Kevin McKenna MP: speeches

Speeches

• 25 Jun 2026 · Draft Conversion Practices Bill · Hansard source

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  I am so grateful that the Bill is finally approaching this stage in its journey towards becoming law. I think of my younger self, in the 1980s—a gay man in a religious household. Family relationships were put under so much strain because of religious pressure not to come out as gay and not to be honest. Frankly, the community pressure at the time had an impact not just on me, but on my parents. It is so great that we can get to a point in our country’s development where parents will get support and will not be put under pressure forcibly to convert their children. This is an incredible moment. I want to explore a little the protection around health professionals, as others have mentioned, particularly for people who might not fit the more common boxes that people think about, such as being gay, lesbian or transgender. For example, people who are asexual come under insidious and forcible pressure to have sex. Some of that pressure comes from assumptions in the medical community that all human beings should aspire to have an active sex life, but this is part of normal human variation; some people just do not have that desire and are coming under pressure, under the guise of clinical interventions. Will the Minister explain how that will be addressed in the Bill?

• 10 Jun 2026 · Water Supply in Kent · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I commend my hon. and caring Friend the Member for Ashford (Sojan Joseph) for securing this important debate, which is very pressing for everyone in Kent. As the right hon. Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich (Sir Roger Gale) has just said, this issue is causing a lot of anxiety and aggravation for residents across the county. In my constituency, there are two main elements to that: the supply and the outfall—the sewage. In terms of supply, my constituency is in one of the driest parts of the country—drier even than other parts of Kent, which is already the driest part of the country—because we are on the north side of the north downs and in the rain shadow. That is great for growing apples and pears, and for a lot of the nature and wildlife that we have, but it keeps our marshes a little drier than they would be otherwise. However, we have real challenges with the supply of water, even with the large investment coming into the area, particularly to the Isle of Sheppey, which is exceptionally vulnerable. It is connected to the mainland of Great Britain by only a single water main that goes under the bridge. I had the pleasure of going underneath the Swale to see it, and it is surprisingly narrow. The entire island—nearly 40,000 people—is supplied by that very narrow pipe. Other infrastructure on the island is old, weak and creaking, and the cast iron water mains need replacing. I am grateful that the extra investment will mean that the 11 km east-west water main across the island will be replaced. The fundamental problem, though, is that we have not been building reservoirs across most of the country, to ensure that we can store water in the wetter months of the year. Sittingbourne is an industrial town with huge water users: we have the largest paper mill in the entirety of the United Kingdom—the second biggest in Europe—which uses massive amounts of water, as do other key industries in my constituency’s towns. They are competing with residents—my constituents—for drinking water. Ironically, the water level in Sittingbourne is very high. Since we lost the other water mill, the River Bourne, which runs underneath the town, and the river at Periwinkle are both running high. We have water in the area that is coming off the north downs, but we cannot necessarily access it for industrial use. There is a bit of abstraction, but not enough. We cannot access water for industries that could really benefit the area, such as hydrogen plants and other things that might come online. There are options for desalination. We are coastal and have lots of marsh areas, so I would appreciate hearing what the options for Kent are from the Minister. Other parts of the world that are even drier manage better than we do, so there is a fundamental question about how resilient we are in Kent. I would also like to hear from the Minister whether we have a clear plan for securing that sort of resilience across the supply by the end of the decade. What does that look like? My local council, Swale borough council, is extremely concerned by this. It has written to Southern Water and South East Water about the supply problems we have been facing and it wants to understand what the plans are for the future. As my hon. and caring Friend the Member for Ashford said, we want to understand why the communication has been so poor. It is poor partly because we have a hodgepodge of different organisations—multiple water companies, a drainage board and, to some extent, the Environment Agency as well, which is involved in land drainage. Who people need to go to is often confusing, and when crises are happening, it is hard to get through to the right people; it is not joined up well enough with local government. Recently, as the crisis was happening in places such as Whitstable and Herne Bay, we got a lot of emergency supply come into the area, particularly the Isle of Sheppey. Bottled water stations were set up—they thankfully did not need to be used—and water tankers were moved on, but even while that was happening, it was still hard for local councillors and me to find out exactly what was happening and where. I got a lot of agitated calls from residents and councillors saying, “Do you know what’s happening? How likely are we to lose water supply?” That needs to be tightened up. In terms of the drainage off the land, the sewage that is going into our waterways is a real concern, as the right hon. Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich said. I am grateful that Sheerness beach recently got its blue flag status renewed—please come to Sheerness for your summer holidays. Lots of local residents have been looking at the water. In Milton Creek in Sittingbourne, Raybel Charters, a group that restored the barge there and are in the water a lot, found that it is dirtier than the River Seine. Open water swimmers have been doing inspections at Queenborough and found bacteria there. National treasure and local legend Danny Dyer, who has been filming on the Isle of Sheppey, has also been investigating, and has found shocking amounts of E. coli and coliforms in the water—he does not want to damage the tourist reputation, given his caravan park. This is a real risk, and I want to understand what we can do about it. In particular, what are we going to do about securing future supply, especially through reservoirs and desalination plants? What is the plan, Minister?

