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Damian Hinds
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On the record 2010–2026
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“I do not know what the outcomes and therefore the mitigations of AI will need to be, but we must keep an open mind.”
House of Commons8 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Like many colleagues, I am trying to educate myself more to understand better the implications, including the upside for productivity, the implications for energy and water, and the effect on all manner of things in the public and private spheres, such as healthcare, education, international relations, and foreign and security policy and so on. I am no expert, but one thing I have learned is that no one knows what the societal effect of AI is at this moment in time. A lot of people have a story to tell, but no one really knows. That is one of the reasons why we have to keep coming back to these subjects as our understanding iterates and evolves.”
House of Commons8 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I commend the hon. Member for Poole (Neil Duncan-Jordan), as well as his two friends and allies who have just spoken, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) and the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), on bringing this important subject to Westminster Hall. This is in danger of turning into one of those rare debates in Parliament where one learns something from everybody who speaks and we all come away better informed and equipped. This subject is enormous, and it is only a 90-minute debate. It obviously will not be the last time we discuss these matters, and I freely confess to not being an expert on the subject.”
House of Commons8 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“People already say that AI has had a big impact on job markets, particularly on the graduate job market. I honestly do not know whether that is true or not. It strikes me that it is quite an easy thing to say: if a company is not doing that well this year and is not employing graduates to the same extent that it used to, it is a great thing to say, “Well, we’re investing in AI.” I do not see how a professional services firm, with the current technology deployment, would be able to substitute people for AI in quite that way. In the future, it is true that there is a scenario in which there is mass unemployment. But it is also true that when there have been huge upheavals previously, labour markets have adapted, albeit over time, and sometimes it is that gap that makes the difference. Labour has found its way into different sectors—”
House of Commons8 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I agree with large parts of what the hon. Gentleman says. The timeframes are obviously shorter this time than they were for say, the industrial revolution, the printing press or any of the other massive changes that we have seen in the past. When Gutenberg invented his printing press, I am not sure it was foreseeable to even the most far-sighted, omniscient individual what all the effects of that would be. That does not mean we do not try to scenario-plan and to think about the different possible outcomes and try to mitigate them. Labour market effects are probably what we as politicians worry about the most, along with all the other implications, like the consequences for income distribution, intergenerational fairness and so many other aspects.”
House of Commons8 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I agree with the hon. Gentleman; this is, of course, not a left versus right argument. For example, the antitrust regime in the United States exists precisely to prevent the concentration of power. Indeed, all the companies in the list we heard earlier were American. We did not mention ByteDance or Huawei, which we could easily have done. As the right hon. Member for Oxford East said, sovereign capability is obviously important, too. On labour markets, there is also a risk—actually, the hon. Member for Poole did not do this, but I thought that he was going to keep saying, “Universal basic income, universal basic income.” He did not, but a lot of people do. Universal basic income is a policy prescription that those people calling for it tended to believe in years earlier, before they had even heard of AI, and now it fits this scenario.”
House of Commons8 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This sounds like a stupid thing to say, but people already ask, “Why is my child learning to write with a pen, because by the time they grow up nobody will be doing that?” Finally, we are about to make the same mistake with chatbots as we did with social media. I am talking about anthropomorphism, where a computer program develops a personality of its own and develops relationships with people. I welcome the development of an age-appropriate design code for chatbots, but it is not enough. The regulatory regime we have in this country, with Ofcom and the Information Commissioner’s Office, relies on there being evidence of harm. The evidence will not come before the harm. We need to change that system and adopt a precautionary principle when it comes to protecting children.”
House of Commons8 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“One way we can mitigate that effect with schoolchildren is ensure that when they do their exams at the end of the year, they do them with a piece of paper and a pen in exam conditions. I am afraid there is a move across exam boards to make more exams digital. Of course, they will say that the computers are not attached to the internet and children cannot do this, that and the other, but pen and paper is the safest thing. Of course, there should be exceptions for children with a special educational need or disability that means they need to use a keyboard, and exceptions for computer science, but in general, children at school doing their public exams should do them on pen and paper. That will make sure it happens lower down the school as well. It will also ensure that children continue to write.”
