Mrs Elsie Blundell
MP for Heywood and Middleton North · Labour · United Kingdom
“I am so proud to represent some wonderful churches across my constituency, from All Saints and Martyrs in Langley to St Luke’s in central Heywood, but many are in need of repair and renewal.”
House of Commons22 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My constituents are very concerned about Northern Care Alliance hospitals. Across the trust, there were 10 serious incidents between 2025 and 2026 that were found to be wholly preventable, lengthy delays causing severe harm to patients and industrial action, culminating in a sustained decline in performance and national rankings on patien…”
House of Commons20 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker, and to see the Minister, my constituency neighbour, in his place. I thank the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett) for securing this crucial debate. The debt we owe to our country’s unpaid carers is immense.”
House of Commons15 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Finally, I would like to touch on how we secure high-quality supportive and respite services in every postcode. When carers reach a point where they feel like the walls are closing in—and, in truth, long before they reach that point—flexible respite and replacement care should be available, and should be both reliable and of high quality.…”
House of Commons15 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This means NHS trusts having robust and systematic processes for identifying carers, with GP records being properly maintained so that individuals can be identified early, connected to support, and have their own wellbeing needs properly addressed.”
House of Commons15 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Undoubtedly, every Member present will know a constituent, friend or family member with caring responsibilities. Being an unpaid carer, though commendable, can be deeply isolating and lonely. It is therefore crucial that when it gets too much, there is a community and a safety net that can provide comfort and support to our constituents.”
House of Commons15 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
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“Communities across Heywood and Middleton North, however resilient, still bear the scars of these appalling and cowardly acts. I am grateful to the Minister for her continued engagement and resolve in addressing the cruel legacy of those crimes. What steps are being taken by her Department to learn from the healthcare practitioners, support workers and others who were active at the time of these crimes and initial inquiries to ensure that they can provide their insights and expertise to inform the commendable present-day efforts to secure justice for the women and girls?”
House of Commons28 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Q9. My constituents are grafters—they want to work, and they want to see opportunities created and the skills and investment in infrastructure that we need for the future. I welcome the Prime Minister’s commitment to fix the transport system in the north of England, which has been holding us back, and I invite him to the Atom Valley development zone in my constituency to discuss how we can create skilled jobs in north Greater Manchester.”
House of Commons2 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My constituency carries painful scars from a time when vulnerable girls were subjected to abuse and exploitation, but across the country it is not just so-called grooming gangs that present a danger to girls; abuse happens online, in institutions and in the home. What measures will the new Government put in place to target perpetrators and address the root causes of abuse and violence, to ensure that what happened to vulnerable girls in my constituency can never happen again?”
House of Commons29 July 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Finally, when it comes to devolution for our city region the job is well under way, but we must be mindful of the fact that it is not yet finished. I look forward to supporting our new Government, because I know that, through the English devolution Bill and other measures, they will put power back into the hands of working people and money back into their pockets. They will strive to ensure that powerful forces are not able to disenfranchise those people again. Throughout history, my constituents have had too much experience of that. I thank right hon. and hon. Members for their attention, and I thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to make my first contribution.”
House of Commons19 July 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We need to improve transport connectivity throughout city regions like Greater Manchester because good transport infrastructure allows for more frequent interaction between people and creates larger pools of workers for businesses. Earlier this month, we received promising news from the Greater Manchester combined authority of a re-commitment to the linking of Middleton into Greater Manchester’s Metrolink network and of progress on plans for Heywood’s tram-train connection. In future, that will form part of the city region’s integrated transport network, which Greater Manchester must carry on delivering at pace, to boost productivity, pay, jobs and living standards in Heywood and Middleton North.”
House of Commons19 July 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am incredibly pleased by the measures set out in the King’s Speech to accelerate infrastructure delivery and to improve our transport network. Unfortunately, many people in my constituency do not have access to the opportunities and jobs they need, as Heywood and Middleton—despite their location in the great, modern city region of Greater Manchester—are two of the largest towns in the north-west of England not to be served by a rail station or Metrolink tram stop. As one former shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls, argued in a recent paper, there has been too little transport investment in low-productivity areas such as mine.”
