Sarah Russell MP: speeches

Speeches

• 21 Oct 2025 · Sentencing Bill · Hansard source

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  I do not know the details of the case to which the hon. Member refers, which makes it impossible for me to give an informed comment by return. None the less, I can genuinely say, speaking from 13 or 14 years’ experience practising as a solicitor before I came to this place, as well as a lot of time spent in the Labour party and meeting leftie people, that the two did not really overlap. They just did not.

• 21 Oct 2025 · Sentencing Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Member give way?

• 21 Oct 2025 · Sentencing Bill · Hansard source

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  I broadly agree with the hon. Member on the overall topic: we should look at whether those offences are dealt with with sufficient severity. I also agree that the impact on people’s families cannot be overstated.

• 21 Oct 2025 · Rape Gangs: National Statutory Inquiry · Hansard source

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  Ellie Reynolds has said that financial dependency has made people stay silent when they should speak, and also alleged that people on the panel were isolated by having contact with each other discouraged. The Minister has been extremely clear that this is a fully independent process and has not had Government involvement, but how does she propose to handle the very complex relationship between the concerns that Ellie Reynolds has spoken clearly about and ensuring that the process retains the faith of everyone involved?

• 16 Oct 2025 · Ada Lovelace Day · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) so much for securing this important debate. Other hon. Members have already outlined some fantastic initiatives to encourage women and girls in STEM. Such initiatives are so important. There is one in my constituency, at the all-girls Sandbach high school, which runs an extracurricular club called CAUC—Complete and Utter Chaos—for their female students. To be honest, it does not sound chaotic to me: together they design and build electric cars in the school’s workshop, and then race them against other schools at prestigious circuits around the country, including Silverstone. I have been and it is honestly phenomenal. They have this car building workshop, and it is just incredible. The aim of CAUC is to inspire and encourage female students to pursue careers in traditionally male-dominated industries. We know that, at the moment, only 14.5% of UK engineers are female. The club looks to expose its students to a unique hands-on learning opportunity and many of them have gone on to do STEM degrees and become engineers and have obtained placements, including with Bentley and an F1 racing team. They are doing great stuff. There is also the Jodrell Bank observatory in my constituency, which I truly love and have spoken about before—I should mention that a member of my immediate family works elsewhere within the University of Manchester. There are lots of fantastic women at Jodrell Bank doing groundbreaking research and discovery, and I want to recognise that Jodrell Bank has made active efforts to improve the percentage of women using its radio telescope with double-blind evaluation of applications for it. Having done that, female scientists now take up 50% of the telescope’s usage, which is fantastic and what we should all be aiming for. The point I want the Government to look at is that there is a massive problem with childcare for people doing PhD studentships. I do not regard childcare as exclusively women’s work, nor do I regard it as exclusively their financial cost to bear. None the less, if a person doing a PhD is a young woman wishing to have children, it takes years and it is quite likely to be within a time during which they might want to have kids. At the moment, if they do a fully funded PhD, paid for by the state, they are not eligible for free childcare hours within nursery settings. An average PhD stipend is £15,000, whereas an average full-time nursery place is £12,500 a year. People would be completely unable to live and parent on that sort of money. We should urgently change that. Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered radio pulsars during her PhD. We could be losing all kinds of talent by having that restriction.

• 16 Oct 2025 · Health and Social Care Committee · Hansard source

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  The statistics in this report and everything they reflect are completely shocking. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Erdington (Paulette Hamilton) for bringing it forward on behalf of the Committee. Records at Leighton, my local hospital, show that work has been done on improving experiences and outcomes for Asian and black women, but unfortunately, given the quality of data collection, it is quite difficult to be sure whether that is translating into better clinical outcomes for everyone—particularly black and Asian women. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to urgently push that work forward?