House of Commons8 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In education now, if someone asks the typical year 9 pupil, “How many of your friends use AI to help them do their homework?”, that child would just laugh and say, “All of them.” The idea that we have some sort of issue where we have to encourage children to use AI is just nonsense. It is also crazy to suppose that we can just say to them, “Don’t do it,” and they will comply. Every child in the country learns computing in primary school. We need to make sure that the curriculum evolves so that children get to understand how the thing works, how it generates its content, why it might hallucinate, why it tries to flatter the questioner and why we cannot fully rely on it. There is a real danger. Cognitive offloading is a fancy term, but it basically means relying on a machine to do the work for us.”
House of Commons8 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“For example, I do not think that having a Science, Intelligence and Technology Committee, which obviously covers technology, is a suitable way to address all these matters, and I also do not think that it is appropriate to expect every other Select Committee to develop such expertise themselves. Somehow, we need to meld the two structures. We must have some form of super-Select Committee—a support team, or something like that—to work with all the other teams or Committees across the piece. I will finish by mentioning two specific things that we can do right now, because there is a ticking bomb with AI, specifically regarding children.”
House of Commons8 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“However, we soon realise that those things seem relatively benign when people start talking about agentic AI and super-intelligence, whereby machines take control of a situation, which some people have described as being ultimately an existential threat to humanity. I do not know what all the answers are, but I think that as politicians—as the House of Commons—we need to ensure that our organisational architecture is equipped to consider all these questions as they evolve. However, I do not think that our Select Committee structure today is equipped in that way.”
House of Commons8 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I had better press on, because we have a number of colleagues to get through. Regarding generative AI and its effect on information integrity, which my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings referred to earlier, we should bear in mind that so far the massive growth in fraud, misinformation and disinformation has all been done with cheapfakes. People talk about deepfakes, but it is done with rubbish, which can still take in large numbers of people. Just imagine what happens when such fakes become convincing. For example, there is the email that says, “I am stranded in Bermuda”, or whatever it is, “and I need you to send me £100 overnight.” Imagine when that scam actually involves a video of someone’s child saying it to them.”
House of Commons8 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Minister said that he would not move the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister. I do not think that is unheard of, but I am curious to understand why, having put down such an amendment, the Government would not move it. There are three main things here, and the Minister has talked about two of them: the Employment Rights Act and apprenticeships. The third main thing seems to be about planned changes for business rates. In not moving the amendment, is the Minister saying that the Government do not stick by what they said previously about upcoming changes to business rates on pubs?”
House of Commons7 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“A high proportion of people with zero-hours contracts are young, and a high proportion are students or people with another job. But one of the biggest employers of people on zero-hours contracts is the national health service, because NHS bank staff work in that way. The contracts can work for young people. In my constituency, I know plenty of young people who have two zero-hours contract jobs: one at home, where they are during the holidays; and one where they are studying during term time. I do not see why that does not work perfectly well for both employer and employee.”
House of Commons7 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My first job was a zero-hours contract—we just did not call it that then. In fact, it was not quite a zero-hours contract because there was no actual contract. There was no guaranteed work; it fluctuated week to week, and night to night, washing dishes in a local restaurant, but that is where I learnt some of those crucial skills. They now call them soft skills, but there is nothing soft about them; they are hard. That job is where I learnt about taking criticism; about turning up again the next day; about turning up when I was tired or feeling not that great; about looking the customer in the eye; and about how, if I kept coming back day after day, week after week, at the end of the week they gave me money. That is an important life lesson.”
House of Commons7 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Whatever the different mix of reasons, the numbers have come down over time. That decline has now accelerated for two reasons. First, I am afraid that whenever the economy takes a hit, it is always young people who feel it first, which is because of the “last in, first out” approach to employment and people not being taken on in the first place. Secondly, it has become relatively costlier and riskier to take on those young people, because of direct employment costs and the Employment Rights Act 2025. All of us in the Chamber are Members of Parliament; we have done reasonably well in our lives. Most of us, before we came here, had successful careers of one type or another. How many colleagues in this place had their first paid employment for 37.5 hours a week, full-time, reliably throughout the whole year? I certainly did not.”
