Freddie van Mierlo MP: speeches

Speeches

• 7 May 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I welcome new clause 1, tabled by my hon. Friend. Does she agree that raising the age of consent for processing personal data from 13 to 16 will help reduce the use of smartphones in schools by reducing their addictiveness, thereby also improving concentration and educational performance in schools?

• 7 May 2025 · Automotive Manufacturing: Employment · Hansard source

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  Does the hon. Member regret the lack of action to bring forward battery manufacturing in the UK under the Conservative Government?

• 7 May 2025 · Automotive Manufacturing: Employment · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Member give way on that point?

• 7 May 2025 · Automotive Manufacturing: Employment · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to my hon. Friend, as the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for trade, for visiting the Cowley Mini plant in Oxfordshire. All Liberal Democrat Oxfordshire MPs attended; it was a pleasurable visit and we saw the amazing work being done there. I am worried that the Government are asleep at the wheel on this issue and that we will see job cuts at Cowley as a result of the very high energy costs in the United Kingdom. I would like the Government to do more to tackle that and, potentially, to support the industry. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government should announce greater flexibility, benefiting not just luxury manufacturers such as JLR—that is very welcome—but those that make cars intended for the mass market?

• 6 May 2025 · Dedicated Schools Grant · Hansard source

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  In Oxfordshire, we receive an area cost adjustment of just 2%—that is to take into account the difference in the cost of living in different parts of the country. In London boroughs, that adjustment reaches 18%. It simply does not match the cost of living in Oxfordshire, where house prices are comparable to those in London. Does my hon. Friend share my concern that this lack of funding is impacting the education of our children?

• 6 May 2025 · Perinatal Mental Health · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Laura Kyrke-Smith) for her question and the Minister for her answer. I am delighted to be forming the all-party parliamentary group for fatherhood. Will the Minister outline the steps that she will take to improve perinatal mental health for fathers?

• 23 Apr 2025 · Sewage · Hansard source

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  The Secretary of State mentions the boat race, but in 10 weeks we will be welcoming the world’s rowers to the Henley Royal Regatta. Does he share my concern about the amount of sewage being dumped in that part of the Thames, which is blighting the event?

• 23 Apr 2025 · Sewage · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend has outlined the outrage and the scandal of sewage leaking into our rivers, lakes and seas. It is also the case that sewage is spilling out on to our streets, and groundwater infiltration causes much of the problem. Thames Water in my area has so far refused to do anything about “Poo Corner” in the parish of Berrick Salome. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is another issue we need to address?

• 23 Apr 2025 · Hospitals · Hansard source

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  Hospitals matter to everyone, but hospitals falling apart help no one—not patients, not staff and not the economy. The Government have called the NHS “broken”. They rightly blamed the Conservatives, and criticised the NHS’s management under their leadership, so why are the Government now making the same mistakes? Under the revised new hospital programme, the building of the Royal Berkshire hospital will not commence for another decade. There is little prospect of a new Royal Berkshire to serve the communities of Henley, Reading, Newbury, Bracknell and Windsor until the 2040s. Doctors who have worked in the NHS for over 30 years believe that they will never work in modern buildings. The cancer centre alone is 164 years old.

• 23 Apr 2025 · Hospitals · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is right to point out the impact of the state of the NHS on the brilliant people who work there. My sister is a nurse in the Royal Preston hospital, and she tells me just how hard it is to walk past people who are being cared for in corridors. Every week at the Royal Berkshire, an operation is cancelled due to power cuts, water supply issues, broken lifts or malfunctioning temperature controls. Those are lost appointments and lost efficiency for the NHS. Floods and sinkholes plague the foundations of the Royal Berkshire hospital, which now requires relocation, and identified suitable sites are set to be put on the market at the end of this year. Further inaction by the Government will mean that those carefully laid plans and that funding will amount to nothing. There are also hospitals that were never considered for the programme, as my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) pointed out. I recently visited the Warneford hospital in Oxford, which gives in-patient care to patients with severe mental health conditions, including schizophrenia, personality disorders and psychosis. I was shocked by the conditions that patients live in. They are in tight spaces in dark rooms, and the infrastructure is Georgian. There were rooms that reminded me of recent visits to HMP Huntercombe. I said that rather nervously to the member of staff showing me around, worried that I might offend them. They gently held my arm and said, “Freddie, why do you think we showed you these rooms?” Staff told me that cramped conditions make it difficult to take breaks during the day. One worker showed me their windowless cupboard office—hardly great for their own mental health. Staff also told me how working in Georgian buildings impacts the quality of their work. Sight lines in common rooms are obstructed by pillars; rooms are difficult to heat; and security is difficult to maintain. A new Warneford would cost a fraction of the price of a physical health hospital, and the Government promised to put mental health on the same footing as physical health, so why does the revised new hospital programme not include a single mental health facility? Both the Warneford and the Royal Berkshire have been devastated by the Government’s lack of foresight. The cuts to hospital spending are a decision made to save money, but that is a false economy. Over the next 10 years, repairs to the Royal Berkshire hospital are projected to cost £400 million—a quarter of the cost of a new hospital. Add to that the many other neglected hospitals, and the loss is unthinkable. Proper investment in modern infrastructure is needed now. In my constituency we have the Townlands Memorial hospital, which shows how good the NHS can be with modern infrastructure. Anyone who receives care there, whether through the Royal Berkshire NHS foundation trust or the Oxford Health NHS foundation trust, sings its praises. It hosts over 30 specialities and plans to expand further. Let us give our hospitals the chance to excel.

