Cameron Thomas MP: speeches

Speeches

• 1 Jul 2025 · Supporting Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  20. What steps she is taking to help increase economic growth in north Gloucestershire.

• 1 Jul 2025 · Supporting Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  North Gloucestershire is ready to jump-start economic growth, with its existing advanced engineering and defence industries ready to drive the UK toward economic and defence objectives. Babcock, GE Aerospace, Moog and Safran are already developing world-leading technologies, and the Garden Town project includes a further 100 hectares of employment area. Will the Minister join me in Gloucestershire so we can demonstrate this expertise and the potential for growth on the ground?

• 30 Jun 2025 · Welfare Reform · Hansard source

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  Welcome back, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Government’s recent compromise with their own MPs secures PIP for existing claimants, but not for those who come hereafter—a distinction born not of compassion, nor apparently of economics, but to secure the Government’s own political footing. If I am wrong, will the Secretary of State describe the moral foundation for this distinction between those who suffer today and those who will suffer in the future?

• 30 Jun 2025 · Defence Spending: Cross-party Talks · Hansard source

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  There is a great deal of experience across these Benches, and most of us recognise the imminence of the need to hit 3%. My expertise is in force protection, and I know, among other things, that Brize Norton cannot draw support from the Military Provost Guard Service under the land top level budget, such as at nearby Dalton barracks and South Cerney. That is more acute still at RAF Lossiemouth. Will the Minister meet me to discuss the command structure of the MPGS and bring our experience to the table to find that 3% of GDP imminently?

• 30 Jun 2025 · Defence Spending: Cross-party Talks · Hansard source

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  10. If he will make an assessment of the potential merits of holding cross-party talks on increasing defence spending to 3% of GDP by 2030.

• 25 Jun 2025 · Controlled Drugs (Procedure for Specification) Bill · Hansard source

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  I support the Bill in the context of my liberalism. For years, the Liberal Democrats have campaigned for better access to medicinal cannabis for those who rely on it to manage their symptoms. The current system is too restrictive and necessitates a more compassionate, patient-centred approach to ensure that nobody is left to suffer unnecessarily. The Government should investigate the merits of permitting general practice to prescribe cannabis-based products. That said, this retired military police officer does not find his liberal values to be at odds with the Bill. In fact, the Bill increases protections for citizens from dangerous substances and simplifies and shortens the control systems set out in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.

• 25 Jun 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q4. In 1957, my constituent Ronald Clark was among 22,000 UK personnel exposed to nuclear testing on Christmas Island. Those veterans and their descendants have suffered various cancers, crippling illnesses and deformities, but the Ministry of Defence has never accepted liability. I note the Deputy Prime Minister’s response to the hon. Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey), but it does not go quite far enough. Time is running out. Will the Deputy Prime Minister meet me, my constituent and those veterans to determine appropriate compensation?

• 24 Jun 2025 · National Security Strategy · Hansard source

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  I echo the comments made by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) about the Chinese Communist party. The national security strategy recognises that UK security is tied to that of our allies. Do the Government acknowledge that lasting peace in Europe means terminating Putin’s European ambitions in Ukraine, and if so, how will the Government get that through to the US Administration?

• 24 Jun 2025 · Department for Education · Hansard source

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  I am afraid I will not. This is a growing, nationwide crisis being experienced by schools and families, and it has secondary effects on the Department for Work and Pensions and the Treasury. Responsibility for SEND provision currently falls to local authorities, but councils across the country are struggling to balance their resources between looking after their people and maintaining their infrastructure. I do not accept that those councils are all at fault—that simply cannot be. In fact, I empathise with those councils that observed this month’s spending review with their heads in their hands. Last month, I held a Westminster Hall debate where I pointed out that Gloucestershire is among the lowest-funded councils for education in England. I am delighted that the Minister for School Standards announced a review of the national funding formula for 2026-27, and I very much hope that Gloucestershire will be firmly in the Government’s mind when it takes place. I ask the Government to acknowledge that they must address the growing demand for SEND provision and not leave it to local authorities or kick it down the road until 2030. I ask that the Government investigate and address the root causes of this growing problem and implement systems and processes in the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Education and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Until they do, local authorities will continue to buckle under demand, our teachers will continue to break and our constituents across the country will continue to suffer.