• 4 Jun 2026 · Home-to-School Transport · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. Massive congratulations to the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Tom Gordon) on securing the debate. This issue matters to so many people around the country. My constituency is a coastal community, but also very rural in parts. Many of the issues raised by the hon. Member apply directly to Sittingbourne and Sheppey. A notable issue is the recent school allocations in the east of the island of Sheppey that sent people what on paper was a few miles, as the crow flies, but given that it is an island, there is an enormous body of water in the way, and as the Harty ferry from Harty island went many decades ago, it was never going to happen—unless the kids were really good at swimming. They are being sent on a more-than-two-hour journey by public transport, often on snarled-up roads, and we have terrible bus services, like so many rural areas. However, I want to focus on the issues for children with special educational needs and disabilities and particularly those aged 16 and older. Kent county council has recently changed the criteria that allow people to opt for school transport to their education and has now made it all but impossible for people with special educational needs to secure transport. In fact, more than 50 families have written to me about this in just the last couple of months, since it was announced that the policy was being changed. Some of the stories that I hear are heartbreaking. Anthony is one young lad. He is 17 years old and non-verbal. He is attending sixth form at the moment. Although he is mobile on his feet, he needs a lot of help with his day-to-day care: his toileting—the ability to toilet—but also his interaction with people if they are on public transport. In fact, he would always need to be chaperoned, which is not something that can now be afforded in this system. That puts him at risk and puts the public at risk as well. He is distraught—visibly so—and his mother is distraught at the fact that now he may be unable to access schools and complete his education. He is just one example of many. They have been through the appeals process, trying to get that overturned, and it is really opaque. When I have written to people at the county council to try to find out what the process is and what the criteria are for challenging these decisions—for Anthony and many other children in this situation—I am told that it is a case of exceptional circumstances only, but then they struggle to define what exceptional circumstances are. As we burrow through this, we find that in the end there is an absolute veto in terms of their local policies, which frankly, to my mind, just means that they can make it up as they see fit. There is no real guidance as to what is and is not possible. Anthony is not the only one. One of my near neighbours in Sittingbourne is Mason. I went to see him. He is a young lad of 16 with cerebral palsy. He has a fantastic wheelchair. It is a big chunky piece of kit that he requires to get around on. He is having a great time in sixth form at the moment, but from September that is not going to happen, because although nominally some funding has been allocated to him, it is not enough to hire transport. More to the point, when his parents have gone round looking for available transport in the area and have phoned up all nine of the local cab companies in Sittingbourne, not one of them has an adapted vehicle. To the point made about how transport impacts parents and other members of the family, Mason’s father drives their adapted vehicle to work and so is unable to use it to take him to school. Mason’s mother does not drive and has to take their daughter to a different school and get to work herself. One of those two parents is now under pressure to give up work in order to protect Mason’s education, which is going to be vital. This is a lad who could absolutely thrive as an adult if he can get through the key stages. We know a lot of people with SEND need to go through the later stages in education all the way up to 25 to give them the life skills and ability to interact with other people, and a degree of independence that means people like Mason and other children who are affected can get into work and employment, which we know is one of the Government’s key aims. In a constituency like mine, with particularly high levels of young people not earning or learning, the impact is felt ever further. There are other stories where people have gone through the appeals process. It is a very intrusive process pushed down on people where members of the extended family—uncles and aunts, near friends and quite distant members of the family—are all asked to give a reason why they cannot take the children to school. In one case, members of a family who live in Cornwall were asked to account for why they could not take the child to school, when, of course, my constituency is in Kent. Unless there is a rapid way of travelling, I do not think that is very likely. It is not very plausible and it just speaks to how the whole process is not coherent—and I am being very polite. The hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), who is not here, as he often isn’t, came to Kent soon after the election to give his opinion and to tell the Reform administration what he thought should happen. He was very clear. He said it was an enormous waste to spend money on getting kids to school. In fact, he said: “There are things called parents who for as long as modern times remember have had the aggravation of getting their kids to school.” That is a very characteristic turn of phrase from him. This is the modern world, not the 1950s or the 1850s. Transport is very complicated and we have a very different relationship with people with disabilities. I think particularly of families in which both parents are working. It really feeds into everything that is happening in Kent under its Reform administration. The leader of the Reform council said that breakfast clubs are a disaster because parents should be feeding their children. The trouble is, when I spoke to the county council to try to get clarity about what the criteria are, it pushed it back on the national Government and said that there is no tight guidance. In line with the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough, who secured the debate, I ask the Minister what we can do nationally to ensure that local authorities deliver what we want as a national policy: getting people into education, work or training, and making sure that everyone has access to a full and vibrant life. Is there a way of updating the statutory guidance for local authorities to include funding for transport for young people who need post-16 SEND transport? We need to get that in black and white so that local authorities have to consider it and cannot flim-flam away in the way that Kent county council has. That is my main ask.

