Jacob Collier MP: speeches

Speeches

• 27 Oct 2025 · Statutory Maternity and Paternity Pay · Hansard source

  More

  I do agree, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his work in this area. Every change must be responsible with public money and it must be manageable for employers. The evidence suggests that that can be achieved. Changes can be phased in over time, so that payroll systems and budgets can adjust. However, it is crucial that the cost of this reform is not simply passed on to employers, who are already facing rising costs. As the petitioner has argued, this change should be about Government investment, recognising the economic and social value of supporting families, just as we do with other forms of social security.

• 22 Oct 2025 · Heathrow: National Airports Review · Hansard source

  More

  I thank the Transport Secretary for her statement and recognise the national importance of this project. As she said, we must ensure that the whole of the United Kingdom benefits from the project, should it go ahead, and I am particularly keen that firms across Staffordshire and the midlands are involved. If she approves the scheme, how will British firms play their part in this nationally significant project?

• 20 Oct 2025 · A50/A500 Corridor · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There will be a £24 million benefit to Stoke-on-Trent, a £30 million boost to Uttoxeter and east Staffordshire, and an £11 million benefit to Newcastle-under-Lyme, which demonstrates the importance of investing in this corridor.

• 20 Oct 2025 · A50/A500 Corridor · Hansard source

  More

  I will.

• 20 Oct 2025 · A50/A500 Corridor · Hansard source

  More

  I absolutely agree. My hon. Friend has been a great champion for improvements alongside me. Congestion around Uttoxeter, Blythe Bridge and Sudbury undermines productivity and growth and turns commutes into nightmares. Queues stretch for miles at peak hours, average speeds fall below 20 mph and local roads bear the pressure of diverted traffic. My constituents experience that on a daily basis.

• 20 Oct 2025 · A50/A500 Corridor · Hansard source

  More

  I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the important issue of the A50/A500 corridor, a route that is vital to our industry and people in both Staffordshire and the wider midlands. May I welcome the new Minister to his portfolio? I hope he has not already got earache from the amount of times I have mentioned this road to him already. The previous Roads Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), saw the chaos of the road for herself, and the same pleasure awaits him if he wishes to visit. This corridor is more than a road; it connects our communities, links our manufacturers to markets and sustains thousands of jobs across the midlands. Every day, more than 60,000 vehicles travel along it, moving people, goods and opportunity between Derby, Uttoxeter, Stoke-on-Trent and the M1 and M6. It is a route that serves some of Britain’s best-known businesses, including JCB, Toyota and Rolls-Royce, leading universities and tourist attractions such as Alton Towers.

• 20 Oct 2025 · A50/A500 Corridor · Hansard source

  More

  Absolutely, and if we see that investment, we can create even more jobs. Midlands Connect’s long-term vision goes further by predicting 17,000 new jobs and £12 billion of added economic output for the region over the next 60 years. That investment will also support the delivery of 30,000 new homes. The corridor plays a vital strategic role in linking the east midlands freeport to the rest of the country, and with the expansion of junction 24 of the M1—which is being championed by east midlands mayor Claire Ward and east midlands Labour MPs—we can turbocharge that growth. However, this is not just about economics; it is also about safety. At the McDonald’s roundabout in Uttoxeter —a location that thousands of my constituents use every day—there has been a series of tragic and fatal accidents. Only recently, we saw another serious collision during the morning rush hour that caused chaos across the town. Each incident is a reminder that we must act with urgency. The current pedestrian crossing on the Uttoxeter roundabout forces pedestrians to cross multiple busy lanes of fast-moving traffic. It is unsafe and unsustainable. Safety improvements must sit alongside wider upgrades to the corridor. Every serious accident leads to delays for hauliers, lost hours for commuters, and disruption for the emergency services. Safer design will save lives, as well as keep us moving. While many MPs might be lobbying the Department for road upgrades after decades of under-investment, few will have a stronger case than the A50/500. If we want to deliver economic growth, make commutes easier, create thousands of jobs, back business to succeed, build more houses and better connect our communities, we should invest in the A50/500. These upgrades are backed cross-party, cross-county and cross-region, because we can all see the benefits. The spending review has provided the cash, the analysis has provided the evidence, and our communities have made their case—what we now need is the political will to deliver. I therefore urge the Minister to confirm that the A50/500 corridor will be considered a key priority in the preparation of RIS3 and that work will now begin on that detailed business case. The midlands has been held back for too long. This Government are already reversing that decline, but we can go further. My constituents and our businesses were first promised these upgrades in 2008 by a bloke called George Osborne, when he was shadow Chancellor. The Tories never delivered, and we are still waiting. This Labour Government can be the difference.

