Lorraine Beavers

Party affiliation

Parliament's party history for this member: Labour (4 Jul 2024 – present).

Register of interests

Register on Parliament's site

Latest on this tracker 101

1. 2 Nov 2026·Parliament·Lorraine Beavers

   Budget Resolutions

   When I ask people in my constituency how they feel about the economy, they tell me that their bills are too high and their rent or mortgage take too much of their pay. I am glad that the Budget takes some first steps to address those issues.<span id="638" class="column-number" data-column-number="638"></span> Four years ago, the Conservatives, led by Liz, crashed the economy and sent mortgages and bills soaring. Before that, they spent more than a decade cutting our armed forces and public services—they left us poorly defended in every sense. The Chancellor’s Budget makes a good start in addressing those problems. The immediate help for 20 million households towards their energy bills this winter is a welcome relief. The changes to business rates will have a huge impact on businesses in my constituency. On devolution, I can only hope that Lancashire will have a mayor by 2028 to share in the proposals that were announced. I urge Reform-led Lancashire county council to grab this amazing opportunity for Lancashire. We have been left behind for too long. The council needs to stop infighting and start fighting for Lancashire instead. I want to come back to how much further we need to go to rebuild Britain. The Prime Minister rightly identified the deindustrialisation of Britain as one of the reasons places such as Blackpool North and Fleetwood have not shared in the proceeds of growth as much as they should have done. He is right that a change of policy is required, but right now Britain is deindustrialising faster than any of our neighbours. Domestic manufacturing capacity is an essential source of our national security. British manufacturers face the highest electricity prices in Europe. I know many Labour colleagues have asked the Chancellor to look at the merits of extending the British industrial competitiveness scheme to all manufacturing firms. I hope the Front-Bench team look carefully again at the proposals and sit down with the TUC and others to discuss how that could be implemented. This Budget offers practical help with people’s bills this winter. The 10-year plan and the spending review must do the same for their jobs.

   Hansard source
2. 20 Oct 2026·Parliament·Lorraine Beavers

   Topical Questions

   Blackpool Victoria hospital desperately needs more money, because the ICB’s funding for hospital trusts does not account for the 20 million tourists or the complexity of care required. Will the Secretary of State ensure that the hospital receives its fair share of extra funding from the ICB?

   Hansard source
3. 15 Sep 2026·Parliament·Lorraine Beavers

   Civil Service Pension Scheme

   I stood on a manifesto that promised the biggest wave of insourcing in a generation. This situation is only one of many since the 1980s in which the responsibility of the state has been outsourced to private companies, which have consistently failed to deliver for working people. I will not stop fighting until this scheme is brought back where it belongs. Will the Minister commit to drawing up plans to bring the scheme in house? Will she also apply pressure on Capita to issue comprehensive finalisation statements for each case? How will the Government hold Capita to account in the meantime? Will the Minister clarify who made the terrible decision to award the Synergy contract? Will she push for a compensation scheme for all affected by Capita’s failures that considers both the stress and the financial loss caused to our much-loved civil servants?

   Hansard source
4. 8 Sep 2026·Parliament·Lorraine Beavers

   Israel and Palestine

   I thank the Foreign Secretary for his action today, demonstrating British leadership on a global stage; I hope he agrees that it is long overdue. Settlement expansion is a project driven by the Israeli state. Will he consider further action such as suspending the UK-Israel trade agreement?

   Hansard source
5. 15 Jul 2026·Parliament·Lorraine Beavers

   Waste Management Sites

   I beg to move, That this House has considered the impact of waste management sites on local communities. It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Murrison. For nearly three years, the people of Fleetwood have been forced to live with an intolerable smell from the Jameson Road landfill site. They have complained, protested and reported the effects on their health to the council, the Environment Agency, the Government and to me, their Member of Parliament. Over the past two and a half years, the Environment Agency has taken increasingly severe action against the operator of the site. Each time, the operator has breached its permit and acted unlawfully in the process, and still the smell remains. At times recently, it has been worse than ever. In March of this year alone, more than 4,000 complaints were made. The central point that I wish to make is that this is proof of a broken regulatory system. Residents can make thousands of complaints, and people and businesses can be forced to leave an area because of an operator acting unlawfully, and still they are left breathing the same foul air. If our system cannot prevent that from happening, it is broken. If the regulatory system’s purpose is to record suffering, issue notices and hold meetings, but not to prevent suffering for the local community, its purpose and objectives are the wrong way around. In Fleetwood, it is as simple as this: a private company is making money from stinking out the entire town and damaging livelihoods, breaking the law in the process, while the British state appears too weak, too slow and too broken to stop it.