• 3 Jun 2026 · South East Water: Disruption of Supply · Hansard source

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  Constituents of mine have been really worried and concerned by seeing residents of Herne Bay and Whitstable along the coast deprived of their essential water supplies. It should not have come as a shock; we know that there was 15% extra usage of water during the heatwave the other week, but local farmers were telling me in March and April that water supplies in the swales on Sheppey were really low. We have more investment coming, but it is really chalk and cheese in my area and in Swale, where we have Southern Water and South East Water. South East Water is absolutely dreadful, whereas on Sheppey—which is particularly vulnerable to water supply issues—we have a new water main coming, £4 million-worth of investment, and a massive new drainage system. The difference between those two companies is obvious, so will the Minister tell me how we cannot just increase the amount of investment going into the water system, but deliver it at pace, and how we can end the postcode lottery of whether people get water or do not just because of the management of these firms?

• 21 Apr 2026 · SS Richard Montgomery: Masts · Hansard source

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  Absolutely. As I have talked to people on Sheppey, some people have gone, “The masts are all ours! We have to have them all.” There are three masts—we can share. I know that it matters to people in Southend; I have had communications from some of my hon. Friend’s constituents, and also from people more generally. There is one extra snag in this project. Currently, the masts are the responsibility of the United Kingdom Government. There was an Act of Parliament in 1973, largely pulled together for the Richard Montgomery so that we could take on what has been described as the most dangerous wreck in Britain. Although for decades the United Kingdom Government have been responsible for ensuring that the masts are safe and that shipping transits around them safely, as soon as anything comes off the wreck, it reverts to its original owners, which are the United States Government. Although I know that people locally would like the masts, and I am sure that the United Kingdom Government would be happy for them to come to Sheppey and to Southend, we will have to ask the United States Government for one of the masts. There are three masts; Southend could have one, Sheppey could have one, and maybe one could go into the ballroom that Donald Trump is building at the moment—they would look great covered in gold leaf. Beyond that, this means that we must engage in a bit of diplomatic discussion with our American allies. It would be a massive testament to our partnership with our American friends during the second world war, and since then through NATO. It is a way of bringing that story to life for people. We could use this to bring us together, as it would bring people in Southend and Sheppey together. It could reignite—not literally; that would be terrible—the bonds with our American allies. I have a few questions for the Minister, some of which have been raised by my constituents. A no-fly zone has recently been extended around the wreck of the Montgomery, including bans on drones. Several constituents would like to know why and what has changed. Are the changes reflective of any additional concern about the explosive nature of the Montgomery’s cargo? People would also like to know what this would involve, and what we need to do to ask the Americans if we can have the masts. Do the Government still believe that the masts should be kept in the United Kingdom? I would also like some general evaluation of the Government’s ideas about a timeline for the removal of the masts and what it would involve. This is quite a romantic story in its way. Shipwrecks always have a degree of romance to them, and the Montgomery has the added frisson of an incredible amount of explosives, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West and Leigh (David Burton-Sampson) said, adds a little bit of fear. The wreck speaks to me about how such stories get embedded in communities, even over a few decades. The people of Sheppey really care. I have a petition running at the moment, and I hope that there is a petition in Southend, too. I encourage anyone to sign my petition so that we can show the strength of feeling and the real desire to finally bring the masts of the Richard Montgomery home to the United Kingdom, home to Sheppey and home to Southend.

• 21 Apr 2026 · SS Richard Montgomery: Masts · Hansard source

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  Yes, for any community that has strong links to the sea, the stories of the sea run deep in everyone’s veins. As I was about to come on to, there is an amazing mural in the middle of Sheerness of a fairly mean-looking mermaid who has her hands gripped around the plungers of a TNT detonator, threatening Sheerness. People have a sense of pride about that mural and the stories, and it matters to all the communities that surround the area where the Montgomery is laid to rest. It is important that we ensure that the masts are preserved for the future and, building on what the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, people locally are keen that if these masts are removed, they come to land. The Government, as I say, are removing the masts. We do not know what condition the masts will be in when they come off the ship, but certainly people in Sheppey would love to have one of the masts, at least, returned to the mainland.

