Liam Conlon
MP for Beckenham and Penge · Labour · United Kingdom
“The petitioners “therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to work with the Mayor of London and other relevant partners to support the delivery of the transformation of the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre.” Following is the full text of the petition: [The petition of residents of the constituency of Beckenham…”
“With 28 world records, the Crystal Palace national sports centre is the spiritual home of UK athletics. It is also an incredible community asset. Residents across Beckenham and Penge speak fondly about using its facilities growing up, or remember their children and grandchildren learning to swim in the Olympic-sized pool.”
“The £130 million transformation of the centre, backed by funding from our Mayor of London, Sir Sadiq Khan, will see the reopening of the Olympic-sized pool and diving boards, a revamped athletics stadium, and new facilities for other sports, too. I will be campaigning to bring world-class athletics back to Crystal Palace park once again.”
“The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to work with the Mayor of London and other relevant partners to support the delivery of the transformation of the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre. And the petitioners remain, etc. ] [P003227]”
“Across my constituency, a lack of action on road safety means that parents are afraid to let their children play out, older people avoid using certain junctions, and some streets are plagued by unbearable noise. Just this week, it is likely that two people will have been seriously injured on Bromley’s roads.”
“Earlier this month, in my constituency of Beckenham and Penge, the River Pool was lined with thousands of dead fish, including critically endangered European eels, following a pollution incident. Thankfully, the water quality has now returned to normal, and the Environment Agency has agreed to restock the river with fish species.”
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“I do not dispute that investment is needed, but this must never be allowed to happen again. I am pleased that this Government have taken immediate action, including bringing criminal charges against persistent lawbreakers, giving regulators the power to ban executive bonuses, introducing severe and automatic fines for offences, and ringfencing money for vital infrastructure investment. I also want to talk about a lesser-known reform that relates to compensation, which is the guaranteed standards scheme. Admittedly, it is not a document I had familiarised myself with before constituents were left without water, but it lays out the minimum compensation rates for water outages.”
“The previous Government failed to drive investment in the system and abdicated their responsibility to regulate. A failure to maintain, invest and build has led to an aching system, one in which over 50% of Thames Water’s sewage treatment plants have inadequate capacity and where, in 2024 alone, Thames Water discharged raw sewage into rivers for nearly 300,000 hours. All the while, that failure was rewarded. In 2023-24, Thames Water paid executive bonuses worth over £1.3 million—a reward for failed management, aided and abetted by the previous Conservative Government, that has left an investment shortfall of £24 billion. It is our constituents who pick up the tab for that shortfall, left to pay the price of failure, with some quite literally seeing their bills double.”
“It was Thames Water that had a responsibility to safeguard vulnerable customers and provide alternative sources of water. This week, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and East Dulwich (Ellie Reeves) and I met representatives of Thames Water to talk to them about that water outage and some of the lessons they could learn from it. One of the points I made to them was that this is not like covid, which sprung up without any warning; burst water pipes happen all the time, and frequent and consistent communication is a pretty standard thing that constituents and customers are entitled to expect. However, I do not mention this ordeal just to highlight the unjust plight of my constituents. Their experience embodies the failure of the water system highlighted by the Bill that my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South has introduced.”
“Along with local volunteers, my team and I knocked on hundreds of doors across the local area, including on the evening of Valentine’s day—which, as someone pointed out, might be the reason I am still single. We identified those who might need additional help and delivered bottled water to them all over the weekend. This included residents who were pregnant, those who were disabled, and some who were terminally ill. One constituent’s story particularly sticks in my mind: a disabled single mum of two, reliant on oxygen, was left without water for days, without any support or emergency deliveries from Thames Water. The compensation she received for that failure was a £40 good-will payment. While I thank every volunteer who helped with that effort, it should never have been necessary.”
