Emma Lewell MP: speeches

Speeches

• 15 Sept 2026 · Tourism: Overnight Visitor Levy · Hansard source

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  South Shields tourism is largely made up of families from neighbouring regions who have saved hard all year round to spend a few days at the seaside, and even if the increase from this measure is marginal, they will not come. My constituents, family-run B&Bs, caravan parks, hotels and wider hospitality industry have been unequivocal with me that they do not want this measure. It is the wrong tax at the worst time. The extra burden on their business will tip my local industry over. Devolution works only when it reflects what communities want, so will my hon. Friend confirm that MPs, who are voices and local leaders in their communities, will be at the forefront of these proposals?

• 16 Jul 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  I echo Mr Speaker’s comments at the start of business questions and hope that everyone has a lovely summer. Reform-led South Tyneside council is planning to close down our publicly run, high-quality STANLEY’s—South Tyneside Accredited Network for Learning in the Early Years—nurseries and daycare, which will affect hundreds of children, their families, and staff. The campaigners’ petition has attracted more than 11,000 signatures. If the seven STANLEY’s centres in South Shields close, the children will have nowhere else to go. Will my right hon. Friend use his good offices to press urgently for tighter controls on councils that ride roughshod over their communities like this?

• 16 Jul 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T10. Heugh Street bridge has been closed since November. The council only applied to the structures fund after I raised the matter here, and despite pleas, it has still not implemented proper diversions. The bridge is absolutely vital on Great North Run day in September. Can the Minister suggest what else we can do next?

• 14 Jul 2026 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill · Hansard source

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  Before I speak to the Government’s new clauses and amendments, which ensure that there is no carve-out from the duty of candour for the intelligence and security services, I put on record my utmost respect for my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne) and all my hon. and right hon. Friends who have been relentless in pushing this Bill forward. However, it is the Hillsborough families and campaigners, who have fought doggedly through their pain and heartache, who deserve all our respect. In memory of their loved ones, through their courage and refusal to be silenced or ground down, they have fundamentally changed the relationship between the state and the public, ensuring the services that are there to protect and serve us are always accountable. There is something deeply wrong in our country that caused us to need to legislate for these services to tell the truth, and to face criminal sanctions if they do not. Telling the truth should have always been their position, not something that they were forced to do. The rest of us face reprisals for not telling the truth. At the very least, we should expect that from the state. Chloe and Liam, the children of my dear friends and constituents, Lisa and Mark Rutherford and Caroline Curry, were killed in the Manchester terror attack. They sat through utterly agonising years, months, days and hours of inquiry hearings, which revealed that MI5 had not given an accurate picture of the key intelligence held on their children’s murderer. The chairman of the public inquiry also found that MI5 missed a significant opportunity to take action that might have prevented the attack. Lisa, Mark and Caroline were signatories to the Hillsborough Law Now campaign letter to my right hon. and learned Friend the Prime Minister earlier this year. That letter says: “Despite MI5 lying to a public inquiry in this way, no one has been held to account. This lack of accountability needs to change. Creating a full duty of candour responsibility on MI5, MI6 and GCHQ is the clearest route to creating this change.” The letter went on to say: “Every security and intelligence officer should be required to tell the truth, and the leaders of the organisations should also bear full responsibility.” That is absolutely right, and I am relieved today that the Government have listened. Caroline, Lisa and Mark are not in the Gallery today. They told me that they feel that by not being here, they are letting their children down. They are not. Their loved ones will know that they, like everyone who has fought so hard and has been involved in getting us here today, have never, ever given up. They have fought with every breath, every single minute of every day since their loved ones were so brutally taken from them. This law will not be retrospective; it cannot right past wrongs. However, it will send a very clear signal to the state, and in doing so will instil a culture in which the truth, not the cover-up, is the primary focus. This is so important for everyone who is fighting for justice—the nuclear veterans, Chinook, Grenfell, the Post Office scandal, the infected blood scandal, the covid-19 bereaved families, and many others. As MPs in this place, it is now our job to make sure that this Bill becomes an Act, to make sure that every single word of it is fully adhered to, and that the people we represent are never again treated in such a despicable way. In a democracy like ours, truth and justice should never have taken decades; it should never have been this hard, this relentless or this painful. It is a real honour to have met all those involved with the Hillsborough law campaign, although I wish I had met them under different circumstances. I thank all of them. We all owe them, and I sincerely hope that now they have got Parliament to this stage, they are able to find some small element of peace.