• 21 Apr 2026 · SS Richard Montgomery: Masts · Hansard source

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  Madam Deputy Speaker, I am really grateful to you and the House for this opportunity to discuss something that is of immense importance to residents in Sittingbourne, and especially on the Isle of Sheppey. It should also be of real concern to Members of this House, since the wreck that I am about to talk about, which lies at the mouth of the Thames estuary, also presents a danger to the physical wellbeing of the Houses of Parliament themselves. For those who do not know, the Richard Montgomery, which lies just beneath the water at the mouth of the Thames, contains potentially the largest amount of explosives that could explode in peacetime anywhere in the world that has not been a nuclear test. This amount of explosives could, if they all went off at the same time, throw a plume of water 3,000 metres into the sky, setting off a tsunami that would obliterate vast swathes of the Kent and Essex coastline and shoot all the way up to London to flood all our colleagues who might be drinking on the Terrace of the House of Commons. This is obviously a real concern. I have to say that that was based on calculations done in the 1970s. More recent assessments of the wreck are not quite as dramatic. Nevertheless, there is a significant amount of munitions on the floor of the sea, just at the mouth of the most important river in our country, the River Thames. The Richard Montgomery came over during the 1940s. It was full of munitions that were being given to Britain to fight the Nazis in the second world war. Tragically, it lost its anchorage and drifted on to a sandbank. When the tide fell, it broke the back of the ship, leaving it marooned in the mouth of the Thames. Since then, it has been a major landmark that is used by ships to navigate their way up and down the River Thames and a warning to people not to get too close to the explosives. It can be seen from Sheerness, where it is only about a mile and a half out to sea. People who have grown up on Sheppey know this story. It does not just connect them to the second world war and the support we got from our American allies at that time; it also has a powerful story, because of the threat of the explosives, as people grow up around it and feel that they might be in danger of a catastrophic explosion occurring. In recent years, the wreck, which is a steel vessel, has been gradually deteriorating and corroding. Concerns have been raised about what would happen if the vessel should disintegrate completely and scatter the explosives across the sea or, even worse, if any of them were to be triggered. I have spoken to explosives experts and bomb disposal experts in the Royal Navy and the general feeling is that, when vessels such as this were set to sea, all the explosives and munitions on board were made safe. The detonators would have been kept separate from the high explosive charges and the risk is comparatively low, but we cannot say that there is zero risk. One of the concerns that has been raised in recent years is that, as the three masts that stand proud of the water erode and rust away, they could fall on the wreck and destroy what is left of the Richard Montgomery, either triggering an explosion or scattering the explosives. Over several years, the Government and the previous Government looked at what could be done to make it as safe as possible, and the decision was made to remove the masts. The Government have finally now signed a contract with the removal company that will dismantle the masts. This landmark will be lost forever to people from Sheerness, and the emotion and those stories are at risk of being lost locally.

• 17 Mar 2026 · Meningitis Outbreak · Hansard source

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  My heart also goes out to everyone affected by this terrible and unfolding tragedy. I think particularly of my constituents in Sittingbourne and Sheppey, many of whom are students who attend the universities in Canterbury or who go to school in Faversham. Many are staff there, too. It will be particularly hard on my constituent, Sue, whose son died of meningitis a few years ago. She has been tirelessly campaigning for a change in the law on the duty of care for people in those situations. Matthew would be alive today if action had been taken swiftly enough by the people who were with him. What more can we do to ensure that everyone on the ground across Kent and more widely knows what to do if they see the signs and symptoms of meningitis?

• 21 Jan 2026 · Warm Homes Plan · Hansard source

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  I am really pleased to see this plan. It is such a welcome change from the lukewarm gusts of air that came from the Opposition when they were in government. It is practical, pragmatic and deliverable. Lots of people in my constituency will welcome how fair it is, particularly for people on lower incomes, but also for those on middle incomes, houseowners and renters—everyone. The worry for people in my constituency is that we have a local authority in Kent county council that is committed to climate denialism. It is obsessed with it. How can people in my constituency get the advantages for their houses, jobs and employment, including the tradespeople who really want to be part of this?

• 15 Jan 2026 · Gambling Harms: Children and Young People · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is very knowledgeable about this subject, and he is bang on about all those actions. It is exactly that: gambling has to be treated as a public health issue. I would endorse all those actions. The key thing is that we look to regulate alcohol, junk food and all such items because we know that they cause risk and cost us all money; if they are increasing demand on the NHS, they are costing us money. Who is paying for that? At the moment, it is not the gambling firms, which are externalising the costs of their business on the rest of us, and causing harm in society. I really endorse what my hon. Friend said; we need to treat gambling as a risk, in the same way that we treat smoking, air pollution and drinking, and we need to manage it. That needs to be the lens through which the Government look at gambling, particularly when we consider children, who, of course, are different participants in society, economically. They are in a more vulnerable position, and they are our future. I entirely endorse that intervention, which leads me on to some key things. I know that many of my hon. Friends want to speak and have some key points to make, but I need to reiterate that, at a fundamental level, this is not about banning gambling; it is about managing the harms caused by gambling. I represent a seaside constituency that has a dog track and seaside slot arcades. Those are things that we can manage, and they are in places we would expect to see such things. However, we know that, as gambling starts to move into new areas, that brings in new risks. That is why the fact that some of those things are moving away from seaside areas, where they can be controlled and people are used to regulating them, is a really important issue. I am not asking for us to ban them; I am asking for us to regulate, and to treat gambling harms as a public health emergency, which is what I believe they are developing into, because the tech is moving so fast. I see my hon. Friend the Member for Brent East has taken her place.