• 24 Jun 2025 · Department for Education · Hansard source

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  Parents with SEND children across Tewkesbury represent one of the demographics who most consistently contact me. I regularly hold surgeries with desperate parents who feel that they have nowhere left to turn. I have spoken with parents whose children have missed years of education and whose ability to work has been diluted by the need to care for and teach their children outside the school environment. Many others have spent years awaiting diagnoses and years more acquiring an EHCP, viewing an EHCP as a kind of silver bullet, only to get their children enrolled in a school that simply does not have the additional resources to support them.

• 23 Jun 2025 · Middle East · Hansard source

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  I thank the Foreign Secretary for the gravity with which he is treating this important topic. One week ago, he told me that he had “huge confidence” in our ability to defend our middle eastern assets from Iranian strikes, but within two days, two strategic assets were vandalised by a couple of civilians on e-scooters at RAF Brize Norton. Does he recognise that the UK must not follow Trump into Netanyahu’s war with Iran, when force protection is inadequately resourced at home?

• 23 Jun 2025 · UK Military Base Protection · Hansard source

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  I am not sure that this question is appropriate any more, Mr Deputy Speaker. Ironically, on Saturday the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) demonstrated his ignorance of RAF force protection by tweeting that Group Captain Louise Henton’s background in human resources led to last week’s infiltration of RAF Brize Norton. It was a disgusting attack on a senior officer—my previous squadron commander—who has dedicated her career to armed forces service and to bettering the lives and lived experience of our personnel. Will the Minister therefore join me in thanking all members of the armed forces and in condemning the remarks of the deputy leader of Reform?

• 17 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is making very important points, in particular on the Jehovah’s Witnesses cult. One of the methods Jehovah’s Witnesses use to ensure that issues like this do not escape from the organisation is threatening individuals with the act of disfellowshipping—being cut off from all communication with their own family. I wonder whether he will go a little further in recognising that, too.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  Let me say, in the spirit of openness, that as a young man I perhaps did not always drive as responsibly as I do now. Although the hon. Lady is making an important point, there is an educational component to this. Will she join me in commending the work of the Under 17 Car Club and its Pathfinder initiative, which teaches young drivers about the dangers of driving in that fashion?

• 17 Jun 2025 · Under-18s Sunbed Ban · Hansard source

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  Until his recent death, my constituent Luke Webster had lived with alternating hemiplegia of childhood. His life was short and he spent much of it being moved between different care facilities, to the frustration of his family. At one such facility, Luke was abused. Will the Minister meet me and Luke’s mother to discuss improved safeguards—

• 16 Jun 2025 · Iran-Israel Conflict · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s statement. The Iranian regime is a malignant international force—who knows how many British lives have been lost to its sponsorship of international terrorism. The Iranians have explicitly stated a threat towards our assets and our people in the middle east. How much confidence does the Foreign Secretary have in our ability to mitigate those threats?

• 3 Jun 2025 · Dementia Care · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) for bringing this debate to the House. I would also like to give credit to the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash), whose touching tribute to their father reminded me of the grandfather who I knew and loved, before dementia slowly stripped me of that man. Dementia is a particularly cruel terminal illness and the leading cause of death in the UK. We each know somebody who is watching or who has watched somebody they love slowly fade from dementia. One day, some of our own children will slowly be robbed of us—perhaps, in time, my daughter will slowly suffer my own withdrawal. The very foundations of our characters are the memories of lives lived, and friends and families loved. Dementia steals away those memories, and with each memory lost, so too is a little more of that person. Children and grandchildren, once a source of joy and warmth, become strangers as the void left by lost memories is filled with confusion and fear. Confusion chips away at confidence while fear eats away at empathy. Once only a shadow of the person we love remains, dementia takes their independence. It comes for their speech, their ability to walk and even their ability to eat. For those who shoulder the burden of care, the impact is profound, provoking competing feelings of sadness, anger and pride. Many do not realise that they are carers and soldier on in their duty to their loved ones without external support. Young carers, such as those I met recently in Twigworth, shoulder their additional responsibility through the most challenging period of their own development. Many do not know that they are carers, and too many are not identified as such by their schools or their authorities. The financial burden of dementia on the UK economy is £42 billion per year, and £26 billion of that is borne by informal carers. Patients and carers alike are failed by dual crises in social care and the NHS, and the stresses imposed on patients only hasten their decline. Liberal Democrats have consistently called on this Government to address the growing social care crisis with a long-term plan, and I reiterate that we cannot adequately support the NHS without addressing social care. Other Members have spoken at length about measures that the Government can take. I will not repeat those, but I will say that one area in which the Government can move quickly is dementia care skills, through tailored training for our health and care workers to better understand the needs of dementia patients. Too often, care is not adequately tailored for dementia. In Tewkesbury constituency, I am proud to have Gloucestershire’s sole dementia-only nursing home, Wentworth Court. I will be visiting it this week to listen to its needs and learn from its experience, and I will follow up by writing to the Secretary of State.

