Commons
Westminster Hall
27 October 2025
3 contributions
Holidays During School Term Time
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. I start by recognising the strength of feeling on term-time absences from school, particularly among the almost 182,000 people who signed the petition. Family life is precious, and there are so many pressures bearing down on families that serve to…
I have not mentioned fines, but I agree that fining parents is a very flawed area of policy. I do not want to say it is always entirely the wrong thing to do, but fines are not a particularly effective mechanism for discouraging parents from removing their children from school for a holiday. The cos…
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Debate
20 October 2025
Post-16 Education and Skills Strategy
I thank the Secretary of State for her statement. I welcome the Government’s focus on further education and skills, which have been overlooked for far too long and are critical to the delivery of the Government’s missions. My Committee has recently undertaken an inquiry into FE and skills, and I am …
Commons
Oral Questions
Education
20 October 2025
SEND Provision
My Committee’s recent inquiry on SEND found that, although support from health services is critical in enabling many children with special educational needs and disabilities to access education, health is often not represented at the table and there are no effective mechanisms to hold health service…
Commons
Westminster Hall
15 October 2025
Educational Assessment System Reform
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate and on his speech. Does he agree that it is an unacceptable feature of our education system that around a third of young people leave school without a recognised qualification, a grade 4 in English or maths? For many of those young peop…
Commons
Proceedings
13 October 2025
9 contributions
Education Committee
As Chair of the Education Committee, I am pleased to present to the House our fifth report of this Parliament, “Solving the SEND Crisis”. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this statement.
This inquiry was our first major undertaking in this Parliament. We chose the su…
I thank the right hon. Member for his question, which is an important one. The evidence we saw in Ontario in Canada is that where parental involvement is embedded in the system, partly through statutory entitlements to participation in decisions about a child’s education, that builds much better par…
+7 more contributions in this session
Commons
Westminster Hall
15 September 2025
3 contributions
Children with SEND: Assessments and Support
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Dr Huq. I thank everybody across the country who signed this important petition, and the Petitions Committee for granting time for the debate. It is no surprise that the petition attracted such interest. Across the country, children and their families are be…
My speech will turn to some of the points that the hon. Member raised. I will not give way to further interventions, because many Members want to speak and it would eat into their time.
The Committee spent eight months examining evidence and hearing in person from a wide range of witnesses, includi…
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Debate
9 September 2025
5 contributions
Accessibility of Railway Stations: Dulwich and West Norwood
I am grateful for the opportunity to bring before the House the significant issues that affect my constituents across Dulwich and West Norwood because of the lack of accessibility at our local railway stations.
The Dulwich and West Norwood constituency covers part of Lambeth and part of Southwark. …
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and for all his work on this important set of issues. He is absolutely right to say that full accessibility is about more than simply level access, and also that information about accessibility at different rail stations is vital to whether travellers will…
+3 more contributions in this session
Commons
Ministerial Statement
4 September 2025
Early Education and Childcare
I welcome the Minister’s statement: the expansion of funded childcare hours this week; the future expansion of school-based nurseries; and confirmation of a further three years of funding for the holiday activities and food programme.
My Committee is today launching an inquiry on the early years. W…
Commons
Westminster Hall
4 September 2025
Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. I thank the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett) for securing this important debate.
The introduction of the adoption and special guardianship support fund as part of the Children and Families Act 2014 marked an important recognition of ou…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
1 September 2025
Middle East
I welcome the commitment to recognising the Palestinian state later this month. That is an essential step, and there can be no further delay. Israeli Government support for illegal settlement in the west bank and the decision to build in the E1 area are strategically designed to undermine the viabil…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
21 July 2025
Middle East
Children are being starved and shot in front of our constituents’ eyes. They are watching illegal settlers systematically and strategically undermine the Palestinian state. It is not that there is a risk of international humanitarian law being broken. International humanitarian law is being broken i…
Commons
Debate
16 July 2025
4 contributions
Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life
Giving every child the best possible start in life should be a driving mission of every Government. Investment in the early years and in a high-quality education for every child delivers among the highest returns of any area of public spending; they are literally building the foundations of a child’…
I thank the hon. Member very much for his intervention, and our report, which we published last week, says exactly that. We have a system of children’s social care that is under so much pressure that it all too often fails to put children at the centre of the services that are supposed to be deliver…
+2 more contributions in this session
Commons
Proceedings
10 July 2025
2 contributions
Educational Attainment of Boys
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth) on securing this debate and on his excellent speech. As the Chair of the Education Committee, I want to see every child and young person engaged in learning throughout their time in education, and helped to find their indiv…
I thank the hon. Member for her intervention. To reflect on what my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland has said, I believe there is a need for a strategic approach to this issue, but as I will talk about later, my Committee is looking at inclusive education and how we can make changes in the…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
10 July 2025
6 contributions
Children’s Social Care
I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this statement. Today I speak on behalf of the Education Committee and, more importantly, the thousands of children across England whose lives are profoundly shaped by our children’s social care system.
