Adam Thompson
MP for Erewash · Labour · United Kingdom
“I am sure that every Member across the House values the contribution of their own teams; we have heard from various colleagues about them and all the work that they do. I put on record my thanks to my incredible team.”
“Treetops hospice in Risley is an amazing local charity that provides hospice at-home support for thousands of Derbyshire families using its innovative provision model, and I hope to engage with the Health Secretary after recess to discuss that model.”
“Let me briefly address East Midlands Railway, a service that I use regularly to travel between Erewash and London. This week, EMR has continued to operate a reduced timetable, citing the impact of recent hot weather.”
“It is always an honour to speak in the Adjournment debate in memory of Sir David Amess. As is traditional, I will endeavour to cram as many topics as I can into my contribution before we break for the summer recess. I will discuss recent knife crime in Ilkeston.”
“Supporting grassroots music has always mattered to me, both as a former gigging musician and as the MP for Erewash. Last summer, I spoke in this debate about the importance of protecting the small venues that give new artists their first opportunities and bring communities together through live music.”
“However, the problems of venue closures, poor pay for artists and high prices for tickets endures, so, to repeat my sentiment from last time: colleagues and friends, please go and see a band this summer. I have some quick-fire points.”
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“I have previously met Midlands Connect and Network Rail and spoken about persistent issues at Long Eaton station. Struggles with accessibility result from its relative lack of modernisation, but the problems do not stop there. The platform is also unusually short—there is a special announcement every time I get on my train back home. It means that long inter-city trains cannot open all their doors because they cannot be accessed from the whole platform. It leads to missed connections and confusion for travellers across the board. Additionally, the railway bridge right next to the station across Tamworth Road is 200 years old. It is so low and narrow that it chokes all traffic going under what is an important thoroughfare between Long Eaton and the M1.”
“Thankfully, despite the previous Conservative Government’s best efforts in 2023, the ticket office remains open, but travellers are still severely limited. The office is not staffed all the time, meaning that of an evening or weekend, the lifts cannot be used and disabled members of my community cannot access the platforms. I pay tribute to my local councillor, Dave Doyle—a very good friend of mine—and to Sawley parish council chair, Alan Chewings. Dave and Alan have done great work for many years in raising the alarm on accessibility failures at Long Eaton train station. Indeed, when Dave, Alan and I campaigned against the proposed ticket office closure a few years ago, disabled people’s access was very much what we focused on. Great thanks are therefore due to Dave and Alan for their efforts over the years.”
“The barriers make it effectively impossible for anybody who requires a wheelchair to make it up, and some old tarmac on the ramp often sees people with no mobility issues at all hit the deck every time there is a freeze. From personal experience on my parliamentary commute, I can confirm: not fun. Thankfully, two lifts were installed at Long Eaton train station in 2012, as part of Network Rail’s Access for All programme, which was launched by the last Labour Government in 2006 and continues to this day. The installation was great progress towards improving disabled access to the platforms, but the operation of the lifts leaves quite a lot to be desired. Travellers can use the lifts only when somebody is on duty at the ticket office, which is during normal hours of nine-to-five.”
“I thank the Chair of the Transport Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), for her efforts in securing this debate, and indeed the Backbench Business Committee for granting it. At Long Eaton train station in my constituency, the two platforms are well above ground level. They are both accessed by narrow ramps and on both sides of the train line there is a steep upward incline. The ramps are guarded at each end by rails that prevent people from cycling up and down them, but the sharpness of that gradient means that if a traveller has any kind of mobility issues, their journey up to the platform might be rather difficult.”
“I thank the Secretary of State for her answer. Despite the massive Government increases in funding generally, in a recent meeting of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, we heard how the Science and Technology Facilities Council is currently dealing with a significant reduction in funding, particularly in particle physics, astronomy and nuclear physics. Michele Dougherty, the executive chair of the STFC, placed the blame squarely on decisions made prior to her arrival and explained her efforts to sort out the mess, but it is the scientific community, research professionals and UK science that will feel the brunt of this funding crunch. What is the Secretary of State doing to ensure that UK science is not damaged by STFC’s historical failings?”
