Alison Bennett
MP for Mid Sussex · Liberal Democrat · United Kingdom
“Q6. I put on record my appreciation for the hard work of the Prime Minister’s ministerial team in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in tackling the absolute failings of South East Water. However, last Friday, 1,200 pupils at Downlands community school in Hassocks were sent home because they had no water.”
“She told me the staff were amazing, but she also made it clear that amazing staff should never have to work in those conditions Perhaps the most difficult responses I have received were from the healthcare professionals themselves. One doctor told me that they regularly examine patients in corridors.”
“I am sorry, but I will not, in the interests of time. This is happening not because our NHS staff are failing, but because they are being asked to deliver excellent care in circumstances that make excellence almost impossible.”
“Many of those people wanted the House to be told one thing before anything else: the staff who cared for them were extraordinary. They spoke of nurses who never stopped smiling despite being exhausted, doctors who apologised because they knew patients deserved better, and paramedics who stayed compassionate under impossible pressure.”
“I agree with my hon. Friend. What we see time and again is that one problem becomes another until eventually the patient pays the price. My constituent, Catherine Jeater, has seen corridor care as a patient and as a relative of a patient.”
“I begin by thanking the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) for setting out so brilliantly, with her professional expertise and human touch, what it means for corridor care to be a normal habit across the NHS in all parts of the country—not just in the winter, with winter pressures, but throughout the year.”
The complete record
Every one of 584 lines we hold for Alison Bennett, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 3 of 12.
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. Before I begin, I refer the Committee to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. The Liberal Democrats want to see devolution to local people, and we believe that every area in England should be able to secure a devolution deal that works for it, for its local economy and for its residents. We believe that local government reorganisation should be a matter for councils and local people to decide. However, I am mindful that the regulations are being debated before the Government’s decision on the new unitary authorities that will replace the three councils—Brighton and Hove city council, West Sussex county council and East Sussex county council— so is the Minister able to tell the Committee when the announcement will be made on those new unitary structures?”
“T4. My Mid Sussex constituent has waited four months for a transcript that will prove the financial terms agreed with her ex-husband in family court, which he now disputes. Without it, she faces the expense of hiring a barrister to go back to court in April. She is facing financial hardship as a result of this. What steps is the Minister taking to address severe delays in accessing family court transcripts?”
“We must build trust, tackle disinformation and encourage people—regardless of where they live—to take up lifesaving vaccines.”
“Is the Secretary of State confident that there is sufficient stock to deliver protection to all those who need it? As well as talking to the JCVI, will he involve Meningitis Now, which has called for teenagers and young people born prior to 2015 to be vaccinated against meningitis B on the NHS? Vaccination rates are falling in the UK, including for meningitis. For that reason, all politicians and political parties have a moral duty to support science over conspiracy theories. It is deeply regrettable that certain parties have not been responsible in this respect in recent months, and I and my Liberal Democrat colleagues are worried that these avoidable deaths will become more common should a conspiracy theory narrative persist. We must encourage those communities and healthcare workers who are not currently taking up vaccines to do so.”
“I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of the statement. Like other hon. Members who have spoken, first and foremost my thoughts are with the family and friends of the two young people who have lost their lives, and everyone who has been touched by this devastating outbreak. It is understandable that many young people and their families will be feeling anxious. With that in mind, is the Secretary of State confident that this outbreak is contained and has not yet spread beyond those present at the initial event? It is not unreasonable for young people and their families elsewhere in the country to be wondering whether they should be seeking catch-up vaccines. Young people will not have been protected by the menB vaccine that is available to those born after 2015.”
“That deadline then passed. When she attempted to chase the matter herself, she spent nearly an hour on hold, only to be told that the manager was unavailable. What is perhaps most concerning is the reason now being given: the Department would prefer my constituent to submit a completely new application for the wheelchair, rather than reopen the existing case, purely because reopening it would affect its management information.”
“My constituent has done everything asked of her ever since her first application in July 2024. Her assessment was completed, quotes for a suitable chair were submitted and the case had progressed to the point of an award. Then, the system failed her. In September 2025, her case manager informed her that he was retiring, and that the case had been passed to a colleague, who would contact her. That contact never came. Despite my constituent’s repeated attempts to follow up, no one in the Access to Work scheme took ownership of the case or progressed the order. Instead, months later, she was told that her case had been closed due to “no contact” since July, which was demonstrably untrue. When my office intervened, the Department acknowledged the issue, and stated that it would contact my constituent within 10 working days.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) for securing this debate, which is timely because I want to highlight the case of a constituent and ask the Minister to work collaboratively with colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions to intervene urgently in what has become a deeply troubling example of administrative failure in the DWP’s Access to Work scheme. My constituent lives with cerebral palsy and ME. She wants to do exactly what Government policy encourages people to do: work, contribute and maintain her independence. To do that, she requires a wheelchair through the Access to Work programme—an essential piece of equipment that enables her to remain in employment.”
