Jack Abbott MP: speeches

Speeches

• 24 Oct 2024 · Secondary Ticketing Market · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cramlington and Killingworth (Emma Foody) for securing such an important debate. She invited us to share the details of our first gig. Mine was when I was taken to hear Soul II Soul at the Notting Hill carnival when I was little, which was cool. In fact, on the day I was due to be born, my mum decided to see Nina Simone instead, which is also cool. Unfortunately, I have not lived up to that musical heritage, because I have been to see three out of seven members of S Club 7 and two fifths of 5ive. To be honest, that day inflation pricing was not the issue; it was whether we were going to get our money back at all—after we had seen them. In all seriousness, buying tickets under false pretences and selling them on at hugely inflated prices means that fans face a choice: they either stump up or they miss out. It is therefore not hyperbole to say that ticket touts are ripping the heart out of live music. Cracking down on ticket touting is important to music venues, too. Driving prices for gigs higher and higher means that genuine fans cannot access live music, and that has implications for small grassroots music venues as well as big arenas. I can proudly say that my constituency of Ipswich boasts a phenomenally impressive music scene, but if fans are consistently frozen out of live music and the arts more broadly and see them as something they can no longer afford or access, it is grassroots venues and entertainers that will suffer the most. Although our most famous grassroots music venue, The Smokehouse, right in the heart of our town, has nurtured the next generation of local talent, it has been close to closure. During the covid-19 pandemic, the financial pressures became so overbearing that it had to be saved by £12,000 of crowdfunding from local residents and grants from the local Ipswich borough council and Arts Council England. Research from the Music Venue Trust earlier this year shows that two grassroots music venues close every week, leaving holes in the cultural fabric of the cities and towns they once brought so much joy to. Our county of Suffolk is famous for being the home of Ed Sheeran—apologies—who is a phenomenal success. We are proud of the strides we have made in Ipswich over the past few years. I give a big shout-out to all those behind the Brighten the Corners music festival, who have an insatiable thirst for going bigger and better every single year. Yet with 2024 set to be the worst year on record for grassroots music venue closures, I cannot help but wonder whether Suffolk’s next Ed Sheeran will be denied their chance to shine. It is high time to face up to these challenges. That is why I am proud, as a Labour and Co-operative MP, that our movement has been campaigning hard to ensure grassroots music venues have the opportunity to be owned and operated by the community. Community-owned assets can keep their profits local, reinvesting any money made into the project and its successes. Because such assets are rooted in their communities, they provide not just a physical space for gigs but other opportunities for communities too. Some community-owned music venues provide training and development for young people, teaching them about music technology, sound design and stage management, and setting them up for proper careers. We should actively support that groundbreaking model for the live music sector as a route to keep our beloved venues open. At its heart, our work to crack down on ticket touts is about fairness and protecting consumers and fans. Scams and rip-offs are becoming increasingly common and normalised. That affects not just the live music industry but everything from football to car insurance. The odds are increasingly stacked against ordinary people and the grassroots industry in favour not just of big corporations, which are far more shielded from the problems I have outlined, but of ticket touts and scammers. We must fix that. I welcome the new Labour Government’s commitment to make arts and culture more accessible to ordinary people, from tackling ticket touts to broadening the curriculum in schools and expanding access to the arts across the board. Finding a way to stop prolific ticket touts and their often illegal practices is a first step in the right direction, but it must be a springboard for change, spurring on further action to make arts and culture truly affordable and accessible for consumers. I thank the many Members in the Chamber who have been campaigning on this issue for many years, and the fantastic organisations that have been mentioned. With the new Labour Government’s commitment to take action on this issue, we have a real opportunity to put fans back at the heart of live music.

• 21 Oct 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T8. I agree with the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Blake Stephenson). Despite the previous Government’s promises to reform funding settlements, as usual they failed to deliver. Does the Secretary of State agree that we must review the current situation, reform the police funding formula and finally deliver fairer funding for local people?

