Siobhain McDonagh MP: speeches

164 published records · newest first.

Speeches

15 Sept 2026 · Civil Service Pension Scheme · Hansard source
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Order.
15 Sept 2026 · Civil Service Pension Scheme · Hansard source
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Order. Some Members have left the Chamber, so I am increasing the time limit to one minute and 30 seconds.
15 Sept 2026 · Civil Service Pension Scheme · Hansard source
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Order. Everyone can see the nature of my dilemma. I lost a wager with the previous Clerk by suggesting you would not all be here because there was a one-line Whip at 4.30 pm, but you all are. To clarify for Mr Stuart and other Members, I should say that the Doorkeepers have informed me that the Minister was here in plenty of time, but was caught in the mêlée as people left. I regret to inform all of you that, with the authority of the Chairman of Ways and Means, I am imposing a time limit of one minute on Back-Bench speeches. Even then, I cannot guarantee that everybody will get called, so please do not take interventions.
15 Sept 2026 · Civil Service Pension Scheme · Hansard source
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I call the Lib Dem spokesperson. You have five minutes.
15 Sept 2026 · Civil Service Pension Scheme · Hansard source
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Order. Isb apologise for the hokey-cokey way of chairing. We are back down to a minute for speeches.
15 Sept 2026 · Civil Service Pension Scheme · Hansard source
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I call Ian Byrne.
15 Sept 2026 · Civil Service Pension Scheme · Hansard source
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Order. [Interruption.] Congratulations to the Minister—right on time.
15 Sept 2026 · Civil Service Pension Scheme · Hansard source
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Order.
15 Sept 2026 · Civil Service Pension Scheme · Hansard source
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I apologise; I did not see you, John. I will reduce the Minister’s time so that you can speak.
9 Sept 2026 · Engagements · Hansard source
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Q5. In a capital city still scarred by the loss of 72 lives in the Grenfell fire, we have a second equally flammable and deadly risk. In bedrooms and corridors across London, low-paid deliverers for Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats are charging the tools of their trade: lethal lithium e-bike batteries. Every other day, the London Fire Brigade is called out to an e-bike battery fire, with a record 206 in 2025 alone. Will the Prime Minister commit the Government to banning the import of substandard e-bikes and converter kits, and will his Ministers attend my roundtable in October with regulators, delivery companies and insurers to find a way forward?
8 Jul 2026 · NHS Corridor Care · Hansard source
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A number of constituents who work as nurses in the A&E department at St Helier hospital asked me to come to see for myself what they were dealing with. They asked me to come late on a Monday morning, rather than a Saturday or Sunday night as I had anticipated. What I saw was deeply troubling. Around 250 patients were coming through the department every day. Elderly people were being cared for on trolleys out of nurse sight lines. However, what really struck me was that packs of staff were wandering around A&E, with nowhere to do their job. They could not do their paperwork, sit near their patients or monitor anything. Corridor care does not begin in the corridor; it begins long before a patient reaches A&E. For years, community services and alternatives have gradually disappeared. The walk-in centre at the Wilson hospital in Mitcham, which once treated patients every day until midnight, even on Christmas day, has gone. Out-of-hours GP services have been reduced. Those patients have not disappeared; they now go to St Helier. If we want fewer people waiting in our overcrowded emergency departments, we must invest in the services that prevent them from needing to be there in the first place. That is particularly important in communities such as mine, where people are more likely to live with long-term health conditions and greater health inequalities. An A&E department cannot function in isolation. It depends on having the services, capacity and infrastructure around it to keep patients flowing safely through the hospital. That is why I have spent years campaigning for St Helier. I am therefore delighted that NHS London announced up to £57 million to expand and modernise St Helier’s emergency department. However, that cannot be the end. St Helier needs renewal. Only days later, there was an announcement that disrepair in the women’s services block meant that it would have to close. I am delighted that the chief executive of the hospital trust has said that those services will return. Nevertheless, the situation is a stark reminder of what happens when hospitals are expected to serve growing populations in ageing buildings that have been allowed to deteriorate for decades. Corridor care should never become normal in our NHS. My constituents deserve a St Helier hospital that is properly equipped to care for them when they need it most. I am determined to continue to fight for that.
2 Jul 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source
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St Helier hospital has the fourth best maternity unit in the country, the only exclusively NHS-run assisted conception unit in south-west London, and a specialist gynaecology ward where nurses are highly trained in counselling. Yet all that is set to close next May because of the need for emergency repairs. Could the Leader of the House find time for a debate on those vital services, and whether they be temporarily relocated somewhere else on the St Helier site and returned to the current building on completion of the repairs?
2 Jul 2026 · Heart Disease and Stroke: Premature Deaths · Hansard source
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I remind Members to bob if they wish to be called in the debate.
2 Jul 2026 · Heart Disease and Stroke: Premature Deaths · Hansard source
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I call Paul Foster to wind up, very quickly.
2 Jul 2026 · Heart Disease and Stroke: Premature Deaths · Hansard source
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Gentlemen may take off their jackets off if they wish.
2 Jul 2026 · Heart Disease and Stroke: Premature Deaths · Hansard source
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I call Mark Francois.
15 Jun 2026 · Brain Cancer · Hansard source