“Thirdly, will he ask his colleagues in the DWP to review the so-called integrity of the Department’s management information, given the serious concern that cases may be closed and replaced with new ones in a way that creates the appearance of efficiency, when the reality for constituents like mine is repeated failure? At its best, Access to Work is a transformative scheme, but when the system fails and the metrics appear to matter more than the people who the scheme exists to support, confidence is undermined. My constituent is not asking for special treatment; she is simply asking for the Department to finish the job it started. I hope the Minister will help me to swiftly put that right.”
“My hon. Friend makes an important and interesting point, and I very much want to get underneath the detail of why that change has happened. Returning to my constituent’s case, I want to ask the Minister three questions to which I believe my constituent deserves a response; if he is not able to answer them, perhaps he can write and raise these matters with the correct Minister. First, does the Minister agree, as I hope he does, that the case should urgently be reopened? Secondly, does he disagree with the DWP’s apparent position that the integrity of its management information is more important than ensuring that a disabled person has the equipment that they need to work?”
“I thank my hon. Friend for setting out with such exemplary clarity the challenges of going ahead with local government reorganisation, particularly on the timescales that have been set. He represents a Surrey constituency, while I represent a constituency in West Sussex, where we are currently awaiting the outcome of the Government consultation on whether the new unitary will be a single unitary authority covering all of West Sussex, second in size only to Birmingham city council, or our preferred option of two future west Sussex unitary councils. Does he not agree that constituents need local decision-making and for there to be accountability, so that when pothole or SEND provision fails, constituents have a close relationship with their councils and can get the answers that they deserve?”
“I am very much appreciating and enjoying the hon. Member’s contribution to the debate. Can I suggest that, when it comes to getting local government in England on a sound financial footing, the real elephant in the room is putting social care on a financial basis so that councils can deliver decent social care to our communities?”
“I also wanted to raise potholes, because potholes are plaguing many roads in Haywards Heath in my constituency, including Perrymount Road, which feels a bit like driving over the surface of the moon. Conservative-run West Sussex county council has failed for years with temporary patch repairs that are both a disaster and a waste of money. How can West Sussex get better than this?”
“No one should face death in avoidable pain, no family should be left unsupported, and no responsible Government should ignore the evidence that properly funded palliative care is both the compassionate and the economically responsible choice.”
“They must invest properly in the workforce, and scale up proven models of care that shift support from hospital to community, improving patient experience and delivering better value for taxpayers. The Government seem happy to talk about moving care from hospitals to the community, but we need a material change. The Liberal Democrats believe that the Government have a choice: they can allow hospices to drift from crisis to crisis, with beds closed, staff lost, and unmet need rising year after year, all while still struggling to plug gaps left by the struggling NHS; or, they can seize the moment, through the modern service framework, to build a sustainable system that matches funding to need and delivers dignity for all.”
“My Liberal Democrat colleagues and I are campaigning to double the funding for bereavement support payments, reversing the last Conservative Government’s cuts since 2017. We would also reduce isolation following a bereavement, by improving access to social prescribing and through the work of a dedicated Minister for tackling loneliness. We would improve support for children who have lost a parent by appointing a Cabinet member for children and young children, and extend pupil premium plus funding to children in kinship care. The Government must provide stronger national leadership and oversight, and they must place palliative and end-of-life care at the heart of plans for a neighbourhood health service, looking beyond hospices. They must deliver a new funding and commissioning model that ends the postcode lottery.”
“Marie Curie and others have warmly welcomed the Government’s commitment to developing a palliative care and end-of-life care modern service framework, with an interim report expected in the spring and a final report in the autumn. It will be the first national plan for palliative and end-of-life care since 2008. That is, of course, good news. The Government have rightly identified five core challenges: delays in early identification, inconsistent commissioning, workforce shortages, gaps in 24/7 provision, and limited uptake of personalised and advance care planning. But those are not new problems that need solving—we have known about them for some time—and if this framework is to succeed, it must go further.”