• 10 Oct 2024 · Mental Health Support · Hansard source

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  It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Sojan Joseph) for securing this important debate on World Mental Health Day. Sitting in the Chamber are Members from every corner of the country and from all sides of the House—evidence that the mental health crisis is undeniably a national one. My constituents in Ipswich, under the Norfolk and Suffolk mental health trust, suffer a particularly desperate service in an already broken system. Since its creation in 2012, the Norfolk and Suffolk foundation trust has been—it arguably still is—the worst-performing mental health trust in the whole country. It was the first mental health trust to be put into special measures, in 2015, and it was then put into the NHS recovery support programme when the body was set up in 2021. We are almost entirely accustomed to the slew of reports that find that the trust “requires improvement” or is “inadequate”, but time does not allow me to give a detailed overview of the litany of failures that have brought us to this point. However, there are two key tenets to the scandal. First, there is the scandal of the perhaps euphemistically named unexpected or avoidable deaths. The 2022 Care Quality Commission report found that there were 155 such deaths in the two years preceding the report, and the NSFT’s own “Learning from Deaths” report admitted to 418 unexpected unnatural deaths in a four-year period. Many of those deaths were entirely avoidable suicides, some while directly in the NSFT’s care. Those numbers, even taken at face value, which is unfortunately hard to do given the trust’s record, are emblematic of what my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) aptly called the “slow-motion disaster” of mental health care. Secondly, there is the cruel detail of unrecorded or unaccounted deaths, which led to thousands of people falling through the gaps, left off official statistics and totted up retrospectively as if they were a mere glitch in the system—the dead dehumanised, lost and buried in spreadsheets. It is not right that, after facing allegations as serious as the NSFT has faced, it should be allowed to mark its on homework on the matter. But with a new Government comes an opportunity for a new approach. I therefore ask the Minister to meet me to discuss a pathway to justice and to change Suffolk’s mental health services. This is the crux of the debate. The families who have suffered so much deserve justice, and all my constituents deserve change. Those two things are inseparable—we simply cannot have one without the other—and there is no time to waste in delivering them.

• 8 Oct 2024 · SEND Provision: East of England · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) for securing this important debate on a subject close to my heart. Although the SEND crisis is a national issue, the devastating testimony from colleagues from across our region shows that hundreds if not thousands of families in Suffolk have been failed by this deep-rooted, unrelenting issue. The failure is not only structural but cultural, and it is not new. I have campaigned alongside families and campaign groups for many years and have battled to get them the support they need. There is nothing as heartbreaking as a parent breaking down in tears as they beg for help for their young child, exhausted and broken by a system that works against them, rather than for them. In Suffolk, we have seen the same cycle over and again. There have been multiple versions of the damning Ofsted/CQC report. I say gently to the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) that it was not the first report, but the third in less than a decade. Warm words and hollow promises of change and improvement follow, yet little change ever comes. The lived experiences of families across our county have not improved, and in many cases have worsened. As I highlighted in my maiden speech, five years ago, after yet another damning report on SEND provision in Suffolk—the one before last—our local newspaper, the East Anglian Daily Times , carried a hauntingly memorable front page with the faces of children and families across Suffolk who have been badly let down by a failed system, accompanied by the headline, “We must be heard”. That simple plea has gone unanswered time and again. I could give many examples to highlight the crisis in SEND provision in Suffolk, but in the short time I have I want to focus on school exclusions. It was absolutely right that the new Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, has made driving up school attendance a priority—if a child is not in school, they cannot learn—but too often our education system fails to meet the needs of many children with SEND, and in the worst cases they are removed entirely. Over the summer, the Department for Education released the latest school exclusion figures from English schools for school year 2022-23. Once again, they showed an increasingly familiar, and therefore increasingly alarming, trend across the east of England, in particular Suffolk. In our county this year, children with special educational needs received all but one of the primary school permanent exclusions.

• 8 Oct 2024 · SEND Provision: East of England · Hansard source

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  I am coming to an end. Those families expect Government to work with local authorities, particularly those such as Suffolk county council, to put that into place. It falls to us as part of this new Labour Government to follow through on our promise to do so, working with local authorities and families to make urgent progress. Children who need—

• 8 Oct 2024 · SEND Provision: East of England · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The statistics I am reading just scratch the surface. We know there are many more families who have had to make the difficult decision to homeschool their children not out of choice, but out of necessity, because they feel they have no other option. To finish my point, in state-funded primary schools in Suffolk, fixed-term exclusions were 30 times more likely to go to a child with SEND and an EHCP than to a child without. I should add that our county’s fixed-term exclusions are, once again, some of the highest in the country—an unwanted and shameful record of inaction and indifference. Across all age groups in Suffolk, permanent exclusions are more than six times as likely, and fixed-term exclusions more than five times as likely, to go to a child with SEND. While I am encouraged by the intentions of the new Government with respect to SEND provision, I join Members present, along with so many others, in reiterating that the challenge is enormous and must not be underestimated. Like families across Ipswich, I know there is no overnight fix for years of failure. What those families expect is a clear, credible plan with measurable defined goals for SEND provision, and not the half-baked, half-hearted SEND review that was finally dished up after much delay by the previous Government.