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I thank the Petitions Committee and my friends from Brain Cancer Justice, who I affectionately think of as the provisional wing of the all-party parliamentary group on brain tumours. In July last year, we launched Margaret’s trial at University College London hospital. Thanks to the donations of thousands of supporters and the work of brilliant researchers and clinicians under Dr Paul Mulholland at UCLH, we are testing whether immunotherapy before surgery can help newly diagnosed glioblastoma patients. It is exactly the kind of innovation that we need more of. I was not prepared to wait for the institutions that we look to for progress. We decided to do it ourselves, and that is precisely what we are doing. We have five people on the trial and space for 11 more. I urge anyone who hears of anybody diagnosed with glioblastoma to consider our trial. It is for newly diagnosed patients pre-treatment. It is free. It is available. There will be excellent care. The trial will not only hopefully extend the lives of those who decide to go on it, but give us the information to find out how we can use repurposed drugs to treat this truly terrible cancer as early as possible.
1 Jun 2026 · Child Sexual Offender Data · Hansard source
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Order. Will the Member please sit down? Please do not make me have to intervene a third time.
1 Jun 2026 · Child Sexual Offender Data · Hansard source
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Order. I point out to Members that this is an incredibly important debate, which is why so many of you are here today. I would ask you to be brief in your interventions, out of respect for all other Members who have something to say.
1 Jun 2026 · Child Sexual Offender Data · Hansard source
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Order. Ms Spencer, I appreciate that you are very new to this House, and it is great that you are at this debate. I note that you will be making a speech later, and there will be time, but what you are doing at the moment is making an intervention, so it needs to be really brief.
1 Jun 2026 · Child Sexual Offender Data · Hansard source
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I remind hon. Members that they need to bob if they wish to speak. I want to be sure that I have a good idea of who wants to contribute, because we want to make sure that everybody has as long as they need to make their contribution. We will make that calculation now.
18 May 2026 · Backing Business to Create Economic Growth · Hansard source
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The King’s Speech set out this Government’s commitment to remove the barriers holding back Britain and to break through the failed status quo. Nowhere is that more urgently needed than in life sciences and medical innovation. Britain cannot become a world leader in life sciences while patients and researchers are trapped inside systems that move too slowly. This matters because behind every delayed trial and every missed opportunity are families running out of time. This country is uniquely placed to become a world leader in medical innovation. We have extraordinary scientists, extraordinary universities, and extraordinary clinicians. Our life sciences sector is one of the greatest strengths of the British economy. From pioneering NHS research to fast-growing British techbio companies such as Relation Therapeutics, the potential for this country to lead the world in medical innovation is enormous. The challenge we face is not whether we have the talent or the capability to lead but whether our institutions are capable of matching the urgency of patient need. Too often brilliance collides with a system that moves cautiously when it should move decisively. In few areas are the consequences of that slowness felt more acutely than in rare and aggressive cancers. Since losing my wonderful sister Margaret to glioblastoma —the biggest cancer killer of children and adults under 40—I have worked closely with clinicians and researchers searching for a cure. That work has included establishing a new glioblastoma drugs trial in her memory, which is now under way at University College London hospitals NHS foundation trust and showing encouraging signs. In doing so, I have seen at first hand how difficult our systems can make it for innovation. What struck me throughout that process was that, even with funding secured and research ready, and with patients searching for further options, progress still becomes bogged down in systems that move painfully slowly. Glioblastoma is one of the most aggressive and deadly forms of cancer. At diagnosis, patients are told they have months left, not years. For those patients, delay is fatal. Lord O’Shaughnessy’s review into commercial trials found that countries such as Spain and Australia were consistently setting up trials more than two months faster than the UK. Too often, our clinical trials environment is still characterised by complexity, duplication and inertia, when it should be characterised by urgency. This is not a criticism of the brilliant people working within the NHS or our research institutions—far from it. Time and again, I have met exceptional clinicians and researchers working tirelessly to push boundaries and give patients more options, but I have also met clinicians who feel constrained by systems that are too slow to turn research into treatment for patients. Britain too often treats innovation as something to cautiously manage, rather than something to be urgently delivered. Lord O’Shaughnessy’s review warns that Britain risks losing its world-leading position unless we become faster, more agile and more ambitious, and the warning signs are already there, with the UK falling from fourth to 10th globally for commercial trials between 2017 and 2021. The countries that lead the world in medical innovation will increasingly lead the world economically too. The global race for investment, talent and scientific leadership is intensifying, and Britain should not simply aim to participate in that race; we should aim to lead it. This is why the NHS modernisation Bill announced in the King’s Speech matters. NHS modernisation cannot simply mean changing structures; it must mean building a system capable of getting innovation to patients faster. If we are truly to modernise the NHS and remove the barriers holding Britain back, innovation and clinical research must sit at the heart of that mission. Britain has the talent, the institutions and the scientific capability. Now we need a system capable of matching that ambition, so that it is our country that stands at the forefront of innovation when the next generation of medical breakthroughs are discovered and delivered. For the families facing terminal illness today, that progress cannot come quickly enough.
16 Apr 2026 · NHS Federated Data Platform · Hansard source
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I call the Government spokesperson— [ Interruption. ] I call the Opposition spokesperson.
16 Apr 2026 · NHS Federated Data Platform · Hansard source
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Order. May I just say that the hon. Member had very generous time allocated to him during this debate? If the Minister does not want to take an intervention, he does not need to.
16 Apr 2026 · NHS Federated Data Platform · Hansard source
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I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

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