“Members, Thames Water refused to open an alternative site closer to the outage. Some constituents still did not have any water by the start of the weekend, having been left without water since the Tuesday evening. Those residents included vulnerable customers who could not be expected to leave their homes, never mind walk for an hour. Those residents are entitled to sign up to what is called the priority services register. Residents on the PRS should receive deliveries of bottled water, as well as additional support and communications from Thames Water, yet throughout the outage I was contacted by residents on the PRS who were not receiving any of that help on time—some were receiving no help at all.”
“For those unfamiliar with the geography of south-east London, while it is located in a lovely part of the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby), ironically adjacent to the River Pool and the Waterlink Way, it is also up to an hour’s walk away for some of the people in my constituency who were left without water. It was an unacceptable solution that could easily have been avoided. Later that evening, Thames Water managed to make things even worse. The sole water bottle station was closed due to a security incident, leaving residents reliant on local supermarket stocks. Unsurprisingly, those ran dry pretty quickly. While the water bottle station later reopened, despite my offer of support and the offer of support from other hon.”
“I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) for introducing the Bill. I know that my constituents in Beckenham and Penge will want to thank him for raising the issues addressed in the debate today. I will begin by talking about the recent five-day water ordeal that my constituents were subjected to by Thames Water. On the evening of Tuesday 11 February, a mains water pipe burst up the road from me, in Dulwich, south London. Overnight, thousands of homes, hundreds of businesses, 11 care homes and 29 schools all lost access to their water. Six London postcodes were affected in all, including two in my constituency. The next day, residents in Anerley, Crystal Palace and Penge, in my constituency, woke up without any water. In response, Thames Water established a bottled water centre at the Sainsbury’s in Bell Green.”
“Does my hon. Friend welcome the Government’s important changes, including the support from local authorities, for kinship carers, such as those I met in Beckenham and Penge?”
“Such things as access to the blue badge scheme and carer’s allowance are often dependent on PIP, so one potential implication is that people could be locked out. Will the Minister consider carrying these things forward and meet me to discuss access to the blue badge scheme and carer’s allowance for people who might lose PIP, but would still be entitled to those benefits?”
“I am potentially one of the few Members of this House who has been a recipient of the higher rates of living allowance. I was a recipient of the higher rate of mobility allowance, and I relied on a Motability car for many years, too. On the flipside, I remember, after my second hip replacement in my early 30s, having to try to navigate the Access to Work scheme, which was pretty impossible. In fact, it locks people out of work, rather than letting them in. There are many good things in the Green Paper that has been brought forward that address some of those points. When I think back to what I had to go through from age 13 to 17, I am also pleased that those benefits will be protected for people in that situation. PIP is also what we call a passporting benefit.”
“I recently had the pleasure of meeting Lucas de Gouveia from Beckenham, who, at 14 years old, already represents GB at wheelchair tennis. Lucas contacted me to ask for help in raising money for equipment and travel, so that he can participate in competitions, which are more expensive for disability sports. I have written to a range of companies on Lucas’s behalf and hope to meet them soon, with Lucas. Will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating Lucas on his incredible achievement so far, and wish us well as we try to secure sponsorship for him?”
“To sum up, what makes the Irish community so special for me is that it is an inclusive and welcoming community. At the entrance to the exhibition at the London Irish Centre two years ago, there was a plaque that read: “Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine”, which means “In the shelter of each other, the people live”. It is an Irish proverb that sums up what makes our community in Britain so special and sums up neatly the Irish contribution to making our country the great place it is to live. I again thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme for securing this debate, and I thank everyone who has taken part in it.”
“We are now in a period where we can turn on the TV on a Friday night and watch Graham Norton on BBC One and “Derry Girls” on Channel 4, which is a representation of how far the Irish community has come. We see it in trade unions and in the labour movement as well: there was a period a year or two ago when the general secretary of every single major trade union in this country was either first- generation or second-generation Irish. There is no more visible transformation in the confidence of the London Irish community over time than in the growth of the Mayor of London’s St Patrick’s day parade. I was very proud to take part in that this month with our mayor, Sir Sadiq Khan. More than 50,000 people joined and participated in that parade, and London was awash with green.”
