March 2026

Parliamentary appearance by Dr Marie Tidball

I beg to move, That this House has considered social enterprises and community ownership. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John. When people make speeches about post-industrial towns like mine, they often begin in the same way: by listing everything that we have lost. They talk about decline, deprivation, and the industries that disappeared during the wave of UK deindustrialisation. To be clear, many of those things are true and it is important to acknowledge that. However, th

My hon. Friend is a great advocate for the co-operative movement, whose birthplace is in his constituency. I absolutely agree with him—there is more the Government can do to support co-operatives in all sectors. Today, the co-operative spirit is alive and well in my constituency. In towns like mine, such organisations are not simply community projects, but are becoming local economic anchors. Let me give the House a few examples. For Tyldesley is a community-led initiative that is revitalising t

That is exactly what this debate is about: hearing about initiatives that are thriving all over the country, bringing them together, and creating the support that those organisations need. I will definitely take that forward to see whether there is anything that we can do in our local area. Across the UK there are about 131,000 social enterprises—roughly one in every 42 businesses. Together, they contribute about 3.4% of GDP, employ more than 2.3 million people, and reinvest more than £1 billion

Parliamentary appearance by Neil O'Brien

We have seen this play out before: a US rush to military escalation with no plan for what comes next. We have seen schoolgirls bombed in Iran, whole families killed in Lebanon, chaos in a region already scarred by repression and genocide, and economic shocks that hurt the most vulnerable at home. In Irish, there is a phrase, “Ní mhealltar an sionnach faoi dhó”—have we learned no lessons? People are asking exactly that: how many times do these horrors play out before the lessons are learned? The

I spoke very broadly about the value of social enterprise and community ownership, but to hear individual stories from across the country just shows the power that they have and their effect on us. I thank the Minister for his response and commitment to the sector, and I look forward to working with him in the future. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered social enterprises and community ownership.

I was born in 1997, so the hon. Lady will forgive me if I cannot recollect that. I do not think that graduates are arguing that we should not pay. There is an understanding that graduates should pay for their degrees; it is the scale and fairness within the system that I want to highlight. When maintenance grants were scrapped, the cost did not disappear; it was simply shifted. It was shifted on to students and turned into debt, and the burden was put on those from the lowest-income families. Th

Fourteen years of Conservative economic decline saw jobs and opportunity leave places such as my constituency of Mansfield, and AI now presents a chance to turn that around. How will the Secretary of State ensure that the Government roll-out of AI growth zones, creating opportunity across the country, will translate into local jobs and skills in left-behind communities?

What provision do these measures make for the disproportionate impact of fuel poverty in rural areas? Treasury figures show that cost of energy increases have disproportionately hit rural households, rural public services, rural charities and rural businesses, including in my Norfolk constituency. The risk of fuel poverty is 15% higher in rural areas. Do these regulations include any provision that tackles this traditionally overlooked injustice?

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. On the point of insurance, I have just come from chairing a meeting with Aviva—a great Norfolk insurer, the biggest insurer of houses in the country. It made the point to me that this is the tip of a major iceberg of uninsureability, unmortgageability and then unsaleability, and that the Treasury should be looking at this as a major problem on the balance sheet of this country. It is a Horizon Post Office-sized scandal in its scale, risking

The Minister has mentioned Aviva, one of Norfolk’s great companies and the biggest insurer of houses in the country. Has she seen its recent report, in which it calculates that about 4.78 million houses are at serious risk of flooding over the next 10 years? I congratulate he on securing the funding in the autumn, which I think was going to protect 60,000 houses, but does she agree that the Treasury should be thinking very deeply about the scale of this challenge in the context of national resil

3. What assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of AI growth zones on regeneration in Mansfield.

The situation at Royal Mail is a systemic failure, from imposed revisions to delivery offices, to a toxic managerial culture and a recruitment model built on low pay and insecure conditions. The optimised delivery model has failed but Royal Mail is pressing ahead with it regardless, despite the workforce’s suggestions that offer a more viable way forward. There is the underlying resource crisis; since 2022, new entrants have been offered wages barely above the legal minimum, with fewer hours and

Parliamentary appearance by Chris Elmore

Parliamentary appearance by Sarah Hall

Q4. Violence against women and girls is a global emergency. It is a key concern that we discussed at last week’s United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Social media platforms are promoting and profiting from vile online misogyny. It has made its way on to playgrounds, into workplaces and relationships, and even into our politics, harming women and girls and exploiting young men and boys. In the manosphere, everyone loses. What is this Government doing to tackle the harm being caused b

I appreciate that it is a start. I welcome our introduction of £1,000, but I do think there is more to do. I also acknowledge that we are in a tough economic environment and this is what the Government have chosen to prioritise. It is not by accident that my generation have it so hard. Make no mistake: these decisions were taken by the Conservative party when they were in government. They asked my generation to do more with less, to bear a heavier burden, and then left us behind. The Tories call

I pay tribute to the dedicated postal workers in Sheffield Central, who work tirelessly to ensure that people receive their letters and deliveries throughout the year. I have also been contacted by constituents in the Nether Edge area of Sheffield who have complained of delays and missing post. Some residents have missed important work papers, legal documents and hospital appointments, while others have found themselves waiting endlessly for their gas or electric cards. One constituent in partic

Parents in Gillingham and Rainham strongly back this Government’s efforts to keep children safe online. Does the Secretary of State agree that repealing the Online Safety Act, as Reform has pledged to do, would recklessly expose our children to online predators and leave them without the protections they deserve, and that any party serious about families must have a credible plan for children’s online safety, not simply tear one up?