Labour Party MP for Hyndburn since (elected). An MP continuously since .
Parliament recordVoting recordWritten questionsEarly day motions
Entries on this tracker
130
Each filed under the party they sat for that day
Register entries
2
As currently published
Declared while sitting for Labour
£0
0 of 2 entries state an amount
| Party | Office | Area | Period | Began | Ended | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Labour | MP | Hyndburn | – present | elected | — | Party history |
Parliament's party history for this member: Labour ( – present).
Every entry the member has in the Register of Members' Financial Interests, as Parliament currently publishes it. The wording and values are the member's own declarations; nothing here has been assessed by this site.
Totals add only the entries that declare an amount received: payments for work, donations, gifts, and funded visits (register categories 1.1, 2, 3, 4 and 5). Ongoing employment is listed but not added, because its figure is a rate rather than a sum received. Each entry is dated by when the benefit happened, not when it was registered, and placed under the party the member sat for on that date. A member who changed party therefore has a separate total for each.
| Date | Category | Entry | Declared value | Sitting for | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| date registered | 7. Shareholdings | Shares in Limina Group ltd | — | Labour | Register record |
| date registered | 6. Land and property | Property in Cheltenham | — | Labour | Register record |
This change on children’s trust funds is a huge win for the campaigners who have fought for six years to see it. I know that it means a huge deal to my constituents Paula and Andy Gilbert and their son James. What is the timescale for when these families will be able to access their money?
There is much to welcome in this Budget for my constituents in Hyndburn and Haslingden. Some of the measures include £100 for 41,000 of my residents. They will benefit from this immediate support with their energy bills as we seek to tackle the cost of energy crisis. The measures also include the expansion of paid parental leave to self-employed people, which will help around 90 new families in my patch every single year, and the business rates relief for businesses with rateable values of £18,000 or less, which builds upon and goes further than the previously announced plans to increase business rates relief on pubs from April 2027. I know how hard our pub and shop owners work and the huge contribution they make to our local communities. I must give a shout-out to my local, the White Bull in Oswaldtwistle, which has recently undertaken plans to extend its dining area, and where I would be delighted to treat the Minister to lunch if they were to come and visit—I strongly recommend the Hungarian goulash. I will focus on two main substantive issues in this Budget. First, I welcome the commitment to a mayor of Lancashire. This Labour Government have made it clear that having a mayor is firmly on the table for Lancashire, and at my business event last week, with over 130 leaders from across east Lancashire, business leaders were clear that they want this to happen as quickly as possible. Therefore, it is time for Reform-led Lancashire county council to stop delaying and get behind a mayor for Lancashire, which is key to unlocking our economic potential. But even better, we do not have to wait for a mayor for us to get going. Following the calls from many Labour colleagues, including my hon. Friends the Members for Ribble Valley (Maya Ellis) and for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae), the Budget includes a commitment to capacity and capability funding for areas that are progressing towards a mayoral strategic authority, which will put £7.7 million of funding into Lancashire from next year. Alongside that, there is the development of the local growth funds, with a total of £80 million for non-mayoral areas to support priority projects that will support their economic growth and development. Secondly, I turn to what this Budget does for entrepreneurs. Some of these measures include the increases to the trading allowance, a proposed young entrepreneurs’ allowance and £200 million of additional funding for female founders. Furthermore, there is a significant set of plans to support early-stage and scale-up funding, with a commitment of an extra £5 billion to the British Business Bank, £450 million of which is allocated to a new venture debt product to help innovative firms access capital without immediate equity dilution. Over the past year, I have been raising with Ministers the challenge faced by these businesses during their pre-commercialisation so-called “valley of death” and the opportunity to help low-carbon technology businesses in Hyndburn and east Lancashire that face this barrier through funding the RedCAT proposals that I have shared. RedCAT provides businesses that are trying to produce new products for their first identified customer, and I hope that through these combined announcements there may be ways of funding RedCAT. I urge Ministers to meet me to work out how we can overcome some of the siloed approaches within Government to unlock this and unlock economic growth not just in Hyndburn and Lancashire, but in other parts of the country. This Budget goes a long way towards helping my constituents through these difficult global headwinds, as well as outlining a broader ambition to reshape our energy markets and the economy for the future in a way that delivers good growth in every postcode and hope in every heart. Devolution is the chance for Lancashire to take control of our own future and stop having to come cap in hand to Westminster. While we work towards this, I will continue to work with Ministers to deliver the jobs, opportunities and growth that Hyndburn desperately needs.
Hyndburn has incredibly high levels of houses in multiple occupation. That is driving up rents, taking family homes off the market <span id="578" class="column-number" data-column-number="578"></span>and increasing the number of vulnerable people moving to our community. How are the Government acting to enable councils such as Hyndburn borough council to reduce HMOs in their areas?
Mr Speaker, you will remember that the last Labour Government established children’s trust funds, but sadly around 80,000 children across the country, including my constituent James Gilbert, are unable to access them due to an expensive and bureaucratic courts process for those who lack mental capacity. Will the Prime Minister commit to ensuring that this Government finally fix this problem, which has left our campaigners frustrated for over six years since they first raised it with Ministers?
Will the Leader of the House join me in sending condolences to the family and friends of Labour Councillor Dave Parkins? Dave was a proud veteran and a diligent and compassionate councillor for 32 years in Huncoat. In his most recent election in 2023, he secured 80% of the vote—an example to us all. “Mr Huncoat” will be sorely missed by all of us in Hyndburn.