“We see the pride of the second-generation Irish community, of which I am part, and the growth of Irish culture and its importance right across Britain in the growth of the Gaelic Athletic Association. It is not just people of Irish heritage who get involved, but people from all communities and backgrounds who participate in GAA. There is also the Irish language; people are adopting Irish names. My cousin Jordan and his partner Annie had a baby a couple of weeks ago—a little girl—and I congratulate them. They have named her Fiadh, which is Irish for “wild” —I think she will take after her dad. It is common that people are very proud of their heritage often several generations back. We have seen that in Irish music and culture, where for years the Irish community was subjected to discrimination.”
“We had an event on an evening two nights ago in a packed room in Parliament to which survivors came and told their stories. It was incredibly powerful to hear from them about the impact that that has on them many years later. I hope the Government will listen to the proposals we are putting forward. At the moment, if the survivors accept the compensation payment they have been awarded by the Irish Government, but are in receipt of means-tested benefits, they will lose that compensation. I heard from survivors this week, and that has actually become an additional burden for many of these women, who are now often in their 80s or 90s, and some of them are very vulnerable. I will go back to the Irish in Britain.”
“For some, it was for work or to be with friends and family, but in the case of thousands of women who were sent to those homes for the perceived sin of becoming pregnant outside marriage, it was to escape those institutions and the stigma that often came with having been in one. More than 13,000 survivors live in Britain today, both women and the children who were born into the institutions. They were subjected to some of the most horrific mistreatment and abuse in those homes. Women were used as unpaid labour, and their children were often forcibly adopted. I have named my Bill “Philomena’s law”, after Philomena Lee, who I felt brought that story to a global audience in the film “Philomena”, in which she is portrayed by Dame Judi Dench.”
“Friend the Member for Reading Central (Matt Rodda), who is here today but cannot take part in the debate, has long been a champion of Irish contributions to Reading football club and to the Reading Irish Centre, which I have been to and which does incredible work to support the Irish community in Reading. As well as celebrating the contributions of the Irish community in Britain, I will touch on a campaign I started in the last few weeks to secure justice for 13,000 survivors of Ireland’s mother and baby homes living in Britain. We often need to remember the reason why lots of people left Ireland and decided to come to Britain.”
“However, the exhibition also charted the history of how the Irish community was received here, which, as has been touched on, was not always easy. Alongside the Windrush generation and the West Indian community —it is important to remember that there has been a lot of solidarity between those communities—it was often treated with suspicion and subjected to discrimination, including through signs that read “No blacks, no dogs, no Irish”. However, the London Irish community and the Irish community across Britain today is a community transformed. It is confident in the contributions it makes to every aspect of life in Britain—economic, political, social and cultural. The Irish community help to make our country the great place it is to live. I extend that beyond London to the home counties as well. My hon.”
“It would begin with, “What county are you from?”, then, “What town are you from? Do you know so and so?” Once they had made that connection, we were free to get on with our day. The Irish in Britain have maintained that relationship with the NHS ever since, and I am really proud that there are more Irish staff in the NHS today than staff from any other European country. Even if we think back more recently to the global health emergency of covid, it was an Irish woman, Professor Teresa Lambe, who co-developed the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. It was then Margaret Keenan, an Irish woman from Enniskillen living in Coventry and a former NHS nurse, who became the first person in the world to have the vaccine. The Irish connection to the NHS is really deep and strong, and our community is incredibly proud of it.”
“I know that we have a fantastic construction industry in London, with so many Irish people involved, and today we have the founder of and members from the London Irish Construction Network, including Sean Daly and Frank O’Hare, here to watch the debate. As was touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme, waves of thousands of young Irish women came to staff our hospitals at the birth of the NHS in this country. Those women, known as the Angels of Mercy, were often overlooked but essential to the NHS. I spent a lot of time in NHS hospitals as a teenager, especially the Royal London hospital and the Royal National orthopaedic hospital. My Irish dad would often look after me, and we would often encounter an Irish nurse. Before I could get treated, they had to establish how they knew each other.”