House of Commons7 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The phrase “pub-closing time” has become meaningless, because pubs are closing earlier and earlier, all at different times, and in some cases not opening for days. I spoke about the scarring effect of being unemployed as a young adult. There is also a big downside and cost to not being able to get early paid work experience opportunities before becoming a full-time employee. To be fair, the Saturday job, and part-time employment for under 18s in particular, has been in long-term decline. That is partly to do with the decline of paper rounds and milk rounds. There has also been a decline in Saturday work in retail, some of which is about an increasing nervousness—often an ill-placed, unnecessary nervousness—on the part of employers around their responsibilities when hiring young people.”
House of Commons7 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That is especially true for those marginal employment decisions—Saturday jobs, seasonal work, and, the title of today’s debate, summer jobs. The number of apprenticeships is about to rise dramatically, but that is because the Government have reduced the minimum specification and length of time for an apprenticeship, and every time that is done, the number goes up hugely. But I worry that, like for like, apprenticeships in key sectors employing lots of school leavers—I hear this about hairdressing, for example, in East Hampshire, as I am sure other Members also do—are already falling. Business owners in my constituency are reluctant to expand because of the risk, and are not maxing out on business opportunities where they are fluctuating or seasonal.”
House of Commons7 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We have 109,000 more young people out of work, the youth unemployment rate is at 16%, and our ratio between youth unemployment and overall unemployment is now at European levels. Why do we care about youth unemployment? There are two reasons: first, it is a matter of what is right and of justice for young people; and secondly, if someone is unemployed when they are a young adult, the scarring effect on their career and earnings can stay with them for five, 10 or 20 years into the future. It is definitely true that the labour market has softened a lot. I hear in East Hampshire that this has not been about mass layoffs; it has been overwhelmingly about not taking people on in the first place, or not increasing the amount of work hours for people already employed.”
House of Commons7 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My right hon. Friend is right. I have spent an inordinate amount of time studying zero-hours contracts, partly because the previous leader of the Labour party, the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), used to bring them up at Prime Minister’s questions every week, and gave the impression that half the country was on a zero-hours contract and was getting no work whatsoever. In fact, it turned out that less than 3% had their main job as a zero-hours contract, so far from them working zero hours— [ Interruption. ] Yes, look it up.”
House of Commons7 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Of course the hon. Member is right. Nobody wants exploitative zero-hours contracts. Quite often when the Opposition talk about zero-hours contracts, the Government think that the work exploitative automatically gets inserted into the phrase. That is why we stopped exclusivity clauses in zero-hours contracts way back when we were in government. Nobody should be exploited, but that does not mean that there cannot be a job that works for the employer and employee and gives flexibility in the economy.”
House of Commons7 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Good employers, who want to keep their employees, do not do stupid things that upset their employees. Good employers will always want to keep good people in order to build their business.”
House of Commons7 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Imagine a situation where an employer has a job vacancy and they have two applicants who in all other respects are the same, but one is 30 years old and one is 18. Who is the employer going to employ at exactly the same wage, with all other things being equal? They are, of course, going to employ the person with experience—the person with both work experience and life experience, who has just been doing it a little longer, working with teams, dealing with colleagues and dealing with customers. I use that hypothetical situation just to establish the principle that wages do have an effect, and that is why the Low Pay Commission— [ Interruption. ] The Minister can screw up his face again if he wishes.”
House of Commons7 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This is much harder to talk about, because whenever anybody talks about the realities of equalising pay between younger people and slightly older adults—not that people do so very often—they can be vilified easily for being heartless, uncaring, discriminatory—you name it. However, sometimes being in this place as a politician and a representative and having the best interests of our constituents at heart means having to say difficult things. This difficult thing is something that I think most people here know—including, actually, most Labour MPs—but it is difficult to say. Let me take a little bit of the heat and politics out of it by talking about a hypothetical situation. This is not the situation that we actually have today, because we have differential national insurance contributions by age.”
House of Commons7 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The hon. Gentleman is right, of course. I do not think anybody in the House of Commons would argue that there should be no employment or workplace regulation at all. [ Interruption. ] Well—actually, I do not think anybody does, genuinely. I certainly do not. I welcome very many of the rights that have come over the years. However, it would be totally ignorant to suggest that new inflexibilities and rigidities can be brought into the labour market without their having an effect on unemployment. Whenever there is an effect on unemployment, there is always a magnified effect on youth unemployment, and we want to ensure that young people can get into and stay in jobs. I want to speak briefly about the costs of employment.”