“Although I acknowledge that the Government have a difficult time ahead in solving the Tory mess, I am deeply supportive of the Prime Minister’s huge new target for universities and apprenticeships: that by the age of 25, two thirds of young people should be studying for a degree or taking up a gold-standard apprenticeship. Labour is taking action to ensure that young people are either earning or learning, with 200,000 job and apprenticeship opportunities over the next three years. I also strongly support the £2.5 billion investment that forms the Government’s youth guarantee. We must use it to expand employment support, offer grants to employers who hire young people, and provide a jobs guarantee to create subsidised work placements for long-term unemployed 18-to-24 year olds.”
“Universities UK still supports the income-contingent loan repayment system, which has facilitated a huge advance in access to university over the past two decades. It notes that more students from disadvantaged backgrounds have been able to enter university, and that the number of pupils who received free school meals and went on to university doubled from 2005-06 to 2023-24. Successive reviews of the higher education finance system have concluded that it is the fairest way of funding higher education. It was Labour policy, made when we were last in government, that achieved those significant improvements.”
“I believe it is right that those who can repay their loans do so, and that graduates earning the highest salaries contribute more towards their student loan repayments, but the Government must also repair the damage that was left to us by the Tories. That is why I strongly support the Government’s plan to restore maintenance grants and increase maintenance loans in line with inflation, as I believe should always have been the case. These measures ultimately support low-income students to access, and participate and excel in, higher education. When I was teaching degree-level apprenticeships in electromechanical engineering, I saw what widening participation measures achieved in practice: it allowed access to education for people who did not otherwise have it. I saw the profound good that those measures achieved.”
“In choosing to tinker around the edges of the policy cesspit that they created over many years, the Tories exhibit the most unbelievable brass neck. There is not a hint of an apology for the damage that they did, nor a modicum of understanding of the work that this Government are doing to dig us out of the mess they left us in. The Government are taking the tough but fair decisions necessary to protect taxpayers and students now and for the future. Under the system, lower-earning graduates will always be protected, with any outstanding loans and interest continuing to be written off after 30 years.”
“It has left our institutions facing years of staff dissatisfaction and industrial action, and it has created a whole generation saddled with unbelievable student debt. The Tories created, and then compounded, a system that looks like a graduate tax, smells like a graduate tax, and yet provides the uniquely deep personal pressure that sits astride hundreds of thousands of pounds of apparent debt, crushing millions of students who have been to university in the past 14 years. The Tories enacted almost irreparable damage on the university sector, and did immeasurable harm to a whole generation’s experience of university. The death of fun indeed! I am amazed, then, at the decision to table this Opposition day motion.”
“We saw a huge downturn in involvement with extracurricular activities that year, because of the additional pressure put on new students by the fee increase. Indeed, I remember very well that a friend who worked in the events team at our student union referred to October 2012 as “the death of fun”. I accept that the sector needed intervention, and I believe that the architect of the policy, now the Lord Willetts, took difficult decisions that he felt were needed to make the university sector sustainable. I do not believe, however, that he had factored into his plan the Tories’ subsequent freeze in fee increases and repayment thresholds, or their later abolition of maintenance grants. Although the initial increase was a blow to students, the following decade of failed Tory policy has left our university sector in tatters.”
“I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and in particular to my role as the chair of the all-party parliamentary university group and to my membership of the University and College Union. I must note my shock and awe at the Conservatives’ decision to hold an Opposition day debate on the current state of student loans. It is a system that they created in government, that they subsequently broke, and that has left a generation of students and graduates utterly and comprehensively beaten. I remember well when they—with the support of the Liberal Democrats—tripled student fees in 2012. At the time, I was a student and the president of a sports club at my university.”
“The hon. Member talks about the effect of interest over time. Given that the loans are eventually written off under the current system, can he tell me what threshold a salary would have to be at for the proposed changes in interest to make any realistic difference over the course of a graduate’s entire life?”
“I want to stress that in Erewash, we have not just a strong industrial history but a growing industrial present. People want jobs; they want investment; they want economic growth—but that needs to come with proper, long-term, serious infrastructure commitments. Growth leads to work for local people, not just around them. They need to know that it benefits them, not just the mega-rich chief executive officers. Part of that is making sure that we have proper investment in infrastructure to make people’s lives better and more productive.”
