Emily Darlington
MP for Milton Keynes Central · Labour · United Kingdom
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I have rewritten my speech because I do not want to repeat all the things that have been said. I think we are in agreement, although we may have different perspectives. I want to take us back to 80 years ago, to a country house a few miles from Milton Keynes in my constituency.”
“British AI firms need three things to succeed: customers who will buy their products, the ability to increase supply to meet demand, and a USP that British AI is the most trusted. The Government can help with all three. First, we have to act as a good customer. Why should those NHS and MOD contracts not go to British AI firms?”
“With the activist Government in the US turning off technology and restricting its availability outside the US, that puts at risk not only our NHS but, most importantly, the defence of our realm against Russia, for which others may have more sympathy than we do.”
“Britain is standing at another one of those moments, as we see with our economy and our military tech coming together and pushing forward either for the good of the nation or for its ultimate damage. The potential benefits of artificial intelligence are enormous, and not only for the private sector.”
“We are overly reliant: despite the fact that we part-own Crown Hosting, that accounts for only 6% of public sector data; the rest is nearly all on Amazon Web Services, which is a significant risk. We need to look at how we diffuse the supply of compute power—the underused capacity—to increase that.”
“A maker exports its products, services and ideas around the world, as we did in world war two, but the UK is at risk of becoming an AI taker and simply handing over the keys to giant US tech firms that are buying up our best young AI companies.”
The complete record
Every one of 410 lines we hold for Emily Darlington, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 2 of 9.
“I thank everyone who joined us for the debate. As the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer) said, it is one that we needed to have because so many people do not know about this issue. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Dr Ahmed) for reaffirming that this Government recognise medical misogyny. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Paul Davies) for reminding us about health advice. We both participated in a debate about endometriosis and adenomyosis not too long ago. In that debate, I said that periods can be uncomfortable but should not be painful, and Members from across the House came up to me afterwards to ask, “Is that true?” Yes, it is true. Periods should not be painful. That shows how we all lack advice on women’s health. My hon.”
“Again, that is about transparency on algorithms, which you were talking about, and about our dialogue with social media platforms. We need to ask them, what is more damaging? Is it the sexualised content, the misogynistic content or the health advice? We need to have that serious discussion with them. We also need to think much wider than the four big social media companies. That is not always where people go for such advice. We have heard of experiences on LinkedIn and many other platforms that show that this is a widespread issue. Finally, you are absolutely right about media literacy, so that we know what is good health content and what is based on rubbish science. That is part of how we get through this. [ Interruption. ] I thank everyone for attending.”
“The systems are designed by men and the content, for the most part, focuses on men—not completely, but the algorithms are traditionally designed by men and therefore feed what they think men want, or not even what they want, but what will keep them on the platform the longest. That is their business model. I appreciate the Minister reiterating the Government’s position that we believe that women should have access to accurate medical information. There are two sides to that: making sure that we suppress inaccurate medical information; and making sure that we have the mechanisms to show what is medically accurate with a tick. We should then make sure that that is the material that people see. I appreciate what you said about appeal mechanisms, but it is difficult to appeal against shadow-banning, so we need to talk further about that.”
“Yes, they would be. I am trying to say that the OSA does not limit this, but it does limit some of the other material. It is important that there is a place for the Government to say what platforms should or should not be able to publish, but they should not micromanage. I agree on that. It should not be like the Lord Chamberlain saying, “Here are the words that you are allowed to use”, or, “The Queen does not approve of those phrases”, but we should be clear that we limit free speech where it has a real, negative impact on individuals or on society, and that we are protecting people because of their age, gender or other protected characteristics. The shadow Minister raised an important discussion about publishers, plurality and biases that are already in the system.”
“One of the best ways to make sure that any AI developed contributes to innovation and growth is to set very high standards. We are lucky to have the British Standards Institute—the oldest standards institute in the world—and I am very lucky that it is based in Milton Keynes. Will the Minister join me in wishing it a huge happy birthday in this momentous year for it? What kind of engagement has he had with it on its work to set reassuringly high standards for AI’s development?”
