Anna Sabine
MP for Frome and East Somerset · Liberal Democrat · United Kingdom
“Turning to online spaces, the proposal to highlight trusted news sources on social media is welcome, but unfortunately this is just a sticking plaster over the fundamental issue that big social media platforms are already rigged against truth, fairness and impartiality.”
“The Green Paper rightly recognises the severe financial challenges facing our public service broadcasters, which have been vividly exposed by recent devastating cuts at the BBC.”
“T4. We have a shortage of music teachers in this country. A system of bursaries was in place for those taking music postgraduate certificates in education, but after the number of students increased slightly, that bursary system was pulled, yet we still do not have enough music teachers.”
“I would also like to start by congratulating the England football team on their win yesterday. While fans are rightly excited to finally see England bring it home this summer, some world cup tickets this year have surged to over £24,000.”
“Some have engaged constructively and early, but in Somerset there was unfortunately no consultation with me at all. Instead, I was given a list of locations that had already been chosen, none of which were located in Frome and East Somerset.”
“For many of my constituents, Frome community hospital is an important community hub, where people access lifesaving care for themselves and their families.”
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“I just draw the Minister back to my specific point about whether he can confirm that he is having discussions with the British Dental Association. The association agrees that the contract is wrong, and it wants to speak urgently to the Government about how it can be amended.”
“Q I want to pick up on something Mr Sells said about Crown court backlogs. I have a constituent who is still waiting, two years after a serious sexual assault, and says that that timelapse has actually been more traumatic than the assault itself. You said you were concerned that low-value shoplifting might add to Crown court backlogs; are there other things in the Bill that may do that or, indeed, things you would like to see in it that would help to reduce court backlogs more generally? Oliver Sells: Oh dear. I do not think time permits me to answer that question in the way that I would like. Goodness gracious!”
“There is nothing wrong with that at all in my view; it is perfectly satisfactory and prevents all the difficulties and delay of people coming to court. If I had my way, I would change very radically the procedural rules in the Crown court and the magistrates court. We are too slow and too timid, and I think there is a form of institutionalised idleness in some parts of the sector.”
“Give it your best shot. Oliver Sells: I will give you the short answer. Yes, there are a whole load of things, but I do not have time to spell them out for you now. I do not think people understand that the courts want to strive to get cases through but are struggling to do so. There is an enormous amount of good will, both in the magistrates court and the Crown court. Let me give you one example: prison transport. Why are we so reliant on defendants being brought long distances from prison every day to Crown courts? I see no justification for that in many cases. I have recently tried cases in which the defendant was sitting in Reading prison and the complainant was giving evidence on her phone in a Tesco car park.”
“On the length of the sentence, I do not suppose there is any length of sentence that would be justifiable in terms of the harms that are caused by exploitation. I share the concerns on what you described—the length of time in the Modern Slavery Act versus what is described in the Bill. We would want to see that increased.”
“Q This question is probably best aimed at Action for Children. It is on a point that was raised in some of our written evidence about the proposed sentencing under the proposed child criminal exploitation offence compared with the Modern Slavery Act 2015. The proposed sentencing for child criminal exploitation is 10 years, which is much shorter than the penalty of up to life imprisonment under the Modern Slavery Act. That might create a perverse situation where you can be sentenced for child criminal exploitation and get much less than you would under the Modern Slavery Act. Do you have any views on that? Sharon Maciver: As I mentioned in my introduction, the harms caused to children are lifelong and traumatic and devastate children, young people and their communities.”
“Q In the light of my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam describing Croydon as rural, I point out that I am from a properly rural seat in Somerset. Fly-tipping gets mentioned to me a lot by farmers, partly because they often deal with it on their land and partly because they consider that many of the perpetrators are the kind of people who are committing wider rural crime. Sara, from the point of view of the LGA, which represents lots of more rural councils, do you feel that there is more the Bill could do to support councils in dealing with rural crime? Councillor Conway: I think we will need to write with more detail about that, if it is okay. The board I sit on definitely has people who I think would have a lot to say about that but, for specific information, I think we should write to you.”
“Any flexibility that we can get around how the funding is given to police forces, through us, would be very welcome, because that will means you can start to see PCSOs, for example, playing a more visible role. Certainly the recent neighbourhood policing guarantee has helped with that.”