I established the “Get Hyndburn Working” group, and together we are looking at how we can bring our youth hub into a town centre location and also bring health, training and education services all under one roof. Will the Minister meet me to discuss how the Government can support us to make that a reality?
Will my hon. Friend confirm how many amendments were accepted in the House of Lords, and that it was about 90 peers who were involved in supporting all the amendments tabled?
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
I am sure that I am not the only Member who came to this place because I felt that the voices of the people I wanted to represent are seldom heard, and I felt a duty to ensure that they were heard in decision making at the highest level. While I am the Member of Parliament for everyone in Hyndburn and Haslingden, and I recognise that many people in my constituency might support the principle of an assisted death, when I vote today, I must consider the perspective of the many hundreds of people who have written to me for whom this Bill is a terrifying prospect.<span id="1366" class="column-number" data-column-number="1366"></span> Many of those who have written to me are disabled; caring for severely disabled children or family members; people who are getting older, and who worry that they will become a burden; or people who know that because of the colour of their skin, they will face different treatment in our NHS, and who worry about what that would mean for them or their elderly parents. We must all consider the privilege that we in this place hold. We have the confidence to challenge a doctor’s assessment, and to turn down the suggestion of assisted death, and the belief that we might be able to afford the care that we need when we are older, and so can make a true choice about how we might die. However, we must remember that this is not the experience of most people, and certainly not the experience of those with lower levels of education, those from ethnic minority backgrounds, those with disabilities, or those who are struggling to make ends meet. For them, the suggestion made by a doctor may easily sound like a decision based on what is best for them. The likelihood of their mental capacity being accurately assessed is far lower than it would be for many of us. For them, and indeed for most of us, the assessment of how long they have left to live is often hugely inaccurate.
I could not agree more. Those people cannot escape the often unintentional prejudice that they face every single day in their engagement with our health services. They know that the Bill would treat them unequally, and they are begging us not to pass it into law. Disability rights groups have shared with us that introducing assisted dying devalues the lives of disabled individuals by framing dependence as an intolerable condition, and one not intrinsic to all our lives. Relying on each other is what makes our society strong, and we must not tolerate a situation in which individuals make decisions from which they cannot return on the basis that they perceive themselves to be a burden. This law, if passed, will almost certainly further increase the gap in life expectancy between the richest and poorest, given that people living in more deprived areas are likely to acquire complex multi-morbidity seven years younger than those in the richest areas, and are far more likely to feel that they are a financial burden on their family. It is reasonable to anticipate that this will lead to people with less money dying younger. Is that the legacy that those voting for this Bill today want? In Hyndburn and Haslingden, I have seen how systemic failures in social and palliative care have added to the suffering and challenges that many in my community have faced. Like many of us, I have sat with loved ones as they were dying without the palliative care that they needed. According to Marie Curie, one in three people die without good palliative care. During these debates, we have heard so many horrific stories of death, and of course we must do all we can to avoid those situations.<span id="1367" class="column-number" data-column-number="1367"></span> I spoke with one of the most highly regarded palliative care nurses in the world, who has spent most of her career in South Africa with children who have AIDS and who die far too young. She told me that, in her decades of practice, in which she has cared for thousands of patients, she could bring to mind only two patients whom she was unable to offer a good death, with the right treatment and care. Assisted dying is not a choice if palliative care is not provided as an alternative. As it stands, the cost of assisted dying is supposed to come from the existing health budget. Research by Sue Ryder found that if we offered consistent palliative care to every patient who needed it, we would need to double NHS funding for that care; it would cost around an extra £300 million a year. We have to be clear about the priorities and honest about what is possible. This Bill intends to force the NHS to implement assisted dying within four years. Given the budget constraints and capacity limitations, it is just not realistic to say that we can simultaneously improve palliative care and introduce assisted dying. We are taking 10 years to implement the proposed SEND reforms, yet we expect to do this within four. This Bill should provide that assisted dying will not be introduced until palliative care is fixed, and it fails to do that. Furthermore, the evidence from other countries is overwhelmingly that introducing assisted dying leads to decreased investment in palliative care. In closing, it was a Labour Government who introduced the national health service, with the aim of securing “improvement in the physical and mental health of the people of England and Wales and the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of illness”. It is that mission that NHS staff have signed up to deliver. Let this Labour Government not be the one to bring in a Bill that effectively entirely undermines and changes that founding purpose of the NHS, and let us instead vote today to kill this Bill.
Held . Recorded result: Lab Gain. Majority 1,687. 36,374 votes cast from an electorate of 67,147. Parties are as each candidate stood at the time.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sarah Smith | Labour | 12,186 | 33.5% |
| Sara Britcliffe | Conservative | 10,499 | 28.9% |
| Richard Oakley | Reform UK | 7,541 | 20.7% |
| Shabir Fazal | Green Party | 4,938 | 13.6% |
| Beth Waller-Slack | Liberal Democrat | 1,210 | 3.3% |
| Seat | Dates |
|---|---|
| HyndburnElected 1 time | – present |
| Committee | Dates |
|---|---|
| Railways Bill | – |
| Ecclesiastical Committee | – present |
| Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee | – |
X (formerly Twitter)
Only the details Parliament publishes for this member. Contact page on Parliament's site
Profile data retrieved from Parliament on .