“I believe that in Milton Keynes, Reform was forecast to win 26 seats, but after the hon. Member’s visit, that went number went down to nine. Does that not prove that the more people get to see of him and his party, the less they want them?”
“We have already heard from Members about some of the impacts of Brexit. If the Conservative party is serious about growing the economy and supporting small businesses, as it says it is, I am sure that we can count on the Opposition’s full support in getting closer to Europe to make that happen. On the clean water Bill, Milton Keynes has both a river and a canal; some Members may remember that the previous MP decided to demonstrate how clean the river was—or was not—by taking his shirt off in a photoshoot. The water is not clean—”
“Friend the Member for Stevenage (Kevin Bonavia) claimed that he represented the first new town, but I remind everyone that Milton Keynes is the most successful new town. I will not go through every Bill, but I will pick out some that will make a difference to people in my constituency. The European partnership Bill is so important. As we all know, and as the public in Milton Keynes know, especially if they are running a small or medium-sized business, the Brexit campaign was not clear on how leaving would impact people—that is me using parliamentary language. The biggest thing that we could do to support small and medium-sized businesses in the UK is ensure that they had full access to all European customers, and to the whole trading area, and work with their European counterparts and trade partners to build growth here.”
“First, I pay tribute to the King for coming to the other place and making a speech. He addressed us not with the wit and humour with which he addressed the Americans, but with the seriousness that was needed today. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) for her impassioned speech and perseverance. She is admired and respected by anybody who has suffered any kind of hardship and abuse, and she shows how far one can go. She boasted that Bradford was the youngest city, but I would like to point out that Milton Keynes is the newest city. We had a speech from my hon. Friend the Member for—where was he from again? Oh yes, my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince); I should remember that, as he mentioned it 35 times—I counted. He made claims about his new town, and my hon.”
“This is a huge problem in Glebe Farm, where six different developers are charging six different service charges to freeholders. That must end. We also need the social housing renewal Bill. Social housing was part of my cabinet portfolio when I was the Labour deputy leader of Milton Keynes city council. We were able to build new council homes to high, green standards, with air source heat pumps and solar panels, further bringing down energy bills for our council tenants. We also had a social housing decarbonisation fund that supported over 2,000 tenants in bringing down their bills through insulation and new windows.”
“The clean water Bill is about taking on vested interests. It is about not just cleaning up the waterways but taking on those water companies that have absolutely taken us for mugs. I would remind any Member who still puts a picture of Margaret Thatcher up on their office wall that the reason we are in this position with water companies is because of her legacy. We want to end leasehold for good. That is hugely important in a city such as Milton Keynes, where many people own their property. We are that new town—that promise that someone can move in and own a flat or property—but we must go further and ensure an end to leasehold, because those who buy freehold houses should not continue to pay a service charge, many years into the future.”
“I am pleased that we are pursuing a serious agenda—an agenda that is about our security and the security of the everyday lives of our constituents. In Milton Keynes, the 35 Bills in this King’s Speech, on top of the 50 that we passed in the last Session, are making a real difference to everyone.”
“I want to see a critical incident protocol, independent of Government, which can be triggered in response to a significant risk to the integrity or security of our elections. I know this is controversial, but elections do not just happen for six weeks every five years now, so our election laws should also apply all year round. The six-week campaign is a thing of the past—we cannot keep regulating for a world that does not exist. Anything that people see relating to our democracy, whether it is a year out from an election or two weeks out from an election, should meet our electoral standards. This is not about limiting debate or controlling outcomes; it is about safeguarding the conditions in which each and every person makes their choice. It is the only way our democracy survives.”
“The Representation of the People Act 1983 was not designed for a world of deepfakes of politicians, micro-targeting, political advertising, and algorithms with agendas. I am thrilled that this Government are reforming it, and I will be re-tabling my seven amendments to the Bill on Report. I want to see clear laws that recognise and define digital manipulation as a serious offence against our democracy. I want increased powers for the Electoral Commission to demand back-end, real-time access to social media platforms when manipulation is suspected. I want mandatory labelling of AI-generated content and a political advertisement repository so that voters can separate what is real and what is not, and see where political content comes from, who is funding it and what they are saying in different parts of the country to different voters.”
