Speeches by Fenton-Glynn.

“I understand that is the civil standard, so it is the balance of probability.”

“Thank you. To reiterate, I declared my interest earlier: I spent five years working for the GMC immediately before becoming an MP, although none of my role was about fitness to practise. Last year, I was interested to find out a bit more about how the GMC manages sexual harassment and misconduct claims, and I looked at…”

“May I declare my interest?”

“In terms of the high level of numbers that I was able to get after asking FOIs, there is nothing in there that could not have been in the public domain.”

“We can get that on the record before I get to my questions. I declare my interest that I worked for the GMC for five years. I found that everyone who worked at the organisation was committed to safe medical regulation, the best for doctors and the best for patients. My questions will primarily be about fitness to pract…”

“Charlie, you said that you take sexual harassment and misconduct incredibly seriously—you said that it was unacceptable. From my FOI, we know that between January 2018 and August 2025, 997 complaints linked to sexual assault were logged, but only 53 resulted in suspension or erasure. Is that good enough?”

“To stick to that theme, from my FOI requests we found that 90% of complaints concluded with no formal sanction, but two thirds of those that you prosecuted ended up with a serious sanction. Does that suggest that you could perhaps prosecute more and you should think about a lower threshold for how many you prosecute?”

“Are you doing anything to check that you are not filtering out too many cases too early?”

“Another issue that comes up, thinking about the victims here, is the long delays. There are also quite long delays for appeals. The average appeal wait is 406 days. Could more be done to support victims through that process?”

“It should have been answered yesterday.”

“To move on to that, would you commit to publishing slightly more data on sexual harassment and misconduct in the workplace?”

“I thank the Secretary of State for the strong statement she has made. I have been disappointed to hear so much politicisation of a national security issue in this House, but can she confirm that, just as the future of Ukraine should be determined by the Ukrainians, the future of Greenland should be determined by Denmar…”

“I travelled through Manchester Victoria station on the day of the arena bombing and I saw the young people on their way into that concert. They were young, vibrant, excited, happy—all the things that they deserved to be, doing the most normal thing in the world: going to see a concert. It was one of the most shocking m…”

“As a Yorkshire MP, I could not be more proud of the fact that it is a Labour Government who are delivering this change. I urge the Secretary of State to look again at the Calder Valley line. It needs electrification, perhaps as part of phase 3, which was promised by the Conservative party in 2015 but then dropped after…”

“When the Secretary of State was in front of the Health and Social Care Committee, he recognised that we will not solve the workforce problems in the NHS without solving the workforce problems in social care as well. There are 150,000 unfilled posts in social care—three times greater than in the wider economy. What are …”

“I will move you away from geriatricians in north Wales, because I want to get to the broader point. We have a workforce crisis. We have experienced staff leaving. We have what looks to be a postcode lottery in provision. We also have the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill coming down the pipe, which has an auto-c…”

“Just to pick you up on that, the problem with the postcode lottery, particularly because there are no minimum service standards in ICBs, means that we might have to have some form of direction on this to make sure that we are fixing that problem.”

“Okay. We will now move on to the workforce within that. There are currently 78 vacancies for palliative care consultants, or there were when the report was published, and that is on top of the 132 clinicians who are expected to leave the profession in the next five years. There have also been pretty bad training bottle…”

“Can I just pause you there? Your line there was that the public need to do more to support palliative care. That does not feel like a sustainable model for the funding of palliative care.”

“I am going to move to a different area; I am sure you will be pleased not to talk about industrial action for a bit. I am going to talk about palliative care. You will be aware that this Committee commissioned an independent expert panel to look into palliative care, and the report wasn’t good news. The panel found tha…”