“Access to compassionate end-of-life care should not depend on geography, the strength of an area’s ability to raise funds or whether someone is an adult or a child. Hospices, of course, welcome the capital funding from the Government, but it quite simply does not pay nurses’ salaries. Staff account for around 70% of hospice costs. Without revenue funding for core services, capital investment does not keep beds open or prevent service reductions. This is a national, structural problem, but it is also a very real one for all our areas across the country, particularly for my area in Sussex, where the Southern Hospice Group is consulting on how to cut its costs.”
“Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury) noted, the disastrous rise in employer national insurance contributions alone is costing hospices in England an estimated £34 million a year. Hospices collectively raise about £1.4 billion themselves. Government funding amounts to just over £500 million—barely a quarter of the income—and in some areas, hospices receive as little as 8% of their funding from NHS grants. There is no robust national methodology underpinning these variations. It is a postcode lottery and, as the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) noted, the variation in funding for children’s hospices is even more acute than that in the adult hospice sector.”
“With the average acute bed day costing around £500, and with roughly 40% to 50% of the NHS budget concentrated in acute settings, the potential for a more appropriate allocation of resources is obvious. Around 69% of people are admitted as in-patients in the final six months, with a median stay of 13 days, and 80% of those who die in hospital had an emergency admission in their final month of life. These are real people—people who, with better planning and properly resourced hospice, community nursing, GP, pharmacy and paramedic services, might have experienced a calmer, more dignified end of life and spared the NHS considerable cost. But the very sector that relieves this pressure is itself under extraordinary strain. Between 2022 and 2024, there was a £47 million real-terms cut in hospice funding. As the hon.”
“That equates to nearly one person dying with unmet needs every three minutes. Without intervention, around 44,400 more people are projected to have unmet palliative care needs in 2050 compared with 2025. That is the scale of the challenge before us. Hospices are essential pillars of our health and care system, especially at a time when the NHS is under such immense strain. The economic case for funding them properly is overwhelming. Approximately 15% of all emergency hospital admissions in England involve people in their last year of life—nearly 1 million admissions in 2023 alone. Those patients account for around 30% of all emergency hospital bed days. In the last six months of life, around 360,000 people spent a total of 8.4 million days in hospital.”
“Some 75% of hospices are running a deficit, two in five are planning reductions in clinical services in the year ahead, and 380 hospice beds across England lie empty, not because there is no need for them, but because there is no funding to staff hospices, as many hon. Members have said. Around 300,000 people are cared for by hospices every year, yet around 100,000 more need it. One in three of those who need hospice care miss out, and demand is rising sharply. Over the next decade in England, just over 5.75 million people will die. Around 90% of them—an estimated 5.18 million people—will have palliative care needs. New research commissioned by Marie Curie and published earlier this month showed that nearly one in three dying people have both unaddressed symptoms and concerns and insufficient access to GP services at the end of life.”
“I got talking to him, and it turned out that he was waiting for a lift to St Peter and St James hospice, where he was going to a bereavement café. He told me that he had lost his wife two and a half years ago, but he had no recollection of the first two years following her loss—I think it had been a blur for him. For the past six months, he has been going back to St Peter and St James for the bereavement café, and he is beginning to feel a little better with that support each week. My thanks go to St Peter and St James, and to all the hospices that support our constituents, for what they do. Our palliative care system is at tipping point, with a funding cliff edge approaching.”
“I thank all hon. Members for their thoughtful and moving contributions this afternoon. The hon. Members for Worcester (Tom Collins) and for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer) spoke so movingly about their own very personal loss. Of course, we would not be holding the debate were it not for the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), who set out the frame of this debate so brilliantly and has done so much outside the Chamber to strive for better palliative care. The hon. Member for York Central concluded her remarks by talking about bereavement support, and that is where I will begin mine. Last week, I was out in Burgess Hill. I saw an elderly gentleman who was standing by the edge of the pavement holding on to a walking frame.”
“The hon. Gentleman is very generous. Does he agree that it is totally unfair that one person in my constituency missed out on their gap year and the opportunity to travel abroad because they have a British passport while their friend got to travel and have that experience because they could access an Irish passport?”
“Burgess Hill in my Mid Sussex constituency has done everything asked of it by successive Governments. It is taking thousands of new houses, yet it has a high street and shopping centre that need redevelopment. Under the previous Conservative Government, a levelling-up fund bid was unsuccessful, and Labour has not supported it through the Pride in Place scheme. The Liberal Democrats want to give Burgess Hill the town centre that it so badly deserves. What support can the Minister offer for the regeneration of high streets and town centres, such as that in Burgess Hill, that are unlikely to qualify for Pride in Place funding?”