House of Commons7 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The best thing is to be well rewarded in a job, but the worst thing of all is not to have a hope of getting into a job that is well rewarded. We have talked a bit about the national living wage. Of course, we all want the national living wage to keep going up. That is why we brought it in, by the way, in 2015, with the explicit intention that it would keep rising until it was further up the income distribution. However, we do have to acknowledge the reality. As I say, I think that most people present know that there is a difference by age and that it is there for a reason.”
House of Commons7 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Well, I will help him with that. That principle is why, back in 1999—under a Labour Government, as he will recall—when the original minimum wage came in, the Low Pay Commission specified that there should be a different rate for young people. That was for two reasons. The first reason was because of the work experience effect: there is a difference in how employers view people with a few years’ work experience and others without that experience, and if those rates were exactly the same, youth unemployment would inevitably rise. The second reason was to recognise that very many of those younger workers are in some form of education or training at the same time. We all want people to be properly rewarded for the work they do.”
House of Commons7 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I just want to add something that we have not really talked about today—in fact, something we hardly ever talk about—in the context of these changes. We need to consider the number of people who will be forced into self-employment as a result of the changes in the Employment Rights Act. I strongly encourage the Government to change course.”
House of Commons7 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I will just end by saying that I would have thought that the Labour party would like to break away from that cliché—the fact that every Labour Government ever to exist have left office with unemployment higher than when they came in. If I was a Labour Member, I would want to say, “With our enormous majority, and perhaps with the new Prime Minister we are about to have, this could be our chance to break away from that, so that nobody can ever say that to us again. We are, after all, Labour—we are supposed to be the party of work. Let us devote all our energies to maximising employment, and particularly to maximising the opportunities for young people coming into the labour market.” It is not too late for them to take that approach.”
House of Commons7 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I genuinely do not know quite how to respond to that. The differential has come down. It is due to come down further—it is due to be eliminated. There will still be the difference in national insurance contributions. Nobody is at this time envisaging there being no difference in employment costs at all. The reason that I used a hypothetical case and established that principle was to demonstrate why there is a wage effect on youth unemployment. I was going to talk about the overnight visitor levy, on which I have strong views—I think it will be bad for our local economies, bad for international inbound tourism and bad for places that rely on domestic tourism and seaside towns in particular—but in the interests of time, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will not.”
House of Commons7 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As the Government look to introduce this hated so-called overnight visitor levy in England— [ Interruption. ] I believe they are. Labour Members always say, “Don’t worry, it’s not very much money. It will all be hypothecated. It will have no effect on the inbound tourism industry.” Perhaps some of them might look at the example of my hon. Friend’s home city of Aberdeen and consider what could happen.”
House of Commons7 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I can tell the Minister that 3% is a relatively small percentage of 100%, and many of those people are students. The Labour party used to speak about zero-hours contracts as if they were taking over the entire economy, but that is simply not true—they are a perfectly legitimate form of employment that works for some people. I described the situation of my constituents who have one zero-hours contract at their term-time address and another at their home address. What is wrong with that? If it works for the employer and for the employee, why is Labour so against that flexibility?”
House of Commons7 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is both a total budget cut and money that now has to be stretched across far more schools, having already let the real value of the £320 million erode over the first two years. Control of that is going to be taken away from schools. That is a very aggressive move. I commend to the House the Committee’s report, “Game On: Community and school sport”. There is a great deal in it, as my right hon. Friend set out, in terms of improving funding applications, local authority duties and doing things in initial teacher training. Most of all, though, as has been mentioned by colleagues across the House, what we need to see, and what this report calls for, is a cross-Government approach to movement for health.”
House of Commons30 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In this part of the DCMS world, there is the axing of the National Citizen Service and the closure of the youth investment fund. At the same time, the Department for Education is closing the opening school facilities fund and the Treasury is making changes to business rates, with the effect that that has in this sector. Of course, there is the question at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government about Sport England as a statutory consultee. The Department of Health is also cutting by 66% its contribution to health-related activity in schools. However, the biggest things are the cuts to the schools PE and sport premium, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) set out.”
