Sam Rushworth
MP for Bishop Auckland · Labour · United Kingdom
“I thank the Minister for that answer. In the area that I represent, we have a problem. NHS dental practices in Shildon and in Bishop Auckland closed in the year before the general election, and recently another practice in West Auckland has been writing to patients to say that it cannot provide NHS care.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Hobhouse. I thank my friend the hon. Member for Horsham (John Milne) for the initiative to lead this debate. Although she is not present in the debate, I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Maidstone and Malling (Helen Grant), who is a great campaigner on this issue.”
“The Lobular Moon Shot Project has been successful so far in raising significant funds, which have been used to develop funding proposals for early work. As we have heard, there is an opportunity to fund significant research at Manchester University. I declare an interest as an alumnus of Manchester.”
“When I was elected, Katie asked to see me, and I was delighted to pick up the baton and support my constituent. In fact, this Saturday she is organising a fair and a tabletop sale in her village of Hilton to raise funds for the Lobular Moon Shot Project.”
“It is, however, vital that those funding rounds go ahead and that the funding is made available to meet the need. As we have heard already, the unique aspect of lobular breast cancer is that it is very difficult to discover.”
“Do they look to enjoy all of life’s riches and pleasures? Susan chose to spend it in the service of others, campaigning for the science to be done to develop a cure for lobular breast cancer. She founded the Lobular Moon Shot campaign.”
The complete record
Every one of 471 lines we hold for Sam Rushworth, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 8 of 10.
“Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) suggested earlier, if young people were asked, “If you could switch this off for everyone, would you?” lots of them would actually say, “Yes, I would.” However, there is a phenomenon, which my teenagers tell me is called FOMO—fear of missing out—that means that they have to be in a space, while simultaneously not wanting to be in that space, all the time. In our generation, we might have found school life difficult, but we could go home from school and switch off. For many children today, the first thing they experience when they wake up in the morning is the notifications from the night before, and those notifications are the last thing they see when they go to bed at night. Therefore, I think we do need to regulate.”
“Despite schools’ valiant efforts to teach children not to do that, we know it is happening—and happening at a worrying scale. We also know that children are overconnected to a social space, which is completely unsupervised, where they can encounter humiliation and bullying. I had a conversation not long ago with a child and asked the question, “Well, why don’t you just not go online?” The response came back, “Because I need to know what people are saying about me.” As the right hon.”
“Many people have spoken well about the damage that we know social media is causing to our children: apps that are designed to addict, requiring users to get streaks, which we know affects concentration; an over-connectedness that is driving anxiety and disrupting children’s sleep; content that distorts children’s relationships with reality on bodies and lifestyles, which is damaging to self-esteem, and, while some of these sites do not host explicitly pornographic material, in the sense that certain body parts are covered, children are often overexposed to a general timbre of content that is still sexualising the human body and causing them to think in sexualised terms at a young age. There is also the challenge of apps that are designed for children to communicate through images, which are driving the phenomenon known as sexting.”
“Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister) for an excellent speech setting out the strong evidence base for why it is imperative that we, as a Parliament, act. There have been some excellent speeches from Members across all the parties in this place today. I was reflecting, were I ever fortunate enough to place where my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington did in the private Member’s ballot, and to be able to one thing to improve our country right now, what I would do. I think that he has got it right—it has to be about what we do to protect the next generation. It is not a cliché to say that they are all our futures and that we face an epidemic of youth mental unwellness today that is holding back a generation.”
“I thank the British public for bringing this petition forward so that we can debate it today, and thank those who have led on this issue. The petition comes from a place of real strong feeling among parents. This is not some blind moral panic; it is the lived experience of anybody who has raised a teenager in the last few years. My wife and I spend a lot of our time discussing our own parenting. Like many parents, we agonise over whether we are getting it right—on the one hand, wanting not to be too autocratic and to give our children the freedom to engage in a social space which their friends are in, while, on the other, knowing that we are allowing them access to something that we believe is causing them damage. I thank my hon.”
“I thank the Minister for that answer. The cost of transport is a huge cost of living pressure for children and young people in my constituency who are trying to access education and social and leisure opportunities. What assurance can the Minister give me that the buses Bill will end a system in which bus services are controlled by ideology, and make it a system that puts them at the service of local people?”
“Next month, railway enthusiasts from around the world will come to my constituency, where we will mark the 200th anniversary of the Stockton and Darlington railway, which took off from the town of Shildon. Will my right hon. Friend ask the Rail Minister to meet me and other MPs along that route to talk about how the Government can be part of those celebrations?”
