Tom Collins

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

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Latest on this tracker 96

1. 2 Nov 2026·Parliament·Tom Collins

   Budget Resolutions

   I know that people in Worcester will be looking for two things: some let-up in the endless pressure on bills and the public services that keep letting us down, and a genuine sense that there is a plan for things to improve— that there is hope. Let me start by recognising that those two aims have been front and centre as the Chancellor and the Prime Minister have developed this Budget. I believe in politics that is focused on people, and I believe that the Budget aims to focus on people. However, the challenges that we face require a deeper shift—not just adjustments to budgets, but something far more fundamental: an approach that recognises people’s real lived experiences, and puts them at the heart of our decisions and systems. Digital technology is reshaping our world, and we need a fresh approach to digital safety. The Chancellor is right to say that we should build the data centres and artificial intelligence models that keep us secure, but we should also be insisting on safety by design for AI and online social platforms, and should be holding providers responsible. We need an answer that matches the desperate urgency of the climate crisis. The Budget starts to recognise gaps in our energy policy, but it also risks creating new ones. It is right to recognise the importance of gas, but by casting hydrogen projects into further delay and insecurity, we risk our energy future altogether. The Government have accepted new gas extraction in the North sea at Jackdaw, but it is concerning to see that they are hesitating on providing support for the most powerful technology in decarbonising gas at the same time. I was watching David Attenborough before it was cool—

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2. 2 Nov 2026·Parliament·Tom Collins

   Budget Resolutions

   Thank you! My career has been spent developing green technology systems. I urge the Secretary of State to work rapidly to resource, accelerate and provide certainty for the core hydrogen projects that the UK needs for reindustrialisation and for a viable energy future. We are competing with other countries for investment, and we are at risk of losing. If we get it right, though, the UK can not only be more energy-resilient; we can even become energy-rich, and bring about a true renewal that would see the UK selling to Europe and the world. There are other challenges across our system, and the crisis in Worcester’s A&amp;E is stark evidence of that. I recently hosted a rough sleeping summit, bringing 30 organisations together to end rough sleeping in Worcester, and that will create new forms of joint working. However, we need this approach across the board, in health, social care, education, skills and justice, alongside the ambitious funding and goal-setting announced by the Chancellor. I welcome the Government’s provision of £163 million in the Budget to write off 90% of the debt that Worcestershire county council accumulated in making provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities—it creates the breathing room that we need to recover delivery in Worcester—but I am determined to work for deep reform of the system in our county, reform that puts families at the centre. I urge the Chancellor to work with the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, and members of industry, to address the shortfall in funding for hydrogen projects as a matter of urgency. However, with <span id="684" class="column-number" data-column-number="684"></span>those corrections secured, and with ambitious action taken, I believe that we will have the opportunity to not only create room to breathe, but begin a journey that will give every single person real cause to hope again.

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3. 26 Oct 2026·Parliament·Tom Collins

   Rough Sleeping and Good Growth Funds

   In Worcester, I recently hosted a summit attended by representatives of over 30 organisations, from the national Government to regional agencies and authorities, and all the way to local charities and churches, which all pledged to work together to end rough sleeping in Worcester. One outcome of that summit was that it was clear that we need not only more resources, which are incredibly welcome; we also need to change the way of working. When people are affected by long-term <span id="65" class="column-number" data-column-number="65"></span>ill health or disabilities, or the effects of crime and trauma, they need holistic support delivered relationally. This cuts across all Government Departments and services. Will the Minister meet me to discuss how we might roll out, across Government, a change that wraps around people?

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4. 14 Oct 2026·Parliament·Tom Collins

   Whistleblowing

   <Question HRSContentId="{D656C06B-A874-4AE6-9A32-0E1DF2FBAAE9}">2. <QuestionText HRSContentId="{28992629-B5A1-4B17-9F5A-25C9E17B6930}">What steps she has taken with Cabinet colleagues to enhance the whistleblowing framework.</QuestionText> </Question>

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5. 14 Oct 2026·Parliament·Tom Collins

   Whistleblowing

   I am working with a constituent who has been subject to bullying and prejudice in high-level amateur sport. Current whistleblowing protections apply only to employees of an organisation, but sports people often have just as much, if not more, to lose if a sporting organisation turns against them. Does the Solicitor General agree that whistleblowing protections are important for good governance, safety and safeguarding in organisations across sectors?

