Jim McMahon MP: speeches

Speeches

• 13 Jan 2026 · Airport Drop-off Charges · Hansard source

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  I will make some progress, because I am mindful of the time. On reasonableness, of course an app can be used if it is a convenient way to pay, but why not have a simple contactless payment system at the lay-by where the luggage is taken out, so that people can tap in there and then? Then they would not have to wait 24 or 48 hours to pay online. With a lot of these things, if the lived experience of those using the system had been thought about when it was brought in, it would have been designed very differently. In November, we met the managing director of Manchester airport, Chris Woodroofe. We raised those points and put forward a number of requests. The first was for payment on site, so that people can pay not just on an app, but when they are at the airport. Secondly, we asked for an end to the system that allows charges to be racked up. For example, there may be separate lay-bys for arrivals and departures, so it is very easy for someone not familiar with the airport to pass through the arrivals terminal drop-off point, realise that is the wrong place to be, drive around the block and eventually get to the correct location. If they do that, the system charges them twice because they have passed through one before they get to the other. That could be easily resolved using technology. These organisations do not have the legal powers that local authorities have, but rely on contract law in enforcement. Many airports have confusing road networks that rely on roundabouts, with one-way systems through the terminals to drop off. In contract law, for a contract to be fair, those entering into it must have the right to decline it. How can they have the right to decline if they are charged at the moment they enter the place where the signs advising them about the contract are, with no way to reverse or pull out? Those dropping off should have the ability to say, “Now that I am aware of the charges, I don’t agree and will find a different way of dropping off.” Some airports have a bus that enables drop-offs further afield. Some people may not have been aware of that before they arrived, but may choose to use that. Although I am personally sympathetic to the idea that charges can be realistic, Manchester should not follow Gatwick airport and go from £5 to £10, or even close to it. Most people would find an airport’s charging £10 to drop off completely unreasonable and unfair.

• 13 Jan 2026 · Airport Drop-off Charges · Hansard source

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  Logic says that business rates are derived from the commercial value of the asset. The opposite is true of Gatwick—if it commercialises a lay-by, the business rate liability probably goes up—so I am not sure that that quite solves their problem. This debate has been important, and I express my appreciation of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South and Walkden for securing it. We are very proud of Manchester airport and the airport group that it operates, but we are determined to see a revision to the ability to pay, how to pay and the grace period—from 24 hours to 48 hours—and I hope that we see progress.

• 13 Jan 2026 · Airport Drop-off Charges · Hansard source

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  Part of the issue is that there is a starting principle that does not accept that taking a car to an airport is legitimate on the grounds that people should cycle or take the train, the tram or the bus. If that alternative is available, fine, but for most people the ability to see off loved ones safely and say goodbye is a very important part of the experience.

• 8 Jan 2026 · Road Safety Strategy · Hansard source

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  More needs to be done to clamp down on dangerous driving. Oldham has seen far too many lives lost as a result of drivers treating the roads as racetracks. There is much to be welcomed in this strategy, and I congratulate the Minister on the work. However, I am not convinced that the proposal to introduce a practical test waiting period holds. Drivers are already waiting an unacceptable 24 weeks, and surely tests should be taken at the point when drivers are ready to meet the required standard. In many areas, driving is not a “nice to have”; it is essential to get to work or college and to go about daily life. May I ask that this work is not rushed into and that more is done to end the 24-week wait experienced by drivers in Greater Manchester?

• 8 Jan 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Happy new year to you and to the House, Mr Speaker. High street banks have left many towns high and dry, leaving whole communities and businesses without even basic banking facilities. The roll-out of banking hubs is welcome, but our ambition should be for every town to have a bank, including Chadderton and Royton, where postmasters at the post office are ready and willing to take on that challenge. May we have a debate in Government time on banking hubs, to explore that further?

• 17 Dec 2025 · Local Government Finance · Hansard source

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  The fair funding review is significant. It is the first multi-year settlement for a decade, and the first real attempt at fairly distributing resources based on need, cost and the ability to raise revenue locally. It represents a serious piece of work by decent public servants, and I pay tribute to the finance team in my hon. Friend’s Department. The consultation asked councils to make their case for adjustments. London councils asked for housing to be included in the measure of deprivation, and we can see that in some of the changes that have been made, but that sees a significant shift towards London. The recovery grant has made a significant difference and I am pleased to see it continue, but it shows that fundamentally the formula is not yet picking up the real cost pressures being felt by local government as a result of the previous Government. Much has been said about council tax, but the inequality goes much further, as the Minister knows: our car parking income is £2 million, but Westminster city council alone generates £90 million. That is more than the entire recovery grant for Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Sheffield and Leeds combined, so there are much wider structural issues that need to be addressed. My hon. Friend will also know that, despite best endeavours, councils will still find this settlement very challenging and that bigger reforms are needed, so can she make the case—I know she will—to her colleagues in the Treasury that, if the Government want the benefit to be felt on every street in every community, in the end local government will need more money put into the pot more generally?