“Alongside work on that, I have been campaigning for a junction 25a on the M1, designed to service Stanton. I have met Ministers and Highways England, and even sat down and found complete common ground with my local council’s Conservative group leader, Councillor Wayne Major. Ultimately, it would take a minimum of several years and tens of millions of pounds for that project to happen, but it is really important to get it working for our local community. For that, we need the Government, and I am grateful for the changes to the Treasury Green Book to make infrastructure upgrades outside London more acceptable. I am also extremely excited about the £2 billion that the Chancellor committed to transport in the east midlands, and to see how Claire, our brilliant mayor, will spend that money.”
“However, New Stanton Park now grows every day, and Italian manufacturer Fassa Bortolo recently chose Ilkeston as the location for their first factory in Britain. Jobs are returning and investment is coming, which is welcome. However, it is important to note that new developments spark anxiety. Derbyshire was recently ranked as having the worst roads in England: the local road network was not designed to handle so much pressure, and failures at junction 25 of the M1 bring traffic to a standstill for miles. The old ironworks was linked to the railway by a rail spur, and although that infrastructure still exists, it will take a lot more time and money to bring it back into use. Getting the freight from New Stanton Park on to the railway would be an enormous win for local people in my constituency, for our roads and for the environment.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) for securing the debate, and colleagues across the House for their contributions. For too long, the east midlands was left behind: abandoned by a post-1980s, neoliberal, globalisation-driven economic consensus and forgotten by a conservative, austere Treasury logic that struggled to bring itself to invest in London, let alone in medium-sized towns in the east midlands. I am glad that that paradigm is finally changing. The first blast furnace at the former Stanton ironworks in my constituency was lit at the dawn of the industrial revolution, but in 2007 it went out for the final time. Hundreds of jobs were lost, and Ilkeston became a post-industrial town.”
“In December 2024, 18-year-old Noah Smedley from Ilkeston in my constituency was killed when he was stabbed by a 17-year-old armed with a Rambo knife. For a young man to lose his life this way, murdered by another teenager, was absolutely devastating to our community. There was a very deep public outcry of grief in this tight-knit town with a strong local identity. Noah’s death hit the town profoundly. Could the Minister outline the work that the Government are doing to protect young people, especially teenage boys, from the horrors of knife crime?”
“In Erewash, we are very lucky to have a fantastic community radio station in Erewash Sound. Thanks to the incredible Jeff Martin, Paul Stacey, Emma Duthie and dozens of other volunteers, we have a proper local radio station that focuses on hyper-local matters, promotes our community and has created a media training pipeline through the Erewash Sound Academy, which creates real excellence. Will the Leader of the House make time for a debate on community radio, so that everyone can hear more about the magic that my community and many others around the country enjoy?”
“With almost 8% of 16 and 17-year-olds not in education, employment or training, Derbyshire is the worst county in the east midlands for NEET. In New Stanton Park in Ilkeston, on the former site of a once-famous ironworks, major investments are bringing good manufacturing jobs back to Erewash. Will the Secretary of State share the work he is doing to ensure that apprenticeships are available to disadvantaged young people so that they can thrive, instead of being left behind?”
“Like many towns, Long Eaton is home to an asylum seeker hotel. It was gifted to us by the last Tory Government, but I know the Minister is doing everything in his power to close it as soon as possible. A secondary effect of the Tories’ hotels, however, is illegal work associated with the exploitation of local asylum seekers. Can the Minister elaborate on how measures announced recently will help to end illegal work in Erewash?”
“T8. Over the past few months, I have been involved in the new Long Eaton Business Partnership, which is bringing together business owners, private investors, health investors and local politicians. The goal is to shape the future of our town and revive Long Eaton’s town centre. Will the Minister tell us more about her work, through the new Office for the Impact Economy, to collaborate with social investors and philanthropists to bring funding to local communities?”
“Many people who have come to us from Hong Kong have made their home in Long Eaton in my constituency. Their children are thriving in our local schools, new businesses are being established, and a vibrant community is taking shape. Will the Minister outline what further steps the Government are taking, in partnership with local councils and Members of this House, to support the continued integration of Hongkongers into our towns and communities, and to ensure that those who have chosen to settle in Long Eaton feel fully welcomed as part of our community?”
