Patrick Hurley
MP for Southport · Labour · United Kingdom
“Given the creation of “No. 10 North”, much of Westminster and Whitehall may soon be experiencing the delights of the west coast main line for themselves, so I expect further public scrutiny of its service levels.”
“It might sound like the B-side to a song by a second-division punk band from 1978, but it is an academic paper published earlier this year, and the title says it all.”
“There has been a wealth of research in the last decade on the hollowing out of those places and the malign long-term consequences of the funding decisions of the last 20 years or so. However, the one that strikes and stays with me the most is Diane Bolet’s “Drinking Alone”.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West (Richard Quigley) on securing this debate.”
“The criminals on the high street move quickly, but the Government response has tended to be too slow over many years. When will the current pilots finish, how will success be judged, and when will all towns in Britain be able to say that they benefit from what works?”
“We know that identifying and treating conditions such as hypertension, high cholesterol and the like earlier can prevent thousands of heart attacks and strokes. I particularly welcome the Government’s commitment to neighbourhood health services.”
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“Given the creation of “No. 10 North”, much of Westminster and Whitehall may soon be experiencing the delights of the west coast main line for themselves, so I expect further public scrutiny of its service levels. Does the Secretary of State agree that passengers travelling between Euston and the north-west of England deserve better than the current delays and uncertainty, and what assurances can she give me on service improvements?”
“It might sound like the B-side to a song by a second-division punk band from 1978, but it is an academic paper published earlier this year, and the title says it all. It argues that years of losing youth provision, leisure facilities and community spaces has not just reduced opportunities for young people; it has weakened people’s sense of belonging. To bring it back to Diane Bolet’s thesis about voting behaviour, the research was conducted in Great Yarmouth. When the general public hear about infrastructure, they tend to think about roads, but social infrastructure matters too. Youth clubs, sports clubs, libraries, community centres, parks and gardens, faith groups—all of that. I say to anybody watching this debate back in Southport: please get involved. Please help to make our town the town it can be in whatever way you can.”
“There has been a wealth of research in the last decade on the hollowing out of those places and the malign long-term consequences of the funding decisions of the last 20 years or so. However, the one that strikes and stays with me the most is Diane Bolet’s “Drinking Alone”. It charts the correlation between the loss of the local pub and the subsequent propensity of the local population to vote for the radical right at election time. The correlation is striking. It is true that the causal relationship is not fully understood, but what I do understand is that if social isolation is correlated to extreme politics, then it is worth a chance of reversing that ideology by trying to socialise people more in their local areas and geographic communities. I also encourage colleagues to search out “Nothing to do and nowhere to go”.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West (Richard Quigley) on securing this debate. I represent the lovely seaside town of Southport, and like many coastal MPs, I know that our lovely towns can be deceptive because behind the frontage there are lower wages, poor health, seasonal work and young people leaving. That is why I welcome how this debate has been framed, because as well as being economic, the challenge facing our coastal areas is social. There is the loss of the places that bring people together, such as libraries, youth clubs, post offices, Sure Start centres, village halls and pubs.”
“The criminals on the high street move quickly, but the Government response has tended to be too slow over many years. When will the current pilots finish, how will success be judged, and when will all towns in Britain be able to say that they benefit from what works?”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain. I congratulate my near-neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Mr Foster) on securing this important debate. I wish him well. I also congratulate the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) on achieving the childhood ambition of having his very own bat-phone. I am, as they say, well jel.”
“Finally, while prevention is crucial, we cannot ignore access to treatment. There are long waits for cardiac care, and there are increasing and continuing pressures on ambulance response times, meaning that too many people are still waiting too long for an emergency response. The forthcoming modern service framework for cardiovascular disease represents a significant opportunity—it must be ambitious. It should be focused on prevention and early intervention, tackle inequalities head on and ensure that everyone, regardless of where they live, can access timely, high-quality care. If we get this right, we will not only save lives but reduce pressure on the NHS, strengthen our economy and create a fairer, healthier country. Even without a bat-phone of my own, I look forward to supporting the Government in delivering their ambition.”