“One granny was particularly proud and I was wondering what she would have done if she had still been alive when I was elected. I know for a fact that she would have gone to 9 am mass and then to 10.30 am mass, to make sure that everyone knew that her grandson had been elected as an MP. A couple of years ago there was an exhibition at the London Irish Centre curated by the national charity, Irish in Britain, that for the first time that I can remember really told the story of the London-Irish community over several generations. The London Irish did as much as any community to build this great city. Irish navvies dug the underground, and Irish construction workers rebuilt our city after the war.”
“Tayto are more than a crisp: they are a way of educating people about Ireland and Irish politics. A lot of people do not know that there are two types of Tayto, one from Northern Ireland and one from the Republic of Ireland—or, as I call them, the Nordie Tayto and the Free Stayto. That is always a good way of explaining things to people. As I said in my maiden speech, I am proud to be London-Irish. That is the community that I grew up in and the community I want to pay tribute to today. I am also proud to represent Beckenham and Penge, the only constituency in London with a Gaelic place name, as “penge” means “edge of the woods”. We have a fantastic Irish community. All four of my grandparents are from Ireland: two grannies from the south and two grandads from the north.”
“I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am the proud chair of the Labour Party Irish Society, and have been for the past five years. We represent the Irish community in Britain and champion strong co-operative relationships between Ireland and Britain, and Northern Ireland as well. Someone touched on the Good Friday agreement, and two years ago I was proud to open the Mo Mowlam film studio for cinematic arts at Ulster University in Derry. She was one of many great figures from our party who contributed to that peace agreement, which is in the DNA of the Labour party and I am very proud of that. Many hon. Members have had a lot to say about Guinness as the sponsor of choice for St Patrick’s day refreshments, but Jameson is also available and Tayto crisps are worth noting.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) on securing the debate, and on all his efforts and leadership in championing the Irish in Britain and advocating for co-operative relationships with Northern Ireland for many years. Lá fhéile Pádraig sona daoibh—happy St Patrick’s day. St Patrick’s day is no longer a day but a season. It starts sometime in early March, around the time of my birthday, and carries on for a full month. I think today’s debate marks the end of it. I have “green fatigue” at this stage of the month, where I do not want to see any more St Patrick’s paraphernalia, and certainly no Guinness, for quite a while. However, it has once again been a fantastic season, celebrating the best of the Irish community in Britain.”
“T3. Beckenham and Penge is where local lad David Bowie launched his music career, and today it is home to a vibrant, talented community of creatives whose work is increasingly sought after by AI companies. Our creatives deserve a just deal to provide fair pay for my constituents and the legal certainty required to encourage Ai investment. What steps is the Minister taking to deliver that?”
“A few weeks ago, Beckenham was hit by the tragic loss of Graham Murray. A proud Irishman of Cork, Graham was a stalwart of Beckenham rugby club. He was a larger-than-life character and a leader on and off the pitch. He leaves behind a four-year-old son, Tadgh, and wife, Aisling, who I met recently and who is pregnant with their second child. Will the hon. Member join me in sending condolences to Graham’s family and friends in both Beckenham and Ireland, and also pay tribute to John and everyone at Beckenham rugby club, who have rallied round the family and shown the best of our community in recent weeks?”
“Lá fhéile Pádraig sona daoibh go léir—happy St Patrick’s day. St Patrick’s day is a time to bring people together, often in our local pubs. Will the Minister join me in thanking Irish pub landlords up and down the country, including Michael Duffy and Joe Duffy, who run the Chancery and the Jolly Woodman in Beckenham?”
