Caroline Voaden

Getting Britain Working Again

It is a real pleasure to speak in this King’s Speech debate, which is my first in this Chamber. Last time around, I was sat on my own in a hotel room on the south bank with covid, warmly shared as a welcome gift by a lovely new colleague just after I entered this place. After the local election results last week, it is clear that the country has spoken. People right across this great nation are deeply, viscerally disappointed in the performance of this Government since the general election two y

Getting Britain Working Again

What I said is absolutely correct. In my constituency of South Devon, new build homes in developer-led housing estates are selling for £950,000. We are not providing the homes we need—the social homes and the truly affordable homes that young people, young couples, young families and people who want to move out from their parents’ home need. We are providing the wrong sort of homes. Having a system led by housing developers that are driven by profit will never provide the homes that we need. Is

Getting Britain Working Again

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. We do not have a mayor in Devon, so we miss out on a lot of that legislation’s benefits. I have loads of villages that do not even have a bus, so talk of bus fares is completely irrelevant when there is literally no service. How are young people supposed to get to college or work or seek opportunities if they cannot get out of their village? There was no legislation to require banks to offer a minimum service guarantee to their customers. Lloyds bank

Agriculture: Government Support

Many farmers are relying on SFI, but it closed to new applications in March and is yet to reopen, and there is no clarity about the future budget. Delays in payments to those who have agreements have caused significant concern to many of my constituents who have faced cash-flow issues. Does my hon. Friend agree that greater clarity must be provided to farmers on the future offer across various environmental schemes, as well as a commitment to improve the efficiency of payments?

Agriculture: Government Support

I just wanted to make a brief intervention on the issue of entry into farming. Devon county council has several farms and it is very keen to use them as a way to get young people into farming, especially those who do not have a family farm of their own. It is quite worrying what might happen to those county farms if Devon county council is divided up in the local government reorganisation process. Is there is any way that they could be protected through the decimation of Devon, which might happe

Violence against Women and Girls

A quarter of female teachers have been subjected to misogynistic abuse in the classroom in the last year. They report feeling humiliated and violated, and we know that impressionable young boys are targeted on social media with algorithms that pump misogynistic content to them. Will the Minister push the Government to act as swiftly as possible in restricting access to social media for young boys, so that we can educate them on how to treat women and girls before the manosphere influencers get t

Animal Testing

The hon. Member is being very generous with her time. Dogs have noticeable physiological differences from humans—different enzymes, different gastric pH—which leads to the vast majority of drugs that are tested on them failing to translate to humans. Does she agree, therefore, that the Government should commit to ending the use of dogs, specifically, in testing for human use and provide greater funding for alternatives that are coming through, such as organs on chips?

Apprenticeships

Apprenticeships offer young people a great pathway into rewarding careers, so I very much welcome the Government’s ambition to create more of them, but a report published last week by the Social Security Advisory Committee highlighted the so-called apprenticeship penalty, whereby low-income families can lose up to £330 a week in child benefit and universal credit the moment a 16-year-old takes up an apprenticeship. What is the point of creating more apprenticeships if a cliff edge like this disc