• 29 Jul 2024 · Retail Crime · Hansard source

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  Record rates of retail crime and shoplifting are blighting our high streets, including in Ipswich, where too often such instances act as a flashpoint for completely unacceptable levels of violence, threats and abuse directed towards retail workers. I very much welcome the Government’s commitment to ending the £200 threshold for prosecuting shoplifters, and the introduction of a stand-alone offence that will give shop workers the protection they need. Will the Minister join me in Ipswich to meet local retail staff, so that she can hear about their experiences and the vital difference that these steps will make?

• 29 Jul 2024 · Retail Crime · Hansard source

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  7. What steps she is taking to tackle retail crime.

• 25 Jul 2024 · Code of Conduct and Modernisation Committee · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak. Let me say congratulations and welcome to your place. I have been moved and inspired by so many contributions over the past few days, and it is an immense privilege to be making the first maiden speech of today. I also offer my best wishes to the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Patrick Spencer), who will also be making his maiden speech today. Not only is he my neighbour, but he is representing a place that is really close to my heart. I am incredibly proud to be making my maiden speech as the new Member of Parliament for Ipswich. However, this is not my first contribution in this House. Yesterday, I asked a question at PMQs, highlighting the huge potential that Ipswich possesses but saying that, after 14 years of neglect, we desperately needed Government support to help revive our town centre. However, corners of social media instead focused on a very gentle joke I had made, when I pointed out that my home county of Suffolk once again had a premier league football team, unlike our friends north of the border in Norfolk. One keyboard warrior in particular took umbrage at that. His name is Ed Balls, and apparently he used to work here. He said that Norwich has had a 15-year unbeaten run in the Old Farm derby—a run that will now, sadly, be extended due to Ipswich being promoted to the premier league and Norwich getting knocked out in the play-offs last season. I am sure that that will be a bitter pill for Town fans to swallow as they visit Anfield, the Tottenham Hotspur stadium, the Etihad and Old Trafford next season. Ed’s tweet also represented my most significant celebrity beef on social media since Steve Brookstein—yes, the first winner of “The X Factor” nearly a decade ago. Ipswich has a rich and long history—so rich and long, in fact, that I am going to use this as an opportunity to settle an old score. Now that Colchester has vacated its town status, I am laying claim to Ipswich being the oldest continuous town in England. No, I have not checked that with the House of Commons Library, as I might have been given an answer that I did not want to hear, but two minutes of searching online tells me that I have a decent chance of being right—and I presume that, as I am now stating it as fact in Parliament, it now becomes true. Thomas Wolsey is arguably Ipswich’s most famous son, and we in Ipswich have been celebrating his legacy throughout the past year through the Wolsey 550. Wolsey does not always get the praise he deserves. Climbing the greasy pole will not win you many friends—something to which Members of this House will attest, I am sure. However, his story, rising from humble beginnings to becoming one of the most powerful statesmen in England, was remarkable, and he left his imprint on our town too. Ipswich can also lay claim to Ralph Fiennes, Constance Andrews, Thomas Gainsborough, Jean Ingelow, Brian Eno, Edith Cook and even Richard Ayoade, to name but a few. My job over the coming years will be ensuring that kids growing up in Ipswich today get their chance to make their dreams a reality, so that when my successor comes to make their maiden speech, they have a few more names to mention too. I would also like to mention my predecessor, Tom Hunt. While an MP, Tom often spoke about being neurodiverse, and was open about challenges that he faced growing up. He looked to tackle some of the stigma that still exists, and that is an incredibly powerful thing for a Member of Parliament to do. On election night, Tom charitably mentioned our shared commitment to improving the lives of children with special educational needs and disabilities, an issue that I have campaigned on for many years in Suffolk. I will now use my role to fight for those families here in Westminster. The SEND crisis is a national issue, and I know many colleagues from across the House will have heard countless stories about the struggles that families have had to endure to access the services that should be theirs. In Suffolk, we have had a decade of the most grotesque and repeated failures. I remember five years ago, after another damning report, the front page of our local paper, the East Anglian Daily Times , showed the faces of just some of the children and families who had