Miriam Cates: ...course, the provision allowing students, academics and visiting speakers who have had, or are about to have, their freedom of speech curtailed to bring a claim against a university in court. Most cases can, will and should be settled through the Office for Students’ complaints process, but that could take months. There will be circumstances in which quick recourse is needed, for example...
Alexander Stafford: ...Casey inquiries laid out the problems at the heart of the issue by outlining the authorities’ unwillingness to act on information bravely passed to them by victims and connected parties. In many cases, councillors, council officers, police and other public officers turned a blind eye due to apparent concerns about upsetting racial sensitives or cultural differences. In plain English,...
Alison Thewliss: ...of my hon. Friends. We do not believe that this Bill, which is abhorrent in how it rips up people’s human rights, is fixable. Contrary to what the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates) suggested earlier, human rights are not a luxury. They are for everybody, everywhere, all at once. We should not try to remove them from anyone, particularly those who have suffered...
George Eustice: ...who will offer the high-paid jobs and do the research and development. But today, I want to focus on a different matter, which is the Government’s announcement on childcare. It is undoubtedly the case that this announcement will be welcomed by some, but for me it is only half a policy, because as the Chancellor said yesterday, its aim is to help those who want to return to work to do so....
Miriam Cates: ...Office for Students data shows that 193 speaker requests or events at English universities were rejected in 2021, compared with just 53 in 2018. And of course there have been numerous high-profile cases of cancellation, including those of Helen Joyce, of the Israeli ambassador and of my right hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) when he was Education Secretary....
Miriam Cates: ...the appalling crime of rape against women and girls have been too low across the country. What impact does my right hon. and learned Friend believe that Operation Soteria will have on prosecuting cases of rape?
Lloyd Russell-Moyle: On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I wanted to notify the House at the earliest opportunity that I have written to the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates) to acknowledge that the tone of my remarks in the Chamber yesterday was a mistake. I stand by the words that I said, and I profoundly disagree with the comments that the hon. Member made, but our job as MPs is to...
Natalie Elphicke: ...briefly to other amendments, new clause 2 seeks to hold senior managers to account. I am grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Stone (Sir William Cash) and for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates) for their excellent work on this. I was somewhat disappointed to read the comments, repeated today by the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), that it is some kind of...
Miriam Cates: I rise to support the Government’s decision to use their section 35 powers with regard to the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. As is the case for many other hon. Members, I am afraid that I have not had a chance to read the statement of reasons in full and in detail, so I will focus on a few key areas that are significant. In paragraph 27, the Government point out that the Bill...
Baroness Fox of Buckley: ...citing its acceptable use policy associated with criminality and hate speech, and later telling the Times that the accounts were guilty of misinformation about vaccines. Few were convinced. Miriam Cates MP told the other place: “It is … hard to avoid interpreting PayPal’s actions as an orchestrated, politically motivated move to restrict certain views within the UK”,—[Official...
Andrew Griffith: .... Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) and the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) on the work, and frankly the challenges, that hon. Members have faced in the case of the British Steel pension fund, trying to get redress and to speak up for their constituents in the face of regulators that—whether this was real or imagined—they certainly felt were...
Miriam Cates: ...into the process of compliance. Why should directors who are profiting from the platforms not be responsible if children suffer harm as a result of using their products? That is certainly the case in many other industries. The right hon. Lady used the example of the building trade. Of course there will always be accidents, but if individual directors face the prospect of personal...
Miriam Cates: ...reported that it gave them ideas about the type of sex that they wanted to try. We have seen the normalisation of strangulation during sex, and of anal sex among young people. A year or so ago, a case was reported of a boy who raped a girl in school; when the teacher asked him why he had not stopped, he said, “I thought it was normal for girls to cry during sex.” How are these boys...
Alex Norris: ... the right hon. Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) and the hon. Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder) said, median workplace earnings are £2,500 a year lower in rural areas than in urban areas. The case for change is strong, and we on these Benches argue that the problem has been a model that has involved flying the aeroplane on one engine; we have backed one small part of this country and...
Miriam Cates: ...is “age appropriate”. I personally do not think that it should be up to schools, teachers or, potentially, parents to have to decide that. I think that we need child development experts on the case to determine which materials are suitable for which time. I will conclude by reflecting on the speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price). Family is key to...
Presentation and First Reading ( Standing Order No. 57) Sir Christopher Chope supported by Hannah Bardell, Mr Peter Bone, Miriam Cates, Philip Davies, Richard Drax, Esther McVey, Nigel Mills, Jim Shannon, Sir Desmond Swayne, Mr William Wragg and Sir Jeremy Wright, presented a Bill to place a duty on the Secretary of State to make provision about financial assistance to persons who have...
Michelle Donelan: ...who have contributed to the Bill’s passage. The nature of the problem and the intensity of those opposed to academic freedom has made even acknowledging the issue an incredibly brave act in many cases. I thank the many right hon. and hon. Members who have raised the issue and contributed to the discussion over the years. In particular, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland...
Miriam Cates: ...valid belief, and one that I hold myself. Students and staff should absolutely be protected in reflecting that view. He leads me on to my next point, which is that for every high-profile case we have discussed in the House today, many more never make the headlines. Underneath these incidents lies a culture where students and academics alike are becoming afraid to discuss and share their...
Anneliese Dodds: ...might take some of the decisions if there are differences in sex development. There has been a very significant discussion around this, as I am sure the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates) is aware. In countries such as Germany, quite a bit of work has been done on the possibility of ensuring that people can make decisions for themselves at the age of medical consent...
Christopher Chope: ...to provide such financial assistance, on whether there should be any upper limit on the financial assistance available, on the criteria for eligibility and on whether payment should be made in all cases where there is no other reasonable cause for the death or disablement suffered; and for connected purposes. This Bill is not about the tens of millions of people in the United Kingdom who...