• 15 Oct 2025 · Work for Serving Prisoners · Hansard source

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  My local women’s prison is HMP Styal, and my hon. Friend will be aware of the Clink Charity, which does work in developing people’s skills in hospitality. Its ability to operate in HMP Styal collapsed completely because, as there was such a shortage of prison officers, the women were locked up for so much of the time that it was simply unable to provide the service. In other prisons, the charity is being forced to retender for contracts on a commercial basis. It is a not-for-profit that was set up to do that work. I encourage the Minister—I wonder whether my hon. Friend agrees—to review whether contracting in the Ministry of Justice is really working as we need it to in that regard.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Children with SEND: Assessments and Support · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) for opening this important debate, as well as everyone who signed the petition and those who filled in my survey on SEND matters this summer. The level of distress that the current system is causing to both children and their parents is difficult to overstate. The parents I see in my surgeries are so distressed, and so are their children.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Children with SEND: Assessments and Support · Hansard source

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  I agree with my hon. Friend; in fact, that is a matter I will come on to. The distress I see within this system is staggering. I see parents making decisions about taking their children to school, when they suspect that the school place might be damaging for their child, but they also strongly suspect that not taking their child to school is damaging that child—that is a horrific position for parents and children to be placed in. I see two big points of problem in the system. The first is when children or their parents are seeking a diagnosis. In response to my survey, I heard from parents who had got into thousands of pounds—sometimes tens of thousands of pounds—of debt in seeking diagnoses for their children, because they were so desperate to get them some help. However, when they get that EHCP, after a great fight and sometimes legal confrontation, they often find that the support that it gives is not consistently maintained, despite schools doing their absolute best—I have never met a teacher who did not want to help children with special educational needs. Those parents are then incredibly distressed, and those children struggle to stay in school. The second difficulty, I find, occurs as their children get somewhat older: the parents have the diagnosis that they desperately wanted, but their teenage child’s mental health goes down sharply. At that point, they often find that a neurodivergent diagnosis is a hindrance to getting their children the mental health support that they need. That is shocking; it is appalling that people appear to think, on a widespread basis, that autism inherently involves anxiety, and therefore children with an autism diagnosis do not need support with their mental health. That is what I am hearing from parents in my constituency. I could give so many stories. I recently spoke to one parent who explained that her son had repeatedly gone missing from home. She has had referrals to CAMHS from the police, social services and other organisations, and her son is 13 years old and suicidal, but there is a two-year wait for a child’s mental health assessment in my constituency and he is not deemed to meet the threshold. This is life and death for our children, and it is really frightening. These parents are terrified; as my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) mentioned, they are so frightened for their children that they cannot go to work and leave them unattended. I ask the Minister to please process as quickly as possible the applications for special schools at Westfields and Flag Lane Baths, previously flagged to her predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell).

• 11 Sept 2025 · Regional Transport Inequality · Hansard source

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  I was quite tempted to stand up this afternoon and just say the word “pothole” over and over again for three solid minutes, as the peculiarity of such an approach might really bring home to the Minister, who I know has been doing his best on these matters, quite how strongly my constituents feel about the state of their roads. The Government did give Cheshire East several million pounds more in this year’s Budget to deal with road maintenance backlogs than in recent years, which was very much appreciated by my constituents. However, the reality is that 14 years of chronic underfunding has left my roads in a catastrophic state. I cannot emphasise enough how dark, dangerous and worrying rural roads are—the number of young people who die on the roads in my constituency is absolutely horrific. Similarly, I cannot emphasise enough that we need separate funding for significant safety upgrades, as well as a dramatic increase to the road maintenance pot as soon as the Government are able to do so. There is another matter concerning roads in my constituent that I want to draw attention to. Gritting might sound like a trivial thing to those living in an urban area, but gritting in rural areas is absolutely critical. Our roads get a lower level of use, and the result is that they freeze and stay frozen for longer periods of time. One impact of my local authority having had so many financial challenges over the past 14 years has been reductions in gritting. There are schools in my rural areas that have no pavements outside them, and the roads in front of them are completely and utterly ungritted. When those children are dropped off at school, they are put into a road—alongside cars—which has not been gritted at all. Headteachers do their best to mitigate the associated risks by not demanding that parents bring their children in on time, so the lack of safety features not only puts children at risk, but undermines their education. Let me contrast that with London, where automatic number plate recognition cameras help to shut roads off completely at specific times of day. I find it staggering that we have such a complete contrast in treatment. Of course, I want children in London to be safe; this is not about taking things away from London schools, but it is very much about children in my constituency, as well as older people and others, having the same access and safety as everyone else. Briefly, given that I have only 30 seconds left, I want to touch on Northern Rail and the complete lack of Sunday services in my constituency. The strikes have been going on for a year, and we desperately need the issue to be resolved. Sandbach station rail accessibility, including the lack of an accessible lift at the station, is a huge issue. I echo points made by colleagues about the importance of funding such things properly. Lastly, there has been a 67% reduction in buses in my local area over the past 15 years. We must improve on that desperate situation.