• 15 Jan 2026 · Gambling Harms: Children and Young People · Hansard source

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  I entirely agree with my hon. Friend; this is all very much interconnected. She used the terminology “grooming”; those psychology-based behaviours really are a form of grooming and manipulation. I also think it would help to start thinking about the effect of secondary gambling on people, in the same way that we think about secondary smoking. Passive smoking became a very big concern; I do not want to call it “passive gambling”, but the secondary effects of gambling need to be taken as seriously as its direct effects. What are the Government doing in terms of regulating gambling as a public health issue? That is a key question for the Minister. I really welcome the changes to the gambling levy, and I particularly welcome the fact that it is targeted at children in poverty; the money is being used to offset the harm, socially, that is directly caused by gambling. As my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Ben Coleman) said, we also need to regulate gambling advertising, so how are the Government ensuring that gambling advertising regulations keep pace with the change in modern digital technologies, especially social media and pop-up ads? What steps are the Government taking to protect children and young people from gambling-related harm through the course of their whole lives? While it is grabbing children while they are young—sometimes leading to the worst outcomes of all, with children killing themselves young—it is also affecting them as they move into adulthood and employment. Unfortunately, because once someone has this addiction it is very hard to move beyond it, even with a lot of intervention, many of those people then die in their adulthood; but the harm started earlier. I would really like to hear from the Minister on that.

• 15 Jan 2026 · Gambling Harms: Children and Young People · Hansard source

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  I thank every Member who has contributed to this debate. It has been very powerful, and I have valued the detail that people have added; many are key bits of evidence that build up to show the threat that gambling represents to children and young people in this country. I particularly commend my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger) and the work that the APPG on gambling reform does. That work was important in preparing my understanding of the problem before this debate, as was the great work done by the Health and Social Care Committee. It was good to hear some members of that Committee contributing today. This debate has shown how profoundly this issue has affected people and how rapidly it is changing. I thank the Minister for his reply, particularly his commitment to research. It is really important—the only thing I would add is that we have to move fast. As someone from a health background, who has been involved in many health studies, I know that they can move too slowly. We are on rapidly shifting ground, so there are we need to take. While his Department does sterling work on this, I reiterate my feeling that, as always, health should be the principal lens through which we look at this issue. I thank the Chair, and everyone who has contributed to the debate. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the impact of gambling harms on children and young people.

