Commons
Westminster Hall
17 June 2025
2 contributions
Disabled People in Poverty
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I congratulate the hon. Member for Poole (Neil Duncan-Jordan), my colleague from Dorset, on securing this important debate. I will attempt to edit my speech as I go along to buy back some time.
Ensuring fairness starts with recognising tho…
I absolutely agree. The costs for disabled people who live in rural areas include more expensive journeys to access healthcare, unreliable and sparse public transport, and higher energy bills for heating homes that are often older and less efficient.
Hundreds of my constituents have expressed their…
Commons
Westminster Hall
16 June 2025
Farmed Animals: Cages and Crates
The hon. Gentleman raises the incredibly important issue of imports. Every pig or chicken farmer I speak to in West Dorset fully supports a transition, but they all raise the prospect of how we avoid driving up production costs and so increasing the cost to consumers and making imports look more att…
Commons
Westminster Hall
11 June 2025
NHS Funding: South-west
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Steve Darling) on securing the debate. I will be as brief as I can. I would love to talk about the lack of NHS dentist appointments in West Dorset or the problem with the funding model for community pharmacies, but instead I will just make the poi…
Commons
Oral Questions
Energy Security and Net Zero
10 June 2025
2 contributions
Decoupling Electricity and Gas Prices
7. What steps his Department is taking to decouple electricity and gas prices.
New solar is 11% cheaper than the lowest-cost fossil fuel, and onshore wind is 39% cheaper, yet the marginal pricing system that ties electricity costs to the market price of gas has resulted in British consumers enduring the fourth-highest global energy prices during a cost of living crisis. Does t…
Commons
Debate
22 May 2025
3 contributions
Access to NHS Dentistry
I congratulate the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) on securing the debate. I was delighted to be able to support her application, because this issue deeply affects my constituents.
Dentistry is in crisis nationally, and nowhere is that felt more so than in rural communit…
I know that my hon. Friend’s constituency suffers from a lot of the same issues as West Dorset, given their similarity.
The consequences of the lack of NHS dental care are stark: only 36% of adults in West Dorset have seen a dentist in the past two years, and just 50% of children have had a dental …
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Debate
21 May 2025
Business and the Economy
I was touched by the hon. Gentleman’s story of his father’s role in contributing to the economy. I hope that he will be present in the immigration debate later this afternoon to make the same points about the vital work of immigrants contributing to wealth creation in the UK.
The hon. Gentleman men…
Commons
Westminster Hall
21 May 2025
2 contributions
Parkinson’s Disease
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stuart—especially after that flattery. I congratulate the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Paul Davies) on securing this important debate.
Parkinson’s, as has been said, is the fastest growing neurological condition in the world. But behind every stat…
I will answer that with one of my favourite facts about Dorset: if we were a country, we would be the oldest in the world by population age. We are older than Japan.
Commons
Westminster Hall
21 May 2025
Broadband and Mobile Connectivity: Rural Areas
The Minister asked for specific questions. Part of the problem is that the cost of customer acquisition is four to five times larger in rural Britain than it is in urban areas, so the big companies prioritise urban areas, where they can find a lot of customers, leaving rural areas to small businesse…
Commons
Westminster Hall
20 May 2025
Adoption and Kinship Placements
I thank the hon. Lady for securing this important debate, and I agree 100% with the point that she is making. Two constituents in West Dorset support two children with multiple needs—overlapping autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and significant trauma of the kind she mentioned. The fu…
Commons
Debate
19 May 2025
Mental Health Bill [Lords]
Just to follow up on my hon. Friend’s point about the importance of mental health hubs, in West Dorset the only child and adolescent mental health services centre is in Dorchester, and for many people in my constituency, especially young people, that means at least a 30-mile round trip to access ser…
Commons
Proceedings
15 May 2025
5 contributions
Solar Farms
It might be worth making the point that only 10% of solar applications end up being built. The cumulative number of applications is completely irrelevant; what matters is the number that are actually built on the land, so while 7% of a constituency may be covered by applications, that is not a refle…
Will the right hon. Member give way?
+3 more contributions in this session
Commons
Westminster Hall
14 May 2025
Carer’s Leave
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) on securing this important debate. She has been an advocate for carers throughout her parliamentary career, and I thank her for all her hard work.
Unpaid car…
Commons
Westminster Hall
14 May 2025
Glass Packaging: Extended Producer Responsibility
I thank the hon. Lady for securing this debate. Like her, I have heard from the British Beer and Pub Association, and I have also heard from several of the pubs in my constituency of West Dorset. The British Beer and Pub Association has said that the increase per bottle on beer and cider will be bet…
Commons
Oral Questions
Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office
13 May 2025
2 contributions
Topical Questions
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Foreign Affairs Committee recently heard from the Falkland Islands Government about the urgent need for the UK Government to use the EU-UK reset as an opportunity to remove the detrimental post-Brexit tariffs on Falklands exports. What discussions has the Secretary of State had with his Departme…
Commons
Westminster Hall
13 May 2025
Flooding: Planning and Developer Responsibilities
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. On the point about new developments, does he agree with the Liberal Democrats that making the water companies statutory consultees in the planning process would mean that developers cannot build where the infrastructure cannot account for the…
Commons
Westminster Hall
13 May 2025
Local Housing Need Assessment Reform
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (John Milne) on securing this important debate.
In West Dorset we face growing housing challenges. Young families are struggling to find homes in villages where they were raised, k…
Commons
Debate
12 May 2025
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill
On the point about reuniting families, the shadow Minister seemed to be utterly bemused as to why so many migrants and illegal immigrants are male. I wonder whether my hon. Friend is aware of the Doctors without Borders report that showed that a large number of sub-Saharan African women were being i…
Commons
Westminster Hall
7 May 2025
Educational Opportunities in Semi-rural Areas
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Edward. I thank the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Josh Dean) for securing this important debate.
It should not be controversial to say that children and young people deserve an equal start in life, regardless of whether they grow up in a…
Commons
Westminster Hall
7 May 2025
Personal Independence Payment: Disabled People
Too many disabled people in West Dorset are living in fear: fear that the PIP support they rely on will be taken away or that loved ones might not qualify. In recent weeks, I have heard from 190 constituents each sharing their distress about the plans. One of my constituents, Barbara, is 65. She has…
Commons
Westminster Hall
6 May 2025
2 contributions
Dedicated Schools Grant
I agree with all the points that my hon. Friend has made so far. This morning, I spoke to the headmaster of the Thomas Hardye school in Dorchester in my constituency. His previous job was at a London borough school in Croydon, where on average he received £10,000 per pupil; in West Dorset, that figu…
I agree 100% with my hon. Friend’s point. I have no doubt that in her constituency, as in mine, there is a similar problem: when the Government talk about a fully funded pay increase, it is based on a school average. In many rural places, we do not have the average because we have smaller class size…
Commons
Westminster Hall
6 May 2025
Parking Regulation
In rural areas such as West Dorset, public transport is limited. Unfortunately, a car is not a luxury; it is a necessity. Our current approach to parking is outdated and increasingly unfair. At Dorchester South station, a lack of parking provision has become a source of real frustration, with driver…
Commons
Westminster Hall
30 April 2025
2 contributions
Safety of Humanitarian Workers: Conflict Zones
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I add my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mr Morrison) for securing this important debate.
As a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, I have been fortunate in meeting those on the frontline of humanitarian responses, ofte…
I thank my hon. and gallant Friend for his intervention. From someone who has in fact put himself in harm’s way, that is a wonderful sentiment.
There is also the broader issue of how we treat those who work on the frontline of global emergencies, often representing this country’s values abroad. Tha…