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6. 10 Sep 2026·Parliament·Tom Collins

   Business of the House

   Worcestershire Royal hospital has pioneered a project to ensure that every patient it treats is addressed by the name by which they are known—surprisingly, one in four patients are known by a different name from the one that is on their hospital records. It is a simple step that has improved accessibility, treatment, safety and dignity, and rolling it out across the NHS requires no change to the law, but it does demand leadership from the Government. Will the Leader of the House provide Government time for a debate on how we can modernise the NHS’s culture and practice, to better put patients as people at the heart of its processes?

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7. 8 Sep 2026·Parliament·Tom Collins

   Online Safety

   I really welcome the Secretary of State’s statement. We have a massive crisis of digitally enabled child sexual exploitation in the UK. As an illustration, there is a global industry for livestreamed abuse material from the Philippines. The UK is the second largest global consumer and is second only to the US, which is a much larger country. The abuse extends beyond our borders. It extends to adults as well as children on adult devices, and it extends to interfaces as well as content. We will need a broader approach. The Secretary of State is right to identify that technology has disrupted society before. In such cases, we have seen massive expansion, harm and then regulation, and then moved to product safety. I have been working with experts and innovators on how a product safety approach might work. Will she meet me to discuss that?

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8. 13 Jul 2026·Parliament·Tom Collins

   Immigration and Asylum Bill

   I have been campaigning on modern slavery for over 20 years. Back when I started, most modern slavery in the UK was sexual exploitation, and let me be clear that it was of girls. I put myself in the shoes of a parent whose child was in another country, suffering unimaginable abuse and exploitation. I realised that I would pray every night for someone in that country not to rest until my child was rescued. I realised that I had to be that person in this country, and I brought that sentiment with me to Parliament. The Government have taken some good steps to tackle modern slavery by breaking down the criminal gangs and international organised networks behind small boats, starting to open up more safe and legal routes, and clearing the operational backlog of immigration cases. That is good, but if there is diminishing consideration of cases in which people do not disclose that they were victims of modern slavery straight away, or in which the victims had carried out criminal activity, that goes against the very basic, fundamental, “modern slavery <span id="701" class="column-number" data-column-number="701"></span>101” principles of how to tackle modern slavery. Recognising who is a victim and who is a perpetrator, and recognising the effects of trauma, were great accomplishments of the Modern Slavery Act, but I fear that there is now a risk that we will start to see tackling illegal immigration and tackling modern slavery as being in conflict or in tension, when in fact they are entirely aligned. The Secretary of State raised some powerful examples, but they are examples of decision making that was clearly bureaucratic, detached and lacking professional judgement. I echo the comment by the right hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Dame Karen Bradley) that disclosure does not automatically mean a referral under the national referral mechanism. We should be fixing those operational problems. We should be fixing the system, rather than hoping that changing the law will suddenly result in it making better decisions. In fact, I would say that deploying that approach—right the way down to policing and through our multi-agency response to modern slavery in local areas—is a job still to be done, even since we introduced the Modern Slavery Act. We should not be going backwards. We should be surging and pushing forwards to eradicate modern slavery in the UK. If we were to do that, we would find that much of what concerns our communities about illegal immigration would be solved. We must tackle modern slavery head-on. We must strengthen our systems, which are failing at an operational level in their design, decision making and implementation, and we must bring in good governance. For that reason, I really welcome the further discussions with the Government following today to improve this Bill.

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9. 29 Jun 2026·Parliament·Tom Collins

   Topical Questions

   <Question HRSContentId="{D4F4A018-56C0-4234-A40F-639348AC98CB}">T1. <QuestionText HRSContentId="{2CFB76B5-FA6C-4346-B9D7-67D0D683C22D}">If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.</QuestionText></Question>

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10. 29 Jun 2026·Parliament·Tom Collins

    Topical Questions

    This Government have set out to change culture across the DWP in order to make it far more focused on people, not faceless processes. However, in my constituency of Worcester, people are finding that when DWP services have made mistakes, the reaction continues to be delay, denial and sometimes outright refusal to fix errors. What is the Secretary of State doing to improve the attitudes, values and approaches of frontline client-facing services?

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2024 General Election: Worcester

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