“The recent announcement on neighbourhood policing has absolutely helped with that. We very much welcome the additional £200 million announced by the Government a few weeks —or months—ago, and lots of that is being used to invest in areas such as PCSOs and putting that visible presence into areas, which I think will help with some of this. There has also been some flexibility around that funding. Because of the way the previous uplift programme was run, it was very much ringfencing police officers. We absolutely value that, and we know the public value that, but you end up in a very difficult position where forces are having to look at PCSOs and staff jobs to be able to balance the budget.”
“Q Ms Spurrell, you wondered whether we had talked about resources a lot, and it will not surprise you to learn that we have. I want to talk specifically about neighbourhood policing resources. In my local police force, we have seen a 20% drop in the number of police community support officers since 2023, and I know that my principal town of Frome currently has vacancies for PCSOs. Do you have a view on whether the Bill’s provisions, including well-intentioned measures such as the retail crime provisions, can be delivered with the neighbourhood policing that we currently have in place? Emily Spurrell: We are very honest about the fact that there are severe challenges in policing. It varies across different police forces, but we know that some forces are facing significant financial deficits.”
“A lot of rural forces that I speak to, including Avon and Somerset and Lincolnshire, will say that the funding they receive from central Government does not necessarily reflect the operational issues they have in remote rural areas with tourists and vulnerable communities that take a long time to get to. We challenge our membership to report crime. There is a culture in farming to just get on with it—if your fence is damaged, you repair it yourself, and it is not worth reporting—but we have sent that message out, and we are working with the police to say, “You do need to report it, because there’s no way you can increase police support or funding without that understanding of how much crime is occurring in rural areas.” We work with other agencies, which say that a lot of that crime is potentially linked to organised criminal networks.”
“Q I represent Frome and East Somerset, which has a large number of NFU members and farmers, who I meet a lot. They tell me frequently that they do not bother reporting rural crime, because they just do not think there is any value in doing so or that it will ever be resolved, which massively frustrates the local rural crime PCSO, because she never gets the intelligence she needs about what is happening. From an NFU point of view, do you feel there is enough in the Bill on rural crime to reassure farmers that the Government are taking their concerns seriously, and that, if they report rural crime, something will be done about it? Sam Durham: Not necessarily in the Bill; it is all linked to funding, and the fair allocation of police funding as well.”
“Q I think you are doing really well, Ms Yeung; thank you for coming in. Just a quick question, although I probably know the answer: can I assume that your concerns about face coverings would also apply to the use of live facial recognition technology for protests? Venita Yeung: Yes.”
“We recognise that, and there is a proposal—a White Paper—coming forward on police reform, because we think we can do things more efficiently and effectively as we go forward. There is certainly work now around the efficiencies that we can get out of the policing budget, in terms of things such as buying fleet, if we do it together rather than individual police forces doing it individually. IT can also be done together, rather than being done individually by 43 police forces. There are savings to be made there, which we want to plough back into police funding.”
“That is why we have introduced the Bill, while recognising that within the criminal justice system we also have a number of reviews that are taking place independently, be it the sentencing review or the review of our courts. Dame Diana Johnson: I will just add that we had the police settlement at the end of January. We listened to what the police were saying, particularly about our commitment on around neighbourhood policing and the 13,000 additional police officers and PCSOs during the course of this Parliament. We doubled the amount of money going in to kickstart that from April, from £100 million to £200 million. Overall, the police settlement has gone up by, I think, £1.2 billion. Additional money is going in, but I agree with what the PCCs said about the challenging circumstances that some forces are in.”
“Q This question flows on nicely, because the Bill creates a lot of new offences and orders, but one of the themes of today has been resourcing. I wonder to what extent the Government have considered the impact that the Bill will have on the police, the courts and local authorities. Alex Davies-Jones: All of the impact assessments have been published on gov.uk outlining this; that has been done. Members will be well aware of the crisis that we have inherited in the criminal justice system, be that within the court system or the prison system. However, we feel it necessary to make sure that there is always a prison place available for those who require a prison place, for public protection and for punishment.”
“Loss of winter fuel payments, changes to personal independence payments and increases to national insurance for charities and social care providers all pile the pressure on the least well-off in our country while the Government kick tricky decisions like fixing social care into the long grass. The cost of living crisis is going nowhere, and removing winter fuel payments is just another example of a decision that penalises some of the most vulnerable.”
“I could give numerous other examples of pensioners in a similar position to Patricia who do not know what to do. In January, I held a cost of living advice surgery in Midsomer Norton where I brought together organisations and charities such as Wessex Water and Mind to provide a one-stop shop for constituents to come to me with their concerns about bills and benefits. The majority of those who attended the surgery were pensioners anxious about the cost of their utility bills or confused about their eligibility for various payments. More than 2 million pensioners currently live in poverty—that is unacceptable. The pressure that they are feeling will only be heightened by yesterday’s welfare reform announcements. I have already received a deluge of emails from constituents worried about the likely impacts.”
“Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), by cold, hungry and unwell pensioners adding to the strain on GPs and social services. It is morally and economically a poor decision. One of my constituents, Patricia, wrote to me about how furious she was that the winter fuel allowance had been taken away. She is no longer eligible for winter fuel payments, but neither is she eligible for benefits or pension credit. She worked in the NHS for over 40 years, but her NHS pension is not large, and she has been a widow for over 10 years so she is managing on a small, single income. Because her husband died when she was 54, she was not entitled to a widow’s pension, either. She wrote to me saying: “It is always the middle people who are squeezed, whose pips are made to squeak, the easy targets”.”
“After such a huge election victory by a supposedly progressive party, it was disappointing to me and many of my constituents that, despite the financial situation that the Government inherited, one of their first acts was to strip vital support from many of the poorest pensioners in our society. I am sure that many of us across the House had hundreds of emails from concerned pensioners, worried about how they would afford their energy bills this winter. Stripping pensioners of this allowance was the wrong thing to do. The Government said that the removal of winter fuel payments would allow money to be spent in other areas, but as with other attempts to raise money such as increasing employers’ national insurance contributions, any savings will be offset, as pointed out by the right hon.”
“Many people in my constituency are passionate about resolving the situation between Israel and Palestine, and there are concerns that violence in the west bank has increased and illegal settlements have continued to expand. Does the Minister agree that if he also wants to see a reduction in settler violence, we should be considering sanctioning those settlements?”
“Q8. Dorothy House is an amazing hospice supporting terminally ill people in Frome and East Somerset and their families, including my good friend Lisa. Next year, Dorothy House will be looking forward to celebrating 50 years of service, but it will also face an additional cost of £422,000 thanks to the increase in employers’ national insurance contributions. Will the Prime Minister commit to meeting me and representatives of the hospice sector to hear at first hand about the impact of the increase in NICs, and to working to find a solution?”
“I thank the hon. Member for calling this debate, which is clearly so important to her. In my constituency there is an excellent charity called HeartTalks that works with mothers who have experienced baby loss. Would she agree that post-partum check-ups are really important for all women, but particularly those who have suffered baby loss, regardless of the trimester it occurred in?”
“On that specific point, I do not want to show off about who has the worst travel times for radiotherapy, but nobody in my constituency of Frome and East Somerset who does not own a car lives within that recommended 45-minute NHS travel time. Does my hon. Friend agree that reliable, quick and affordable public transport is key, and that the recent increase to the bus fare cap has not helped with the situation?”
“We know from figures provided by Brake that one in five drivers crash within a year of their test, and more than 1,500 young drivers are killed or injured on the roads each year. We know that carrying passengers or driving at night are major risk factors for younger drivers. I certainly remember careering around the roads where I grew up as a teenager, in cars packed with friends, listening to music too loudly. The thought makes me shudder when I look back on it. Sadly, we also know that younger drivers are more likely to be involved in a crash caused by speed. Serious consideration needs to be given to graduated driving licences.”
“My constituency has a lot of A roads that are windy and fast, and they often have junctions off to the side, from which drivers are trying to pull out on to the main road. We have a history of accidents in the local area, including a horrendous one in 2023, when two young sisters were killed by an oncoming vehicle driven by someone who was high on drugs. That accident took place on a very dangerous junction outside Frome, and I am campaigning for traffic lights to be installed there, but I am coming up against a lack of council or Government funding to get the new infrastructure installed. We cannot put in the preventive measures my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) mentioned if we cannot fund them.”
“I thank the hon. Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) for calling this important debate. That is an incredibly difficult speech to follow, and I am feeling very emotional. I also thank all the families here today. I have two teenage children, one of whom is now 18, and he is about to learn to drive. It is really helpful if young people in my constituency can drive themselves around, because—especially in villages such as the one he lives in—they are often at the mercy of unreliable and infrequent bus services. As his mum, I am of course encouraging him to learn: he will be able to be more independent, and it is an important life skill. But I have some really serious concerns about his safety when he starts to drive.”
“I can also see why, in rural areas such as mine or that of the hon. Member for Shrewsbury, really stringent restrictions on driving—such as preventing young people from driving at night—might make it hard for them to get to their jobs or educational settings if buses are not frequent enough. But I think the idea warrants a conversation, because young people have the most to lose if we cannot get this right.”