“Algorithms that prioritise engagement over truth amplify all of that, and foreign actors exploit it. This is a make-or-break moment for the security of this country’s democracy. We cannot shy away from what is at stake. Democracy does not require agreement, but it does require us all to live in a shared reality. Every Member of this House has seen misinformation, disinformation, bot activity or deep fakes in action—in fact, many of us have been victims of it. If we do not act, we are putting our democracy in the hands of tech bros in other countries who do not share our values—in fact, some have even called for riots on our streets—and who cannot be trusted with Britain’s future.”
“We need to see the tackling state threats Bill in the light of the horrible events that we have seen against our Jewish communities in recent weeks, and in the context of our democracy. That is why we need to do more to protect democracy through the Representation of the People Bill, which is coming back in this Session. The most personal form of power that any of us hold is the power to freely choose who we vote for. That power is fundamental to democracy, but today it is under threat from foreign states that want to cause us chaos, tech bros who do not share our values, and opportunists looking to make money from division. They are not taking away our right to vote, but they are distorting the national conversation and undermining genuine voices. Deepfakes stop us being able to trust what is real. Bot armies spread disinformation.”
“Stability for children and victims needs to be at the absolute forefront of our minds. Rather than move them around the country to protect them, we need to intervene to get the perpetrator away and to protect them from the perpetrator. We are banning conversion practices. It should have been done before, but it is finally going to be done under this Government. The removal of peerages Bill is so important, too. People will also know my views on the digital access to services Bill, which will be vital in order to modernise our public services. I want to talk about security, which is the theme that runs through the King’s Speech. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) that when we talk about security, we need to talk about domestic, defence and development, because they all go hand in hand.”
“The hon. Member makes a good point, and I agree with him. In Milton Keynes, we did not privatise our social housing stock; we had 12,000 in the housing revenue account. The reality is that the reforms done under the Conservatives during the 1980s destroyed council housing stock across the country. The wall that has been put between the housing revenue account and the council’s account means that authorities cannot invest in building new housing to reduce their use of temporary accommodation. Things like that need to go. We also need to ensure that victims of domestic abuse are not the ones evicted from their homes with their children. It is the perpetrators who need to leave. For the first time we are bringing forward legislation that will make sure that that happens.”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I understand that when an MP visits another MP’s constituency, the custom and practice is that they should give that MP due notice. The Leader of the Opposition came to my constituency but did not inform me that she would be there. I seek your advice on how best to resolve this. [ Official Report , 28 April 2026; Vol. 784, c. 870.] (Correction)”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Following my earlier point of order, I received an email from Conservative party headquarters. It contained a picture of an email that the Conservatives say that they sent to me ahead of the Leader of the Opposition’s visit to my constituency. Although I have never seen that email, and we have seen no evidence of it in my inbox, I feel that I should give them the benefit of the doubt about it having been sent. I have suggested that the Conservative party uses parliamentary email addresses in future to ensure that emails get to the correct people at the correct time. [ Official Report , 28 April 2026; Vol. 784, c. 838.]”
“Mr Speaker, you and I agree that all women and girls should be safe on this estate, whether they are MPs, staff or visitors. We have been working together to ensure that we become the first White Ribbon-accredited Parliament in the world. What progress is being made to ensure that that accreditation is in place for this House by the next International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, so that we can all celebrate that this is a safe place for every woman and girl who chooses to work or visit here?”
“Given that it is only through these datasets that we can make medical breakthroughs, can the Minister reassure people who are thinking about participating that the protections that he, UK Biobank and other platforms of this kind are putting in place will absolutely protect people in the future?”