• 15 Jan 2026 · Gambling Harms: Children and Young People · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered the impact of gambling harms on children and young people. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell, and to see so many people in the Chamber today for this important debate. I am very aware that the topic of gambling and the harms that it causes to children and young people is important to many Members of this House and many of our constituents. There have already been quite a number of debates on gambling in this Parliament, and I know that Select Committees have looked at it as well. I have talked to my constituents and to various people who have been campaigning against the harms caused by gambling, and we feel that there has been a gap when it comes to looking at the impact: a lot of attention has been paid to adults who are gambling, but there are also real impacts on children. I pay tribute to hon. Members who have been taking a strong stand on gambling. My hon. Friend the Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler) has been campaigning very hard on the impacts, and the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) has been working tirelessly over the years. It is a cross-party concern, so it is really good to see lots of people here. I want to say thank you to my constituent Lesley, who lost her son to gambling several years ago. She cannot be here today, because she is having surgery, but apparently she is watching the debate through one puffy eye. My heart goes out to Lesley and to everyone who has lost loved ones due to gambling. We lose something like 500 people a year in this country directly to gambling, through suicide. The impacts are massive. What I really want to explore today, in relation to children and young people, is how we should look at gambling as a public health issue, and one that is of rising concern because of changes in the way people gamble. People are gambling with all sorts of new technologies, and the country is gambling with lives. The charity Gambling With Lives is here: it has supported me, other MPs and our constituents who have lost people, and I want to say a massive thank you for its support. We also have Rosie here today, who lost her son a few years ago to gambling. When people have lost those who are dear to them, it is so brave that they are standing up and saying, “This has to stop, because it is needless.” Gambling is a normal human activity—but perfectly normal human activities such as eating, drinking and, frankly, having sex are things that we look at through a public health lens, because there are health consequences, and gambling needs to be treated in the same way. With children and young people, it helps to look at the two broad ways in which they experience harms. People can experience harms from gambling directly. The number of people who engage with gambling at a very young age is shocking. Something that stood out to me was when I met a young person in his early 20s who is now a real advocate, particularly for the impacts of gambling on communities that face high levels of deprivation and poverty. He started gambling when he was seven and had a serious gambling addiction by the time he went to secondary school, which had massive impacts on his schooling, his education and his relationships as he was trying to learn how to handle his finances in life. We all know that people should not be gambling when they are seven, and as parliamentarians we all know that the law says they should not be gambling when they are seven—but it is happening. That is partly because the nature of gambling in our society is changing, including the way people access it. It is not just that they are going to the old turf accountants or the bookies on the high street; there are many new, innovative ways in which people are accessing gambling. Although I welcome innovation, I do not welcome innovation where it causes harm. We also need to look at how much gambling is happening online on people’s phones, and possibly at the interactions between the psychological mechanisms behind gambling and social media, because they have a lot in common. This room is full of politicians, and politicians may well doomscroll occasionally on social media—it is not unheard of. Lots of people in this room will know the feeling of scrolling through feeds on various social media platforms that I will not mention, at this point, and getting addicted. That is because various social media platforms have been engineered to hijack our dopamine chemistry and the reward centres in our brain—the stuff that we evolved so we could handle risky situations. Gambling is a way of handling risk and turning risk into an activity that is pleasurable or exciting to a lot of people. We need to be able to handle risk, but people have hijacked it, just as some of the food companies and producers have frankly hijacked our appetites and driven us towards foods that drive up obesity. In the same way, alcohol companies can drive up drinking. I like alcohol, and none of this is a prohibitionist argument: it is an argument about regulation. The second key issue is that, as well as being engaged in gambling, children are affected indirectly. I will address the direct harms first. Because people use social media, children have access to smartphones, meaning that the harm manifests in the same way as with adults who are gambling legally. They can access gambling 24/7 and are subjected to gambling advertisements and inducements to gamble at all times. That is what is happening to our children. Although adverts are, in theory, targeted at adults, children are experiencing them, in the same way that they experience many other harms and things that we do not want them to see online. These adverts are designed to get into people’s heads and get them to engage in gambling, often at points in the evening when they are quite vulnerable. Adults are reporting that, because advertising and gambling companies have all this data on them, adverts are being targeted towards the late evening, when they may be on their own in their bedroom and feeling a bit tired. When their defences are down, that is when they see a little inducement to gamble. The same is happening to children. We should be aware that the gambling industry spends about £2 billion on advertising in the United Kingdom. It is not spending that for nothing. We also know that, roughly speaking, the impacts of gambling on society cost about £1.7 billion. That is a soft figure, but it could well be a lot more; it is very hard to calculate the harms. The advertising industry is spending at least as much on advertising as the harm it is causing to our nation. That should give us pause for thought about the real impacts on our economy. There is a lot of concern, not just over the accessibility of gambling and online slot games, but about the fact that many of them are marketed as games. I am a little bit old and I do not play computer games with loot boxes, but loot boxes are a form of gambling. This House has looked at them, and they are an inducement to gamble. Children are being exposed to the gamification of something that can cause harm. We must look at gambling as a social activity that, for a very large number of people, is fatal. If we were looking at it as an illness, we would say that it had a high mortality rate. Of course, gambling addiction is an illness, and it does have a high mortality rate. That is why we need to look at it as a public health issue. When children start as young as seven, they do not have the same defences as adults. There is increasing evidence that a person’s brain has higher levels of plasticity until their mid-20s, and that adolescents are more likely to engage in risk-taking behaviours. At the same time that we want adolescents to start to learn responsibility in life, gambling is getting in and hijacking the development of people’s ability to handle their own finances and adult decisions, and it is sucking them into online games. I am very concerned about that, but I am equally concerned about the effects on children when an adult in their household is gambling. There is a double effect. We all know that if a household has someone in it whose gambling is out of control and causing damage, that can have knock-on and ripple effects. For children, who are in a more vulnerable position, we know that emotional and psychological harms are caused by being in a household with someone who is gambling, because of the behaviours that the adult starts to express—the tension and anxiety that they may be going through, and the unhelpful lessons that they may be teaching that young child. We also know that gambling, and financial distress generally, can lead to conflict within families. It can lead to tensions, to relationship breakdowns and—as situations like this so often do in families, and as too many of us know from our own experiences and those of our constituents—to a spiral of abuse and neglect. Gambling is a key driver of that. If our Government are really serious about bringing prevention to the fore in the health strategy, they need to identify risks and harms and intervene early. Gambling is among those risks and harms. I do not think we can make our health strategy work without tackling gambling, because so many other things are tied in with it. Financial insecurity is a key driver of health problems and health inequalities, and gambling is a part of the puzzle that we need to address. Gambling can also lead to financial deprivation; if there is no money left, the children are going to suffer. We know that parents will often prioritise feeding their children ahead of themselves, but where the adult in the situation is a gambling addict, they are likely, unfortunately, to prioritise their gambling over their child. That is where there is a vulnerable, non-consenting child who needs extra support. Those are the categories of harms, so we must think about what they mean in practice for children. What are the impacts? The harms are reflected in behavioural and physical changes in the children. It is obvious that there are physical changes as a result of being short of food, but there are also physical and behavioural effects of abuse and neglect that lead to longer-term impacts over a child’s whole life. They can impact a child’s ability to function well at school, and thereby impact educational attainment. They can impact the child’s expectations of life. They can reduce their life chances. They can also add to a lot of the problems that we are facing across the country, where we have people in families with multigenerational unemployment who have not learned the habit of working, and children who think that gambling may be the way to a prosperous life. That is a real impact, and it impacts on so many other parts of the Government’s missions. We want to get people into work—into stable employment—but, if this is the environment that they are in, it can hamper that goal. My question to the Minister is, “If the companies that are playing these games—that are inducing harm and using the techniques of modern social media and modern online tools to get into people’s heads—are undermining the Government’s other missions, how are we going to act on that?” That is a really important question. Gambling also has intergenerational effects, because children affected by it may become problem gamblers themselves. We are talking about large numbers of people: we think that 190,000 children in this country between the ages of 11 and 17 are affected by problem gambling. Nearly 25% of people who use online slot machines are engaged in problem gambling, and when we add it all up and include people who are at risk, it is about 40% of the total number of people who are gambling online. Those are large numbers of people in a growing and rapidly adapting market. I would like to hear from the Minister about how the Government can move faster. We have seen challenges in the last few weeks with nudification tools, child abuse images and sexual abuse material appearing on mainstream social media because of the adaptability of artificial intelligence tools and their ability to move really fast. The tech companies are—as we want them to—innovating and developing things quickly, so the Government need to change their pace of action as well. I think we are a bit too slow on this issue.