• 22 Apr 2025 · Road Safety and Active Travel to School · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover) on his excellent pronunciation of Dutch towns, including Groningen. It is fair to say that in this debate there is a lot of agreement on the benefits of active travel, but even when local authorities have the ambition to deliver cycle schemes, land ownership all too often gets in the way. In my own constituency of Henley and Thame, residents have tirelessly campaigned for a greenway cycle route between Haddenham and Thame. These settlements are just three miles apart. The project received a welcome boost this year when Oxfordshire county council assigned £200,000 for further optioning, but for now the development is marooned until a process of land assembly is completed, which requires lengthy negotiations with landowners. Road projects, for which compulsory-purchase powers are wielded readily, do not suffer the same fate. Officers in my own highway authority tell me there are few precedents for cycleways making successful use of compulsory purchase orders, but are keen to learn more. CPOs for cycle schemes are easily challenged as it becomes impossible to make the case for one specific route over another, and councils are reluctant to pursue a CPO because of the risk of losing the case and of the process becoming a fruitless, costly exercise. Other villages in my area—Watlington, Chinnor and Sonning Common—all hope to have cycle ways. I very much hope that the Minister will say whether she will support councils to use CPOs to progress active travel schemes by issuing strengthened guidance and perhaps by revisiting some of the words of the Senedd on this issue in 2019.

• 11 Mar 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  I welcome the amendments put forward by the Liberal Democrats, especially new clauses 12 to 14, which would extend paternity leave from two to six weeks and double the amount of pay. Those precious weeks are essential for fathers to bond with their child and to provide additional support to their partners. Does my hon. Friend agree that these are essential new clauses that the Government should accept?

• 7 Mar 2025 · Protection of Children (Digital Safety and Data Protection) Bill · Hansard source

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  When I was growing up, we were first becoming aware of the digital world. On coming home from school, I would log in to MSN Messenger, check MySpace, carefully arrange the 10 top friends on that platform, and check out online games. Now those early tools have been honed to be as addictive as possible. Social media is a space for unchecked bullying and a place for predators to hide. I got my first phone aged 13, but the most advanced technology on it was an FM radio. Today, phones are not phones at all—they are supercomputers in our pockets. No parent wants their child to be left out, and once that first child in a class gets a phone, the floodgates open. We must give schools and parents tools to overcome that collective action problem.

• 7 Mar 2025 · Protection of Children (Digital Safety and Data Protection) Bill · Hansard source

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  I join the hon. Lady in congratulating young people on their work. I say as a father that we must act now to reduce the harm caused to two current generations of children and never expose future generations to those harms.

• 7 Mar 2025 · Protection of Children (Digital Safety and Data Protection) Bill · Hansard source

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  I happily join the hon. Gentleman in congratulating that school. Unfortunately, what we have seen today is a tragedy of the Commons, with the weakening of this legislation. We could not, even in this Chamber, overcome the collective action problem to deliver tougher regulation—which we need to stop the misuse of technology and keep the next generation safe—rather than reviews and a promise to plan research. I am happy to see other Members contributing to the conversation, but I note that Reform Members, including the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), have decided not to grace us with their presence. If they cared so much about the protection of our children, they would be here. In conversations with friends who have school-age children, I have learned of apps, such as Roblox, that allow any person to open a conversation with another user of the game. I also heard from campaigners that even Spotify can be used to share explicit images and conduct online grooming. I have spoken to parents in Henley and Thame who are distraught that their children were groomed by predators through social media. When they reported the crime to the police, they were told that nothing could be done because a virtual private network had been used. Technology is constantly evolving and we must stay informed of its developments. Parents must be informed of the risks facing children who use social media. There is a way forward. We are all aware that social media companies are making huge profits from their activity. Introducing a social media levy to increase tax on those companies is an obvious choice. The money collected from the tax could then be used to support children by funding mental health services. Social media is having a detrimental impact on the wellbeing of children. The least we can do is use its profits to mitigate some of the damage. The digital age of consent must be increased to 16. The age of 13 is too young for a child to consent to the collection, processing and storing of their data. The change would not ban children under 16 from using social media, but it would force social media companies to make applications safer and child-friendly for those under 16. My daughter is just 14 months old, but she is already being targeted by shows that seek to manipulate babies’ brains to avoid losing their attention. That shows just how pernicious the online space has become, and as a father I fear what it will look like in 10 years’ time. We must act.