“They even support the principle of paying tax and raising revenue for the Treasury, because they know that Treasury revenue is necessary to improve the NHS and improve schools in their communities, as well as having a strong agricultural budget. They are not asking for a full U-turn, by the way; they are asking for some meaningful tweaks that will help the policy to better target the goals that it intends to achieve.”
“I am here to speak up for the farmers in my constituency of Bishop Auckland, which is a Labour farming community. Farmers in my area are worried. They put their trust in us at the general election, and why did they do so? Because they had been so badly let down for 14 years and they knew that the previous Government could have done more on things like trade deals, supply chains, flood defences and crime. Let me tell the House what farmers in my constituency are telling me. They say that they have no problem with the principle that we should be closing tax loopholes. To quote the Telegraph , they want to stop billionaires “hoovering up agricultural land”, which they know is pushing up land prices.”
“Would that better protect the small family farms and do a better job of closing the tax loophole at the same time? Another point on which my constituents would welcome some consideration is the proposal for a clawback. Someone who inherits a £5 million farm is not a millionaire; they are the custodian of agricultural land, with a responsibility to farm it to produce food for the nation. If they sell a £5 million farm they become a millionaire, but they do not become one simply by inheriting it. Farmers in my constituency would be interested to look at the proposal, and it would be helpful for them to understand the modelling that the Treasury has done. Among that Labour farming community, there is good will for this Government on many things we are trying to achieve. That good will can be retained.”
“I welcome that intervention. There are two areas in particular on which I think farmers in my constituency would like some answers. One is thresholds. Because the policy still keeps the 50% agricultural property relief, it does not actually close a tax loophole at all for the very wealthiest. My constituents would like to see the modelling from the Treasury that says that it would. Meanwhile, because the threshold is quite low, it means that sadly some of the family farms in my constituency will really struggle to pay their inheritance tax bill. They would like to see what modelling has been done around the thresholds; they are not asking for a U-turn, because they understand that it should be neutral for the Treasury, but they would be interested to know whether we could lift the threshold but go to 40% tax at another threshold.”
“There are a variety of things that could be looked at. I met the NFU this morning and we discussed various points. I feel that these are all things that should be considered. I reiterate that I believe that the community I represent still has good will toward this Government and the intentions of this Government, but there are aspects of the policy that could be tweaked to better achieve their intentions.”
“There is absolutely nothing timid about what I am telling the right hon. Gentleman: farmers in my community were massively let down by the previous Government.”
“I do not know why the right hon. Lady keeps saying that. We have not voted on the policy yet. There was a vote against a motion that was put forward by the Opposition. It was a cynical motion that was designed to make us want to vote against it, because it was so ridiculous.”
“The hon. Member is making an excellent speech, but some of the farmers in my constituents are concerned that the Liberal Democrats have talked about a land tax and a wealth tax. Will she tell us how that would affect the farmers in her constituency and mine?”
“T9. I thank the Government for improving the pay and housing conditions of our armed forces. Bishop Auckland has turned out some excellent young men and women into the armed forces, many of whom first went through our brilliant volunteer-led cadet forces. Without wishing to pre-empt the strategic defence review, will the Government commit to ensuring strong funding for our local cadets?”
“T5. Working-class boys in the north-east are being held back by an attainment gap, based on gender and income. The previous Government had no strategy for dealing with such attainment gaps. What will this Government do? Will the Minister commit to a strategy on this issue?”
“One of the biggest cost savings for children’s social care is kinship carers. These unsung heroes do a great deal to care for children, often in very difficult circumstances, but they often feel that the state is not there to support them in that work. Does my hon. Friend agree that more needs to be done to properly recognise the contribution that is made by kinship carers?”
“I thank the Minister for highlighting the rise in the number of children in care. Will she acknowledge the link between the growing number of children in care and the effects of 14 years of austerity?”
“I have visited more than a dozen schools in my constituency since being elected, and I am always overwhelmed by the passion of the teachers who have to work in really trying circumstances. They are often very under-resourced to deal with children who are ill-prepared for school and a growing caseload of children with special educational needs, so I really welcome the additional investment with the RISE teams. As the Minister will know, Conservative Members are fond of quoting our improvement in the PISA rankings, which is the legacy of the generation who experienced Sure Start—where children had a Sure Start centre nearby, that generation achieved 0.8 grades higher at GCSE. What will the Government do to ensure that we have more children coming to school who are prepared for school?”