• 7 Jan 2026 · Ukraine and Wider Operational Update · Hansard source

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  I thank the Secretary of State for his statement, and commend our incredible servicemen and women who have defended our interests here. I am increasingly worried, as are many other Members, about the shadow fleets and the way in which they are operating in the world. Given that there are two international ports in my constituency, I should like the Secretary of State to reassure my constituents by telling me how the United Kingdom will protect the workers, sailors and companies operating out of the Sheerness and Ridham docks at sea in future.

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

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  I am horrified to report to you and to the House that last night in Swale borough council there were violent scenes, as people wearing balaclavas in the public gallery violently intimidated councillors. They were threatening them and pelting them with eggs and missiles from the gallery. This is an attack on democracy itself, it is an attack on free speech, and it is an attack on my constituents. The building was so badly vandalised afterwards, with toilets flooded and lifts destroyed, that it cannot be used today and is not open. My constituents cannot access council services because of these actions. Our democracy is based on the ability to disagree with each other strongly but never violently. What can be done here in the House of Commons for councillors and MPs across the country who are facing growing levels of violent intimidation?

• 10 Dec 2025 · Resident Doctors: Industrial Action · Hansard source

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  I have worked so many Christmases and new years as a nurse in the NHS, and I know the weary dread with which so many colleagues are facing this threat of strike action, particularly against the background of a spike in respiratory illnesses. It will be devastating. In a good year without strikes, it would be bad enough. I really commend the Secretary of State for the work he has done to address what have been long-running sores in the experience of resident doctors. Some of this is genuinely transformational, and what I know a lot of clinical colleagues have been after for so long. But healthcare is a collective activity. It is the multidisciplinary team that delivers healthcare, not individual doctors or individual nurses, so can I recommend that the Secretary of State keeps focusing on that collective improvement to the NHS, as I know he has been doing? I implore everyone in the BMA who is listening: let’s just put this to bed now. It is time for everyone to have a healthy Christmas.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Catapults and Antisocial Behaviour · Hansard source

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  It remains a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. Again, I congratulate the hon. and gallant Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) on bringing forward the debate. Further down the Thames from the idyllic picture that he has portrayed of his constituency of Spelthorne, my constituency sits at the mouth of the Thames, and we have all the same problems. This is very much an issue of rural crime and animals being brutally injured and maimed. It is causing a large amount of fear, aggravation and disgust for a lot of people living in the villages around Sittingbourne and Sheerness. It is also a problem in the towns. The issue actually first came to my attention in Sittingbourne, where our local church hall was smashed up with catapults. We have had shops smashed with catapults, as well as other churches. Indeed, when we were mustering for the Remembrance parade on Remembrance Sunday this year, on the night before, we could see that a whole load of empty flats above the high street had been smashed with catapults. So it is an urban issue as well. Some of what is driving the problem is shops that are recklessly selling catapults on the high street in town as an easy inducement for local kids to take them up, with no checks or controls over them. As I am sure hon. Members are aware, catapults can be fun. They are seen as a child’s toy, but they are not a child’s toy when what is being shot out of them are enormous, weighty ball bearings. I have held some of the ones that our local farmers have handed to me; they are bigger than the end of my thumb. Such a shot going at high velocity through an animal, or God forbid, a human skull could easily be fatal. We have to be very aware that this is not just an issue of maiming animals and property damage; at some point, this could easily become a human fatality. It is something that we really have to attend to. From speaking to the police, I know that they have come up with similar solutions. Some police are more assertive at being able to seize catapults from children they think are offending. Where this has hit the blocks is if the person is carrying a catapult in one pocket and a shot in another. The shot can be ball bearings or even pebbles. Once they have dropped them on the ground, there is no indication that they were carrying the catapult with any form of ammunition. Also, there is a real feeling that the police do not quite have the powers needed. I have spoken to the National Farmers Union and to ASB Help to work out some options and ways forward. I strongly congratulate the hon. and gallant Member for Spelthorne on bringing another option to the table. One option that I have been looking at with the NFU is simply scheduling catapults as an offensive weapon. Other options include some sort of licensing scheme, which seems rather complicated, although it might be something we need to move towards if we cannot make this work in any other way. I have talked to police on the ground, particularly those in the fantastic neighbourhood policing team that has just started in Sittingbourne, and they think that catapults being an offensive weapon will help enormously. We really need to get to grips with this issue, so the mysterious meeting that my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Jim Dickson) and I apparently had with Ministers was really an attempt to bring the issue to the Government’s table and to make sure that its seriousness was properly assessed. Some may have seen that in the south-east of England, the BBC has done some really good investigative journalism on this issue. There have been fantastic if quite harrowing reports, with some really disturbing pictures. A lot of that had not really come to the Government’s table up to that point, so I commend the BBC team for that investigation. I am really glad that, during that discussion, Ministers told my hon. Friend and I that they would like to convene some experts around the table to look at what the best options are. I recognise—this is important to remember—that there are legitimate uses of a catapult beyond the pages of The Beano . Anglers use catapults to fire bait into the water. Also, I had not been aware of this before, but I now know that there is competitive catapult shooting, which is absolutely fine. It is a good and laudable activity that fits very much with what was being discussed earlier in relation to the need for good options for young children to improve their motor skills and camaraderie. These are all good things. Catapults being an offensive weapon would not stop that happening, but we need to have discussions, with anglers and professional and amateur catapultists around the table, to make sure that there are no unintended consequences from any changes in the law. This is a real problem in our towns and rural areas. It needs to be stopped before there are human fatalities. Also, the destruction of wildlife by catapults needs to be stopped immediately. I ask Ministers to update us on the plans to review this issue and to bring experts together. Like all the hon. Members attending this debate, I would very much like to be part of that.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Catapults and Antisocial Behaviour · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond, and I commend the hon. and gallant Member for securing this debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Jim Dickson) and I were the two who went along to that meeting—it is disappointing that our names were not added to that letter. I would like to contribute to the debate, because this is a serious issue in my constituency, but I will save that for later; I will just say that it was us, and we are very glad to have this debate.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Catapults and Antisocial Behaviour · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

