Commons
Ministerial Statement
8 January 2026
Road Safety Strategy
More needs to be done to clamp down on dangerous driving. Oldham has seen far too many lives lost as a result of drivers treating the roads as racetracks. There is much to be welcomed in this strategy, and I congratulate the Minister on the work. However, I am not convinced that the proposal to intr…
Commons
Proceedings
8 January 2026
Business of the House
Happy new year to you and to the House, Mr Speaker.
High street banks have left many towns high and dry, leaving whole communities and businesses without even basic banking facilities. The roll-out of banking hubs is welcome, but our ambition should be for every town to have a bank, including Chadd…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
17 December 2025
Local Government Finance
The fair funding review is significant. It is the first multi-year settlement for a decade, and the first real attempt at fairly distributing resources based on need, cost and the ability to raise revenue locally. It represents a serious piece of work by decent public servants, and I pay tribute to …
Commons
Westminster Hall
15 December 2025
8 contributions
Online Safety Act 2023: Repeal
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. The new media has quickly become the worst of the old media: owned, controlled and directed by the wealthy and powerful. My particular focus will be on social media, because it is no longer a movement of the people, nor has it been bui…
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech that gets to the heart of some of the tensions. However, he seems to be leaning quite strongly into how the algorithms are self-learning and catch on to what people share organically, which they double down on to commercialise the content. Does he accept …
+6 more contributions in this session
Commons
Proceedings
11 December 2025
Business of the House
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
Credit unions make a significant contribution, providing safe, ethical and community focused financial services, and they remain an important part of the wider co-operative family. Will the Leader of the House make time for a debate on the role of credit unions in promoting f…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
9 December 2025
Grooming Gangs: Independent Inquiry
The announcement of the chair, panel, terms of reference and timelines are welcome. Survivors have waited to engage in the formal process, and it is important for them and for others yet to come forward that the inquiry leaves no stone unturned, is not restricted by time and follows the evidence whe…
Commons
Proceedings
4 December 2025
Business of the House
One issue that literally keeps my constituents awake at night is noisy fireworks. It happens around weddings and around car meets, with young people setting them off at night. That is why I was pleased to support the ten-minute rule Bill introduced yesterday by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton S…
Commons
Proceedings
4 December 2025
Local Elections
I need to be blunt, as I usually am: we need to be better than this. Local leaders across the political spectrum have worked in good faith. They have put aside self-interest and differences, and they did everything asked of them to secure a better settlement for the people they represent. They reaso…
Commons
Westminster Hall
3 December 2025
2 contributions
Local Media
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan; it is great to see you at the top table, keeping these debates in order.
This is an important debate. The connection that Members have shown to their local titles speaks volumes about the significance that they hold in their communit…
I get the Government’s intention, which I strongly support, and I credit the Minister for the work that he is doing, but none of us would accept a member of the public going into a newsagents, taking a newspaper off the rack and walking out without paying for it, yet that is exactly what is taking p…
Commons
Westminster Hall
2 December 2025
Homelessness: Funding
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I congratulate hon. Members on their speeches so far.
The homelessness crisis is a national scandal, and it has a human cost that we all see in our constituencies. In Oldham, there are 517 households, including 633 children, in temporar…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
1 December 2025
Office for Budget Responsibility Forecasts
Is it not the case that after 14 years of the Conservatives telling the country that politics cannot make positive change, this Government have delivered answers on the two-child limit, apprenticeships, the future economy and decent public services? That is why the Conservatives’ response is as it s…
Commons
Oral Questions
1 December 2025
2 contributions
Eton Star Sixth Form: Oldham
11. What her planned timetable is for making a decision on the proposed Eton Star sixth-form college in Oldham.
The previous Government announced the free schools for sixth-formers programme over two years ago. It is now over a year since this Government announced a review of that programme, meaning that the local authority, alongside parents and other sixth-form providers, has been waiting over two years to …
Commons
Proceedings
27 November 2025
Business of the House
Happy Lancashire day to you, Mr Speaker, and to all celebrating the historic county in Oldham, Chadderton and Royton. For 15 years, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs mileage rate has been 45p per mile for the first 10,000 miles. In that time, the cost of buying and running a car, and of insurance an…
Commons
Proceedings
27 November 2025
Right to Trial by Jury
After 14 years of the previous Government, many in Oldham feel that justice has left town. Our county court closed, our magistrates court closed, and police station after police station closed as well. Today, in a town of a quarter of a million people, not a single custody cell is in operation. We a…
Commons
Debate
26 November 2025
4 contributions
Budget Resolutions
Given his background, the right hon. Gentleman must surely recognise that there is a direct link between social policy and economic policy—that this country needs a working-age population to fund future pensions and welfare bills for generations in the future. How on earth can you do that if you are…
I think she brought me to order at just the right time!