“That is exactly right. I am keen that when we discuss this issue, we look at good practice from other places. Graduated driving licences can be set up in a number of ways, but typically might involve minimum periods for learning to drive, and reducing the number of passengers a young person can have in the car. In the UK, we already have a version of this system for motorbikes. We recognise that young motorcyclists probably should not ride the most powerful bikes straightaway, and we restrict them accordingly. Even motoring groups such as the RAC have supported moves towards a graduated driving licence scheme in recent times, and I intend to explore the idea in my own political party. I totally understand why young people might resist or resent the idea of graduated driving licences.”
“The hon. Gentleman mentioned the personal tragedies of road accidents and refers to Members of all political persuasions. Does he agree that it is brilliant to see cross-party support for these campaigns, but that it might be more helpful for campaigners if His Majesty’s Opposition were better represented in today’s debate?”
“A constituent of mine from Somerset was seriously sexually assaulted in another county more than two years ago. Despite reporting the assault in 2022, she has been given a court date in December 2025. She told me that the legal process, involving both the courts and the relevant police service, has been more traumatising than the incident itself. What better support can we offer women who find themselves stuck in these processes for such lengths of time?”
“Many local authorities are, of course, under immense financial strain and I cannot see how this situation can be resolved until the Government relieve councils by providing extra funding and by making EHCP applications as simple and straightforward as possible. We are better than ever at diagnosing additional needs, but the system is woefully under-resourced to support children to thrive.”
“Despite the medical recognition of the need for an EHCP and despite the diagnoses, Bath and North East Somerset council and Somerset council went back and forth for over a year about which local authority should take responsibility for the EHCP, because the child’s parents were separated, with one living in each authority, and the child’s time was split evenly between the two. That cannot be an uncommon occurrence, yet there were delays and stress for the family while they waited for their case to come to tribunal. The child’s mother estimates that he has missed 1,100 lessons in the 15 months that it has taken to resolve this issue.”
“It is a pleasure to contribute to this debate. With limited time, I would like to raise a very specific issue. My constituency of Frome and East Somerset falls under both Bath and North East Somerset council and Somerset council, and there have been instances in which children’s specific cases, claims or tribunals have fallen between two different systems. One of my constituents wrote to me about their child, who is 14 and has central nervous system lupus, epilepsy, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and visual and sensory processing disorder. All the child’s needs were documented by an educational psychologist, who recommended an EHCP.”
“The work the Government are doing to improve transparency and accountability contrasts with what happened under the previous Administration, but does the hon. Lady agree that if they ignore an independent ombudsman’s report, it just looks like more of the same to people in my constituency?”
“My constituents in Frome and East Somerset are still shocked to learn about the implications of Old Oak Common. Does my hon. Friend agree that the consultation on that huge change, which will have a major impact on the south-west, was insufficient, and that we still need to have some kind of impact survey or study of the potential impact on tourism and business and the other effects of the works at Old Oak Common?”
“Kitting out a child for a new term at school is an expensive business, and anything the Government can do to support parents in keeping those costs down would be most welcome.”
“We should foster an environment where school clothes can be easily handed down through families, regardless of gender, and exchanged between families, either through the school or through charity shops, instead of focusing on brand new items for each child. That also reduces clothing and textile waste. Will the Minister consider, for example, why three items were chosen rather than one, such as a school tie or jumper, which makes students easily identifiable as being from a particular school, but which leaves maximum options for parents to buy the other uniform elements from other retailers? Will she also consider what other additional measures could be taken to keep down the cost of a uniform?”
“That does not even account for a sports kit and shoes, or for the fact that children often require new items each year as they grow. There are also parts of my constituency of Frome and East Somerset that operate a three-tier school system, meaning children move around three different schools with three different uniforms before they are 16. That can mean that parents have to adapt to three totally different uniforms, colours and requirements. We should aim to strike a balance between students looking smart and not making uniforms overly complicated and exclusive. The simpler the uniform, which is based on staple and easily available items and colours, the more reusable it is.”
“From my experience of sending my daughter to state school, branded school uniform items are being sold from monopoly suppliers for an inflated price, compared with the items bought from high street and charity shops. The Bill talks about restricting schools to three branded items of uniform—by the way, I do not read that as excluding primary schools from letting kids wear ties. The bare minimum of three branded items of a jumper, a polo shirt and a skirt for my daughter’s school costs more than double that from a high street shop. For a family with three children to have two sets of three branded items per year costs more than £300, compared with £108 from my local supermarket in Frome—nearly three times as much.”