“This Bill, Philomena’s law, named after the inspirational and courageous Philomena Lee, will achieve that. I am proud to bring it to the House today, and I hope in the months ahead we will see a change in the law so that we can deliver justice for survivors and show them the kindness and respect they have so often been denied in life. Question put and agreed to. Ordered, That Liam Conlon, Claire Hanna, Colum Eastwood, Deirdre Costigan, Lola McEvoy, Damien Egan, Uma Kumaran, Sarah Coombes, Helena Dollimore, Florence Eshalomi, Rachel Hopkins and Tom Rutland present the Bill. Liam Conlon accordingly presented the Bill. Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 28 March, and to be printed (Bill 198).”
“They had their children forcibly adopted, sometimes overseas, never to be seen again. The women and children fortunate enough to leave the institutions often came here to Britain. They came here to escape the stigma and shame and build a new life, and there are more than 13,000 survivors living here today. Last year, the Irish Government opened a long-awaited compensation scheme for those survivors. It is a small but important mark of accountability and redress for what happened to them, but thousands of survivors in Britain today cannot access this compensation without being penalised for it. If they access it, they lose any means-tested benefits or financial support for social care. Just as we did for the Windrush families, we must now change the law to ensure that compensation payments for victims and survivors are ringfenced.”
“Their bravery not only secured the apology from the Irish Government and subsequently brought about the payment scheme, but perhaps more importantly contributed enormously to the hard and crucial work of dismantling the stigma and secrecy that has long been associated with time spent in mother and baby homes. That, of course, includes Philomena Lee, whose own story brought this injustice to a global audience. I am delighted that Philomena’s daughter Jane and her grandson Joshua are here in the Gallery with us today. Ireland’s mother and baby homes were cruel institutions. Over seven decades, tens of thousands of Irish women were sent there for the perceived sin of becoming pregnant outside of marriage. They were subjected to the most horrific mistreatment and abuse, physical and psychological. Women were used as unpaid labour.”
“They include: Rosa and the team at Irish in Britain; Séan and the team at the London Irish Centre in Camden; the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith; the Fréa network supporting the Irish community in Leeds, Manchester, Merseyside and beyond; Coventry Irish Society; Luton Irish Forum; Irish Network Stevenage; and many more. I would also like to pay tribute to the mother and baby home survivors here in Britain, in Ireland and elsewhere, who summoned the courage to share their personal experiences and to recount their most traumatic years in the name of justice.”
“The introduction of an indefinite capital disregard, which my Bill proposes, would remove any risk to an applicant’s benefits. There is strong precedent for such a disregard; the same arrangements have been applied to similar special compensation schemes in the recent past, including those introduced for the victims of the 7/7 London bombings and for payments made under the Windrush compensation scheme. I want to pay tribute to some of the many incredible organisations in Britain that continue to support mother and baby home survivors.”
“She told me: “When I first heard about the payment scheme, I thought that it was marvellous and I was excited. I couldn’t take it in—I had never had money at any point in my life. I was going to use this money to visit a half-brother in America—he had been born less than 16 miles away, but I did not know that him or his brother and sister existed until we did some family tracing. It would have been lovely to meet him, but I do not feel that I can use the money for this as my benefits would be affected.” The whole point of the payment scheme was to recognise the suffering that survivors experienced while resident, but for many it has become an additional burden, a process that has forced them to revisit their most traumatic experiences, seemingly to no avail. Fortunately, there is a solution and it is a relatively simple one.”
“Under our current rules, any money accepted through this payment scheme would be considered savings and could see them lose means-tested benefits and financial support for social care. For some, it is deterring them from making any application at all. It is one of the reasons that only 5% of survivors in Britain have applied so far. For others, having received a compensation offer, they are now having to weigh up whether it is worth accepting the money, or whether to do so would sink them into a worse financial situation overall. Among them is a survivor from the north of England who has shared her story with me. This woman, who experienced harrowing abuse over several years, applied to the payment scheme in September last year and received an offer soon after.”