• 4 Sept 2025 · Criminal Justice System: Technology · Hansard source

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  3. What steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to help improve efficiency in the criminal justice system through the use of technology. [R]

• 4 Sept 2025 · Criminal Justice System: Technology · Hansard source

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  I thank the Solicitor General for that answer. The courts system and all the associated IT have been left in the most catastrophic state by the previous Conservative Government. It is shocking that £2 billion was spent on a civil courts IT system that cannot even handle litigation where there is more than one claimant or defendant, which is basic and normal. The particular issue that worries me today, though, is the Legal Aid Agency and the state of its IT system; as she will know, it was the subject of a cyber-attack in the spring. Could she update us on that situation and on any potential plans to build back better?

• 1 Sept 2025 · Poverty Reduction · Hansard source

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  5. What steps she is taking to reduce the number of children in poverty in Congleton constituency.

• 22 Jul 2025 · Changing Places Toilets · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. I am very sad to report that there are no Changing Places toilets in my constituency on the website—not a single one. I believe that, actually, Congleton leisure centre does have a Changing Places toilet, and I believe that Ruby’s Fund also has a very extensive disabled-facilitated toilet, although not to Changing Places standard. Does he agree that, when I have a constituency of 90,000 people, with four towns and multiple villages, that is an appalling state of affairs and we need to do better?

• 22 Jul 2025 · Changing Places Toilets · Hansard source

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  That is fantastic, but could the Minister please think about how we can address this issue for those of us with predominantly rural communities that have smaller towns that are unlikely to have very large buildings?

• 21 Jul 2025 · Extending the Ukraine Permission Extension Scheme · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He talks about children. There are children in my constituency who came here as very small children and have only ever been in the English education system. Their parents are deeply concerned about what will happen to them going forward, so it would be appropriate for us to look to put in place permanent measures as soon as humanly possible. I am sure he would also want to join me in thanking the host families in my constituency, who I am so proud of and grateful to, and Refugees Welcome, which continues to work to help Ukrainian families integrate in our community.

• 14 Jul 2025 · Condition of Roads: Cheshire · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Lady—she is being very collegiate, as she always is. Does she agree that it is incredibly important in our beautiful Cheshire towns that our roads are maintained in good condition? I am thinking in particular of a stretch of road in Alsager, which is lovely and has a fantastic local café, but it is a major part of the town centre, and the degeneration of the road is making it look less attractive than it otherwise could be. Does she agree that those are important points, not simply for the state of the road, but for the whole local economy?

• 4 Jul 2025 · Dogs (Protection of Livestock) (Amendment) Bill · Hansard source

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  The Minister mentions forests. I want to congratulate Trees for Congleton, which has just planted its 30,000th tree in Congleton. It set out a few years ago to plant one tree for every citizen in the town, and it has achieved that. I think that is quite remarkable.