House of Commons19 July 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“People like these make my constituency great, and I will do everything that I can to support them. I would like to pay tribute to my predecessors. Chris Clarkson has represented the people of Heywood and Middleton for the past four and a half years. I know that many Members of this House valued his good humour and enjoyed working alongside him, including on the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee. Liz McInnes was the MP for Heywood and Middleton between 2014 and 2019, and served in two shadow ministerial roles. Liz worked incredibly hard in both of those positions and was a fierce advocate for her constituents on many issues, including the NHS, in which she had previously worked. For the past seven years, I have enjoyed a career in transport planning.”
House of Commons19 July 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“They include retail workers such as Robert and Brenda Bell from Heywood, who are also proud trade unionists, for whom the employment rights Bill, set out in the King’s Speech, will create extra rights to work flexibly and make parental leave, sick pay and protection from unfair dismissal day-one rights. This Government will also ban zero-hours contracts and fire and rehire. Then there are the many volunteers, including the Pullen family, who run the 1st Heywood Scouts Group; Howard Bowden and Simon Bennett, who do excellent work through the Friends of Jubilee Park group and St Edmund’s church; and Pete Knowles and his group of volunteers at Stoney Hill community wildlife area, who protect and promote our beautiful meadows and woodlands and make sure that children in a relatively urban area can access nature too.”
House of Commons19 July 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Alongside Heywood, Middleton and Spotland, I have the privilege of representing the former mill town of Castleton, with its proud history of manufacturing and engineering, and the fantastic villages of Bamford and Norden. My constituency was also home to renowned architect Edgar Wood, who is widely recognised as the most advanced English architect of his time. More recently, Heywood was the birthplace of Ian Simpson—one half of SimpsonHaugh & Partners—whose buildings, such as Beetham Tower and One Blackfriars, compel people to look up to the skylines in both Manchester and London. To this day, it is the people of Heywood and Middleton North who continue to make the place great, and I would like to use this speech to pay tribute to some of them.”
House of Commons19 July 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Friend the Member for Rochdale (Paul Waugh)—I will claim as a predecessor, as large parts of what was his constituency now fall under Heywood and Middleton North boundaries. The history of the area I represent, then, is strongly linked to many political and social reforms in this country and around the world, and to ideals and values that we hold close to this day: that there is no place for violence in our politics; that the circumstances a person is born into must not prevent them from participating in our democracy; and that—as those cotton workers knew in the 1860s—we should be compassionate to all people regardless of race, class or any other distinction.”
House of Commons19 July 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a monument to the cotton workers who lived there in the 1860s, and who bravely sided with the Union cause during the American civil war. It was a selfless act, especially as the Union side at that time was preventing goods from leaving Confederate ports. This resulted in a shortage of cotton supplies—a cotton famine—and caused unemployment, poverty and hardship across Lancashire, but support for President Lincoln and his pledge to end the slave trade held firm. The workers’ campaign was supported by Rochdale statesman and radical John Bright, of whom a sculpture can be found in the Lower Waiting Hall of Westminster Palace. Bright was a lifelong campaigner against slavery and is especially well known for his role in abolishing the corn laws, alongside another great parliamentarian, Richard Cobden, who—with apologies to my hon.”
House of Commons19 July 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to make my maiden speech during this debate. I am so proud to represent Heywood and Middleton North. It is a new constituency, comprising part of Rochdale and most of the former Heywood and Middleton seat, both in Greater Manchester. People from my constituency have long shaped our parliamentary democracy. Heywood is the birthplace of Peter Heywood, famous for apprehending Guy Fawkes in the cellar beneath Parliament in 1605. Middleton, too, has a famous son in Sam Bamford, the radical social reformer who led a contingent of weavers from Middleton into Manchester in 1819. Their peaceful protest for political representation ended in massacre at St Peter’s Field. Spotland, in the Rochdale part of my constituency, is home to a stone road widely known as Cotton Famine Road.”
House of Commons19 July 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