“We know that identifying and treating conditions such as hypertension, high cholesterol and the like earlier can prevent thousands of heart attacks and strokes. I particularly welcome the Government’s commitment to neighbourhood health services. Taking screening and checks into communities, making better use of pharmacies, using data more intelligently and increasingly using AI technologies are all real opportunities to narrow the health inequalities that can scar our communities. We need to stop treating conditions in isolation. So many people with cardiovascular disease are also living with other long-term health conditions. Patients do not just experience heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease or obesity separately; they experience them together. Our health system must increasingly treat the person rather than the condition.”
“Up to 80% of premature deaths from cardiovascular disease can be prevented and 70% of cases are linked to modifiable risk factors such as smoking, obesity, poor diet and inactivity. That is why prevention should be at the heart of the Government’s approach. We need to continue to drive down smoking rates, to make healthy food more accessible and to design our communities and the places where people live around cycling, walking and physical activity. We need to recognise—it is a cliché but only because it is true—that prevention is better and simply cheaper than cure. It keeps people healthier and more independent for longer, and allows people to fully participate in social life. Early diagnosis is equally important. Millions of people are currently living undiagnosed with high blood pressure.”
“During the recent Makerfield by-election, I was very lucky—not just to be part of the wonderful campaign to return a new Member to this House but to undertake almost half-a-million steps around the streets of Wigan over the course of 17 punishing days. I am celebrating not only a new Member for Makerfield but having lost four pounds. For those of us who represent communities in the north-west, the challenges around cardiovascular disease are particularly acute. Health inequalities remain stark. People living in some of our most deprived communities are significantly more likely to develop cardiovascular disease and more than twice as likely to die prematurely from it. Behind every one of those statistics is a family changed forever. There is good news, though: many of those deaths are preventable.”
“It will have been very important to place that on the record once the right hon. Gentleman gets home this evening, I imagine. The Government’s aim to reduce premature deaths from heart disease and stroke by 25% over the next decade is welcome, ambitious and absolutely necessary. Cardiovascular disease remains one of the biggest public health challenges that this country faces. Across the country more than 8 million people live with cardiovascular disease. As has been mentioned, despite decades of progress, we now see a worrying reversal. Premature deaths are rising again for the first time in over half a century. One thing I have personally been doing to reduce my chances of being a victim of cardiovascular disease is walking more.”
“If we combine robust enforcement against unlawful storefronts with a bold programme of renewal and reinvestment, our high streets can once again become thriving civic centres at the heart of community life.”
“Those would be specifically designated areas, typically focused on existing town centres, in which Government could use a package of fiscal incentives, planning flexibilities and public investment to encourage the refurbishment, repurposing and reoccupation of existing buildings, with the aim of increasing population density, economic activity and civic life. Many of our traditional town centres contain beautiful historic buildings with vacant upper floors and underused premises. Renovation zones would provide targeted incentives to encourage the refurbishment and repurposing of those buildings. Rather than endless outward expansion with out-of-town retail parks, we could be focusing on repairing, restoring and repopulating the places that we already have.”
“Legitimate businesses, which employ local people and contribute positively to their communities, should not have to compete with enterprises involved in illicit tobacco, counterfeit goods, money laundering or other criminal activity. To combat that, we need stronger partnership working between local authorities, trading standards, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the police and every other enforcement agency, and we need to ensure that they all have the resources that they need to act swiftly. Visible enforcement matters because it helps to restore confidence among residents, visitors and responsible businesses alike. Alongside enforcement, I want to suggest a more ambitious approach to regeneration and renewal, through what I have previously described as renovation zones.”