• 4 Jul 2025 · Dogs (Protection of Livestock) (Amendment) Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for Chester South and Eddisbury (Aphra Brandreth) for bringing forward this Bill, which is immensely popular with local farmers. I have met with the NFU and its membership repeatedly over months, if not most of the last year, and it is always one of the first things they mention to me. I commend her for her sterling work and for the collegiate way in which she always conducts herself, including in this matter. It is fantastic that we are extending protection to alpacas and llamas. No one wants to see attacks or worrying, and including both those definitions is really important and strengthens the law appropriately. I am incredibly impressed that the Bill covers paths and roads. The hon. Member for Chester South and Eddisbury thinks her constituency is the most beautiful in the country but, of course, it is not even the most beautiful in Cheshire, because mine is better. One of the really beautiful things I did recently was go to Goostrey Rose Festival last weekend. We have new paths in Goostrey and they are used incredibly regularly by dog walkers, but they are on farm boundaries. This legislation is so important for covering paths like those. I have been on a farm with a family in the aftermath of a dog attack, and it is terrible. I am not here to demonise dog owners—we have so many considerate, sensible, countryside-loving dog owners in my constituency—and I know the hon. Member for Chester South and Eddisbury is not either. We are here to make sure that the overwhelming majority of people are left in peace to go about their everyday lives, in both the farming community and the dog-owning community—they are often one and the same—and to make sure that rural crime is properly prosecuted. GPS theft is another major component of rural crime in my area. Our local police and crime commissioner, Dan Price, has been doing work on this, and the hon. Member for Chester South and Eddisbury has been involved in it. It would be great to get an update from the Minister on that. I want to take a moment to thank the NFU, which has lobbied me extensively on this issue. I am on its food and farming fellowship and have learned a great deal from it. I also thank the farmers in my constituency for continuing to feed us and for looking after the countryside so well.

• 4 Jul 2025 · Animal Welfare (Import of Dogs, Cats and Ferrets) Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for introducing this fantastic Bill, which does important things for animal welfare. Sadly, my constituency has a problem with dog-on-dog attacks, which are truly distressing to their owners. The overwhelming majority of dog owners in my constituency are incredibly responsible and keep their dogs under control at all times, but a tiny minority are doing a great deal of damage. Does the hon. Member have any thoughts on what we could do about that?

• 4 Jul 2025 · Animal Welfare (Import of Dogs, Cats and Ferrets) Bill · Hansard source

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  May I take a moment to mention Dobermann Rescue, based in my constituency, which also does fantastic work? I am sure my hon. Friend will join me in commending its work.

• 3 Jul 2025 · NHS 10-Year Plan · Hansard source

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  I thank the Secretary of State for the 10-year plan. Moving quickly on the dentistry contract is extremely important to my constituents, but I want to raise the fact that, at the moment, parents in my constituency are frightened. They are frightened about how long it takes them to get diagnoses for their children, particularly in relation to neurodiversity; about the lack of support once they do get those diagnoses; and about the lack of child and adolescent mental health services. They are also frightened that their neurodiverse children are being removed from those services on the basis that autism is apparently regarded by some people in our local services as inherently anxiety-creating and therefore children with that diagnosis do not need mental health support. Can the Secretary of State tell me how my constituents will benefit from this plan when it comes to the support children need with their health?

• 3 Jul 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  My constituency has a fantastic group of volunteers and sponsors for Congleton Pride, but they have had to show extraordinary resilience after multiple attacks on their banners for Pride month and our major Pride event. I know that the Leader of the House will want to thank all the volunteers and sponsors who have provided new banners and put more banners in more locations. I thank very much the volunteers for persevering and the police for their involvement in this matter, and I thank the members of the community who support Pride. I encourage as many people as possible to come to the Pride event in Congleton town centre on Saturday 19 July from 10 am. Please can we have a debate in Government time about how we can support the LGBTQ+ community?

• 2 Jul 2025 · Whistleblowers · Hansard source

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  My recollection of the development of the law during that time is that the cap on unfair dismissal awards applied to whistleblowing, which made it much more difficult for me to get adequate compensation for my clients, particularly if they were high earners in the financial services sector.