“I know from my own time in the air cadets, as well as from hearing recently from 348 Ilkeston squadron and TS Indomitable in Long Eaton, that the cadet movement is an incredible force for excellence in young people’s development. I am sure the Leader of the House will agree that the adult volunteers who drive the movement do amazing work, quietly building young people into pillars of their communities, but will he consider recognising those volunteers and the wider cadet movement by supporting the Government in organising a national cadets week?”
“High streets in towns like Long Eaton have come under growing strain in recent years, not least because of widespread bank closures, but around one in five people is still not using online banking—a group that disproportionately includes older and disabled residents. I am fighting hard for the establishment of a banking hub in Long Eaton. Given the clear need for accessible financial services, what role does the Minister envisage for post offices in supporting the regeneration of high streets in Erewash, and what support is he providing to strengthen the Post Office’s financial services?”
“I thank the Secretary of State for explaining very clearly why the local power plan represents the biggest investment in community energy ever. It will help create jobs, develop skills and generate growth. Those are clearly the ambitions behind the redevelopment of New Stanton Park in my constituency. It is creating thousands of jobs and apprenticeships, and is returning industry to Ilkeston. Will the Secretary of State outline how the local power plan, alongside Mayor Claire Ward’s mayoral renewables fund, will support developments such as the New Stanton Park by lowering energy costs, attracting investment and expanding gold-standard apprenticeships?”
“On Monday, Ilkeston’s No.1 tourist attraction, the NatWest hole, was cruelly divided in two by a metal pole, which was installed with no explanation. The hole is a beloved part of the fabric of our town, and its defacement caused significant distress to my community. Thankfully, the pole mysteriously vanished a few hours later, but I have written to NatWest to try to understand what happened. Will the Leader of the House consider scheduling a debate on the protected status of local heritage sites and quirky landmarks, so that we can discuss whether Historic England might grant the Ilkeston hole listed status?”
“I thank the Secretary of State for her statement. When I trained as a physics teacher, I saw both the enrichment that tech can provide, with easy access to calculators and apps to enhance learning, and the disruption, with endless notifications, distractions and cyber-bullying incidents. How will the Secretary of State ensure that the consultation harnesses the opportunities that tech provides while protecting kids at risk?”
“I welcome the Minister’s statement and thank her very much for presenting the strategy. Road safety is a frequent and serious concern across Erewash. Following the tragic murder of Samuel Wilson by a driver under the influence of alcohol and drugs in Ilkeston marketplace in December 2023, I have been supporting a local campaign for safer road rules and stronger pedestrianisation in our marketplace to prevent such events from ever happening again. Will the Minister comment on how her road safety strategy will make our town centres safer for pedestrians?”
“I thank the Secretary of State for her answers. I used to be one of those research scientists. I worked in metrology for advanced manufacturing, so I am glad that the Government have identified advanced manufacturing as one of the eight sectors with the greatest growth potential. From the Victorian gentlemen scientists who redefined the way we see our universe to the women driving the fourth industrial revolution, the British have always been able to make the best things. How is the Secretary of State supporting novel technologies through the technology readiness scale to maximise growth for small and medium-sized enterprises in Erewash, such as Atlas Composite Technologies, Status Metrology and R. A. Labone?”
“It does so while we deliver record levels of public investment, and without a return to the brutal, crippling austerity that gave this country 14 wasted years under the previous Government. Change is already under way. The economy is now forecast to grow faster this year than previously expected, and as record investments and trade deals made and secured by this Government pay off, and reforms to stifling planning rules finally come through and deepen, it can grow further. In the first year of this Government, average wages grew more than they did in the entire lost decade of the 2010s, and what happens when workers have more money? They do not sequester it in Dubai or the Cayman Islands; they spend it—on housing, on food, on our high streets, in the pub, and on their children, the greatest investment of all.”