“Health datasets of the size that UK Biobank has are incredibly important, because they allow us to find answers to the huge health challenges that many of us face, whether that is pain, as the Minister referred to, dementia or heart conditions. My concern is that this breach will make people think twice before donating their data. That could have a huge impact on our ability to treat conditions right across the world, but particularly here in the UK. The scientific community has always worked across borders and collaborated, whether that is with Europe, Canada, the US or even China.”
“I want to take a moment to focus on the young women who were exploited, abused and raped by Jeffrey Epstein and his friends. For years they were trafficked for rape, with no one to turn to, and for years people did not believe them. The idea that Mandelson would call Epstein’s conviction “wrongful” is disgusting, and I cannot imagine how it felt for the survivors to hear that. The Prime Minister was right to sack him. Will he take this opportunity to say again to those young women that this House believes them and the Government stand by them, and is he confident that no person with financial or personal links to sex traffickers will receive developed vetting status in future?”
“Painful periods are not normal and we need to repeat that to every woman we know, including every female team member we know and every GP or consultant we know, to make real change happen.”
“I have told her all my tricks, including the use of irritable bowel syndrome medication to reduce some of the cramping—if people in the Public Gallery do not know about that one, it works really well—but our GP says that she is too young to start having such discussions. She is doing her mock GCSE exams this week. I wish her the best of luck, because she has studied really hard, but she is terrified that she will get her period this week and it will mess up those mock GCSEs. I have given just a few examples; I know that women in the Public Gallery could give many more. We hear the same story over and over, and it all stems from this fallacy that periods are meant to be painful.”
“Educators are told by big tech that it has been quietly restricting or hiding women’s health content that contains educational terms like “periods”, “menopause”, “vagina” and “endometriosis” under the guise of safety or because those terms are too sexualised. How are we supposed to create an environment in which not only we as women but our bosses, colleagues and partners, who might be male, all understand that painful periods are not normal, and that the pain is real? We are seeing improvements in these areas, and I know that we are all looking forward to the women’s health strategy, which many of us have had long conversations about with the Ministers involved. We hope that it will bring about further real progress, but right now, I have a 15-year-old daughter who has all the same symptoms that I had, with all the same pain.”
“At no point were any of us told that painful periods are not normal—I am not talking about discomfort; I am talking about pain—even though we know that to be the case. Each and every one of us should know that from the start. This relates to the fact that women’s health information is being shadow-banned online. Over the past year, 95% of women’s health educators were targeted for shadow-banning. That means that people who are trying to get this kind of health information out there are having their posts either blocked or downgraded because of their content. I do not mean to be rude, but that does not seem to happen to posts about erectile dysfunction.”
“I will literally vomit it back up.” April had a Mirena intrauterine device fitted for her symptoms, but she wanted to get it removed. I was shocked by this story: she was told that the strings of her IUD had been cut too short to remove without surgery. When April asked why that was the case she was told: “We cut the strings short for our younger patients, because we don’t want their boyfriends to find sex with them uncomfortable.” April had to undergo surgery under general anaesthesia to remove her IUD. She says that, at every stage, “A decision about my own body—my contraception, my ability to access the removal of my IUD—was shaped around the comfort of a hypothetical male partner.” She was single at the time. That is what we are all put through.”
“I used to organise my work tasks around my expected period: I would do all the work that took concentration on days I knew would be good days, so that on the bad days I did not have to be productive. I missed about a day of work a month, which used to terrify me at the beginning of my career. I did not feel that I could talk to my bosses about it—I did not have the words to do so—and I had doubts from those doctors telling me that it was not as bad as I thought. I also want to share April’s story. She is only 24 and she has been going through this for the past 10 years. Her periods were so painful that she vomited. It is like that for many of us: doctors would say, “Take a paracetamol,” and I would say, “That’s great, but I can’t keep it down.”
“It was not until I got to the other end with my reproductive health, when I had to go for several scans for menopause ahead of getting treatment for perimenopause, that the scanner said to me, “Oh, you have adenomyosis. That must be really painful,” as an offhand comment. I was bowled over. I said, “What is that? I’ve never even heard of it.” I had heard of endometriosis, but I had no idea what adenomyosis was. She said, “Oh, it’s similar, but it’s growing in your muscle lining.” I could not believe it; I was shocked that from the beginning to the end of my reproductive years—all those years of pain—I never once got a proper diagnosis. How did that impact my working career? I used to wish my period would start on a weekend, so that I would not have to miss work—I can see some nodding heads.”