“I am pleased that the White Paper makes one mention of young carers. It rightly notes that young carers pay a huge price for caring for their siblings and family members. I am sure the Secretary of State agrees that it is vital that we identify and support young carers, so will she support my call to make young carers eligible for the pupil premium?”
“Building on the point made by the hon. Member for Crawley (Peter Lamb), the £63 million of new capacity funding is a drop in the ocean compared with the real cost of LGR across the country. We are talking about councils having to merge workforces, IT contracts and outsourced contracts, none of which has been properly funded by central Government. These are authorities that are highly leveraged and do not have the reserves to pay for it. What is the Secretary of State’s assessment of the true cost of local government reorganisation?”
“The hon. Member is giving a brilliant speech, and I am so pleased that he opened his remarks with, and spoke again just now about, the role of parents and parents’ use of mobile phones. I have recently met paediatricians, GPs and headteachers, who all say that they are observing bad use of phones in parents, which then impacts the children. Does the hon. Member agree that it has a detrimental consequence for children when parents are on screens too much?”
“Palantir has links to Peter Mandelson, to Peter Thiel and to the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and it is extending its web of influence across multiple parts of our public sector. It is extraordinary that the Government are so reluctant to have this deal properly scrutinised. Does the Minister come to this place today feeling any shred of embarrassment that he cannot tell us why there are no minutes of the February 2025 meeting? We do not know whether a future contract was discussed, or whether the Prime Minister was aware of Mandelson’s links to Palantir.”
“In her response, the Home Secretary noted the speeding-up of processing times, but I wonder whether enough is being done on that. Surely, making sure that asylum seekers are processed as fast as possible is the route to closing the hotels.”
“This is not about process; it is about the judgment of the Prime Minister, and we cannot legislate out the poor judgment that has been in evidence today. Perhaps the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister has considered our calls for an office of the whistleblower, but does he agree that, in order to mitigate the frailties and the human error that we see here, we must ensure that there are proper criminal sanctions for Ministers who fail to whistleblow?”
“Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler) said last year, too many councils with the worst roads are receiving less funding than those with roads that are already in better condition. That simply makes no sense. In Mid Sussex, we want safe roads, fair compensation when things go wrong and a transport system that works. I do not think that is unreasonable. Banging on about potholes is sometimes described as being peak Lib Dem, but it matters to folk every day and it is critical to safety and to our economy. I know that I and my colleagues will keep being peak Lib Dem by fighting until our roads are brought back to the standard that the public deserve.”
“Under the former Conservative Government, our transport system was neglected; up and down the country, families and businesses are paying more for less, and semi-rural communities across Mid Sussex can see that the roads they rely on are neglected and left to crumble. The Liberal Democrats have been clear that transport links are essential for our economy, for getting to work or school, for leisure and for exercise, which is why we campaigned in the general election for funding to fix 1.2 million potholes every year, and for long-term investment to stop the endless cycle of patch and repair. We welcome the Government’s £7.3 billion commitment in November’s Budget, but funding must be based on need. As my hon.”
“They should not be left footing the bill for damage caused by neglected infrastructure, nor should pedestrians, cyclists or drivers feel unsafe on roads that are meant to connect our communities and support our local economy. The problem is only getting worse. Burgess Hill and the surrounding villages are seeing significant new housing, yet road maintenance has not kept pace. People are rightly asking, “How will our failing roads cope with thousands more vehicles?” We need more houses, but much like our water system, we need to know that we have the infrastructure to support them first.”
“They told me, “our roads are dangerous—simply because they are not being looked after properly”. Another constituent described how a pothole had burst their stepson’s tyre, leaving him more than £120 out of pocket through no fault of his own. West Sussex county council acknowledged that it knew about the pothole— it even repaired it—but the claim was rejected because the inspection time limit had technically been reached. As the constituent put it, “how can this be right that hard-working people suffer, through no fault of their own?” That question goes to the heart of this issue. Families in Mid Sussex pay road tax, council tax and income tax.”