“In my constituency, we are trying to do just that: restoring our iconic seaside pier, investing in public services, supporting creative and cultural sectors—including the Warehouse Arts Centre, which opened just last week—bringing vacant upper floors above retail units back into use as homes, and improving the aesthetics of the town. However, as well as good intentions, we need—my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) mentioned the trading standards officer in Dudley—the confidence and determination to enforce our will. Across the country, our constituents are increasingly raising concerns that premises appear to be operating outside the law.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. Our local high streets are the beating heart of our towns and our country, but they have faced profound challenges in recent years. We have seen the rise of online retail, changing consumer habits and years of under-investment in our town centres, and the tax system and business rates have not kept pace with that. In my view, the answer to all that is not simply to recreate the high streets of 30 or 40 years ago. The successful town centre or high street of the future will look different. We need to work to combine retail with culture, hospitality, housing, leisure, health services and other aspects of community activity.”
“There are not many White Papers that leave behind institutions that still change lives six decades later, but this one did, because Jennie Lee understood something important: there has always been a mismatch in this country—potential is spread far more widely and far more equally than opportunity. In the mid-60s, the assumption was still that higher education belonged to a relatively narrow section of society.”
“It meant learning being made available not just to those who had always had privilege, not just to the young or the affluent, and not only to those who followed a conventional academic route, but, crucially, to ordinary working people fitting study around jobs, families and the realities of their lives. Sixty years on, what once sounded ambitious, perhaps even eccentric to some, instead now looks visionary. That is because it was visionary. It did not begin as some sort of administrative reform dreamt up in Whitehall; first and foremost, it was a political project. Harold Wilson first floated the idea in 1963, after seeing the potential of television and broadcasting to widen access to education in ways that had not previously seemed possible. But the person who really drove the project forward was his Minister, Jennie Lee.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered the impact of the University of the Air White Paper on lifelong learning opportunities. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I am grateful for the opportunity to lead this debate marking the 60th anniversary of the White Paper that led to the founding of the Open University, originally called the “University of the Air”. It is worth pausing on that phrase for a moment, because 60 years later it still sounds faintly otherworldly, even with all our electronic gizmos and gadgets and the information whizzing around us constantly. A “University of the Air” meant higher education broadcast directly into people’s homes.”
“It reaches every constituency, including my own, Southport, where around 135 people are currently studying through it. This is not some sort of niche institution sitting at the margins of education policy but one of the central pillars of lifelong learning in this country.”
“Crucially, she insisted that there should be no lowering of standards and no second-class offer for those who had missed out the first time round. Perhaps the most radical thing of all was that the Open University would be genuinely open. The White Paper made it clear that people should be able to study irrespective of their previous educational qualifications. In other words, someone would not be shut out just because they had not done their A-levels. On all those points, the Government at the time were absolutely right, because the Open University has become one of the great success stories of modern Britain. Today, it is the largest university in the country, with around 125,000 students. Nearly a quarter of all part-time higher education students in this country study at the OU.”
“Funding is a huge issue here. The modular basis for the Open University has been a real boon to people who find themselves unable, for whatever reason, to study in a traditional format, but funding is still a key concern. Back in the ’60s, university was for young people. It was thought to be for young people, usually at least middle class, studying full time and following a fairly prescribed path. The thinking went that if someone missed their opportunity at 18 or 21, that was that—they had had their chance. But Jennie Lee and the Wilson Government challenged that assumption. They believed that education ought not to be reserved for those lucky enough to travel a conventional route through life, and that people should have second chances—and third chances if they need them, and fourth chances too.”
“It changed it for me. To be frank, I have forgotten quite a lot of the stuff that I was actually taught during my time at the Open University. I sometimes need a primer on the exact details of the theoretical framework underpinning the long-run Phillips curve. When I re-read my master’s thesis a few years ago, I surprised myself with how much I agreed with my conclusions on the intersection between liberty and unequal power relations. But I will never forget that moment back in December 2010, when I got my undergraduate result. It felt like validation. It was a confidence boost that has never left me. In among the successes and the congratulations, we should be honest about the challenges—”
“We simply cannot operate on the assumption that education happens only once, in our late teens or early 20s, and then stops. Frankly, that never made sense, and it certainly does not make sense any more. If we are serious about economic growth, improving productivity and helping people back into good work, lifelong learning has to move from being a worthy aspiration to being something much closer to the centre of how we think about our economy. Since being elected to Parliament, I have spent a lot of time working in the areas of employment, skills and economic inactivity, and I think we sometimes underestimate the role education plays in building people’s confidence as much as their competence. Often, people are not just missing qualifications; they are missing the confidence that they are capable of more. Adult education changes that.”