“I was elected to this House to be a voice for working people, and the thousands of families in Erewash who, in 2022, saw their mortgages skyrocket because the Conservatives sent markets spiralling with billions in unfunded tax cuts. The people who I represent did not vote for Liz Truss—most of them did not know who she was. It was hard-working families up and down the country and in Erewash who paid the price for her failures all the same. That should never happen again. What my right hon. Friend the Chancellor did last month in the Budget—made actionable by this Bill—was take the necessary decisions to ensure that there will never be another Liz Truss moment. The Bill will, by the end of the decade, deliver the fiscal headroom that we require to withstand shocks and help pay down the national debt.”
“So yes, in the Budget and in the Bill, the tax burden has increased, but it is those with the broadest shoulders who will bear the greatest weight—those with property to let, those with shares to sell, those paid not through wages but through dividends, those with such vast savings that they pay tax on the interest alone.”
“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his amusing intervention. I am sure that time will tell. We must all contribute to Britain’s renewal, and there are things that only Government can do to secure that renewal. If we want to get the NHS back on its feet, fix our crumbling schools, cut waiting lists and truly invest in Britain’s future, we must pay for it. We know that the alternatives proposed by the Opposition parties lead only to calamity. Liz Truss showed us that when Governments cut taxes for the wealthy, it is working people who end up paying. Nor should we want infinite borrowing, however; I do not want to spend £1 in every £10 serving debt interest. It should go to our schools, our hospitals, and our country.”
“It was not a Budget for millionaires, billionaires, slum landlords, investment bankers, or the bosses of big corporations.”
“In the interests of time, I will not give way again. These are income streams that are overwhelmingly enjoyed by the highest earners, and it is, by and large, the already well-off who will pay more under the Bill. Its provisions include changes to national insurance relief on pension contributions through salary sacrifice schemes—again, a mechanism primarily used by the highest earners. They include reforming council tax, so that someone living in a £10 million mansion in central London does not pay less council tax than a terraced house owner in Ilkeston and Long Eaton. They include a new surcharge on homes worth more than £2 million, which will be paid by fewer than 1% of homeowners. This Budget was for working families, for the everyman and the everywoman, for children and for young people.”
“I will never apologise for standing up for working people, and for saying that the highest earners should pay their fair share. Nor should the Chancellor, the Government or the British people.”
“Reform—whose Members are not here today, I note—would sell off our NHS to the highest bidder, and force people to pay for the care they need. Meanwhile, the Conservatives are calling for mass redundancies in the public sector, enough to sack every police officer in the country twice over. They are against the minimum wage, they are against protections for workers, and they have no plans for growth or renewal—just policies that would leave working families worse off, while their donors get richer and richer. To renew Britain costs money. To restore confidence in the public finances takes time. To get the economy growing again is a serious challenge, but we are meeting it. The choice is between the measures in the Budget and the Bill, and a return to austerity, and I know which side I am on.”
“As I have said, in the interests of time, I will take no more interventions. Instead, we are taking action to cut the cost of living and strengthen our public services. There will be £150 off average energy bills next year, rising to £300 for the poorest households—again, money back in working people’s pockets. As inflation continues to fall, it becomes easier for the Bank of England to cut interest rates, as it has repeatedly under this Government. Prescription charges, train fares and bus fares have all been frozen. There are 5.2 million more appointments in our NHS, with 250 new neighbourhood health centres, cutting waiting lists and bringing care back closer to where people actually live. The Opposition parties will decry these measures, exposing our fundamental differences.”
“There will be no more squalid years of austerity, and no more failing working people. This Budget puts working people back at the heart of our economy, and I am very proud to support it.”
“If they want to charge people money to use our NHS, if they want to cut the minimum wage —taking money out of working people’s pockets, so that it can be given back to their bosses, tax-dodging corporations, millionaires, billionaires or shady party donors—and if they want to see a return to years of dredging austerity, they do not love this country. This Government are investing in Britain, in its people, in families and in our economy fairly and sustainably. We are on the long road towards fighting back against the cost of living crisis, to make life in this country affordable again. We are getting the NHS back on its feet, cutting waiting lists, ending the postcode lottery and putting healthcare back in our local communities, where it can make a real difference.”