“State schools should represent a level playing field for children of all backgrounds, where pupils are treated with the same respect and given the same opportunities. I recognise that a school uniform allows pupils to go into school with the same appearance and not be discriminated against or bullied for what they wear. However, school uniform is one of the biggest costs in sending children to school, and although I welcome the Government’s commitment to limiting the number of branded items students are required to have each year, more needs to be done to support parents during the cost of living crisis, when they are already facing higher energy bills and food costs.”
“I am standing up to talk about the important issue of school uniforms, but I will first say that the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome) was quite right to point out that child sexual abuse takes place across our society. We have just seen the Archbishop of Canterbury and others in the Church of England resign over child sexual abuse. For the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) to deny that it affects all aspects of society is, frankly, for the birds. I am a single parent to two teenagers and, like many other parents in this place, I know how many expenses are involved in sending children to school. As they grow and progress through school, they require different pairs of shoes, sets of stationery and money for school trips.”
“I urge the Government to look into a programme of measures, many of which were brilliantly set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham, that would mitigate the impact of the disruption caused by Old Oak Common and ensure that the south-west is not being left behind.”
“It will be a direct hit on the economies of the south-west and Wales; it will affect people not only now, but far into the future, as they adapt their investment and business decisions accordingly. We already have unreliable services with frankly rubbish wi-fi and mobile signal, which hampers people’s ability to work on the train. Millions of passengers will be displaced as a result of the work, which will increase journeys on roads and push services to other stations. Regular users of the M4 and M5 will dread the prospect of more cars on those motorways, particularly at weekends. No one is denying that the work needs to happen or is going to happen. However, it seems that there has been little to no consideration of the impact on the south-west.”
“They will not have been aware of the plans when they made that decision. The Prime Minister’s response to the hon. Member for Exmouth and Exeter East (David Reed) at Prime Minister’s questions on 27 November was welcome, but his comments that services are unaffected between Exeter and London Euston show his lack of understanding of the situation. Many of my constituents use Bath Spa station. The train from Exeter does not run through it, and it travels through Frome a maximum of twice a day. We are lucky that we have a stop on a main line, but many people will not even have access to that. The planned work will leave the south-west with some of the slowest inter-city services in the country. It will severely reduce the number of trains running and the number of seats available.”
“The new project will affect approximately 56 million passenger journeys a year through Paddington and will push people on to other lines, such as South Western Railway, which cannot handle the passengers it has at the moment, let alone the numbers it would need to handle to avoid disruption. My constituents have been left in the dark about how the project will affect them. There has been little to no consultation with local businesses or groups about the disruption. That is unacceptable. This Christmas, our railways are already being delayed thanks to essential work happening in Westbury, leaving many struggling to get from Frome to London. Furthermore, many people and businesses relocated to places like Frome and East Somerset during covid, partly based on the time and regularity of services.”
“I am pleased to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson) for securing this important debate. As we have heard, the work at Old Oak Common will be hugely impactful on the south-west for at least the next seven years. A month from work starting, however, councils, MPs, businesses and interest groups are only just being notified of the impact on services. That is a totally unacceptable approach to public consultation. This work is meant to last for seven years or more. For us in Frome and East Somerset, it follows 10 years of disruption to our rail services from the electrification of the main line and the construction of the Elizabeth line.”
“When bank branches close, which is already more likely in rural areas, residents are increasingly vulnerable because the alternatives are more physically spread out, and after losing free-to-use cashpoints, rural residents have to travel three times as far to get cash as those in urban areas.”
“My constituency of Frome and East Somerset is a predominantly rural area, with a number of market towns such as Frome, Midsomer Norton and Radstock, and 150 villages and hamlets. Frome has recently been allocated a banking hub, after our last bank branch announced that it would close. Thankfully, Midsomer Norton still has two bank branches open, but they serve surrounding areas as far as the city of Bath, meaning that residents in the surrounding villages still have to travel miles to reach their nearest bank. Access to cash and face-to-face banking is vital for about 5 million customers across the UK who may be vulnerable because of low income or age, and in rural areas many people are dependent on cash for their livelihoods.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered financial inclusion in rural areas. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard. I am grateful to the Chairman of Ways and Means for granting this debate. Financial inclusion is the ability of people to access, understand and use financial services to manage their money and reduce poverty. I hope the Minister will agree that we need better financial inclusion across the UK. I have been heartened to hear the new Government talk about financial inclusion, but more rural areas face a whole host of issues that make the challenges around financial inclusion even greater, and that is what I will focus on today.”