“People from primary schools in rural areas of my constituency have come to me, and one of the challenges they face is a falling population because of the declining number of jobs. Although they have both fixed and variable costs, they lose per pupil funding as a result, and some of those primary schools are becoming unviable. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need a different funding settlement for schools in rural areas?”
“I welcome the Government’s tripling of the emergency housing budget, but one of my constituents is about to be made homeless because debt incurred as a teenager means that she is not eligible for social housing. Are the Government willing to look at that? I am sure that they do not think that debt should be a reason for homelessness.”
“I thank the Home Secretary for her answers, which have clarified a number of the questions I would have wanted to raise with her. I am also grateful for her victim-centred approach. One of the challenges is that, when a child is being groomed for sexual exploitation, they do not always know that they are a victim until they are an adult, living haunted by the past. What more can be done to help children recognise what is happening in their lives?”
“There are three male faith leaders of that platform, who have also done remarkable work, and been nominated for all the Nobel prizes, as well as all the things one would expect, and have travelled the world, but we were not able to get visas for the women due to their poverty. As I sat with those women and asked them about their experience and what I could do, two things stood out for me. One of them was that one woman said she was grateful for the work of the men in building peace, before adding: “But I was the one who faced down the barrel of a gun and stood between the militia and my community, and persuaded them to put down their weapons.””
“We took them to Birmingham central mosque for a discussion on peace and the role of women in peace there. Ghadir was given a pretty hard time by some of the audience, who could not understand why she was appearing on a platform with her Jewish friend promoting peace in their community. Another example of three outstanding women, who I, unfortunately, could not bring to the UK because we were not successful in getting visas for them to come to the conference, are three women in the Central African Republic. A few years ago, I was with them in Bangui. By chance it happened to be International Women’s Day. Their names are Marie-Therese, Aicha Baba and Clarisse Manehou—a Catholic, a Protestant and a Muslim. They are three women who represent an interfaith platform and work together.”
“She did not learn to read or write until she was nine years old, and was often bullied at school for being illiterate. Eventually, she found somebody she was able to confide in and open up to, and she talked to her foster parents about her experiences. Today, Charity works mentoring young girls overcoming the trauma of abuse and sexual violence in her country. She came here to Parliament and spoke eloquently about her work. Another person is Khalidah, who is from Iraq, and her friend, Shno Qane Qader. Khalidah is a young Yazidi woman and Shno is a young Muslim woman; they work together to promote peace in their communities and there is powerful testimony of their work. Other examples include Ghadir Hana, an Israeli-Palestinian, and Surale Rosen, a Jewish Israeli: two women working together for peace.”
“However, as he spent time in the workshop he realised the value of its mission. He ended up becoming one of its most committed members, and went on to found a school for girls and start his own organisation. Another such person is Badung Charity Audu, a Nigerian human rights activist. Charity witnessed severe violence in her community, including Muslim houses being burned to ashes around her. Some of her friends were murdered and, beginning at the age of five, she was repeatedly raped by relatives and close friends. Due to the high standing of her abusers within her community and faith group, she remained silent in her suffering. She faced constant verbal abuse and was often called “born by mistake” because she was born out of wedlock.”
“A couple of years ago, I was privileged to work with the previous Government’s special envoy for freedom of religion or belief in organising the global ministerial conference—I was part of an effort to bring women and youth from countries where there is interfaith conflict to the UK. One of those people was Sri Lankan peacebuilder Dishani Jayaweera. She founded the Centre for Peacebuilding and Reconciliation. She told us a story from during the war when she met a man named Ulama, who had come to one of her workshops. She would run workshops that brought together people from different sides of the conflict to help build empathy and understanding. On the third day of the workshop, he took her hand and broke down crying; he confessed that he had been sent by an extremist group to spy on her organisation.”
“She was a remarkable young woman on an access course and her ambition was to go on to be a doctor, but during that period the Home Office was trying to deport her family back to Afghanistan because it was deemed a safe country. I remember spending time with her, and she tearfully explained to me that although she probably could live there, she would not be able to continue her studies—and she had this dream of going on to be a doctor. We were ultimately unsuccessful at keeping her in the country, and I do not know what has happened to her since, but this is an important point that we note for future policymaking in that area. I will focus my remarks today on the role of women in upstream prevention, with examples of some really heroic women that I have been privileged to know.”