   Hansard source
6. 15 Jul 2026·Parliament·Lorraine Beavers

   Waste Management Sites

   I agree. I hope that we will get that done—or start the battle to do so—today. Absurdly, none of the waste is even from Fleetwood. It seems that waste can be transported from across the country to any landfill site that is happy to take it—a form of waste tourism. The waste comes from outside Lancashire, harming people and the environment in the process. Of course, working-class northern communities such as mine are allowed to be collateral damage. This is not just about Fleetwood; communities across the country have found themselves trapped in the same nightmare that we have experienced.

   Hansard source
7. 15 Jul 2026·Parliament·Lorraine Beavers

   Waste Management Sites

   My hon. Friend is correct, and I agree with him. I will address that point in my remarks. Communities across the country have found themselves trapped in the same nightmare that we have experienced: living beside waste sites, making complaint after complaint and discovering that the system is better at documenting their suffering than ending it. People have reported headaches, nausea, nosebleeds, vomiting and breathing difficulties, with some requiring hospital treatment. The prolonged stress is also harming my residents’ mental health. Children do not want to play outside, parents have had to keep the windows shut—even during the recent hot weather—and businesses are losing customers. Some residents are considering leaving the town they have lived in all their lives, while others have already left. I take this opportunity to raise the case of my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Ms Minns), who, unfortunately, cannot join us today as she is attending a Select Committee. Her constituents have also had to keep their windows shut and stay indoors because of the awful smell coming from a landfill site. My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Cat Smith) has constituents who can smell the landfill site in my constituency, as the odour blows across the Wyre estuary to Knott End and Preesall. Nobody should have to live like that, in Fleetwood or anywhere else. Let me share some of the experiences that residents have reported to me. One wrote to say that the landfill has affected her already severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. She feels like a prisoner in her own home; when the smell is at its worst, she cannot leave her house for days on end. Like many in Fleetwood, she moved to the area for the fresh sea air. Instead, she says, it has ruined her life. Another wrote to say that their family had to leave Fleetwood because of the smell. One member of the family, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, found the additional strain impossible to cope with, and their adult disabled daughter experienced throat irritation and disrupted sleep. They could not put up with it any longer and had to move away. That meant leaving behind their daughter’s established social and support network, registering with a completely new medical team and changing her care package. Another of my constituents has emphysema. He too moved to Fleetwood for better air, but because of the landfill, he suffers with sore and itchy eyes, has difficulty breathing and feels worse than ever. He asked one simple question: why is this allowed? I ask the Minister the same question. I do not want to hear that it is not allowed, because the fact that the problem continues proves that it is. If a national Government cannot put a stop to it, will the Minister suggest who can? These are not isolated complaints.

   Hansard source
8. 15 Jul 2026·Parliament·Lorraine Beavers

   Waste Management Sites

   I agree. The problems began following the transfer of ownership from SUEZ to Transwaste Recycling and Aggregates, and the resumption of tipping in January 2024. SUEZ proved that sites like Jameson Road can be operated properly without a detrimental impact on the local community, but across the country more operators are cutting corners and operating outside of the law. Meanwhile, our enforcement framework has not kept up. It is designed around the assumption that operators will do the right thing, often with local authorities in mind. As we have learned in Fleetwood, we cannot afford to make that assumption any longer. The nature of waste management has changed. Small waste management firms are now operating sites that were previously considered economically unviable. As the Jameson Road debacle suggests, to make such sites profitable, companies are now operating them poorly, breaching the terms to their permits and ignoring planning conditions. Local people are left to bear the brunt of their corner cutting. The issuing and transferring of environmental permits needs to be more robust. Perhaps a new environmental permit should be issued with each change of ownership. If an economically unviable site has been closed, any prospective operator should surely be asked how they will overcome the financial issues. The way in which operators plan to make a site profitable without cutting corners should be scrutinised, and permits should not be carried over if operators cannot produce credible plans. Instead of the company bearing the burden to run a site properly, the burden has fallen on residents to prove that the operator has no such ability. That demonstrates that the weight of scrutiny in the system is in the wrong place. How does the Minister plan to address that? At present, the regulation is self-evidently ineffective. As the local Member of Parliament, I meet representatives of the Environment Agency every Friday morning. My team and the wider community have pursued every possible avenue to stop the smell and get the site closed. Over the course of those meetings, I have concluded that one of two things must be true: either the Environment Agency does not have sufficient powers to intervene quickly enough, or it is not using the powers it has with the necessary urgency. Which does the Minister think it is? Either explanation demands Government action. If the Environment Agency lacks the powers to suspend activity before further harm is caused, Parliament must provide such powers. If existing powers are unusable because of legal tests, internal processes or fears of legal challenge, those barriers must be removed. The agency must also have the resources to enforce the law. The issues at Jameson Road have resulted in the Environment Agency needing to pull experts in from all over the country.