House of Commons30 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That has been underpinned in many ways by the schools PE and sport premium, the requirement for which is to go over and above what is set out in the national curriculum. Crucially, it has been a budget controlled by the schools themselves. This is an estimates day, which is about spending. I think we could query a lot of priorities at DCMS. I was particularly gobsmacked by the decision to cut the business events growth programme—a tiny sum of money in overall Government terms, but one that drives such success and billions of pounds’ worth of contribution to the economy—at the same time as looking at bringing in an overnight visitor levy, which will make this country less competitive compared to competitor nations.”
House of Commons30 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) just said, sports participation underpins so much for young people, building character and resilience, acting in favour of good mental health and tackling obesity. Into old age, too, staying active has huge benefits, as I was discussing just this weekend with the brilliant, dementia-friendly Petersfield walking football group. In many ways, sports provision is probably better than ever, and national governing bodies have done a very good job. I was particularly grateful when the bowls national governing body introduced the Culture, Media and Sport Committee to the national open weekend for bowls, and I discovered what great fun it can be. Of course, children are now introduced to a great variety of sports at primary school, and that is a good thing.”
House of Commons30 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am going to have another go, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) did. A billion pounds over three years sounds like a lot of money. The simple mathematical question is, is that £1 billion over three years more or less than the amount for a comparable three-year period, starting just before the middle of 2024?”
House of Commons30 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Friend the Member for Windsor rightly said, there are particular questions around that for online courses. Credits and modules have long existed in this country, but breaking up a course or stretch of study, or moving from one institution to another, has not been nearly as prevalent in this country as in others, whether in Europe through the Bologna system or indeed the United States. What will the Government do to ensure that the amounts that are involved in this statutory instrument will represent value for individuals, with comparability of the modules, full recognition when that module is taken somewhere else, and a culture change in our higher education system?”
House of Commons24 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I wonder whether the Minister might say a word about the levels of enrolment in the pilots that the Department for Education undertook, and what we have learned. Is there a risk of people being reluctant? There is a psychological barrier if there is a fixed lifetime maximum. What do we know about people’s possible reluctance to eat into that at a certain level, rather than leaving it intact? Has there been any research on that? Conversely, is there a risk of overselling the modules, given the terms of the loan and what may seem to many people—low earners in particular—quite low risk in taking one out? Are there specific risks of gaming from moving to a system in which providers will be paid according to a number of credits? As my hon.”
House of Commons24 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This statutory instrument is not about the existence of the lifelong learning entitlement, nor is it about the existence—or the level—of the fee; it is just about the modularisation of that fee. I have a couple of short questions to put to the Minister. The first touches on what the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire was just saying: there is a question of debt aversion. That did not happen, as was widely predicted, after the Vince Cable reforms in the early 2010s—the great risk of debt aversion among young people did not turn out to be true. However, this is mostly about an older demographic, with different sets of responsibilities, at a different life stage. What research has been done about that?”
House of Commons24 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Like everyone who has spoken, I support the principle of the lifelong learning entitlement. I welcomed it in Sir Philip Augar’s review, which reported while I was at the Department for Education. I was pleased that it was brought in by my erstwhile right hon. Friends for Chichester and Harlow. It is true that higher education in this country has been too rigid for too long. The lifelong learning entitlement eliminates the “do it now or do it never” problem. It makes the most of talent, and it means that people can move into growing sectors in the economy, or just new areas of interest, and learn what they need to learn. For all those reasons, it is also good for productivity.”
House of Commons24 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This House ended the licensing of the press on 3 May 1695, when it declined to renew the relevant legislation. That makes the definition of news sources difficult. Perhaps that is why the Green Paper talks about prominence for public service media and “potentially” for local and national news sources. Does the Secretary of State agree that it is unthinkable to have a situation where we would be promoting BBC and Channel 4 news, but not our major national newspapers and trusted local news sources?”