• 15 Dec 2025 · Online Safety Act 2023: Repeal · Hansard source

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  I think there is no disagreement on the protection of children and there is no disagreement on what we have legislated to be illegal content. There is more debate needed on harmful but not illegal content and where that line is and what we enforce, and the protections for those who are not children, particularly vulnerable users and those who are being exploited and drawn into some quite extreme behaviours. I will be honest about where some of these tensions are. How confident will the UK Government be in entering into negotiations on this when we are in the position we are in on trade with the US? The US has also made it clear that it sees any further regulation on social media platforms to be an infringement on trade and freedom of speech. When it comes to making that call, where will the UK Government be?

• 15 Dec 2025 · Online Safety Act 2023: Repeal · Hansard source

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  The Minister has done a huge amount of work on this issue, which I am sure is appreciated by everyone in this House. It cannot be beyond the wit of man to find a way for these VPN companies to bridge between the service user and the ultimate website or platform that they are viewing, so why are VPNs not in scope of the legislation to ensure that they are compliant with the age verification measures? Presumably, it is more difficult for the end website to know the origins of the user, if they have bypassed via a VPN. Surely the onus should be on the VPN company to comply with the law also.

• 15 Dec 2025 · Online Safety Act 2023: Repeal · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. The new media has quickly become the worst of the old media: owned, controlled and directed by the wealthy and powerful. My particular focus will be on social media, because it is no longer a movement of the people, nor has it been built or designed for the public good. It had the potential to be, but it has been deliberately designed not to be, and we are paying the price, with real harm, hate, division, exploitation and extremism normalised. I hear the petitioners’ concerns about the impact on community forums, but the truth is that online regulation does not go anywhere near far enough. That is because the previous Government failed to take the action that was needed. For instance, there is no fit and proper persons test—there should be. There is no editorial responsibility for content on the platforms—there should be. There is no adequate protection from malign foreign influence—there should be. There is no protection from disinformation —there should be. There are no meaningful safeguards against racism, misogyny or hate—there should be. There are no restrictions on Members of Parliament monetising content they produce—instead, they should post solely in the public interest, rather than generating income into their bank account—and there should be. There is no transparency on algorithms, nor the need to declare in-kind benefit in politics in the way that there is in almost every other aspect of political gain—again, there should be. As it stands, truth, democracy and the safeguarding of the public interest are under threat. The previous Government ducked it, offering a watered-down version that was backed up by a toothless regulator. We have seen what is possible when red lines are drawn; Australia has decided that the welfare of its children is more important than the interests of the powerful and the wealthy. That is leadership. The UK’s failure to stand up to powerful vested interests has played right into the hands of foreign forces who wish harm on our country, our way of life and our democracy. Technology is moving fast, as we are seeing with AI, and frankly, lawmakers need to be much sharper and quicker to keep up. The first duty of any Government is to protect the national security of their citizens, so for the Government, the question is simply this: when will they start to fight on this new front with vigour and finally do what the previous Government failed to do?

• 15 Dec 2025 · Online Safety Act 2023: Repeal · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech that gets to the heart of some of the tensions. However, he seems to be leaning quite strongly into how the algorithms are self-learning and catch on to what people share organically, which they double down on to commercialise the content. Does he accept that some widely used platforms are not just using an algorithm but are deliberately suppressing mainstream opinion and fact in order to amplify false information and disinformation, and that the people benefiting are those who have malign interests in our country?

• 15 Dec 2025 · Online Safety Act 2023: Repeal · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is making a very good speech; maybe he should consider a career in TED Talks after this. A number of competitor platforms have been tried, such as Bluesky as an alternative to X, but the take-up is not sustained. I wonder whether the monopoly that some of these online platforms have is now so well embedded that people have become attached to them out of habit. As Members, we must all feel the tension at times about whether we should or should not be on some of these platforms. There is a need for mainstream voices to occupy these spaces to ensure that we do not concede to extremes of any political spectrum, but we are always going to be disadvantaged if the algorithm drives towards those extremes and not to the mainstream. I just test the principle of an online BBC versus whether or not there should be a more level playing field for mainstream content on existing platforms.

