Commons
Westminster Hall
24 March 2026
Endometriosis Services
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. I thank the hon. Member for Ipswich (Jack Abbott) for securing this debate—the opportunity to raise the importance of this debilitating condition with the Minister today is extremely welcome. I welcome her to her place; I must say that the con…
Commons
Debate
23 March 2026
2 contributions
Rail Connections to London: Rural Towns
The hon. Lady is my constituency neighbour, and she is making an excellent speech about how wonderful Shropshire is. Also lovely is Oswestry in my constituency, another medieval town with a great history. I support the call that I think she will make for a direct service to London that runs through …
One reason people use their cars instead of the railway is that they cannot access the platform because there are steps and no lift. Does the hon. Member agree that restoring step-free access to stations such Whitchurch in my constituency is critical to making sure that people can benefit from using…
Commons
Westminster Hall
23 March 2026
Puberty Blockers Clinical Trial
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Mundell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) for his opening speech, as well as the compassionate and balanced nature with which he introduced the debate.
Liberal Democrats have been arguing fo…
Commons
Oral Questions
19 March 2026
Business of the House
My constituents live along what would have been a route for construction traffic for High Speed 2, when it was proposed that it would continue up to Crewe. Because my constituents’ daughter has a life-limiting condition, the Select Committee requested that HS2 Ltd buy my constituents’ house, so that…
Commons
Debate
18 March 2026
Flooding: Rural Communities
The hon. Member is making an excellent speech and has taken a huge number of interventions, for which I thank her. When it comes to development, flood management strategies are not taking into account the run-off that additional development will cause; for example, the upper Severn catchment managem…
Commons
Oral Questions
18 March 2026
Rural Broadband
The roll-out of Project Gigabit in my constituency has been a failure because Freedom Fibre has handed back the contract, with many thousands of properties unconnected, and the replacement contract is likely to take many more years to deliver gigabit access to thousands of my constituents. The all-p…
Commons
Westminster Hall
17 March 2026
3 contributions
Rural Roads
Will the hon. Member give way on that point?
The hon. Member is making what is generally a good speech about rural funding, so it is a shame that he has made it party political. Does he not understand that the Conservative administration, under whose budget we are still operating, cut highways funding, including the proportion for preventive m…
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
11 March 2026
Royal Mail: Universal Service Obligation
In rural parts of the country such as North Shropshire, where broadband, mobile signal and public transport are poor, people really depend on their postal service. Constituents have contacted me to say that they have missed court documents and NHS letters—important things that they need in order to …
Commons
Debate
9 March 2026
Middle East: Economic Update
One in three households in North Shropshire are dependent on heating oil—I declare an interest, because mine is one of them. Since last week, people have been in contact with me, concerned about the rapid escalation of heating oil costs. I welcome the Chancellor’s announcement that she recognises th…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
26 February 2026
Business of the House
The western side of my constituency is blighted by the dangerous A483, which runs from Welshpool in Wales through to Oswestry in my constituency. The residents of Llanymynech, Pant and Llynclys are particularly badly affected by safety issues. Everyone knows that the right solution is a bypass, but …
Commons
Westminster Hall
26 February 2026
2 contributions
Eating Disorders Awareness Week
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) for securing this debate and for her dogged campaigning, her tireless work as chair of the APPG on eating disorders and her excellent opening speech.
I welcome Eating Disorders Awaren…
The Minister is probably about to draw his remarks to a close, but can I press him again on the mental health investment standard, which should ensure that the proportion of NHS spending on mental health goes up every year? In the last year for which we have numbers, it had gone up as a proportion o…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
25 February 2026
Post Office Green Paper
I welcome the Government’s announcement today that they are going to maintain 11,500 branches, but in my constituency, outreach services that were only available maybe for an hour or two each week anyway in Cockshutt, Clee, Weston Rhyn, Knockin, West Felton and Ruyton XI Towns have all been lost bec…
Commons
Debate
24 February 2026
7 contributions
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor
I am one of a handful of Liberal Democrat and Labour MPs who were elected in the wake of a political scandal. In my case, in December 2021, it was a financial scandal followed by a cover-up by the then Conservative Government, who tried to get one of their own off the hook. In the midst of my by-ele…
The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. I cannot imagine what it must have been like to be one of those victims—one of those survivors—and to see repeatedly over the years the establishment closing ranks around those who knew Epstein and telling us that everything is okay. The hon. Gentleman is…
+5 more contributions in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
24 February 2026
Access to NHS Dental Services
Everyone in this House knows that NHS dentistry was allowed to fall apart under the Conservatives, resulting in DIY tooth extractions, people being forced to go to A&E because they are in pain, and children suffering in every corner of the country. Last year, 38,000 children in Shropshire did no…
Commons
Oral Questions
24 February 2026
Health and Social Care: Rural Communities
Last year in Shropshire, which is a fairly typical rural area, 158,000 patients waited more than a month for a GP appointment. That is not surprising, given that, like many other rural areas, we have 50 fewer qualified GPs than we did a decade ago. Meanwhile, already busy GPs are trying to develop i…
Commons
Debate
12 February 2026
5 contributions
Rural Mobile Connectivity
I beg to move,
That this House calls on the Government and service providers to help improve mobile connectivity in rural areas.
