Commons
Westminster Hall
21 January 2026
3 contributions
Waste Collection: Birmingham and the West Midlands
I am sorry to have missed the start of the right hon. Lady’s speech. I am listening carefully to what she says. I am curious to know whether she raised concerns about the cancellation of services in Birmingham in the days when the authority was suffering the sharpest cuts in funding of any metropoli…
Will the right hon. Lady give way?
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
Education
19 January 2026
2 contributions
School Support Staff Negotiating Body
9. What recent progress her Department has made on establishing the School Support Staff Negotiating Body.
I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and my chairship of the GMB parliamentary group. The School Support Staff Negotiating Body, established under Labour’s landmark Employment Rights Act, will make a real difference for more than 1,600 people in my constituenc…
Commons
Debate
14 January 2026
West Midlands Police
I thank the Home Secretary for her statement. As a Birmingham MP, I have set out on a number of occasions in the Chamber my serious concerns about both the decision and the way in which it was made. It is clear that the chief constable’s position is untenable. I pay tribute to the many police office…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
14 January 2026
Northern Powerhouse Rail
A little more than two years have passed since the last Prime Minister chaotically took the axe to HS2 north and east of Birmingham, and the mayor at the time, Andy Street, failed the test of leadership and failed to stand up for our region. There is an obvious link between the east-west connections…
Commons
Debate
13 January 2026
2 contributions
Finance (No. 2) Bill
I draw attention to my chairship of the GMB parliamentary group, a union that represents workers in the distillery and retail trades. I will limit my comments to the uprating of excise duty, but I welcome this Budget more generally. It represents the right choice—investment and renewal over austerit…
I sit on the same Select Committee as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur), and I know better than to speak for him. I have a degree of personal sympathy with the case that the hon. Member for Angus and Perthshire Glens (Dave Doogan) sets out. I also think there is somethin…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
13 January 2026
Iran
I thank the Foreign Secretary for her statement. I echo the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow West (Patricia Ferguson) about the regime’s severance of communications adding to the distress of many of our constituents, who are trying to establish the safety and personal liberty o…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
8 January 2026
Road Safety Strategy
I thank the Minister for all her hard work over many years to bring this excellent statement to the House. Some 500 people are killed or seriously injured on Birmingham’s roads every year, including in my constituency. Sadly, due to the historical layout of many of our estates, schools, shops and ot…
Commons
Westminster Hall
17 December 2025
2 contributions
Neurodiversity in the Workplace
Merry Christmas to you, Mr Twigg, and all the House staff. I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate on a topic that is close to my heart, and close to the hearts of many of my constituents. My union, the GMB, has done a lot of work on this issue through the “Thinking Differently at Work” camp…
One problem experienced by neurodivergent workers is that, when reasonable adjustments are put in place, the manager changes and they have to start again. The TUC did some very good work on a reasonable adjustments passport, as did the civil service unions. I encourage all colleagues to look at that…
Commons
Debate
15 December 2025
6 contributions
Employment Rights Bill
Will the shadow Minister give way?
The debate is on the Employment Rights Bill, although I struggle to follow the line of logic in the hon. Member’s speech. He said that the effect of the change would be to benefit the wealthiest employees, but chief executive officers and other senior executives rarely seek recourse to employment tr…
+4 more contributions in this session
Commons
Debate
10 December 2025
Cammell Laird Workers’ Imprisonment: Public Inquiry
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate and on again reading into the record the names of the 37. I hope I might put two sentiments of my own on the record. First, I pay tribute to the work of Eddie Marnell who, over many years as a member of GMB’s north-west and Irish region and centr…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
10 December 2025
Resident Doctors: Industrial Action
I draw attention to my membership of the GMB and my chairship of its parliamentary group. The BMA is currently in dispute with its workforce over an offer of 2% for this year, which is below the inflation rate on the retail prices index and the consumer prices index. Does my right hon. Friend agree …
Commons
Debate
9 December 2025
2 contributions
Railways Bill
And now we turn, at last, to a fundamental question which has perhaps gone unasked in this House for too long: what is the mass and acceleration of an average-sized peacock? The question does not spring from the pages of a script for “The Goon Show” or “Monty Python”. It is a real case that came bef…
When the hon. Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon) was the shadow Transport Secretary, he was recorded saying that his party would likely not reverse nationalisation because the public would be unlikely to think it was a good idea. If this Bill passes, will it be the policy of the hon. Member for Bro…
Commons
Debate
8 December 2025
Employment Rights Bill
The hon. Lady just said that she has been informed by business groups that were in the negotiations that this measure was not agreed. Will she name them?