been so badly failed by a broken system, with the heartbreaking, desperate headline, “We must be heard”. As ITV’s report shows today, so little has changed half a decade later. Those children and their families have still not been heard. This is not just about the educational impacts on children, immense though they may be. It is also about the exhaustion, desperation and isolation that families suffer, day in, day out; the months—years, even—battling for an education, health and care plan; the time spent waiting by the phone, or checking emails, hoping that they might finally get some positive news; and the energy they have to find just to try to navigate this broken system, fight through tribunals, and submit mountains upon mountains of new documentation and information, all while trying to care for their family. As a Labour Government, we cannot let the suffering of vulnerable children and their families continue. It will be my personal mission in this place to fight this inequality and injustice. If I can make one final plea on this issue, as a former teaching assistant and proud GMB MP, I urge that when we talk about the crisis in retention and recruitment of teachers, we include specialist and support staff in the conversation. They are crucial to breaking down barriers to opportunity, too. I would like to touch on another subject that is incredibly important to me: the energy transition. This is not just an environmental necessity but an economic imperative. It can boost our economy, reduce bills, ensure greater security and deliver the well paid jobs that we need. With GB Energy, we will be able to achieve that. If Britain is to become a world leader in this area, as the Labour party has pledged, I want Ipswich and Suffolk to be right at the heart of this national renewal. Why should we not be? Over the coming years, thousands of jobs will be created in new nuclear at Sizewell, in offshore wind and in solar. I am unapologetically ambitious for our town and our county. I do not want those jobs and that investment to drift away elsewhere. I want kids growing up in Ipswich, or people looking to retrain and upskill, to get those secure, well paid jobs. I want local businesses to benefit from the billions of pounds that will flow out of these projects, and I want our area to be the centre of national excellence. That is our future, if we are brave enough to grasp it. As a Labour and Co-operative Member of Parliament, it is particularly welcome to me that our commitment to community energy sits at the very heart of this mission. The greatest-ever expansion of community energy projects, delivering a million new owners of energy, will be genuinely transformational, and as a proud Co-operative party MP, I will champion the growth of such projects, so that local people will benefit from our green transition too. Many of us are just a few weeks into our new role, and as this debate is about second jobs, I will be honest in my contribution and say that I have no idea why or how any Member of Parliament would have a second job. We all know what I am talking about. To be the Member of Parliament for Ipswich is the greatest privilege of my life, but to be frank, it is not like any other job. I think about Ipswich, and its beautiful, award-winning parks; its waterfront looking absolutely glorious on a sunny day; the music festivals that we have now, which I would have loved to have been to as a teenager—I am only slightly older now than I was then—and the fact that our town once again has a premier league football club. I might have mentioned that already. I think about Suffolk too, the place I moved to 25 years ago. I still hang out with my friends from Debenham high school. I still play for the same cricket club, the mighty Eye and District cricket club—my batting just as terrible, and my bowling just as slow, if not slower. I still want to walk around Fram castle, and along the beaches of Southwold, Aldeburgh and Dunwich. I still pop into Coes, a family business founded nearly 100 years ago, and I love nothing better than eating at the Lighthouse restaurant, or drinking an Adnams or an Aspall in the Woolpack or the Greyhound. I am still surrounded by my friends, my family and my neighbours, not to mention a million happy memories, having been shaped and inspired by them for nearly a quarter of a century. I have no doubt that I will make some mistakes along the way, and I know that there will be some times when my constituents disagree with me, but know that everything that I do here will be out of service, friendship and love for my home, Ipswich and Suffolk.

• 24 Jul 2024 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q13. We have much to be proud of in Ipswich, from a thriving arts and culture scene to beautiful parks and a stunning waterfront. Unlike our friends over the border in Norfolk, we also now have a premier league football team again; the Prime Minister is very welcome to join us when Arsenal visit next year. Despite all those positives, after the last 14 years, our town centre is really struggling and desperately needs help. Can the Prime Minister set out to this House the steps that he will take to revive town centres like Ipswich’s?