I put on record my tha…
I thank the hon. Member for her question and for all her interest and work in this important area. The report makes strong recommendations for the Government to make the adoption and special guardianship support fund permanent, to evaluate the impact of the cut in the short term, and to review and m…
+4 more contributions in this session
Commons
Westminster Hall
9 July 2025
3 contributions
Early Years Providers: Government Support
Thank you, Mr Pritchard; it is a pleasure to see you in the Chair. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) on securing this important debate.
I want by paying tribute to early years providers across the country. The early years sector runs on a powerhouse of de…
On the first part of the hon. Lady’s intervention, that is exactly what the Government are trying to do in establishing school-based nurseries: to ensure that across the country there are a range of settings that support children’s development so they arrive at school in reception year ready to lear…
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Westminster Hall
8 July 2025
Generative Artificial Intelligence: Schools
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Jeremy. I congratulate the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) on securing this important debate.
The use of generative artificial intelligence in education is a critical challenge of our time. As parliamentarians, we bear the responsibi…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
7 July 2025
Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life
I warmly welcome the statement from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on restoring a comprehensive and strategic approach to early years support, childcare and early education—an approach that has sadly been lacking during the 14 years of the last Government. In that time, we saw Sure Star…
Commons
Debate
1 July 2025
2 contributions
Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill
Welfare reform is important because the current system is not working and because it has a huge impact on the lives of so many individuals and families across the country. For the past 10 years in this place, I have seen so many of my constituents trapped in poverty with the constant fear and insecu…
I welcome the bringing forward of employment support, and I know how effective that support can be, but we have yet to see it bed in.
I have further concerns that have not yet been addressed. I am concerned about the impact of the Bill on young people, and care-experienced people in particular. We …
Commons
Ministerial Statement
30 June 2025
Welfare Reform
I thank my right hon. Friend for her statement, and for the steps she has taken to improve the Bill. In launching the Timms review, she has accepted that the current PIP assessment criteria and descriptors are not fit for purpose. Can she confirm that the difference between the timetable for impleme…
Commons
Debate
24 June 2025
4 contributions
Department for Education
I rise to address the House on the Department for Education’s main estimate for 2025-26. I thank the Liaison Committee and the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this debate this afternoon; it is an important opportunity to scrutinise the Government’s spending plans, which must del…
My hon. Friend makes an important point about the state of the school estate.
The final area of challenge is that many universities face a risk of insolvency. At the heart of all the Department’s responsibilities are individual children and young people who need and are entitled to the best possibl…
+2 more contributions in this session
Commons
Proceedings
16 June 2025
9 contributions
Windrush Day 2025
I beg to move,
That this House has considered Windrush Day 2025.
I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this important debate.
On 22 June 1948, HMT Empire Windrush arrived in Tilbury docks from the Caribbean, carrying 1,027 passengers and two stowaways. More tha…
Of course, in our two boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark, the contribution of the Windrush generation is extraordinary. It is demonstrated most powerfully in the statue that my hon. Friend mentions.
The lives of Windrush passengers, and of others from the Caribbean who followed them to Brixton, were…
+7 more contributions in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
Education
16 June 2025
SEND Support: Children without an EHCP
One of the biggest challenges affecting the delivery of support for children with special educational needs and disabilities is the extent of local authority funding deficits. They are currently dealt with through the statutory override, which allows local authorities to set a balanced budget withou…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
11 June 2025
Spending Review 2025
I welcome the focus my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has placed on children and young people in this spending review, with additional investment in children’s social care, schools and skills. These announcements show the Government’s commitment to improving the life chances of every child, and my…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
10 June 2025
Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories
I welcome the sanctions on Israeli Government Ministers announced today. Those two Ministers have shown the world who they are for a long time and this step, while welcome, is long overdue. The Minister speaks of the peril for the two-state solution. There cannot be a two-state solution that is real…
Commons
Oral Questions
Housing, Communities and Local Government
9 June 2025
Topical Questions
T8. Across London, 90,000 children are living in temporary accommodation, denied the essentials of a stable home, which has terrible consequences for their physical and mental health and education. This is a scandalous inheritance from the previous Conservative Government. When does the Secretary of…