• 17 Nov 2025 · Illegal Waste: Organised Crime · Hansard source

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  On Raspberry Hill Lane in my constituency near the village of Iwade, there is one of these mega illegal dumps. It has started metastasising, sprouting accessory dumps nearby, all in an attempt to evade the police and the Environment Agency. It is not just putting pressure on and destroying the countryside, but putting strains on legitimate waste processing businesses in my constituency such as Sweeep, Countrystyle, MVV and DS Smith, which are key to recycling the waste that we produce. Will the Minister tell my constituents how we are not only increasing the capacity of the Environment Agency and the police to handle this problem with extra resources, but boosting the capability of those agencies—particularly with the skills and the cross-agency working that is needed—to get to the bottom of this serious organised crime?

• 12 Nov 2025 · SEND Provision: Kent · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to serve under your chairship, Sir John. The stories that my hon. and learned Friend is recounting completely match those that I get in my inbox and hear in my surgeries—these stories are repeated across the county. My constituency has a higher than the national, regional and county average of people with learning disability needs, and we are just not getting the support we need. I want to flag two things. The SEND team at the council is extremely unresponsive to parents and schools and, indeed, to me and my office—I am sure that is true for colleagues, too. There is also a pattern of schools saying they can care for a child but being turned down. That is happening over and over again, and people are being forced to travel many miles across the county in a way that is simply not possible for children with this level of need.

• 23 Oct 2025 · English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (Tenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I would just like to give a counter. We have heard some very interesting evidence, but my own local authority has the misfortune to operate under the committee system, which was largely brought about in a deal that created a rainbow coalition with the Greens and some other local parties. Honestly, it is a dismal failure. Contrary to the evidence that has been presented, it has made the council more siloed, and fewer councillors feel that they can engage well with the council. Frankly, it is the whim of every individual committee chair as to how they operate, often constraining meetings to an extremely short duration. That has reduced the amount of scrutiny and gummed up the business of the council. I would like to present that as evidence from someone who actually lives within a council that has a committee system.

• 23 Oct 2025 · English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is obvious. My area has a very different socioeconomic status from that of the rest of Kent—frankly, a lot of the coastal parts of Kent are very different from the centre of Kent. The authority will not be as large as Kent county council, which currently is responsible for the biggest challenges—special educational needs and disabilities, adult social care and children’s social care. Those are a lot of the things that matter most to my constituents. Having more like with like areas in a unitary authority, the likely outcome of this reorganisation where I am, will be a massive improvement and will allow other parts of Kent to focus on their special needs.

• 23 Oct 2025 · English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain. The hon. Gentleman speaks with great passion, which is very much informed by his local circumstances in Hampshire. I can share my local circumstances in Kent, where the current two-tier system just does not work for my constituents. We have some great councillors in Swale and some good councillors in Kent, but over decades the system has not worked because the needs of people in certain parts of Kent are so different from the needs of people in my constituency, which is a much poorer, more industrial and more deprived area. We have been overlooked. I am afraid that the people in Tunbridge Wells, which is a great town, do not get the needs of people in Sheerness. This change will be a massive improvement for people in my neck of the woods, and that is why I support it.

• 15 Oct 2025 · Pride in Place · Hansard source

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  Since the announcement of £20 million for the east of Sheppey, my constituents have been fizzing with excitement. I am getting loads of responses to my online surveys, and the coffee morning I held on Saturday—the first of many I will hold—was very well attended. People had really great ideas, but they had two main things to feed back. First, they want local people to be at the heart of this initiative. The citizens of Eastchurch, Warden, Leysdown and Shellness all want to be part of it, but they want to make sure it is centred on them, not on outside voices. Secondly, they want the funding to be a catalyst for further change and investment in the area. I would like to hear the Minister’s thoughts on that, and I would also quickly remind her that I have three more neighbourhoods in the bottom 10% of the country—just to add that to the list.