• 2 Jun 2025 · Strategic Defence Review · Hansard source

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  In the last decade, China has expanded its military to a degree only matched since 1945 by the USSR in the cold war era. In the past decade, the previous Government did not read the signs coming from Russia; this Government must read the signs coming from China. Ukraine does not have five years, and neither does Taiwan. I again invite the Government to bring us to the table, and let us find 3% now.

• 21 May 2025 · Immigration · Hansard source

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  I am making this intervention from the Reform Bench, in the absence, apparently, of their own interest in immigration. Another thing that I think the Conservative party might answer for is the fact that Vladimir Putin weaponised immigration in 2015 through his terrorist tactics in Syria. I wonder whether the Conservatives have given much thought to how the Conservative Friends of Russia group continued to operate for nearly a decade thereafter.

• 21 May 2025 · Immigration · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Gentleman speaks of the liberal elite but he is being generous there to me, a guy who was state-educated; I am very much just a bloke, but I thank him. One thing the Liberals were elite at was pointing out the fact that Brexit was not going to work. The promise of Brexit was of course to take back control of our borders; what does the right hon. Gentleman make of the fact that immigration is now four times higher than in 2019, following his own party being in government?

• 21 May 2025 · Immigration · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is making an interesting point about those who help us. Following a complicated pregnancy, my wonderful daughter was birthed at the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford by a team comprising English, Spanish, Indian, Italian and South African experts. Will he join me in thanking those immigrants who bring so much to our country and help us when we need it?

• 21 May 2025 · Parkinson’s Disease · Hansard source

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  A constituent of mine was diagnosed with Parkinson’s at the age of 61. Individual sufferers can experience the symptoms to varying degrees day by day, which brings into question the effectiveness of PIP assessments, the results of which can vary depending on when they are carried out. With medical assistance hard to come by, charities such as Parkinson’s UK and Cure Parkinson’s are vital to sufferers. Will the hon. Gentleman join me in thanking them and similar organisations for their support to these thousands of people across the country.

• 21 May 2025 · Parkinson’s Disease · Hansard source

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  I am glad that the hon. Member has brought this point up. Hon. Members have mentioned that there are 153,000 sufferers in the UK, 10% of whom rely on PIP. It is vital for them to live and work independently. I share the hon. Member’s concern that any reduction in sufferers’ access to PIP will not only have serious financial consequences but lead to a diminishment of their independence.

• 20 May 2025 · Adoption and Kinship Placements · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Lady for securing this debate. Following the announcements in April, a constituent got in touch. She has two adopted granddaughters who, given their traumatic start in life, rely on specialist support. Does the hon. Lady share my concern that diminishing the support fund will have long-term financial impacts on the Government’s budget?

• 6 May 2025 · Dedicated Schools Grant · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend makes eloquent points. Clearly, the SEND crisis is exacerbating the situation to a significant degree. What we look for from the Government is a long-term strategic plan to deal with this, rather than just pushing it down the line. Since 2014, mainstream schools have been required to contribute the initial £6,000 of additional costs for SEND pupils from their own core budget. Owing to the inequity in the DSG, it is easy to see why that has a greater impact on those schools in lower-funded authorities. Resources have become so stretched many teaching assistants are available only to support pupils with the greatest SEND requirements. Underfunded primary and senior schools are taking drastic actions to balance the books. One primary school head I spoke with spends his holidays in school, completing the tasks of a caretaker he can no longer afford to employ. Across Gloucestershire there is nothing left to cut. Headteachers are overwhelmed and cannot afford to meet the cost of any pay rise that may arise from the Government’s negotiations with teaching unions. The impact of an unfunded pay rise, I have been told, would be ruinous. I recognise that this Government inherited from the Conservative party an utterly broken country. That was a hospital pass but, almost a year down the line, my teachers remain on the frontline of a genuine crisis, to which they have been given no real answers. They do not have time for more politics as usual. They do not have another 15 years for this system to reach equity, nor do they need more short-termism. They need their Government to step up now with long-term solutions that do not simply pass the challenges down the line. To support teachers and enable them to plan for the future, rather than simply stave off financial collapse, I ask the Government to review the national funding formula, and target funding to achieve near-term equity. Thank you, Ms Butler, for chairing this debate; I look forward to the contributions of others and the Minister’s response.