Caroline Nokes: I welcome the Minister’s statement. Last week, I met Fighting With Pride and one of my constituents, who I will not name because he has not given me permission to do so. Three points came across in that meeting. The first was the importance of testimonies. He was a grown man who had been discharged in the 1980s and whose mother had received a letter from his commanding officer outing him as...
Caroline Nokes: I thank the Minister for giving way, and welcome him to his new role, appreciating that he has only been in it a few weeks. I gently say to him that there is a real challenge in our NHS when 10% of women in one study reported unwanted sexual conduct in return for career opportunities. That is absolutely about power, and it is going to take a step change to break down those structures that...
Caroline Nokes: The hon. Lady is highlighting a very important issue. She made a point about reporting, which is certainly an enormous challenge. The Women and Equalities Committee heard from Chelcie Jewitt of Surviving in Scrubs, who made the point that when doctors tried to report harassment, they were often told by the General Medical Council that it was a trust issue, yet the trust would say that it was...
Caroline Nokes: I reassure my hon. Friend that she is more than enough for me. There was a really worrying article in The Times a few days ago that talked about the invisibility of disabled people when making employment applications. We know that disabled people are less likely to be in work and to take up opportunities for entrepreneurship. Perhaps my hon. Friend could highlight the important work she is...
Caroline Nokes: I know my right hon. Friend is as shocked as I am by some of the working practices of SSE in providing power to commercial premises. My constituent Philip Liddell of ACE Liftaway has paid £73,000 on deposit to SSE, but because of SSE’s delays with SSE’s solicitors, it has now asked him for an additional £50,000 to move an electricity substation on his commercial premises—an increase...
Caroline Nokes: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people were (a) arrested on suspicion and (b) convicted of people smuggling in UK waters since the start of January 2023.
Caroline Nokes: I very much appreciate having been granted this debate tonight. I reassure the Minister that I come here not in anger, not in sorrow, but with deep, deep concern at the charges being levied on my constituents, specifically by the Aster Group, which is the largest housing association operating in my constituency. I am not alone in my concern, and I am conscious that my hon. Friend the Member...
Caroline Nokes: The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. He is right to highlight how some housing associations have grown and grown. Somebody came to my constituency surgery last week to raise an issue about a different housing association, Adbury, whose ambition is to become one of the largest housing associations in the country. There is a problem with scale, because as these organisations become...
Caroline Nokes: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department is taking steps to help support British citizens fleeing the conflict in Gaza to obtain visas for family members to travel with them to the UK.
Caroline Nokes: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she is taking steps to help ensure there are effective routes for refugee family reunion in the UK for Palestinian refugees seeking to join family members in the UK.
Caroline Nokes: To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, whether his Department is taking steps to help support local authorities to find accommodation for UK citizens who have fled Gaza.
Caroline Nokes: To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, pursuant to the Answer to Question 189778 on 20 June 2023 on Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities: Disability, how many projects his Department have commissioned to increase high street accessibility for disabled people through local growth funding in the last three years by location.
Caroline Nokes: To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of measures introduced to support outdoor dining during the covid-19 pandemic on disabled people and their access to pedestrian areas.
Caroline Nokes: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what discussions she has had with abortion providers on the implementation of safe access zones.
Caroline Nokes: My hon. Friend will be aware that funds are made available to get disabled people into employment via Access to Work. However, there are significant delays in those funds being made available, once granted. Additional costs to disabled people—for example, their paying £6,000 for powered wheels—come at more of a cost when they are obliged to pay for them on their credit card because they...
Caroline Nokes: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to increase the uptake of perinatal mental health services among ethnic minority communities.
Caroline Nokes: I thank my right hon. Friend the Minister for giving way. The subject of my intervention is perhaps not entirely relevant to what he has just been saying, but I feared that he was coming to the end of his remarks. My right hon. Friend the Minister has spoken about his work with the Department for Education. May I ask what connection there has been between his Department and the Department for...
Caroline Nokes: My hon. Friend makes a very important argument about the centres being lost forever. When I visited the fifth Romsey girl guides over the summer, the girls there made the point that they had all enjoyed Foxlease in the constituency of my neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), but they were concerned that future generations of brownies, rainbows and...