“Working-class people have always valued education, hard work and making something of ourselves. The nonsense about a lack of aspiration that we sometimes hear from the assembled ranks of the privileged has never been true. The problem was never aspiration; the problem was access. In many ways, the “University of the Air” was the modern expression of that Victorian-era working-class tradition, and the belief that education should not stop, even when life gets complicated. That approach matters now more than ever. We live in a country where people are likely to work for longer. They change careers more often. They need to retrain repeatedly. We are also living through profound economic change, with automation, artificial intelligence, changing labour markets and an ageing population.”
“From speaking to other OU students over the years, I know that my story is far from unusual. There are hundreds of thousands of us out there who have rebuilt confidence, changed career, retrained or simply proved something to ourselves, because somebody, somewhere, 60 years ago had the foresight to build an institution flexible enough to meet people where they already are. Something about all this is deeply embedded in the labour movement. The Open University sits in a much longer tradition of working-class people organising to educate ourselves and improve our circumstances. Long before most people had access to university, we had mechanics’ institutes, miners’ libraries, mutual improvement societies, trade union reading rooms and university extension programmes. We had the Workers’ Educational Association.”
“I spent a few soul-destroying months working for a debt collector, before I could take no more and quit to go back on the dole. Like many people, I found that without qualifications there were doors that simply remained shut, no matter how hard I tried. The Open University changed all that for me, although not in some dramatic overnight fashion like we might see in a television drama. It was hard work. It meant studying in the evenings, at weekends, on the bus to and from work—and, to be honest, probably sometimes during work if the boss was not looking. I was doing assignments when other members of the family were watching television or going out and getting on with their lives. But it made something possible for me that would otherwise not have been possible: it gave me the ability to learn around my life.”
“It explicitly talked about flexibility, recognising that some learners would move quickly and others slowly, depending on the realities of their lives. The Open University says something very simple to people in those circumstances: “It is not too late. It is never too late.” I should declare an interest, because I would not be standing here in Westminster Hall this afternoon without the Open University. I did not come through the conventional route into higher education. I left school without much expectation that university was really for people like me. For most of my life, I worked in fairly ordinary, fairly low-paid jobs. For instance, I sold “Magic Tree” air-fresheners to petrol stations. I spent a decade working in a call centre for an insurance company.”
“I am more than happy to commend Baroness Jennie Lee, and I am more than happy to celebrate the success of my hon. Friend and of the countless thousands of others who have studied around the real lives we all lead. One reason why the Open University works is precisely because it understands something that many higher education institutions still struggle with: life is not linear. People do not all move neatly from school to university to career to retirement in a straight line. Our lives are messier than that. People leave school without confidence, drift into jobs and later discover different ambitions. They become parents, care for relatives, lose jobs, or their health changes. Sometimes, at 35, 45 or 55, they simply decide that they want to try something new. The original White Paper understood that.”
“The central question remains exactly the same as it ever was: what do we do with potential that has not yet had its chance? For millions of people, the Open University has represented confidence, dignity and a second opportunity. I know that, because in my case it changed the direction of my life. For that reason, if no other, I believe that the vision behind the “University of the Air” deserves not simply our admiration but our continued support.”
“We must ensure that part-time provision is properly funded and properly supported, we must raise awareness so that more people know these opportunities exist, and we must ensure that lifelong learning is embedded across Government—yes, in education policy, but also in economic, employment and regional growth strategies as well. As we mark 60 years since the White Paper, we should all do two things. First, we should celebrate one of the most genuinely radical and successful achievements of not just Harold Wilson’s Government but every Labour Government: an institution built on the belief that intelligence is not confined to one class, one place or one stage of life. Secondly, we should remember that the argument Jennie Lee made in 1966 is not yet finished.”