Commons
Proceedings
8 December 2025
Maccabi Tel Aviv FC: Away Fans Ban
I wish to associate myself with the sentiments expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Erdington (Paulette Hamilton). Something has clearly gone very wrong with the safety advisory group process in respect of Aston Villa, as the Minister, to her credit, has said from the start. I am pa…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
1 December 2025
Office for Budget Responsibility Forecasts
The OBR is a valuable institution, and the “Economic and fiscal outlook” is by far the most important document that it produces. Today’s report makes it clear that the OBR’s IT infrastructure was a point of critical failure that should have been identified as far back as 2013. Does the Minister agre…
Commons
Proceedings
24 November 2025
Maccabi Tel Aviv FC: Away Fans Ban
As a local MP, I have previously expressed my concerns about the decision-making process. I welcome the Minister’s commitment today that a review is being carried out about how such risk assessments are made. I understand why some information may not be suitable for placing in the public domain, but…
Commons
Debate
17 November 2025
Budget: Press Briefings
The Minister said in his response that the Treasury and the OBR are exchanging information, but that did not happen in the period immediately before the last election, when spending pressures were withheld from the OBR in a way that the chair said may have broken the law. Will the Minister confirm t…
Commons
Debate
12 November 2025
10 contributions
Taxes
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for becoming the human face of tax collection in this debate. A number of my constituents also work for HMRC, and they have told me that the period of cuts has impeded the agency’s ability to collect corporate taxation and get into the public purse revenues that are r…
Opposition motions are usually detailed—as, indeed, is the next motion on the Order Paper, relating to energy—so the brevity of this motion deserves comment. The most important line is, I think, the first:
“That this House calls on the Government to control public expenditure”.
In the hands of thi…
+8 more contributions in this session
Commons
Debate
5 November 2025
6 contributions
Employment Rights Bill
Yesterday, the hon. Gentleman said the Conservatives
“will repeal those most damaging elements of the Employment Rights Bill”. —[ Official Report , 4 November 2025; Vol. 774, c. 776.]
Could he inform us which elements of the Bill they will retain?
I did not realise that was a genuine offer. I do not have the ctrl+F function in front of me to do a word count, but, again, I would be interested in hearing an answer to the question I posed to the hon. Gentleman. All I will say is that, as his colleague the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Gre…
+4 more contributions in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
Women and Equalities
5 November 2025
Topical Questions
T3. Dyspraxia is a common condition, but public awareness levels are still too low. Does the Minister agree that more needs to be done across Government and society to raise awareness of dyspraxia?
Commons
Debate
4 November 2025
2 contributions
Supporting High Streets
I was initially surprised to see this motion on the Order Paper, given that it is essentially a resubmission of a motion previous submitted by the Opposition and rejected by the House in February, but I should not have been. After all, they do say that culprits often return to the scene of the offen…
I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving way; he is being generous with his time. I wonder if he could clarify his party’s position on the Employment Rights Bill. The shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith), said that a Conservative Government woul…
Commons
Oral Questions
Defence
3 November 2025
2 contributions
Defence Sector: Economic Growth
8. What steps he is taking to help ensure that the defence sector supports economic growth.
I draw attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests in respect of the GMB, a defence manufacturing trade union.
Defence is an engine for growth, but skill shortages remain. What steps are being taken to increase the number of high-quality apprentices? If I may, Mr Spe…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
22 October 2025
Heathrow: National Airports Review
I draw attention to my chairship of the GMB parliamentary group. As someone who worked on this issue the last time around, I was astonished to hear the Opposition’s flight of fantasy when they accused others of delay. On their watch, the airports commission was artificially delayed until after a gen…
Commons
Westminster Hall
22 October 2025
Trade Union Workplace Access
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. I draw attention to my chairship of the GMB parliamentary group. I am glad that he mentioned GMB’s frustrations with Amazon. Another sector in which that union and other unions have been frustrated is social care, which has been fra…
Commons
Debate
20 October 2025
Maccabi Tel Aviv FC: Away Fans Ban
The people charged with the protection of public safety carry a heavy burden, and not all the information that they consider has yet been laid out in the public domain. However, I have deep concerns about the principle of block-banning entire groups of opposition fans—some of whom, let us not forget…