“My speech is significantly shorter than six minutes, so we should be good. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller) for bringing us a debate that is really timely, particularly at this time of year, because I am going to focus my remarks on potholes. In my constituency of Mid Sussex, potholes are a daily hazard. They make journeys unpleasant and dangerous, they damage vehicles and they are a symbol of a road network that has been allowed to crumble for far too long. One constituent wrote to me that after walking their dog in the pouring rain recently, a car hit a water-filled pothole at speed and they were sprayed not just with filthy water but with shards of broken road surface.”
“Madam Deputy Speaker, I am sure that your constituents, like mine, were absolutely shocked this morning to discover that their water bills from South East Water will go up by 7%, while the company is being investigated by Ofwat. The water industry is a failed industry. Will the Leader of the House make time for a debate on adopting the Liberal Democrat call for a mutual ownership model for the water companies?”
“The Minister talks about the definition of a pub. In the village of Hurstpierpoint in my constituency, Morley’s Bistro has a very similar product offering to food-led pubs on the same high street. They are competing for the same customers, and they are, ideally, all employing young people and giving them their first job. How does the Minister justify this?”
“The Secretary of State rightly notes that there is international competition for healthcare talent. On Friday, I met Dr Osoba, a GP who trains future GPs. She told me how disheartening it is to train future GPs whose intention is to leave the UK. What is the Secretary of State doing to ensure that British-trained medics stay working in the NHS?”
“I am pleased to hear the Secretary of State’s comments about social care, but an awful lot of care in this country is provided by family carers, who can often be serving personnel or the children of serving personnel. Does he consider that the Bill as currently drafted does everything possible to support unpaid carers who face a greater postcode lottery as they move round the country as a result of their service?”
“A close and strong relationship with our European partners is vital to our interests. Mid Sussex is home to high-tech life sciences companies such as CSL Behring and Roche Diagnostics. The regulatory and trade barriers put up after Brexit have made business harder for them. With a mercurial Administration in the White House, as evidenced this week, surely it is time for the Minister to get behind Liberal Democrat calls for a bespoke customs union with the EU.”
“T6. May I please push for a clearer answer to the question by my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart)? Will the Cabinet Office set up a European relations Select Committee?”
“Today’s decision undermines trust in elections and in democracy. Surely the Secretary of State can see that this plays into the hands of those who want to undermine our democratic institutions.”
“Members, including at the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee on 11 November and during oral questions in the Chamber on 24 November, that elections scheduled for May 2026 would go ahead—explain why a U-turn happened a few weeks later, in December? What new information came to light between November and December that prompted that change of heart? Finally, on trust in democracy, councillors in West Sussex will serve for six instead of four years. That is not the “short period” stated by the Secretary of State. In 2021, the world was a very different place. We were at the peak of the Boris bounce. The electoral map and the world have changed dramatically since then. When public trust in politicians is low, it can never be right for those who are up for re-election to decide whether they want to face their electorate.”
“I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of the statement. I refer the House to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Today’s announcement raises three questions about waste, incompetence and trust in democracy. First, on waste, councils across the country have already committed significant public money in good faith to preparing for these elections, which the Government repeatedly assured them would go ahead. Cancelling them at this late stage is not cost-free. Will the Secretary of State commit today to reimbursing councils in full for every pound spent as a result of these cancellations, or are local taxpayers now expected to pick up the bill for ministerial indecision? Secondly, on incompetence, will the Minister—who repeatedly told hon.”
“I know the hon. Member trained as a teacher. Plumpton college educates many students in Mid Sussex and last year, it pledged £500,000 of fully funded training in the wine sector. Does he agree that to grow the wine industry, the Government also need to support skill development in rural economies and communities?”
“I thank the Secretary of State for her statement, in which she talked about new reforms for regional planning supporting housing growth. Right across the south-east, we have both very high housing targets, but a totally unreliable fresh water system, as I know the Secretary of State experienced herself when she visited Tunbridge Wells recently. How can these two things be realised when fundamentally we are dealing with, as she puts it, whole-system failure?”
“My hon. Friend is right to discuss the problems of sewage in our waterways, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) and I, and the hon. Member for East Grinstead and Uckfield (Mims Davies), have all experienced in recent weeks, it is not just about sewage in waterways; it is about freshwater supply. Does my hon. Friend agree that the chief executive of South East Water should also go for failing to deliver tap water to our taps?”
“Anna is a child development doctor in my constituency. Every day, she sees children who have been harmed by excessive screen time. The Secretary of State says that she wishes to come to a clear position before the summer. When we come to that clear position, how urgently will change happen? How long will Anna keep on seeing children damaged by too much screen time?”