• 15 Dec 2025 · Online Safety Act 2023: Repeal · Hansard source

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  There needs to be a tie-in here with the Cabinet Office and the review of electoral law. If a kind donor in my constituency owned a big billboard and gave me absolute free use of it during an election period, but made an offer to any other party that they could put a Post-it note on the back of it that nobody would see, I would have been expected to declare that as a gift in kind, or a donation in kind. That is not the case with algorithms that are posting and promoting generally right-wing and far-right content during the regulated period. Surely there has to be a better join-up here of election law and online law.

• 15 Dec 2025 · Online Safety Act 2023: Repeal · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady is making a very important point. It really concerns me to see just how desensitised young people or adults can become when they see that type of content, and that inhumane content is directly linked to misogyny and racism. While I know no Member of this House would say such a thing, outside this place I could imagine an argument being made that harm depicted in AI-generated content is not real harm, because the content in itself is not real and no real abuse has been carried out. However, does the hon. Lady share my concern that such content is incredibly harmful, and that there is a real danger that it entraps even more people down the very dark route to what is essentially child abuse and to further types of harm, which will then present in the real world in a way that I do not think even Parliament has yet registered? In a sense, this problem is becoming more and more of a public health crisis.

• 15 Dec 2025 · Online Safety Act 2023: Repeal · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend does well to draw attention to the gaming world. When most of us think about online threats, we think about social media and messaging, but there are interactive ways of communicating in almost every game in existence, and that can happen across the world. In Oldham, we have had a number of section 60 stop-and-search orders in place, because of the number of schoolchildren who have been carrying knives and dangerous weapons. Largely, that has been whipped up not in the classroom, but online, overnight, when children are winding each other up and making threats to each other. That has real-life consequences: children have been injured and, unfortunately, killed as a result of carrying weapons in our community. Does my hon. Friend share my concern that this threat is multifaceted, and that the legislation probably should not be so prescriptive for particular platforms at a point in time, but should have founding principles that can be far more agile as new technology comes on stream?

• 11 Dec 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Mr Speaker. Credit unions make a significant contribution, providing safe, ethical and community focused financial services, and they remain an important part of the wider co-operative family. Will the Leader of the House make time for a debate on the role of credit unions in promoting financial inclusion and supporting local economies, and will he ask the relevant Minister to confirm what steps the Government are taking to strengthen the credit union sector, update regulations and increase public awareness?

• 9 Dec 2025 · Grooming Gangs: Independent Inquiry · Hansard source

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  The announcement of the chair, panel, terms of reference and timelines are welcome. Survivors have waited to engage in the formal process, and it is important for them and for others yet to come forward that the inquiry leaves no stone unturned, is not restricted by time and follows the evidence wherever it may lead. We have heard quite a lot about race being an important characteristic of the form of abuse that we are talking about here, but can we not lose sight of class? Of course, the perpetrators were by and large Pakistani men, but the social workers and police officers were not, and they had a view of these girls that absolutely determined how they were treated. Can the Home Secretary confirm that the national inquiry format, together with deep dives, will ensure that cross-border offending, which transcended local authority and police boundaries, will be covered and not allowed to fall through the net?

• 4 Dec 2025 · Local Elections · Hansard source

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  I need to be blunt, as I usually am: we need to be better than this. Local leaders across the political spectrum have worked in good faith. They have put aside self-interest and differences, and they did everything asked of them to secure a better settlement for the people they represent. They reasonably expected the Government to do the same. Postponing last year’s elections allowed for these mayoral elections to be agreed, consulted on, the statutory tests to be met and funding to be confirmed, all of which was done, leaving just the legislation to be laid for polling day on 28 May. That is why Labour and other parties have already selected their candidates. The Government have a moral and a legal obligation to honour their side of the bargain. Following a statutory process, all involved had a reasonable expectation that these elections would go ahead. The Government know that trust is hard won but easily squandered. Given that we are where we are, will the Minister confirm that the mayoral elections will go ahead as planned in Cheshire and Warrington and in Cumbria in 2027? Will she update the House on the progress of the Lancashire devolution deal, which was due to be presented by autumn this year, given that we are now in winter?

• 4 Dec 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  One issue that literally keeps my constituents awake at night is noisy fireworks. It happens around weddings and around car meets, with young people setting them off at night. That is why I was pleased to support the ten-minute rule Bill introduced yesterday by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South and Walkden (Yasmin Qureshi). Given that this is a big issue around the country, affecting veterans, those with sensory issues, animals and others, will the Government consider taking over that ten-minute rule Bill, so that we can get it into law?