“Who paid the price for that chaos and that economic crash? It was working people—families in Long Eaton, Ilkeston and Sandiacre—with mortgages sent sky high, and in some cases doubling, savings wiped out and inflation run amok. Who supported that vandalism? While Conservative Back Benchers were pulling their collars, nervously sending furtive glances in the direction of their majorities, who instead gave Liz Truss their full-throated endorsement? It was, of course, the fake patriots and faux defenders of working people at Reform UK. They are fake patriots. Simply put, they cannot love this country if they want to sell it out to foreign billionaires—or Russian oligarchs, for that matter.”
“It left them in the moribund electoral doldrums where they now find themselves. First, they tried to cut their way out of a recession. Interest rates were a fraction of a percent, yet they did nothing to invest in and grow our economy. The NHS fell to its knees, businesses stopped growing and wages went down in real terms. Even their own Back Benchers—what is left of them—and party members were not happy with their approach. After 12 years of trying one failed scheme after another, and eventually running out of even vaguely credible ideas, the Conservatives tried something new: they made Liz Truss Prime Minister. I think we all remember how that ended, with the abject chaos of the Truss mini-Budget , filled with uncosted spending commitments, tax cuts for the wealthiest and nothing short of an economic Hindenburg.”
“It is fundamentally wrong that people in Ilkeston do not get the same standard of care as people who live here in London. We need to build a truly national health service, ending the postcode lottery for good. In this Budget, we have 250 new neighbourhood health centres. That will hopefully mean that the days of my constituents commuting into Nottingham or Derby for minor scans or blood tests might soon be over. To address those who say that we can borrow without end or cut Britain to oblivion, or who think that tax cuts for the wealthy would somehow magic us into economic growth—or, if we ask the Greens, perhaps hypnotise us into physical growth—we already know where those ideas lead. All of those options were tried and tested during the 14 long years that the Conservative party were in control of the Government.”
“Unlike the Tories and their latest rebrand, Reform, I will be proud next week to back a Budget that backs working people. There is a simple truth: when workers are paid well, they work better. When working people have more money, the economy grows. I was delighted to hear in the Chancellor’s statement the announcement of the Team Derby initiative, a new roaring engine for the east midlands economy, creating high-paid, good-quality jobs in my home in Derbyshire. For children in Ilkeston and Long Eaton, new free apprenticeships in SMEs will be something to truly aspire to when they come out of school, as good as any university degree. In Erewash, waiting times for GP appointments are a full week longer than the national average.”
“Undoubtedly my constituents will be watching this Budget debate closely, asking what it means for them and whether it will sort out the cost of living, fix the NHS and help pay down the national debt. What they will have seen from my right hon. Friend the Chancellor and her ministerial team is a Budget with those issues at its heart. Over 14 years this country experienced the steepest fall in living standards in living memory. The planned rise in the minimum wage next April is just one step towards alleviating those problems for the lowest paid in society. The youngest full-time workers will see a nearly £5,000 pay increase. Coupled with £150 off household energy bills, this Government are literally putting money in people’s pockets.”
“My constituents have not forgotten following the rules during lockdown only to find out that the then Government, who set those rules, were having raucous, drunken parties in the corridors of power. I greatly welcome this Government’s strengthening the ministerial code and ensuring that our nation’s leaders are properly held to account. What is the Minister’s response to those who served in the previous Government having the brass neck to lecture this Government on standards in public life?”
“T4. Much of Erewash is on a floodplain, so the Flood Re scheme is an enormous help to my constituents, particularly those who were catastrophically affected by Storm Babet in 2023. However, local businesses have told me that there is no similar scheme to support their properties. What steps is the Minister taking to support businesses that are struggling after severe flooding episodes?”
“Q12. Since this Government massively boosted the national minimum wage for young people, my Erewash constituents earn far more than the £3.40 an hour that I was paid in my first job just 17 years ago. What is the Deputy Prime Minister’s response to the people, including Conservative and Reform Members, who claim that £10 an hour is too high a wage for young workers? Does he happen to know whether any of the Reform leader’s dozen extra jobs pays him less than £10 an hour?”
“When the shadow Minister’s party came into government in 2010, I was working in the Animal store in Queens Arcade in Cardiff, which was an anchor institution there: it brought people in, and ensured that retail was thriving in the community. When his party left government 14 years later, the Animal store was closed, as were the majority of the other units in the arcade. Can he comment on why that happened on his party’s watch?”