“Friend the Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) for securing this really important debate, and I thank the Minister for being here. Until she appeared before the International Development Committee last week, I was a sceptic on the dual role of being both the Minister for Women and Equalities and the Minister for Development. I wondered whether it did not dilute the two roles, but the answer that she gave us has persuaded me that it is a very powerful thing to have her on the global stage. We all know how integral women and girls are to international development. Many Members have raised Afghanistan, and I reflected on a time a few years ago when I was a further education teacher and had an Afghan student.”
“I thank everyone who has spoken today. I have been very moved by Members telling quite harrowing accounts of the way that women are affected by conflict around the world, some of which has brought back difficult memories of my previous life before being in this place, when I worked in conflict zones, predominantly with children and women. To echo my hon. Friend the Member for Bathgate and Linlithgow (Kirsteen Sullivan), I have found that I have reflected almost every day since coming here on whether I am having more impact being here than I did before. I note that five parties are represented here today, and I feel that there is a huge consensus. I certainly hope that beyond this room today there can be actions. I particularly thank my hon.”
“I will close my remarks, because I am really conscious of time. Again, I simply make an appeal that we do not just hear words here today, but that words lead to action.”
“Member for North Herefordshire (Ellie Chowns) made about cash transfers, nothing is more important than getting cash to the women on the ground who know how to spend it to make a real difference in people’s lives. In conclusion, several Members have made outstanding recommendations, so I will not repeat them all, but I will emphasise the point about upstream prevention. The previous Government rightly established that there needs to be an atrocity prevention strategy within aid spending, but now we need to take that idea forward. Part of that process must involve looking at civil society and upstream funding, and the long-term support for the women’s and young people’s organisations that are doing such vital work in peacebuilding. We need to look at the quality of aid, not just the quantity.”
“When I asked those women what would make the biggest difference for them, I was expecting them to make quite big financial demands. Instead, they said, “Could we have some sewing machines?” That was because, for many of them, their husbands had been killed, they had been raped, their homes had been burned and looted, and they no longer had sewing machines to make a living. For the sake of a few thousand dollars to provide sewing machines for those women, we could give them a livelihood, and that sum, frankly, is probably what we would spend on having a 4x4 on the road for a day in one of those countries. To echo the point that the hon.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for that example. Another example comes not from my own life but from Liberia, where women became so fed up of conflict that women on all sides decided to unite behind a woman—Ellen Johnson Sirleaf—for the presidency, while many men in the country voted along factional lines. The experience I had with the women I mentioned will never leave me. I confess that I did not understand the currency I was using. I asked them whether they needed some lunch; I felt that we had been talking for a long time. I gave them what actually amounted to about $100, thinking that I was giving them about $10. They looked a bit overwhelmed. Afterwards, when they went off, my translator told me that they did not buy lunch; they came back hungry, because they said they could use that money better to benefit their community.”
“Q6. Feeling safe in our communities is among the most basic of human needs, but after 14 years of Tory cuts to Durham’s frontline police— [ Interruption. ] After breaking the criminal justice system, too many of my constituents are victims of violence, theft and antisocial behaviour and those crimes too often go unpunished. I know the Prime Minister has had a lifelong commitment to protecting victims. What assurances can he give my constituents that our new Government will be tough on crime and on the causes of crime?”
“Having listened to evidence on Gaza as a member of the International Development Committee, it is clear to me that there have been egregious breaches of international law. While I do not doubt the integrity and sincerity of my hon. Friend, it is clear that the actions taken so far by the Government have either not shifted the dial an inch or make me question how much worse it would be. Besides rhetorically supporting an international court, what will the Government do to help gather evidence to protect witnesses and ensure that there is justice and accountability?”
“T6. More than half the homes in my constituency have an energy performance rating of D or worse, and a quarter are off-grid, relying on more expensive fuels, so I welcome this Government’s commitment to a warm homes plan. However, with a lot of rural homes poorly insulated and not suited to heat pumps, will the Secretary of State work with me on a tailored plan for colder, stone-built rural homes?”
“I welcome this Government’s commitment to getting more disposable income in the pockets of working people. At Christmas time a lot of people will want to buy concert tickets; what conversations is the Minister having with Cabinet colleagues on reforming the secondary ticketing market?”
“Parties with Members elected to this place should uphold the British values of tolerance and respect, but many constituents have contacted me to express alarm about the way that local officers of the Reform party in County Durham are harassing and smearing local charities and town councillors, and are using their social media platforms to promote hatred, Islamophobia and misogyny. No other party in this place would accept such behaviour; they would chuck those people out and ensure that they do not stand as candidates. Could the Leader of the House advise me on what we can do to ensure increased civility in public life?”