• 3 Dec 2025 · Local Media · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan; it is great to see you at the top table, keeping these debates in order. This is an important debate. The connection that Members have shown to their local titles speaks volumes about the significance that they hold in their communities. In my own town, titles such as the Oldham Evening Chronicle , The Oldham Times , Oldham Reporter and Manchester Evening News , as well as the wider ecosystem that includes Oldham Community Radio, ITV Granada and BBC North West, contribute to trusted, deep-rooted reporting that has told the story of Oldham, Chadderton and Royton for well over a century in some cases. None of those outlets has been able to stand still; each has felt the pressures of a rapidly changing media landscape. In the UK, print news consumption has decreased from 59% of residents in 2013 to just 12% in 2025. I pay tribute to the journalists, editors, photographers, production teams and printers who keep that ecosystem alive; above all, I pay tribute to the local reporters who turn up to court hearings, local council meetings, planning committees and community gatherings. Even in an age of live streams, real understanding still comes from being in the room—hearing the side conversations, tone, and context before and after the formal debate has taken place. I also acknowledge the fantastic work of the more than 165 BBC-funded local democracy reporters whose work is shared across multiple titles. By August 2025 this scheme, funded by the licence fee, had produced more than 500,000 stories. The transition to digital has been deeply challenging, however. In many towns and cities, the daily printed paper is no longer the anchor that it was. News now appears instantly and freely—and often without any attribution at all—across apps that are designed to capture attention and keep users locked to the platform, rather than directing them back to the journalist who created the work in the first place. Commercial advertising has also migrated to global platforms, but the platforms do not send anyone to cover Oldham council meetings, the magistrates court or community events. It is a fact that the UK has historically been slow and timid in confronting such challenges. We have a highly regulated broadcast media and press in this country, yet multibillion-dollar platforms operate with standards far below those that we expect of our newspapers and broadcasters. A newspaper is a publisher; it takes full legal responsibility for its content and is subject to clear regulation, complaint mechanisms and restrictions on foreign influence. Platforms such as X or Facebook are still not held to the same standards. Some are deliberately structured to amplify foreign influence and cause political disruption, without any consequence at all in the law. Yet those platforms rely on journalism created by others to hook in readers and give credibility to their feeds; there, it sits alongside misinformation, conspiracy theories, racism and online hate. A public good is used to normalise extreme content, which grooms and radicalises its audiences through the algorithms. How do we sustain local media in a world where facts and fiction are constantly blurred? Other countries have recognised the challenge and have acted. In Australia, the news media bargaining code requires platforms such as Facebook and Google to negotiate payments to publishers or face binding arbitration. As a result, nearly 250 million Australian dollars a year now flow back into Australian journalism, supporting around 30 organisations and saving local titles that might otherwise have folded. Across the European Union, article 15 of the copyright directive requires platforms to pay for the use of news content. France, Germany and Spain now have frameworks ensuring that revenue is distributed from the tech giants. Those models are not perfect, but they prove that intervention is possible, workable and effective. They also mean that the UK now is an outlier. There is no good reason why we cannot take action. The issue could be addressed by the Government introducing a proposal for a British news co-operative, jointly owned by regulated news organisations, empowered to negotiate collective licensing agreements with global platforms, backed by firm legislation and distributing the dividend to support a vibrant local press. If we take action, those titles that we have all talked about today will be something of the future as well as something of our proud past.