   Hansard source
9. 15 Jul 2026·Parliament·Lorraine Beavers

   Waste Management Sites

   I agree. I thank the Environment Agency, which has worked tirelessly despite massive staff shortages and everything else. It has worked with me and my community to resolve this problem. The passing on of responsibility while communities suffer cannot continue. The regulators point to the limits of their powers; the operators point to the weather; Departments point to the regulators. Meanwhile, residents are told to make another complaint and keep filling in their diary sheets. That is how faith in Government is destroyed, especially when that pattern is so recognisable in other aspects of the way the country is run. A private company is making money from stinking out an entire town, damaging people’s health and livelihoods, and the British state has so far been incapable of stopping it. I have dedicated much of my time as an MP to working out why. The children of Flakefleet primary school understand the injustice. A year ago, they wrote to the Prime Minister and handed a petition into 10 Downing Street. The smell from Jameson Road dominates their life at school, and those pupils believe that when something is clearly wrong, those in power will listen and act. That is why I invited this Prime Minister to come to Fleetwood, and I will be inviting the next one to do so as well. My constituents are tired. They feel ignored and forgotten. Many believe this situation would never have been allowed to continue for so long in a wealthy commuter town in Surrey, and I agree with them. Working-class communities should not be expected to tolerate lower standards because they have less political and economic power. Fleetwood’s health, dignity and future cannot be treated as less important than the financial interest of the private waste companies. No community should be treated in this way.

   Hansard source
10. 15 Jul 2026·Parliament·Lorraine Beavers

    Waste Management Sites

    I apologise for naming Surrey. The wider enforcement framework must change. Regulators need clear powers to suspend operators quickly, stronger tests of operators’ competence and the ability to consider the cumulative impact of sites on communities. Penalties must change behaviour, rather than become a cost of doing business. The financial consequences must fall on the polluters, and we must make sure that companies cannot take the profits while leaving residents and taxpayers to carry the costs when things go wrong. We need a system that learns from the crisis in Fleetwood rather than one that waits for the same crisis to unfold elsewhere. A Labour Government should not stand by while private operators profit from the suffering of working-class towns. We were elected to show that <span id="392WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="392WH"></span>government can work and that the state can protect people and stand up to private interests when they cause harm. Jameson Road is a test of that promise. It is also a test of whether we are prepared to fix a national regulatory failure. Reforming the system would show communities across the country that they will not be abandoned when the same failures occur on their doorstep. The next community to face this problem should not have to start from the beginning—keeping diaries, gathering medical evidence and begging regulators to act, while the operators continue to profit. The British state must prove that it is not too broken to stop this. With that in mind, I have several questions for the Minister. Does she acknowledge that the reality of the situation in Fleetwood is that a private company has made profit through unlawful activity at the expense of the health and wellbeing of an entire town, and that that is unacceptable? Will she commission a full review of the current waste management framework, taking into consideration the following questions. Does the Environment Agency have sufficient powers to take decisive action quickly enough? Is it not fully using the powers it already has? Does the Minister believe that the Environment Agency is adequately resourced, and if not, how will the Government increase its funding to deal with the scale of these challenges? Will she legislate to ensure that new environmental permits must be sought when the ownership of a site changes? How does she plan to address the scrutiny gap, whereby companies do not have to prove their ability to run a site properly before operating it? Fleetwood needs action, communities across Britain need protection and this country needs a regulatory system that puts people before polluters.

    Hansard source

2024 General Election: Blackpool North and Fleetwood

Election result on Parliament's site

Parliamentary career

Career on Parliament's site

Published contact details

Only the details Parliament publishes for this member. Contact page on Parliament's site