• 4 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T3. Oxfordshire has no night-time cover for palliative care, which means that patients must dial 111 and wait hours for urgent pain relief to arrive. Will the Minister commit to increasing funding to the Department of Health and Social Care so integrated care boards, including the Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West ICB, can deliver palliative care round the clock?

• 4 Mar 2025 · Bathing Water Regulations · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) for securing this important debate. As a former cabinet member for climate change and nature recovery on South Oxfordshire district council, I have been involved in two bathing water status applications. One was successful, one was not. We often learn more from failure than success, so while I am delighted by the bathing water status achieved at Wallingford Beach, I will speak mostly to the desire to establish bathing water status in Henley. What I learned is that the current system is perverse. It requires swimmers to brave potentially dirty water before a site is cleaned up. This topsy-turvy thinking is all wrong. That is why I very much welcome the Government’s review of the status and have contributed to it. My contribution focused on the bonkers criteria that stopped Henley from being successful. Despite widespread use of the river for canoeing, paddleboarding, pleasure boating and, of course, rowing, only spontaneous, immersed swimmers count as river users, but if someone has my balance, or indeed that of the leader of the Liberal Democrats when paddleboarding, they know that being a paddleboarder does not mean they will not end up in the water. Equally, rowers are constantly exposed to spray and contact with the water during their sport—a fact that leads every year to reports of domestic and international athletes falling ill at the Henley Royal Regatta after being exposed to our effluent. It is embarrassing to know that during the regatta, if I flush the toilet, it may well end up on the sides of one of the boats. It is bonkers that organised swimming events have also been excluded from the criteria. While I understand that we do not want to see the system gamed with events organised solely for the purpose of meeting the criteria, Henley has enjoyed a vibrant, organised swimming culture for many years, with four annual swims organised by the brilliant Henley Swim. I urge the Government to replace the current bathing water state designation with a recreational water designation with teeth, taking into account the full range of river users.

• 4 Mar 2025 · Bathing Water Regulations · Hansard source

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  The Minister made some points on the length of time it would take to get some popular sites up to standard. Would she consider a pre-designation status, so that those sites are not left on the shelf with no support whatsoever—so that we are recognising, as my hon. Friends have said, the importance of certain sites for sporting, cultural and historical reasons?

• 4 Mar 2025 · Bathing Water Regulations · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Every year, we welcome to Henley thousands of visitors who contribute to our local economy. I urge the Government to row back—no pun intended—from the idea that cost and deliverability should be determining factors for investment in a site. When Henley welcomes the world to our wonderful section of the Thames each year, it would be simply unacceptable to say, “Sorry, we must expose you to our sewage, because the Government think it is too hard to treat.” I would therefore be grateful if the Minister commented on the intended change to the criteria for bathing water status and met me to discuss the situation in Henley.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Europe: Diplomatic Co-operation · Hansard source

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  The Thames valley is one of the most important economic zones in this country. At a recent meeting that I held with the business leaders of the Thames Valley chamber of commerce, the overwhelming message was that Brexit has been a disaster for business, and that Boris Johnson and the Tories did them dirty. Will the Minister commit to correcting that wrong, and start negotiations to join a European Union customs union?

• 25 Feb 2025 · Europe: Diplomatic Co-operation · Hansard source

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  8. What steps he is taking to increase diplomatic co-operation with his European counterparts.

• 12 Feb 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  It is hard to imagine a dataset in which it is more important to maintain confidentiality than patient data. This Bill makes changes to the Health and Social Care Act 2012. Can the Secretary of State guarantee that there are no changes to patient confidentiality?

• 12 Feb 2025 · Fuel Poverty: England · Hansard source

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  Like the hon. Lady, I represent a rural constituency in which the number of residents who use heating oil and gas is more than double the national average. Will she comment on how we can transition those residents to more sustainable and cheaper sources of fuel?

• 12 Feb 2025 · Fuel Poverty: England · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

• 5 Feb 2025 · English Devolution and Local Government · Hansard source

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  I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. It is fair to say that in the streets of Henley and Thame, strategic mayoral authorities were not on the lips of residents during the general election. Health was, however, with the dire situation that the Conservatives left in my constituency. There is still perhaps a crumb of opportunity in this reorganisation regarding realigning authorities with integrated care boards, so that we avoid issues where constituents cannot get services on other borders. Is that being taken into account?