I start by thanking the Backbench Business Committee for granting time to hold this vital debate and for granting us a second opportunity to do so, as the debate had to …
The right hon. Gentleman, my constituency neighbour, makes an extremely good point. The quality of the data is critical. One of the recommendations of the APPG is exactly that: to ensure that data is reliable and that Ofcom can challenge it where they know that it is inadequate.
There is a huge dif…
+3 more contributions in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
12 February 2026
Pharmacy First: Withholding Payments
Pharmacists play a crucial role in supporting the health service by reducing the pressure on overcrowded hospitals and GP surgeries. They also play a crucial role in local communities by providing access to treatment when appointments remain hard to come by elsewhere. But pressure on pharmacists is …
Commons
Debate
11 February 2026
Local Government Finance
Shropshire council is about to see a 10% cut in its core funding from central Government, having been terribly badly run by the Conservatives for the previous 16 years before the Lib Dem administration took over in May. The Government have given the council permission to put up its council tax by 9%…
Commons
Oral Questions
Home Department
9 February 2026
Topical Questions
The police officers and police community support officers in North Shropshire work hard, but PCSOs’ hours have been cut because of budget constraints, and there are no front desk services at all in my constituency, despite it having five market towns. Can the Minister outline how we will ensure bett…
Commons
Westminster Hall
4 February 2026
3 contributions
Postal Services: Rural Areas
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Stringer. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Shropshire (Stuart Anderson) on his excellent speech. He described many circumstances similar to those in my constituency, so I will try to keep my comments brief.
Rural services—whether that is t…
I could not agree more. If someone living in Cockshutt takes the bus to the post office in Ellesmere, they would have to wait three hours to get the next bus home. We can imagine how difficult it is for people in nearby villages who have no bus service at all. Jean, who lives in Weston Rhyn, said:
…
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
Justice
3 February 2026
2 contributions
Court Backlog: Shropshire
1. What steps he is taking to reduce court delays in Shropshire.
In my constituency of North Shropshire, residents have to travel to Shrewsbury to have their case heard. As of last September, there was a backlog of more than 730 open cases at Shrewsbury Crown court, a 7% increase on 2024. The wider West Mercia area ranks 43rd out of 44 areas for the time that it …
Commons
Oral Questions
Defence
2 February 2026
Topical Questions
T5. In my constituency, complaints about water supply to single living accommodation doubled from 116 in 2018 to 232 in 2024, with 16 separate losses of water for more than 24 hours last year. Will the Minister meet me to discuss how we can bring single living accommodation up to the standard that o…
Commons
Debate
26 January 2026
Armed Forces Bill
I know that Members across the House supported Liberal Democrat plans to introduce a decent homes standard for service family accommodation, and I am very grateful to the Government for bringing that in through recent legislation from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Howeve…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
21 January 2026
Warm Homes Plan
As the Secretary of State has pointed out, in rural areas, we tend to have older housing stock and lots of people off-grid. They are very keen to see upgrades made to their home, and we welcome this announcement. In my constituency, a number of people engaged with the energy company obligation 4 sch…
Commons
Oral Questions
Wales
21 January 2026
Cross-border Health Services: England and Wales
Powys health board has been categorising the needs of its patients based on cost rather than clinical need, and that is causing a real problem for the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt orthopaedic hospital in my constituency and the associated Headley Court veterans’ centre, because they need to prioritis…