Carla Denyer MP: speeches

Speeches

• 1 Sept 2025 · Borders and Asylum · Hansard source

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  Our communities are divided, and they are scared. We—all of us—want to be with our families, and communities are at their strongest when family life is protected and supported. If the Secretary of State lifted the ban on asylum seekers working, she would be giving those who subsequently achieve refugee status a stronger footing to support their families and be ready to join our communities, and they would not need to seek the homelessness relief she mentioned. Instead of keeping children and their families apart, why does she not help families to support themselves?

• 22 Jul 2025 · Prax Lindsey Oil Refinery · Hansard source

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  The last time we discussed Prax Lindsey, I asked the Minister to support my energy jobs Bill—a plan for the redeployment and retraining of oil and gas workers that is proactive and industry-wide rather than reactive and crisis by crisis, and that would be paid for by the companies. That is what the workers and the unions want, but the Minister said he did not agree with it. He has now said that the Government will fund a training guarantee for these refinery workers and is asking this company’s owners to make voluntary contributions to support workers. That is progress, but will he now turn this into a proactive and industry-wide plan, and please go beyond asking the company nicely to do the right thing and require it?

• 21 Jul 2025 · Middle East · Hansard source

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  The UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls has said that Palestinian mothers are repeatedly watching their children slowly starve to death, be maimed, be killed and be buried alive, and that it is a deliberate part of Israel’s strategy physically and psychologically to destroy women and the continuity of the Palestinian people. She called this a femi-genocide. The Secretary of State has repeatedly said that the situation is intolerable, yet by failing to pull every single lever that this Government could pull, they are tolerating it. When will he stand on the right side of history and implement a full arms embargo, widespread sanctions and a ban on the import of settlement goods, and when will they fund evidence collection for prosecutions?

• 15 Jul 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T2. The Government’s new Scope 3 guidance for offshore projects is hugely welcome. We are already battling deadly heatwaves and overshooting climate limits, so it is critical that we stop extracting new oil and gas. Given that there is no scenario in which Rosebank, or indeed any new oil and gas wells are compatible with limiting global temperature increases to 1.5°C, why are the Government trying to delay recognition of that climate reality by saying that applications will be considered on a case-by-case basis? Will the Minister give us a conclusive science-backed answer now, and confirm that Rosebank will not be going ahead?

• 14 Jul 2025 · State of Climate and Nature · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

• 14 Jul 2025 · UK-France Migration: Co-operation · Hansard source

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  indicated assent .

• 14 Jul 2025 · UK-France Migration: Co-operation · Hansard source

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  Will the Secretary of State explain to us what happens if one in, one out works? If the goal is to stop small boat crossings and it is successful, the outside of the equation drops to zero, which means the inside of the equation also needs to drop to zero and the UK will have got rid of the small sliver of a safe and regulated route scheme that it has just created. Does the Secretary of State not think that, if we did that, it would be more likely to push people back to the small boats and people smugglers?

• 7 Jul 2025 · Fossil Fuel Advertising and Sponsorship · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg, I think for the first time. The petition’s demands are simple, clear and extremely compelling. In the UK, we forbid tobacco advertising because tobacco kills us, and that ban has worked to reduce the number of people dying from it. The air pollution caused directly by fossil fuels and the extreme weather caused by climate change are already killing at least as many people as smoking was before the ad ban, and they are likely to kill many more, so why the hell are we allowing fossil fuel companies to take up space in public places and on our screens to sell us products that kill us? I find that argument so compelling that I have dedicated a significant amount of my life in the past few years to trying to make a ban happen. I thank Chris Packham for initiating the petition and doing so much work to get more than 110,000 signatories, and I thank everyone who signed it. This campaign has been running for many years, and I want to highlight the groundwork done on it by grassroots organising group Adblock Bristol, of which I am a member. Adblock Bristol exists because its members think a lot of things are fundamentally wrong with advertising. Advertising often works by telling us that we are not good enough without a product or by engendering a positive emotion about a product or service that we did not previously have. It often worsens inequality. The billboards are not in the posh parts of town, and they overwhelmingly advertise products that are bad for our health, the environment or society. That is not to mention the direct environmental, social and road safety impacts of the adverts themselves. After a few years of successfully opposing applications for individual billboards in our community, Adblock Bristol set up a national organisation called Adfree Cities, where I worked for a little bit. It campaigns nationally alongside Platform, Badvertising and others to support people in their local communities all over the country to oppose the pernicious impact of advertising. In fact, the hon. Member for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier) listed some of the communities that I supported in doing that. Many local councils have already adopted policies of not hosting adverts for high-carbon products and services, or other harmful products such as junk food, payday loans, alcohol and gambling, on billboards on council-owned land and bus stops. That is a start, but most billboards are privately owned and councils have no jurisdiction over them and no ability to control the myriad other ways that advertising intervenes, often subconsciously, in our lives. Regulation of advertising in this country is, in general, extremely light touch and, frankly, outgunned by the capacity of the companies that pay for the advertising. That is where the petition comes in. It is time for the national Government to step up where local councils do not have the power to do so. This kind of social and regulatory change often creates uproar when it is first proposed, only for it to be accepted as extremely obvious, and for the previous status quo to seem appalling, not long afterwards. We have only to look at compulsory seatbelts in cars, the indoor smoking ban and tobacco advertising. “Freedom of speech, freedom of the market, freedom of choice,” they say, yet we pretty much all agree now that advertising products that cause us serious harm should not be allowed. Let us remember that we are not talking about banning the product; we are just saying that communications that are specifically designed to increase the use of fossil fuels, through misleading claims and by crafting social norms and a social licence for their use and expansion, directly undermining the Government’s evidence-based policy, which is essential to keep us safe from the climate crisis, should not be allowed. That should be a no brainer. Does the Minister want the history books, and perhaps his children, to look back in 10 years and see that he played the modern-day version of the role of those who opposed seatbelts in cars or the smoking ban? I guess not, in which case now is the time to be brave. He will be glad he did it.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Fossil Fuel Advertising and Sponsorship · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for his patience while I checked a fact. A minute or so ago, he used the phrase “informed choice” to defend why he is not planning to ban advertising for fossil fuels. Is he aware that that exact phrase, “informed choice”, was used by the tobacco companies to campaign against the ban on tobacco advertising? I am reading from a memorandum by British American Tobacco that was submitted to Parliament in 2000.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Fossil Fuel Advertising and Sponsorship · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman will have heard earlier in the debate from the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young) that some oil and gas companies advertise their work on decarbonising despite it making up only 0.3% of their business. On that basis, I could arguably edit my Wikipedia page to say that I am a professional swimmer or pub quizzer, but I do not think that would be a fair representation of what I spend most of my time doing, although it probably adds up to 0.3% of my time in some months. On that basis, would the hon. Gentleman reconsider whether he really thinks it is fair to allow oil and gas companies to advertise work that accounts for less than 0.5% of their business and use that to greenwash their image?