“The lifelong learning entitlement represents a major step forward. It is transforming the student finance system to support flexible, modular learning across people’s lives. For the first time, individuals will be able to access funding both for traditional degrees and for shorter courses, as well as retraining and skills development, when they need it throughout their careers. It is fitting that this reform builds directly on the principles pioneered by the Open University almost 60 years ago. The OU’s expertise in modular, flexible provision will be vital in making the lifelong learning entitlement a success, but we must do more.”
“I ask the Minister to reflect on the role that institutions such as the Open University can play in regions like mine. One of its great strengths is that people do not have to leave their communities to access the opportunities available to them. That matters in places that have too often watched talent drain away, like the region I am from. Somebody in Southport or St Helens, in Birkenhead or Bootle, should not necessarily have to move away from their home town to improve their prospects. The Open University allows people to build skills while remaining rooted in the places that they love and that they want to contribute to. That strikes me as important, not just educationally but economically and socially. I am proud that this Labour Government are acting in a way that is true to the founding vision of the Open University.”
“That is why I welcome the broad direction of travel on lifelong learning and the more flexible provision the Government are pursuing. The principle is right—people should be able to access education throughout their lives and in a way that fits around their work and family—but it remains true that implementation and delivery matter as well. If lifelong learning is genuinely to continue to work, people need a system they can understand and easily navigate. The funding regime needs to feel straightforward and fair. Flexible provision has to be properly supported. Employers need to be part of the conversation. And, frankly, we need many more people just to know that these opportunities exist, because too many adults still assume that higher education is simply not for people like them.”
“Definitely. If anything, it is even more important in 2026, with all the challenges we see around us. As I said, we should be honest about the challenges. Despite the success of institutions like the Open University, adult participation in higher education has fallen over the last decade. Too often, the system still feels like it is designed around the traditional undergraduate who left school at 18, rather than the parents in their 30s or 40s, the worker retraining after redundancy or the person managing long-term ill health while trying to rebuild their future. Yet mature students are not some small minority: more than a third of undergraduate entrants are mature learners. They are already a major part of our higher education system, whether we recognise it fully or not.”
“Given the context, it was no choice at all—it was obvious what I should do. Funding is never easy, but we need to redouble our efforts to ensure that the principle the OU was founded on—that education should be affordable and accessible to all—holds true not just for the last 60 years, but for the next 60 years. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the impact of the University of the Air White Paper on lifelong learning opportunities.”
“First, I pay tribute to you, Sir Desmond, for your exemplary chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I also thank Members from across the House for their valued contributions. With your indulgence, Sir Desmond, I will touch on funding, a topic raised by several Members, through an anecdote about how I paid my Open University fees. When I studied at the OU, modules were around £700 each. Even that was too expensive for me. It was not until I realised that I could pay for my modules using Tesco Clubcard vouchers that I finally took the plunge and enrolled. The choice was this: every few months, a booklet from Tesco would come through the post, and I would have the option of getting 50% off a Pizza Express bill, or free cinema tickets, or potentially transforming my life through higher education.”
“In my constituency, an acknowledged victim of violent crime is being alleged to be contributorily negligent in the civil courts. That is retraumatising, and appears to be contrary to natural justice. Will the Minister meet me and my constituents to discuss this further, and see what measures can be put in place to address concerns about how the civil law system deals with such cases?”
“T4. The shadow Secretary of State has recently claimed that the Government could save getting on for £2 billion from the welfare bill by bringing in face-to-face assessments. I find this ironic because the Conservatives were the ones who reduced face-to-face assessments to almost zero when they were in government. Can my right hon. Friend therefore set out what steps he is taking to clear up the mess that they left behind?”
“Q3. In contrast with the preoccupations of the Leader of the Opposition, my constituents are more concerned with the NHS and waiting lists. Thanks to this Government, across England, waiting lists are coming down. In my part of the country, waiting lists have fallen by 13,000 in the past year alone. After years of Tory failure, we are getting the NHS back on its feet. Will the Prime Minister share with me what further plans we have to get waiting lists down even more, and to make sure that we once again have a health service to be proud of?”