House of Commons24 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Clearly one cannot put a value on this tragic loss or say that any amount of money could compensate it, but even if the answer is that there is no way of calculating such a number, it would be helpful to have that set out. I think IBCA has tried to engage well with MPs, which is welcome, but clearly the administration of the scheme needs to accelerate. Inevitably with these processes, things move relatively well at first with the more straightforward cases, but it becomes harder when we get on to the more complex cases. As the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst says, we are talking about victims who are increasingly elderly and who, tragically, may die before they receive the compensation they have been promised.”
House of Commons18 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I have a few questions that I hope he will address later in the debate. First, I have been asked specifically to raise the lack of parity between bereaved parents whose child was over 18 and those whose child was younger. I hope that the Minister can comment on that point and on whether a change may be possible. On further elements of the award, I thank the Minister for his letter in response to our exchange at Cabinet Office questions about the special category mechanism and the psychological harm payments, but I continue to receive questions from my constituents about the unethical research awards. The increase in the amount is very welcome, but in our November 2024 debate I asked how the figures had been reached, and even with the higher number I am still being asked that question.”
House of Commons18 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There is one gentleman in particular, Adrian Goodyear, with whom I have been in contact since I was first elected in 2010; he had previously been in contact with my predecessor Michael Mates for many years. In our 2010 debate, I read out a line from one of Ade’s emails to me that haunted me then and haunts me now: “We’ve now lost so many of our friends from the Treloar days—in fact, we stopped counting at 40”. I pay tribute to Ade, to all the Treloar’s boys and to everybody in this community who has kept up the fight, for their remarkable tenacity in seeking justice in the name and memory of their friends lost. I thank the Paymaster General for his continued and consistent positive engagement on the subject. He always comes to these events in person, which I think the House really appreciates.”
House of Commons18 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It describes how research objectives were put ahead of the interests of children and how those children were subjected to unethical research techniques, without them or their parents being informed or consulted about the risks attached. As the hon. Gentleman mentioned, of the 122 children with haemophilia who attended the school between 1970 and 1987, only about 30 are alive now. There have been much wider effects, too: the stigma that could be attached, the interrupted education, the long-term mental scarring for the people and their families, and the trauma through families that has lasted for decades. This is a story of lost childhoods and lost futures. It has been my privilege to meet a number of the Treloar’s boys over time.”
House of Commons18 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Treloar’s is an internationally recognised centre of excellence in which incredibly committed people provide the most remarkable level of support, care, nurture and education for children and young people with some of the most profound disabilities imaginable, but it was also the place where, in the 1970s and 1980s, there was the single biggest concentration of people who were victims of these terrible practices. The reason was that at any one time there were 40 to 50 haemophiliac patients there. It was seen as an opportunity to study the disease; the NHS haemophilia centre was established nearby, and it later moved into the school grounds. Treloar’s looms large in Sir Brian Langstaff’s report: an entire section is given over to it.”
House of Commons18 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford) did, I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate. I pay tribute to him for securing it and for all his work with the all-party parliamentary group on haemophilia and contaminated blood. He puts an awful lot of work into it—it is not like a normal APPG—and we are all very grateful. This scandal is of such a scale that probably every MP has at least one constituent who has been infected or affected, but in my constituency it has a particular weight attached to it because East Hampshire is home to Treloar’s school and college.”
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“But I want to take this opportunity through the debate, without expecting the Minister to respond directly, to say that with all the passage of time, there is a premium on knowing what will happen and if we will move in this regard. Nothing will ever or could ever make up for the multiple failings of the state in this case—from successive Governments, the civil service, the national health service and many more—but we can and must ensure that at this point, we have a compensation scheme that now does pay out in a timely way, and is as effective and humane as possible for all the victims and their families. We must face up clearly to our failings as a state and —let’s be honest—as a political system over those many years, and give truth to that phrase, “Never again”.”
House of Commons18 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I welcome the fact that the Public Accounts Committee is conducting its inquiry; I hope to hear a commitment from the Minister that lessons will be learned, particularly from that inquiry. The last thing I want to mention is the possibility of a criminal investigation. I know that you and your constituent have been involved in discussions about that, Madam Deputy Speaker, and that you and I have both had discussions with the police and crime commissioner for Hampshire, Donna Jones. This is clearly not a question for this Minister or any Minister—not for the Cabinet Office or the Home Office; it is about the criminal justice system, the police and whether a threshold has been met.”
House of Commons18 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