• 20 Oct 2025 · A50/A500 Corridor · Hansard source

  More

  I was not sure whether the people of Northern Ireland use the A50, but I am grateful for that intervention. I am going to come on to safety concerns, which are a key part of this debate. We have the full backing of 50 local business leaders and the Staffordshire chambers of commerce, who wrote with me to the Chancellor to urge investment in this vital corridor. That is a clear demonstration of the support we have from the business community.

• 20 Oct 2025 · A50/A500 Corridor · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend has made the case that this investment would benefit not just the people of Staffordshire, but the people of east Staffordshire and the wider midlands. I hope that the Government will commit to the A50/A500 being part of the next road investment strategy in March 2026. The Treasury has already set aside £24 billion of capital funding for that programme, and my purpose this evening is clear: to ensure that the A50/A500 is placed within that document, and that the Department for Transport commits to funding the next stage of upgrades through RIS3. Midlands Connect, which has led the technical work on this route, has produced powerful evidence of what those upgrades could achieve. Its latest assessment shows that by 2031, improvements along the A50 could create more than 2,000 jobs across Staffordshire and generate £116 million for the local economy.

• 20 Oct 2025 · Post-16 Education and Skills Strategy · Hansard source

  More

  In my constituency, major employers offer excellent apprenticeships, but the number of places is limited. They have told me that they would welcome the ability to share unsuccessful applications with similar employers, such as small and medium-sized enterprises in their supply chains, rather than their being lost to the system. What can the Education Secretary do to encourage such collaboration between employers to boost the take-up of high-quality apprenticeships?

• 14 Oct 2025 · Great British Energy: Public Sector Renewable Energy Use · Hansard source

  More

  11. What steps Great British Energy is taking to help public services use more renewable energy.

• 14 Oct 2025 · Great British Energy: Public Sector Renewable Energy Use · Hansard source

  More

  Thanks to Great British Energy and this Government, Queen’s hospital in Burton will get solar panels, which will save the trust money that can be ploughed directly into the frontline and be spent on patients. Does the Secretary of State agree that there is significant opportunity to expand that programme to other public buildings, and is he exploring that with his Department?

• 11 Sept 2025 · Suicide Prevention · Hansard source

  More

  I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher), and I congratulate my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett), on her powerful speech. I welcome the conversation that we, as a country, are having about mental health, because every community has a story where lives have been lost, and my constituency is no different. Helena Markey went to my school, de Ferrers, and was in the year below me. I still remember her smile, which would light up any room. On 10 September 2015, she passed away after jumping into the path of a vehicle. She was just 17. It shocked our school community. It shocked our local community. A young life with so much potential and so much to give to the world was taken away from us. Weeks before Helena died, she received her exam feedback and was considering her options for year 13. She became very distressed about the results and would later go on to take her own life. Helena’s parents were completely unaware of just how upset she had become. I have been working with Helena’s incredible parents, Glen and Sharron Markey, since my election, and have been supporting them on their Smile4Helena campaign, which aims to change the Department for Education’s guidance to schools to ensure that they notify parents if a pupil becomes distressed during their results feedback. Glen and Sharron believe that just a simple phone call to them about Helena’s distress would have meant that they could have gone and picked her up from school, and that would have saved her life; they could have talked her through that situation and got through it together. We are seeking a meeting with the new Schools Minister to ensure that what happened to Helena does not happen to any other young person. I would be grateful if the Minister could use his good offices to assist with that. The key to mental health support is talking and being open with each other about the challenges that we all face. It is about not just the investment that we need in mental health crisis services, but front-loading that into preventive support. That is why I believe that the Government’s plan for mental health hubs, and the increase in the number of mental health counsellors, are so important. Locally, there are so many people who support others to open up about their mental health, including the Sexual Abuse Rape Advice Centre or Sarac, Burton YMCA, Burton and District Mind, BAC O’Connor and those, like Andy’s Man Club, that are looking to set up in Burton and Uttoxeter. I pay tribute to all those organisations; they save lives every single day, even if they do not know it. We owe it to Helena, her family and every young person in this country to do better—to create a culture where no one suffers in silence, where families are kept informed and where the right support is there at the right time. I ask the Minister to reaffirm our shared commitment to building a system that catches young people before they fall, because behind every statistic is a life, a family and a future. If by making changes we can prevent just one more family from experiencing the heartbreak that happened to the Markeys, then it will be worth it.