“Q9. I thank the Prime Minister for his words in relation to the horrific attack in my constituency, and for the work that the Government are doing as a result. The families affected do not want their lives to be defined by the attack, and we must not allow my great town to be defined by it either. That is why I am asking for the Prime Minister’s help to ensure that my town’s best days lie ahead. My council is helping to bring empty town centre properties back into residential use. It is a much-needed corrective after years of decline and neglect under the previous Government, but more needs to be done. Does the Prime Minister agree that our town centres need place-based funding, and will he back my bid for Southport to be included in the next round of Pride in Place support?”
“T10. What more can the Government do to ensure that social enterprises delivering NHS services get the same support as internal NHS trusts, and play a bigger role in NHS reform?”
“The better futures approach allows for longer-term investment, focuses on prevention and gives organisations the space that they need to deliver outcomes that work. If the Office for the Impact Economy can take the better futures fund model and apply it more widely to new problems, it could play a significant role in supporting social enterprises and community businesses to tackle some of the most complex problems facing our communities. We all want economic growth. We all want growth that is felt across the country. But we need ownership of that growth. We need control and investment to be more closely connected to our communities, where people live. That is where the social enterprise movement has an important role to play.”
“Rather than having the Office for the Impact Economy reinvent the wheel, there is an opportunity to build on the success of the better futures fund. The Office for the Impact Economy would be better placed to take on responsibility for the existing fund from DCMS and further develop it as a cross-Government programme. The approach that sits behind the better futures fund should not be limited to one programme affecting young people, because the same model can be applied to a much wider set of complex social issues, including homelessness, street drinking, library services, outreach and high street regeneration. In all those areas, we are not suffering from a lack of effort; we are suffering from over a decade of underfunding and from a system that is often too short-term and too tied to the wrong outcomes and outputs.”
“It is defined not by business structures, but by an underlying philosophy that business should work in the interests of communities and that wealth should circulate locally rather than being extracted. I will devote the rest of my speech to the new Office for the Impact Economy, which sits in the Cabinet Office. It is a positive development that shows that there is an understanding that tackling social and economic challenges requires taking a different approach. We already have a good example of the Office for the Impact Economy’s approach in the better futures fund, which currently sits in DCMS. That fund is bringing together public, private and social investment to support early intervention, and it pays for results rather than just for activity.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John. My hon. Friend the Member for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt) said that ownership matters. She is spot on. Ownership affects who makes decisions and who benefits from those decisions. For too long, we have had too little ownership of commercial and community assets by local people, and too much by remote organisations with no real stake in the places they operate in. Before coming to this place, I worked for years in what is called the social enterprise sector. I have never been keen on calling it a sector. One of my old mates once said to me, “Sectors are where movements go to die.” I think social enterprise is better understood as a movement.”
“I neglected to declare an interest in my capacity as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the social, co-operative and community economy. Does my hon. Friend agree that all Members at this debate should attend the annual general meeting of the all-party group on Wednesday 25 March at 5.30 pm? Sadly, it will not be in a community pub, but in Room N in Portcullis House.”
“Under the previous Government, as the Secretary of State mentioned in his statement, youth employment never reached pre-financial crash levels in any single year, so the country had suffered a long period of stagnation. Crucially, some young people, unlike a bloke my age, have never known what an active Government can do to get them into good work. Will the Secretary of State confirm that this targeted package of support is precisely what the young people of this country need in 2026, and that it can finally turn the tables on years of Tory decline?”
“The Prime Minister’s leadership on Ukraine has been exemplary. Does the Minister agree that that leadership has helped to secure US commitments on security for Ukraine, and that this demonstrates the importance of the US-UK defence relationship to international security?”
“Given the Government’s commitment to growing the co-operative sector, will the Minister commit to working across Government, specifically with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, so that high street rental auctions actively prioritise community-owned and co-operative models, and ensure that the Office for the Impact Economy is promoting these economies appropriately?”