Commons
Oral Questions
13 April 2026
Pride in Place: Community Spaces
There are real concerns that Pride in Place is just another example of this Government’s blind spot on rural areas. Groups such as the Rural Services Network and Plunkett UK warn that villages are being left behind. Key rural assets are disappearing fast, and Plunkett is calling for a targeted £10 m…
Commons
Oral Questions
23 March 2026
Financial Abuse
Following on from the previous question, financial abuse between couples sadly does not always end in separation, and many women struggle to access child maintenance safely. Is the Home Office working with DWP colleagues to strengthen income assessments, such as by using His Majesty’s Revenue and Cu…
Commons
Debate
17 March 2026
Youth Unemployment
The Government want to cut funding for level 7 apprenticeships and redirect resources to younger groups, but bodies such as the Royal Institute of British Architects tell me that young people are unlikely to enter professional training in the construction sector, because funding will be withdrawn at…
Commons
Oral Questions
17 March 2026
Topical Questions
T10. My constituent Lucinda Ritchie is a disabled woman with full mental capacity. Until recently, she was living in her own home in Horsham, with NHS support. Against her express wishes, she has been moved into a nursing home an hour away from her family, and denied the right to return. Will the Mi…
Commons
Westminster Hall
17 March 2026
Rural Roads
In the last 20 years, traffic on locally managed major roads has fallen by around 5%, yet damage has never been worse. Why? Because rural routes are carrying traffic they were never designed for. Heavy goods vehicles are increasingly using villages such as Cowfold, Colgate and Lower Beeding in my co…
Commons
Westminster Hall
11 March 2026
Disability Equipment Provision
Last year saw the first fall in Access to Work approvals in more than a decade, including a 16% drop in approvals for aids and equipment, despite the alleged surge in disability claims overall. That suggests that, behind the scenes, the Government have instructed the DWP to get tougher on approval c…
Commons
Oral Questions
Treasury
10 March 2026
Topical Questions
T7. Even while sitting here, I have had word from a constituent whose heating oil cost has risen, in one go, to 129.9p plus VAT per litre. I recognise that the Chancellor has been pressed by a number of Members on this. Can she assure us of immediate action, as vulnerable residents are in immediate …
Commons
Oral Questions
Work and Pensions
9 March 2026
Support for NEET Young People
A recent report from Adzuna, a large job search agency, shows youth unemployment at an 11-year high and vacancies plummeting. Jobseekers urgently need the new “jobcentre in your pocket” digital service. Given that current timeframes suggest that it will not be ready until 2028, will the Secretary of…
Commons
Westminster Hall
3 March 2026
Environmental Protection and Biodiversity
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. I thank the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) for leading this debate.
I would like to focus on the biodiversity net gain industry, or BNG, which has been threatened by changes in Government policy. BNG is one of th…
Commons
Westminster Hall
2 March 2026
Power to Cancel Local Elections
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I thank people in my constituency and across the country for signing this petition in such numbers and with such great speed; that is very revealing of the distress that has been caused.
The first question is how we got into this mess. …
Commons
Debate
25 February 2026
Ukraine
A number of Members have drawn attention to manufacturers in their constituencies. I pay tribute to Chess Dynamics in my constituency of Horsham, which designs and builds world-leading tracking devices—they are absolutely state of the art.
I too was in Ukraine last year and, in addition to our supp…
Commons
Debate
24 February 2026
2 contributions
Online Harm: Child Protection
The Minister is making lots of observations about the consultation that is going to go ahead—what is going to be in it, and how long it is going to take. What we do not know is when he will commit to bringing legislation before this House to act against social media.
I understand the consultation, but what about actual legislation?
Commons
Westminster Hall
23 February 2026
5 contributions
Firearms Licensing
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Alec. I thank the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Ben Goldsborough) for his balanced introduction to the debate.
One of the things we get right in this country is our rigorous gun control laws. In the US, we can see the consequences of slack contro…
Absolutely: let us apply the laws that we already have, as they are well equipped to do the job.
I have been contacted by many constituents about this issue. One constituent, Rob, works as a farm vet, so he is well placed to get an oversight of what is going on. He works with livestock farmers, vis…
+3 more contributions in this session
Commons
Debate
11 February 2026
Local Government Finance
We have heard a lot about the coalition years and austerity, to the extent that I began to wonder whether I had misread the title of the debate. Whatever the rights and wrongs of austerity, it was the conventional wisdom at the time. Had we been in coalition with Labour, I think the same thing would…
Commons
Debate
10 February 2026
Pensions and Social Security
I very much appreciate the action that the Government have taken to uprate UC—for the first time in its history, as the Minister says—but does he accept that it still will not cover the cost of basic essentials such as food, heating and rent for many of our most put-upon constituents?
Commons
Westminster Hall
10 February 2026
Place-based Employment Support Programmes
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I also thank the hon. Member for Southport (Patrick Hurley) for shining a light on this important issue.
The Liberal Democrats strongly support the principles of devolution and localism so we welcome the Government’s stated ambition to…
Commons
Westminster Hall
4 February 2026
Postal Services: Rural Areas
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for South Shropshire (Stuart Anderson) for bringing attention to this important issue. Pressure has been building on postal services for decades. In my former career in advertising, I worked on behalf of the Iris…
Commons
Oral Questions
Justice
3 February 2026
Magistrate Recruitment
I visited my local court just a few days ago. In Horsham, we are lucky enough to have a sufficient number of magistrates, but we still cannot maximise throughput because of a lack of support staff. In July last year, the Justice Committee reported that shortages of support staff were having signific…
Commons
Westminster Hall
3 February 2026
Transport in the South-East
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Sir John. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller) for securing this debate. I can vouch for everything she said about the ring road around Chichester, which I have spent more hours on than I would rather. I agree t…
Commons
Westminster Hall
2 February 2026
Indefinite Leave to Remain
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. Last week, I met 30 or so members of the Hong Kong community in Horsham. These people are professionals: they are teachers, students, engineers, doctors, business owners and directors. They are in work, paying tax, buying homes, raising …
Commons
Debate
26 January 2026
Armed Forces Bill
On that point, I declare my support for Horsham district council’s work. It confirmed to me last year that it is examining the cost of exempting military compensation payments from all locally means-tested benefits. Does the hon. Member agree that in the spirit of the armed forces covenant, military…
Commons
Westminster Hall
26 January 2026
Key Stage 1 Curriculum
In my constituency of Horsham we already see the positives that play-based education can bring, with organisations such as Woods for Learning, which is a forest school catering for children with special educational needs and other children. The effectiveness is clear enough. Would my hon. Friend agr…
Commons
Westminster Hall
20 January 2026
ADHD Diagnosis
I am sorry for interrupting the hon. Member. Education, health and care plans are not supposed to depend on or require a formal diagnosis of ADHD but, in practice, that is how local authorities apply them. Families are far more likely to be challenged by the local authority if they do not have that …
Commons
Westminster Hall
20 January 2026
Water (Special Measures) Act 2025: Enforcement
I will add another name to the catalogue of water company disasters: Southern Water. In Rudgwick in my Horsham constituency, residents have complained for almost 20 years about effluent backing up into bathrooms, footpaths covered in soiled loo paper and having to keep children and pets indoors. Yet…
Commons
Debate
19 January 2026
Local Elections: Cancellation
For the second year running, Conservative-run West Sussex county council has applied to cancel local elections, in which the Conservatives face wipeout. Their excuse is that it would be too hard to organise, but it is the seven district and borough councils that run the elections, not the county cou…