• 10 Sept 2025 · Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

  More

  The shadow Minister talks a lot about price, but he is defending a system in which my constituents must get three buses or more to get to their destination, and pay individual fares on those buses. Under the integrated system proposed in the Bill, we could have a price cap, like the one here in London. Why does he not support that principle?

• 10 Sept 2025 · Russian Drones: Violation of Polish Airspace · Hansard source

  More

  I join the Minister in his condemnation of this clear escalation against our Polish allies. He will know that my constituency has a large Polish diaspora, who are extremely concerned about their country and fearful of further Russian attacks. What assurances can he give the Polish community in my constituency and across the country, and what work will he do across Government to support the Polish community at this difficult time?

• 9 Sept 2025 · Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill · Hansard source

  More

  If the deal is harming our strategic interests, why is it backed by our allies, the United States and NATO?

• 9 Sept 2025 · Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill · Hansard source

  More

  Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

• 4 Sept 2025 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  And a very good one at that.

• 1 Sept 2025 · Borders and Asylum · Hansard source

  More

  Much has been said about the role of the European convention on human rights, and it appears that the party of Churchill is seeking to abandon his legacy in its lurch towards the right, just as there is a growing consensus among European nations that we need to modernise it for today’s times. Does the Home Secretary agree that Britain should be part of leading that change, rather than leaving and turning us into Belarus or Russia?

• 16 Jul 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

  More

  Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 16 July.

• 16 Jul 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

  More

  Families in Burton and Uttoxeter are watching their smart meters like hawks, and dreading the moment when their energy bill lands on the doormat. I therefore welcome Labour’s warm home discount, which will mean £150 off energy bills for millions of people across this country, providing meaningful support in these difficult times. Will the Prime Minister set out how that will help support families in my constituency and across the country?

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

  More

  I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement and the fact that my local hospital will have solar panels on it thanks to this Labour Government, saving thousands of pounds that can go directly back into frontline services. What more can he do to ensure that public buildings like hospitals and prisons have solar panels fitted so that we can lower costs and contribute to our climate goals?

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

  More

  Under the Tories, we had Liz Truss question whether France was actually an ally, so it was nice to hear in President Macron’s words last week that Britain has friends once again. In the 340 weeks that the Conservative party was in charge of the small boats crisis, it sent no one back to France and just four people to Rwanda with cash stuffed in their pockets. Does the Home Secretary agree that the way we get results is by working with international partners, not berating them?

• 8 Jul 2025 · Road and Rail Projects · Hansard source

  More

  I welcome the improvements to the A38 and the midlands rail hub, which will mean 300 extra trains through Burton every week. The Secretary of State will know that I have been campaigning for the A50/A500 corridor, which is essential for local people and businesses; the Roads Minister will remember the time when she visited my constituency and got stuck in traffic on the A50. What progress might we hear on this vital corridor upgrade?

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

  More

  My hon. Friend is right, and I will come on to some examples from around the world that could act as a marker for us. At the time, the tobacco firms argued for nuance—they were exploring reduced-risk products, sponsoring arts initiatives, funding schools in developing countries—and yet we drew the line. Today, fossil fuel air pollution kills more people than smoking. It accounts for one in five deaths globally. The BMJ confirmed that in 2021. Yet fossil fuel adverts still run on our buses, on our television screens, in sports stadiums and increasingly on social media, where the targeting is opaque and the influence invisible. If tobacco’s harm justified a ban, how can we not at least ask the same of an industry whose products now threaten life on earth as we know it? We are not alone. In France, a law passed in 2022 bans fossil fuel advertising, with exemptions only for low-carbon gas, and Amsterdam, The Hague and Sydney have introduced their own versions. The Hague’s policy was challenged in court, but the court ruled in favour of the city’s right to act in the public interest, affirming that the freedom of advertising does not override the responsibility to prevent harm.