“That was followed by the mother and baby institutions payment scheme, which opened to applications last March. The scheme represents a measure of accountability for what happened, recognising the lifelong impact that time spent in those institutions will have had. The impact will be felt in all corners of a survivor’s life, from earning potential and financial security to physical and mental health and wellbeing. Ultimately, the scheme aims to acknowledge the suffering and improve the circumstances of former residents of mother and baby homes, which is why it is wrong that up to 13,000 survivors living here in Britain today risk losing their benefits if they accept this compensation.”
“In certain homes, women were routinely separated from their children, with some being adopted against the wishes or even without the knowledge of their mothers, as happened to Philomena Lee and her son Anthony. As a direct result of the abuse and trauma they experienced, many mother and baby home survivors moved to England. In some cases, they came here because they thought that disappearing from their home country was the only way to protect their family’s reputations, and so for decades thousands of survivors lived in secrecy and shame, including here in Britain. It was not until 2021 that they finally received an apology from the then Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, for what he described as a “profound generational wrong visited upon Irish mothers and their children”.”
“Almost 60 years on, Philomena’s story reached a global audience when it was made into the Oscar-nominated film “Philomena”, starring Dame Judi Dench and Steve Coogan. The film chronicled the time Philomena spent in Sean Ross Abbey and her painstaking search for her long-lost son decades later, with the help of author Martin Sixsmith. I wish Philomena’s story was an isolated one. Sadly, it is not. Philomena is one of tens of thousands of women and their infant children who spent time in mother and baby homes across Ireland for the perceived sin of becoming pregnant outside of marriage. The women were regularly used as unpaid labour, and infant mortality was alarmingly high. They experienced harsh conditions, mistreatment and abuse, both physical and psychological.”
“I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require the Secretary of State to report to Parliament on the potential merits of disregarding payments received under the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme operated by the government of Ireland for the purposes of taxation, means-tested social security payments and social care capital limits; and for connected purposes. Philomena Lee was 18 years old when she became pregnant in 1952 and was sent to the Sean Ross Abbey mother and baby home in Roscrea, County Tipperary, in Ireland. There Philomena gave birth to her son Anthony, and there they both lived until Anthony reached the age of three and Philomena was cruelly forced to give him up for adoption. Anthony was sold to a couple in the United States. Philomena would never see him again.”
“T5. A new report by London Councils predicts a collective decline in demand for reception and year 7 places over the next five years, causing concern about the impact on school standards and pupil attainment. Will the Minister meet me to discuss this important issue?”
“But when he plays games on his phone his behaviour is noticeably different—he’s hyperactive, gets emotional quickly and easily, and is devastated when we say that time to play is up.” Another constituent, Megan, is a therapist by profession. She said: “I regularly hear adult clients sharing how smartphones negatively impact their mental health, from raised anxiety to hours lost doom-scrolling, to more serious harms. If we as adults sometimes struggle to manage our own smartphone use, how are we expecting our children and teenagers to be able to moderate theirs?””
“Since smartphones became prominent in 2012, we have seen a 27% increase in speech and language challenges, a 65% rise in mental health admissions to hospital, and a 640% increase in eating disorders. The average teenager today gets 337 notifications in a day, which averages out at one every six minutes. Once they receive a notification, it takes 23 minutes for them to refocus on what they are doing. Finally—I had not heard this until this week—one in three parents admit to crying over their child’s smartphone use. Those figures chime with what parents have fed back to me across the constituency. One constituent, Gemma, who has worked in the smartphone industry for 15 years, says: “My child is seven, so is not yet exposed to smartphones in a significant way.”
“Some 89% of respondents agree that smartphones and social media have a negative impact on their children’s mental health, but what makes that figure more shocking is that 70% of those who agreed with that statement are parents of primary-aged children—that is children under the age of 12. More than three-quarters of parents agreed that the negatives of their child having a smartphone outweighed the positives. Digging into that, I asked parents if they would have any concerns were their child not to have a smartphone. Understandably, the ability for a child to call home in an emergency, or for parents to track them on their journey to and from school came up a fair amount, but we know that other phones and options on the market have those features. The damage is undeniable and is reflected in statistics across the country.”