“Like many in this House, I have campaigned and worked with Syrian friends in their struggle over much of the last decade, and I welcome the demise of Assad. The Secretary of State is absolutely correct that it is for the Syrian people to decide what happens next, although I greatly fear that the voices of many Syrian people will not be heard unless they are given strong international support to be heard. There is a strong pro-democracy and pro-human rights movement in Syria, particularly among women and youth-led organisations. What are the Government doing to ensure that the voices of women and youth are heard?”
“I have huge respect for the hon. Gentleman, my constituency neighbour, but I have a question. I think the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Ben Maguire) suggested a working farm tax, and it was not clear to me whether the hon. Gentleman accepted or rejected that suggestion. We have heard Liberal Democrats talk in recent weeks about land taxes and wealth taxes as alternatives to raise the revenue to fund their many, many spending commitments. Could the hon. Gentleman clarify that point?”
“A moment ago, we heard talk from the Liberal Democrat Benches of a family farm tax and land taxes. It now seems that the right hon. Lady is suggesting we take up Dan Neidle’s suggestion. Will she confirm whether that is the case?”
“By the way, many farmers in my constituency sympathise with its aims and with what the Government are trying to achieve. One told me recently that he cannot stand the James Dysons of this world who are hoovering up agricultural land. However, they are concerned that there remains a tax incentive to invest in agricultural land, and I would be grateful if the Treasury reported on some of that modelling. For example, we know that 7% of wealthy claimants account for 40% of the cost of APR, but that means that 93% are costing only £382 million. It would be interesting to know how much money it would cost to slightly lift the thresholds or to address the concerns about life insurance.”
“I read it with an open mind, but when I saw it, I thought, “What a load of tripe.” By the way, I thank the right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen) for taking a much more constructive tone in his speech a moment ago. The Opposition could have come to the Chamber today and presented a constructive motion that many rural MPs on the Government Back Benches would have sympathised with. Instead, this motion seems calibrated to make us want to oppose it. It seems to me that the Opposition are more interested in playing party politics and cosplaying as the friends of farmers with this motion than they are in genuinely addressing issues that they both ignored in government and are now ignoring in opposition. Some legitimate concerns about the policy have been expressed to me by farmers in my constituency.”
“Because farmers are working people who deserve secure livelihoods, and because food security is essential for our national security, I hold quarterly forums with the farmers in my area—I say that before anyone tries to intervene to ask me how many I meet with. I hold regular forums and, in fact, some of our council candidates are local sheep and cattle farmers. Of course, I have met with them more in the last few weeks than I had been doing. In the meantime, I am having conversations with fellow MPs and with DEFRA and Treasury officials and Ministers to push for the issues that matter to farmers in our area. As such, when I went to the Bill Office last night to receive the motion for today’s debate, I was genuinely unsure how I would vote.”
“I came here today to speak up for upland farmers in my constituency. Although I am not a farmer myself, I grew up within smelling distance of a dairy farm, and coming from a working background, I have earned a living working outdoors in all weathers as a gardener, so I know what it feels like to have mud on my boots and frozen fingers. For a lot of our farmers, though, the physical strain is only part of the daily struggle; the other part is the anxiety of having so much invested in such a precarious business, and the burden of responsibility for keeping the farm alive in an era of shrinking profits.”
“I will not take any interventions, but only because other colleagues want to get in. There are concerns, but I must say that when I met farmers in my constituency recently, they agreed with me that a bigger concern for them, as many colleagues have said, is profitability. The motion could have talked about economic stability for lower inflation and interest rates, and it could have talked about cutting rural crime, which would also cut insurance premiums. If I may say so, I welcome the Equipment Theft (Prevention) Act 2023 from the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith), but there needs to be secondary legislation.”
“There is, in fact, good will towards this Government and what we are trying to do, but we cannot afford to wait another 18 months, particularly for the basic payment scheme transition. We need upland farmers to be able to access the sustainable farming incentives. I know the SFIs are in the pipeline, but they cannot wait 18 months to receive them.”
“Thank you. Let us work together. I am pleased that the Government are defending against floods and disease. I am pleased that we are committed to protecting standards in trade deals. I am pleased that we are committed to getting a veterinary agreement with the EU to cut red tape. I am pleased with the public sector procurement targets. However, we need to do something on rules about food labelling in order to prevent “farmwashing.” We also need to do more to strengthen farmers’ bargaining power with supermarkets. I am pleased with the changes to planning laws that will allow a lot of farmers to invest. I would just say to my own party and to the Government that we need to bring these forward faster. Farming in my constituency is on life support.”