+2 more contributions in this session
Commons
Debate
4 November 2025
4 contributions
Supporting High Streets
Oldham has always been a town of hard work and heart. It has been built, rebuilt and reinvented time and again, and is reinventing itself again now, but let us be honest: the challenges facing Oldham, Chadderton, Royton and towns like them up and down the country are significant.
It has been intere…
I will. I have heard the right hon. and learned Lady raise that point a few times, and I think it is legitimate. If the criteria do not work for the town she mentions, or for my town, or Royton or Chadderton, then the criteria are the problem, not the towns and communities that need banks. We can ag…
+2 more contributions in this session
Commons
Debate
22 October 2025
Renters’ Rights Bill
The shadow Secretary of State knows that I have a great deal of time for him as a person, but he must reflect on how all of his speech is about the rights of the landlord with absolutely nothing about the rights of tenants. In my own constituency, 600 children are in temporary accommodation, having …
Commons
Proceedings
21 October 2025
Rape Gangs: National Statutory Inquiry
Oldham has stepped forward to take on a local inquiry, and it has been waiting to understand what the move to the national inquiry means for its work. The same is true of victims and survivors, whose bravery and strength in the most difficult circumstances have been truly remarkable. What arrangemen…
Commons
Westminster Hall
21 October 2025
5 contributions
Co-operative Sector: Government Support
I beg to move,
That this House has considered Government support for the co-operative sector.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner, in this important debate. I pay tribute to those leading this great movement in our co-operative societies, our mutuals and the Co-operative p…
I think a lot of people in Britain feel as though it does not matter what they do, how hard they work or how big their contribution is; they are just not able to make ends meet or get on in life. The communities where they live have been incrementally eroded and hollowed out, and they do not feel li…
+3 more contributions in this session
Commons
Westminster Hall
15 October 2025
3 contributions
Knife Crime
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) on securing the debate.
Knife crime and the gang activity that comes with it ruin lives and leave whole communities living in fear. This debate has been wide-ranging, but for Grea…
That is very important, and it has to go alongside other interventions. Like my hon. Friend’s constituency, Oldham has an OnSide youth centre, called Mahdlo, which provides significant intervention and support for young people. It is fair to say that the world has changed since I was a child at scho…
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Debate
2 September 2025
3 contributions
English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill
I thank hon. Members from across the House for their contributions to today’s important debate. The sheer number of Members who wanted to speak demonstrates how important these issues are, and the passion and enthusiasm shown by Members of this House makes absolutely clear their care for their commu…
They absolutely had a choice. It was an invitation that 21 counties have responded to, demonstrating without a doubt that the appetite and interest for reorganisation was there within communities, and they responded in that way.
This process will deliver strong, sustainable unitaries, capable of le…
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Statutory Instrument
1 September 2025
2 contributions
Draft Local Audit (Amendment of Definition of Smaller Authority) Regulations 2025
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Local Audit (Amendment of Definition of Smaller Authority) Regulations 2025.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. The regulations were laid before Parliament on 16 June 2025. Local audit is vital for ensuring the p…
I thank the shadow Minister for his usual pragmatism and support in these matters. We all recognise the importance of Parliament having oversight of public money and making sure that it is spent fairly and appropriately, and that there are checks and balances—but it must be proportionate to the auth…
Commons
Proceedings
22 July 2025
11 contributions
Birmingham Bin Strikes
Members will be aware of the continuing disruption caused by industrial action in Birmingham. I want to be clear that Birmingham city council is an independent employer and that this dispute is between the council and Unite the trade union. The Government are rightly not a party to it, but of course…
I hear the hon. Member’s charac-terisation of the issue, but it bears no relationship at all to the reality of the situation. The council is an independent employer. It is not for the Government to go council by council negotiating trade union disputes or terms and condition changes. It is for the c…
+9 more contributions in this session
Commons
Debate
17 July 2025
2 contributions
Future of the Church of England
I thank the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger) for securing this important debate on the future of the Church of England. I am grateful for the opportunity to respond on behalf of the Government.
The hon. Member has often spoken very powerfully about the importance of faith, its role in …
I believe that very strongly, actually. Even Members who are not church attenders will take part in civic life at a local level that is closely linked to their local parish church. I think about Remembrance Sunday and the role parish churches play in those reflections. I think about our own Mayoral …
Commons
Oral Questions
Housing, Communities and Local Government
14 July 2025
6 contributions
Topical Questions
The hon. Gentleman will know that it is Labour councils that are leading the charge at a local level to regenerate local communities and invest in local businesses—the evidence is there. They are supported by the plan for communities and the community right to buy; there is a real effort in this are…
The real issue for most councils is that the Liberal Democrats did not make hay when the sun was shining in their coalition years. Let nobody in local government forget that the seeds of the erosion of local neighbourhood services started in those coalition years, when the Liberal Democrats more tha…
+4 more contributions in this session