• 2 Jul 2025 · Whistleblowers · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Lloyd Hatton) for securing this debate. As is well known, I worked as a solicitor prior to coming to this place, and I advised a significant number of clients on whistleblowing matters. Based on that experience, I think my hon. Friend is quite right that whistleblowers make an immense contribution to society and that their protection is extremely important. I will take this opportunity to highlight two gaps in the law as I saw them in practice. The first relates to who is covered by the existing law. The EU whistleblowing directive would have introduced in this country coverage for self-employed people under the purview of the whistleblowing Act, but of course we have left the EU, so I assume we will not be implementing it. That is a terrible shame, because self-employed people are really important in this picture. I have some casework relevant to this matter that I cannot refer to because it is going through tribunal, but in 2022 Inside Housing magazine found that, post Grenfell, fire risk assessors were coming under pressure from their employers or, if they were self-employed, their commissioners to downgrade their assessment of fire risk in social housing, because it is so expensive to remediate. In other words, fire risk assessors were whistleblowing that they were concerned that, when they had to make a professional judgment about danger, they were being put under pressure to assess things as being less dangerous than they actually were. A lot of fire risk assessors are self-employed and are incredibly vulnerable, particularly if they have a major social housing client, as many do. They have all the vulnerability of being a whistleblower but none of the protection of employment legislation. They also work for other people, so they are not an employee and may not meet the definition of worker, so they are currently completely excluded. Protect has been campaigning for us to introduce protection into the law, and the EU has recognised that we need protection in law for self-employed people who whistleblow. I would very much like to see the law changed. It would be in the best interests of the whole country and everybody’s safety if we did so. The second problem with whistleblowing law is that it is hard to advise a client that it is worth their taking the risk to bring a case because it is very difficult to prove reliably that what caused the breakdown of the relationship with their employer is the fact that they whistleblew. Employers understandably do not want to admit that their employee was mistreated because they whistleblew, to the extent that they systematically delude themselves about why that person was excluded and subsequently dismissed. There are two ways in which that happens. In a financial services context, I have seen a person’s performance being heavily criticised as “non-commercial”. What that actually means is that the person is not giving the advice that people want to hear, which is quite different from not being commercial; it means that the person actually has regard for the law, and that is unpopular. We have seen examples of that. It is well known that the in-house counsel for the Post Office stopped being invited to meetings because she was not providing the advice on the law that people wanted to hear, so the board and the chief exec just started shutting her out. It definitely happens in legal contexts and financial services contexts. People’s performance starts to be criticised very heavily, but to the person advising them there will be a systematic set of evidence that shows that they were being performance managed. The person advising the client has to tell them, “This is high risk. Your employer is going to say that you were underperforming. I am going to say, on your behalf, that you were being penalised for whistleblowing, but some of this will depend on what the tribunal finds on the day.” That is quite a difficult environment in which to advise people to continue to whistleblow. The second line of case law that is really problematic in a whistleblowing context is about the irreconcilable breakdown of relationships. There is a whole line of case law about how badly people fall out with their colleagues when they start whistleblowing. I have seen that in an NHS context—in fact, the line of case law comes from an NHS context. The employer says, “Oh, no—you haven’t been penalised for whistleblowing. You’re an impossible human being. You are impossible to work with. You have fallen out with all your colleagues and you have been dismissed completely legitimately for another substantial reason: you cannot work with anyone, and that is compromising patient safety.” I have watched an NHS trust systematically trying to line up a member of staff—it is clear from reading the papers—to say that they absolutely cannot get on with their colleagues any more. It carried out independent investigations to find that the person cannot get on with their colleagues. The reason why the person cannot get on with their colleagues is that they are repeatedly raising concerns about their clinical practice, which those people do not want to hear, so they all round on the whistleblower. The case law on the irreconcilable breakdown of relationships is hugely problematic for whistleblowers, and we need clarity in the law such that employers cannot hide behind—or frankly, construct—an irreconcilable breakdown of the relationship to hide, and make potentially lawful, a dismissal that in any other circumstance would clearly be a whistleblowing dismissal. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset for securing the debate, and I look forward to hearing from the Minister. There is a significant need for legal change in this area.