“A midwife at the other end of the phone kept saying to my husband, “If she’s able to nap, she’s clearly not having contractions.” I could nap during contractions because I had spent more than 30 years having to sleep with adenomyosis. I learned to have a very high pain tolerance. That baby was delivered in A&E because we got to the hospital so late. Even after being able to describe the pain of my periods being worse than the pain of contractions, not least because they were continuous and did not go away and come back like contractions, I was told that I was exaggerating and that it could not possibly be that bad. They told me that there was nothing they could do other than keep me on the contraceptive pill, which seemed to do nothing.”
“Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh), “All you need is a hot water bottle and some painkillers.” Like so many other young women—80% of them—I was put on the contraceptive pill before any further investigation, and well before I was sexually active. This continued for many years. I once convinced a doctor that the pain was so bad that I should have some kind of exploratory surgery, so they did exploratory surgery looking for endometriosis. They did not look for adenomyosis. After that, I really was told that I was making it up, because they could not find anything. When I gave birth to my first child, I was in labour for 30 hours.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I declare an interest: I have adenomyosis. It took more than 30 years for it to be diagnosed. The average diagnosis time is nine years and four months. For ethnically diverse communities, it is over 11 years. My story is not unusual. From the age of 14, I repeatedly went to the GP saying, “This isn’t normal.” That is like the 47% of sufferers who visited their GP more than 10 times before a diagnosis, while 70% visited more than five times. We all know what they were told: “You’re making a fuss about nothing”, “It’s normal”, and as we just heard from my hon.”
“I welcome the Rycroft review and I very much enjoyed speaking to Philip Rycroft during the process. Beyond crypto and other financial donations, he says we need to tackle deepfakes, bots and disinformation; create a political ad library; and put in place greater investigatory powers for the Electoral Commission and an incident protocol should there be a major election incident. My amendments deal with all those points. Will the Secretary of State undertake to urgently meet me to see how we can take my currently named amendments and make them Government amendments at the Bill’s next stage?”
“Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the problem with his Government’s drone strategy was that they did not invest in satellites, making us reliant on foreign satellites for full capability, and they did not invest in the radars, as we have, that cover all of Europe and north Africa, thereby making us fully reliant on the US?”
“I would like to take the gallant Minister back to his comments about when and why Britain should go to war. It is clear that the Conservatives have forgotten that the Leader of the Opposition made her comments during the offensive action, not the defensive action. Is the Minister concerned that we have a Leader of the Opposition and a leader of the Reform party who, when Donald Trump says, “Jump!”, say, “How high?””
“It was her review that the people around this Chamber wanted us to listen to and to make changes in response to, so we have to listen to her in this instance as well. The MHRA should operate without any political interference or fear of legal action, yet the MHRA itself referenced potential legal action in relation to the trial as one of the reasons why it changed its mind. That is a problem. The MHRA is there to make sure that anything from clinical trials to medical technologies and new drugs are dealt with on the basis of science and science alone.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I want to start with the expression, “Do no harm.” To be clear for the people who have come to speak to me—parents and young people themselves—we are doing them harm by not giving them the treatment they need, with the wait times of six years, and potentially in respect of puberty blockers, where that is agreed with their healthcare professionals. My overarching concern is that the clinical trial was suggested in the Cass review. It was proposed and designed in conjunction with the MHRA, but then the MHRA changed its mind. Why was that? Dr Hilary Cass said: “There are no new research findings and the MHRA hasn’t presented any new evidence. It feels to me like they are responding to political pressure rather than to science.” That is what she said; I was quoting her verbatim.”