• 3 Dec 2025 · Local Media · Hansard source

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  I get the Government’s intention, which I strongly support, and I credit the Minister for the work that he is doing, but none of us would accept a member of the public going into a newsagents, taking a newspaper off the rack and walking out without paying for it, yet that is exactly what is taking place with these online giants. They are taking the news off the rack without any payment, commercialising it and making billions in the process. That is what we need to consider. I hear the arguments about whether local authorities should continue with statutory notices—I have a different view; I am not sure that we should hold on to something from the past if it is not adding real value that can be demonstrated from the public investment—but we need to move to a modern way of funding a sustainable local press. Surely that requires a bigger intervention from the Government.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Homelessness: Funding · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I congratulate hon. Members on their speeches so far. The homelessness crisis is a national scandal, and it has a human cost that we all see in our constituencies. In Oldham, there are 517 households, including 633 children, in temporary accommodation. Over half of those are in nightly procured accommodation, and a quarter are in bed-and-breakfast accommodation. Even though we call it temporary accommodation, many young people are there for such a significant part of their childhood that it becomes their home, and these are not homes that any of us present would choose to live in. Over 10% of those households in Oldham are in temporary accommodation for between two and five years, and 32% are in temporary accommodation for between one and two years. For a child growing up in primary school, those are the formative years of their childhood and they make a significant difference to their development and education. When procuring temporary accommodation, local authorities are often looking further afield. There are many out-of-borough placements, but even within a borough, with local transport not always as it should be, it can be very difficult for parents to get their children to school. It can be difficult for working parents to rely on family members to support childcare before or after school. In practice, it means that many young people are missing out on a good education and their wider support networks during that period. A lot has been said about the impact of local authority budgets. All of us appreciate the work that the Minister is doing to reconcile not just the financial cost to local government but the human cost to families, particularly children. But let us be honest: this is a gold rush for private landlords, who are absolutely rinsing the taxpayer dry for substandard accommodation. The average cost of nightly accommodation in Oldham is between £25 and £35 a night, and those are single rooms. The accommodation that I visited with the Shared Health Foundation in Oldham had three mattresses with a cooker, a sink and an extractor unit that was supposed to take out the cooking smells from that room, but went nowhere. I met a woman who had fled domestic violence, and she was contemplating going back to her abuser because she was fearful of what staying in that temporary accommodation meant for her children. I visited the room next door and spoke to her 14-year-old son, who wanted to be an engineer when he left school. He could not get any sleep because he was put on a mattress in the corner of that attic room, and there were holes in the skirting board where, every single night, the mice were chomping through the woodwork and keeping him awake. He showed me the holes in the wall that he was using old socks to fill because he did not want the mice to come through into the room. Mice and rats were running through the whole building. A six-room HMO used for temporary accommodation in a town such as Oldham brings the landlord £65,000 a year in income. We are also seeing family homes being taken off the housing market, because these private landlords will snap up terraced houses and convert every single room into a letting room for temporary accommodation, charging £25 to £35 a night. As an example, one person—an Oldham councillor who drives around the town in a Rolls-Royce, for God’s sake—had a facility from which eight children and 16 adults had to be removed because of health and safety violations. These were attic rooms again, filled with mattresses and shared facilities, and he was on a £7,000-a-month contract for just that one property. We have to deal with the human costs, but the system has to be put in order. The Minister is one of the good people in government who absolutely believe that, but she has a job to do with her Home Office colleagues. That is not the Minister, I should say, but there is certainly a culture within the Home Office. Unfortunately, I would say they have a disregard for the impact of their policies on local communities, whether that be the move away from extended support for people moving out of temporary accommodation or even the artificial market that they are driving with the procurement of dispersal accommodation for asylum seekers. If we do not have a whole-of-Government approach to dealing with the housing crisis, we will just not solve it.

• 1 Dec 2025 · Office for Budget Responsibility Forecasts · Hansard source

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  Is it not the case that after 14 years of the Conservatives telling the country that politics cannot make positive change, this Government have delivered answers on the two-child limit, apprenticeships, the future economy and decent public services? That is why the Conservatives’ response is as it seems to be. However, this incident has not covered the OBR in glory. I hear Ministers expressing confidence in the OBR and faith in the role that it has to play in the future. Surely, though, this is the moment to say that it is on its last warning.

• 1 Dec 2025 · Eton Star Sixth Form: Oldham · Hansard source

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  11. What her planned timetable is for making a decision on the proposed Eton Star sixth-form college in Oldham.

• 1 Dec 2025 · Eton Star Sixth Form: Oldham · Hansard source

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  The previous Government announced the free schools for sixth-formers programme over two years ago. It is now over a year since this Government announced a review of that programme, meaning that the local authority, alongside parents and other sixth-form providers, has been waiting over two years to find out whether Eton Star sixth-form college will go ahead. Can I urge the Government to give clarity on that programme before Christmas? Of course, that deals with academic education, but vocational education in my town is important too. Can I ask the Government to pay some attention to the mismatch between apprenticeship vacancies and when children are leaving school? So few vacancies are advertised in July and August; the highest number of vacancies is in February, six months after young people have left school. Surely there is a mismatch?

• 27 Nov 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Happy Lancashire day to you, Mr Speaker, and to all celebrating the historic county in Oldham, Chadderton and Royton. For 15 years, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs mileage rate has been 45p per mile for the first 10,000 miles. In that time, the cost of buying and running a car, and of insurance and repairs, has clearly increased, but HMRC has not caught up. As a result of those cost rises, the NHS uprated its figure and will now pay 56p per mile for the first 3,500 miles. [ Official Report , 1 December 2025; Vol. 776, c. 8WC.] (Correction) That means we now have a two-tier system, in which healthcare workers working for the NHS will be paid 25% more per mile than the home care worker in social care. Is it not time that HMRC got its act together, updated the rates, and finally treated working people with the respect that they deserve by paying them fairly for the mileage that they incur?