Speeches by Russell.

“My primary concern is that those on the Conservative Benches talk about employees as if they are, as I said, unexploded bombs, and they talk about employers as if they are unlikely ever to recruit anyone ever again, and I just do not believe that to be true. Most employers will make a sensible assessment of whether hav…”

“I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Dr Tidball) for her incredibly powerful speech, all the women who I have heard speak today, and those who have formed such a supportive group as new MPs in this House. However, the people I primarily want to thank today are the women who look after my ch…”

“I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. Does he agree that we need more enforcement, more accurate assessment of non-resident parent income, and better joined-up working between His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions? Furthermore, if we saw that, it would help not just his constit…”

“It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I did a lot of research in preparation for my speech today and, as a parent of three primary-age children, what I found really alarmed me. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children reports that there were more than 7,000 offences of sex…”

“My constituent Alison Parr has had the most appalling time trying to obtain free prescriptions on the NHS, to which her profoundly disabled daughter, Ruby, is perfectly entitled. Please may we have a debate in Government time on how the NHS and all public services can be made fully responsive to the needs to disabled p…”

“Q14. Some 54,000 women a year lose their jobs when they are pregnant or on maternity leave, and one in 10 human resources managers say that they would be reluctant to hire a woman who they even thought might start a family. The law has not solved this, so will the Prime Minister please meet me, The Dad Shift and Pregna…”

“Mandy Ogden said to me: “Often, the main argument against this change to driver licensing is that it restricts freedom, but our daughter’s freedom has been taken away forever.” Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that, too, is an important point?”

“I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) for securing this debate. In the words of my constituents Mark and Mandy Ogden, whose daughter Georgia died on 26 June 2020: “The last thing we want is to parade our grief, but we need people to understand the devastation these road deaths cause.” Georgia…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairwomanship, Dr Huq. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Neil Duncan-Jordan) for securing this debate. Two sets of people are being abused and exploited. The first set are workers in the care sector. I agree with everything that my hon. Friend said about the extent of ab…”

“I want to take a moment to raise the issues around Sandbach station. There is no accessibility at the station, which serves approximately 20,000 people. The only route to Manchester for Sandbach residents is to take a train to Crewe, where they can change accessibly —assuming that everything is working—and then take a …”

“My constituents in Alsager, Holmes Chapel, Sandbach and the surrounding villages either drive directly to Crewe or take trains and transfer there. Does my hon. Friend agree that my constituents, like his, want more reliable journeys through an improved station and, moreover, that better transport links could bring econ…”

“Let me begin by paying tribute, as others have done, to some local hospices. Both St Luke’s and East Cheshire do a spectacular job, and are very well loved local institutions. I want to say a particular thank you to the staff, of course, but also to the volunteers, and the donors who are literally keeping the lights on…”

“I understand that there may be some difficulties with the criminal law in relation to people being followed. In the event that they have been actively harassed and threatened, there is a potential crime in the threat, but there may be a gap in the criminal law for those who are simply followed, with that not being part…”

“It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy), who spoke incredibly passionately about the difficulties of debt. There is a lot of debt in my community, which appears, on the face of it, to be relatively affluent, but one of the problems is that people feel a huge compulsion to mainta…”

“The right hon. Lady has referred repeatedly to command, control and consistency, as if the latter were a problem. Presumably, she was part of the Government that sought to use academies as a mechanism by which to control individual schools from Whitehall, rather than having the individual involvement of local authoriti…”

“My experience as an employment lawyer is that academy schools generate large amounts of employment rights litigation because they tend not to treat their staff very well. [Interruption.] Some do, of course, but litigation is not in the best interests of children, and ensuring that children have teachers who are adequat…”

“There are so many fantastic provisions in this Bill that it is quite hard to know where to start. However, the first thing I want to say is that the move to restrict the number of branded school uniform items will, I know, be so welcomed by parents in my Congleton constituency. So many of them who have spoken to me are…”

“I understand that there is a specific problem with the criminal injuries compensation scheme as it stands, whereby a claim has to be brought within two years of the original allegation, even though in many cases there has not even been a prosecution by that point. Is that something that the Department is looking at?”

“Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important that we keep the blame for the backlogs exactly where it belongs? Defence barristers are doubtless doing the best they possibly can for their clients in some extremely difficult circumstances, and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton West (Warinder Juss) says, t…”

“I thank the hon. Member for allowing me to intervene again; I appreciate it. Cheshire has some of the lowest per-pupil funding in the country. There is a direct link between schools that receive relatively low levels of funding and councils that have relatively high levels of SEND diagnoses, because there is not the sa…”