The truth is that the Government do not value our natural environment. Just look at the key pieces of environmental law that were missing from the dashboard, or the way it treats the people who work every day to protect it at the Environment Agency.”
House of Commons24 May 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