“What stood out the most from that conversation was the sheer amount of time that they as school leaders have to spend week after week dealing with issues that have taken place on their students’ phones—cyber-bulling, sexting, the sharing of graphic videos or explicit photos, often of the students themselves. All those and more are crossing our teachers’ desks and demanding hours of their time every day, pulling them away from their core and crucial job of educating. Finally, there are the parents. In Beckenham and Penge, concerns about smartphone and social media use easily fall into the top five issues that constituents have contacted me about since my election to this House last July. Last Friday, I put out a survey asking parents in my constituency for their views; within a week, I have received well over 500 responses.”
“The majority of students told me that they would feel panicked without their mobile phone, and some spoke to me with quiet self-awareness about how they knew their mobile phone had acted as a barrier to interaction with their family. This is time that they are not spending building meaningful relationships through face-to-face conversation and developing the social and communication skills that they will need in life. The second group, teachers, offered another perspective. On Monday, I was delighted to bring together a group of 12 primary and secondary school headteachers from right across my constituency. We discussed the impact of their students’ smartphone use in and out of schools.”
“That change needs to be cultural, to put children and parents first and to place the onus on social media companies and manufacturers to prove that their products are safe while ensuring that we do not miss out on the many benefits of technology. Ahead of this debate, I engaged extensively with three key groups in Beckenham and Penge: young people, parents and school leaders. Despite being the reason we are here today, young people are the group that we most risk excluding from the conversation, which is why I held a focus group at a local secondary school, Harris academy Beckenham, and spoke to students from a range of year groups about their views on how smartphones are changing childhood. In that focus group, half of the students said that smartphones and social media overall have a negative impact on their mental health.”
“I begin by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), who I have now started calling the patron saint of the smartphone-free childhood campaign. He often comes up on the doorsteps in Beckenham and Penge when I speak to parents. This topic has prompted a huge response both in my own constituency and across the country. I welcome Elizabeth, Sarah and other constituents who are here to watch this debate. I also pay tribute to Crispin, Raj and all the brilliant local parents and campaigners I have been working with on this. I will spend some time exploring the wealth of feedback I have had from my constituents before talking about the type of change we need to see across the country.”
“Before I came to this place, I worked in tech for nearly a decade, including at Discovery Education UK, and I saw the many benefits of technology in unlocking the potential of our young people. I believe that balance is possible and must be found, and again I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington for bringing forward this Bill.”
“Absolutely. A key provision of the Bill will provide the evidence base on which to take the best action moving forward. Another parent, Georgia, simply said to me: “My children are two and four, and smartphones are my greatest fear in raising them.” Many other constituents have written in, and I thank everyone across the constituency who responded to my survey and shared their thoughts. The case for change is undeniable and, to sum up, we need collective action and cultural change. Many contributions have been made across the House to that effect. We must put children and parents first by moving the onus from them on to social media companies and manufacturers to prove that their products are safe, as well as recognising the potential benefits of technology.”
“Recently, a burst Thames Water pipe left thousands of my constituents in Anerley, Crystal Palace and Penge without water for up to five days. The response from Thames Water has been completely unacceptable: it put in only one bottled water station, which was an hour away for some residents; it failed to deliver water to people on the priority services register; and its complete lack of communication has left my constituents in the dark. To make matters worse, the only thing it communicated effectively to residents that week was an increase in water bills. I have called on Thames Water to give me clear answers on the compensation it will pay my constituents. Will the Leader of the House join me in urging Thames Water to provide clarity on that, and agree to a debate on changes to the compensation scheme?”
“That includes a meeting next week at Harris Academy Beckenham on Monday to bring stakeholders together. I look forward to continuing to push social media companies to take greater responsibility in a range of areas including on age verification and the sort of content that children and young people are being exposed to daily. I strongly believe in the principle of reverse burden, which was explained really well by the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) when he said that we would not take such an approach to children’s toys or food. I again thank my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe for securing the debate and the Minister for his time.”