“I am not for hounding any particular individual. The only person I have referred to by name is Hilary Cass and she has been on the public record. I have been hounded for my views as well—”
“Exactly, and that is completely inappropriate. A leader of a political party shouted “Traitor” at me when I said we should watch our language around this issue. I do not know who they think I am a traitor to, but I am certainly not one to the human race. The hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) has said she has received death threats; I get death threats too. This is not unique to the hon. Member. The MHRA should not be in an environment where it has any fear of any legal action; it should only look at the science. Many in the community feel that the trial has now become too political for anybody to touch and that we have forgotten about those children who, quite frankly, if we do not do anything for them, we are doing harm.”
“I recognise how difficult today’s statement is—it is not a position that any Labour Government would ever want to be in. I welcome the commitment from the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister to return to 0.7% as quickly as possible. I particularly welcome the protection and focus on women and girls, and on LGBT activity where other countries are withdrawing. As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for aid match, will she continue to work with me to look at areas of expansion and ensure that generous people across the country have an opportunity to support and double UK efforts, particularly in fragile and conflict states, and on women and girls, and LGBT issues, where we are continuing the funding?”
“2. What recent discussions she has had with the British Board of Film Classification on regulatory parity between online and offline pornography.”
“Like many colleagues in this House and the other place, I am deeply concerned about the current unacceptable regulatory gap between online and offline pornography, and the public share that concern. The findings of recent research conducted by the BBFC indicate that 64% of pornography users believe that violent pornography contributes to violent sexual behaviour in the real world, and 80% would support new regulation. Does the Minister recognise the clear public demand for online-offline parity, and will he commit himself to introducing legislation to ensure that content that it would be illegal to supply on our high streets is no longer permitted online?”
“Are we making sure that we are providing opportunities for UK firms to get the amazing contracts to work with us to make this Government the first digital Government that the UK has ever seen?”
“Because it can be turned off, and Elon Musk has said he hates our Prime Minister. What if there is an emergency and Musk wants to create chaos, as he has already done through his contributions to various marches in this country and through his support for that one-man band? I cannot remember what it is called now— Restore or something like that; it starts with an R. Growth comes from the development of our UK ideas, from tech that supports the UK economy, and from making sure that we see the monopoly that I referred to as a threat to our growth and not as something that we need to bow down or curtsy to. I ask the Minister: what is next? We have a great fund, but what are we investing in? Are we making sure that quantum technologies will be developed here, and will serve the UK people and the UK economy?”
“It is about using our own data protection laws and our own BSI standards, and it is about making sure that UK ideas can be sold to the world without foreign interference. I do not say that lightly. Recently, Peter Girnus, the AI security expert for Palantir, said: “The lesson was the speed: the market for military AI does not pause for ethics. It pauses for nothing.” That is a problem: Ministry of Defence contracts are going to such companies, which think that international law should be ignored in warfare. For that very reason, we have to be very sceptical about going into business with Palantir and with the many other companies that feel that they are too big to follow national law. On the Floor of the House, I raised the fallacy of Starlink being a safe emergency protocol. Why is it a fallacy?”
“I thank my kind colleagues. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. This is such a big debate. It is because we are all passionate about UK AI and the growth of the sector in the UK that it is so important, because the growing monopolies that are coming into our country are not actually helping our growth. I know that is quite a controversial statement, but it is not controversial if one thinks about how these industries are developing: they are buying up and squishing out UK inventions, growth and companies. What is sovereignty? That was the question posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West (Dame Chi Onwurah). For me, it is UK ideas, it is UK inventors and it is UK based, but it is also about UK values.”
“The loan charge was a scandal that affected tens of thousands of people across this country, some of whom were on very low pay and not given a choice by their employers. At the last Budget, the Government put forward changes. What assessment has the Minister made of how those changes will impact people at the lowest end, including social care workers across the country?”
“I am the mother of teenagers, and they cannot believe how difficult it is to access their data and interact with public services. They call it “cringe”, a bit like the response from the hon. Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire (Mike Wood). If we are to be a modern, digital Britain, embracing AI and building an innovation-based economy, is it not right that our public services are also built in that frame and put us in the driving seat?”