Speeches by Voaden.

“Chair, could I ask Neil a very quick question?”

“One of my constituents recently spent nearly two weeks calling the DWP every day to find out why his employment and support allowance had been stopped without warning. Each time he called, he waited for over an hour, only for the line to be cut off with no reply. Will the Minister explain to my constituent—and to the t…”

“Many of my constituents have raised concerns about cyber-security risks. Centralising so much information in one place creates an attractive target for hackers and hostile actors. Does the hon. Member agree that Government systems are not immune from such risks?”

“I think we would all agree that it is a tragedy when any rape victim withdraws from the criminal justice system, but I do not buy the faux outrage from the shadow Secretary of State. I was the chief executive of a rape crisis centre when his party was in government, and every single day I heard victims talk about the d…”

“Will the hon. Lady give way?”

“Will the hon. Member give way?”

“Exactly, and why would this be better?”

“May I start by echoing the comments of the Secretary of State and all Members in saying that my thoughts are with the families affected by this awful case? There is a concerning lack of accountability once a setting shuts down, even if it is part of a chain. There is no mechanism to ensure that chain providers have cor…”

“Last week, I attended the impressive national emergency briefing on the climate and nature crisis, where 10 leading experts warned MPs about escalating risks facing the UK. The briefing was challenging and informative, but also encouraging, and it set out positive steps that we can take to mitigate the impact. Those ex…”

“Prior to last week’s talks with leaders of the British overseas territories, concerning reports suggested that the Government were planning to cave in to pressure from the British Virgin Islands, the epicentre of billions of pounds of tax evasion, and allow it to restrict public access to a register of company share ow…”

“Turning to higher education, at the autumn Budget the Government announced that the international student levy will go ahead. The Department’s updated analysis has increased the number of international students it expects to be deterred by the levy in the longer term from 7,000 to 17,000 a year. That is despite the lev…”

“Can you explain the change in the estimate of how many international students are likely to be deterred by that levy?”

“You mentioned the maintenance grant. The proposed maintenance grant will only be £1,000 a year, restricted to certain subjects, and it will be introduced in nearly three years’ time, compared with what used to be £3,000 for all subjects when they were abolished. The maximum will also only be £750 in the third year, whe…”

“So it is a start, and it is going to keep getting better?”

“The Government have said that all schools should take steps to prohibit the use of smartphones during the school day, but they do not support an outright ban on smartphones in schools. As I told the Prime Minister, I recently hosted a roundtable with headteachers of secondary schools who spoke about the transformationa…”

“It is really difficult for a headteacher to do that. One of my local headteachers has just done it, and the pushback, not from the kids but from the parents, is really hard, because it becomes a personal decision taken by the headteacher. They want to be able to say, “I have to do it because that is what the law says,”…”

“Hello, Secretary of State. We talked about this at yesterday’s oral questions, and I think you might have partly answered what I was going to ask, but I will go through it again. You said yesterday that the cost would not be coming from the schools budget, which you have just repeated here, and that the cost would vagu…”

“But they do not have your backing in saying, “This is what you have to do,” and therefore taking the responsibility off them and putting it on the DfE.”

“The Government’s roll-out of mental health support teams in schools and colleges has been described as “glacial”. What steps are the Government taking to accelerate the delivery of mental health support teams?”

“How will you ensure that children in schools who have to wait until 2030 for this provision are not left without vital mental health support in the intervening years?”