Children of Alcoholics

Debate between George Freeman and Jim Shannon

Wednesday 26th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the children of alcoholics.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris, particularly on this day, when there are other events going on in Parliament. I am grateful to colleagues from all parties who have come to support this debate, and to the Minister on what I know is a very busy day for his Department.

Today is a chance to speak on behalf of the children of alcoholics. They are the children who suffer in silence around our country, and sadly there are now many of them; nearly 2.5 million children live with one or both parents suffering from serious alcohol dependency or abuse. It is my great privilege, standing here today as chairman-elect of the all-party parliamentary group on children of alcoholics, to introduce this debate and formally launch our campaign across both Houses and all parties for this Parliament to take forward the work of the National Association for Children of Alcoholics.

The APPG has been brilliantly and ably led by my colleagues Jon Ashworth and the right hon. Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne), who have passed the baton to me now that I am no longer in government. As a freelancer, and the deputy chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, I am free to speak without fear or favour. [Interruption.] I can hear the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) saying that I have always spoken without fear or favour.

I start by saying that there are many children of alcohol in this great Parliament. For many children, it is a terrible trauma of silent suffering from which they never really escape. It also drives into many children an extraordinary ability to take on responsibilities too young, as well as tasks and duties that should really fall only to adults, and it often engenders a drive to make a difference. We see 11, 10, nine or eight-year-olds face things that nobody should have to cope with, let alone a lonely child carer. It is perhaps not surprising that much of the drive that lies behind many people in this Parliament comes from some of those experiences, whether of alcohol or other addictions.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman; we spoke about people who have lived with this before the debate, which he might refer to, and I was very moved by what he told me. Across Northern Ireland, there are some 40,000 children living with parental alcoholism, and there has been a rise specifically in alcohol deaths. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there must be more focus, and that antenatal and health visitors should routinely screen parents who are dependent on alcohol to not only support the parents but ensure that the children are protected in the home? I have a friend who grew up with this, and I always remember their story—it has stuck in my mind all my life.

[George Freeman]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I want to reassure the Minister that I am not here to hit him with 20 demands—that will come in due course. Today is really a chance to raise the flag of the all-party parliamentary group. The hon. Gentleman has mentioned one of the things in our manifesto for change, and I am grateful to him for raising it.

Flooding: Planning and Developer Responsibilities

Debate between George Freeman and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 13th May 2025 Westminster Hall

[George Freeman]

The hon. Lady makes a brilliant point; at the risk of opening the floodgate of interventions too early, I will absolutely come on to her point at pace, so that Members from across the House can pile in.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. He is absolutely right. One of the problems—if I can put forward the reasoning behind what he is referring to—is the old system of building houses, not just in Norfolk, but right across this whole United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Having the storm drain and the sewage within the one system is the way they did it 40 or 50 years ago, in the houses we grew up in. That creates a problem for the houses built around that time. Every time there is heavy rain—rain no longer comes lightly, but comes in hurricane-like storms—it brings a deluge of water. The system is not able to cope with that, so does he have a solution for moving forward? This is about not just new developments, but the old developments and the old houses. What was okay years ago is not okay today.

[George Freeman]

The hon. Member—I am tempted to say my great and hon. Friend, since we have spoken in this Hall together so many times—is absolutely right. My constituency has 130 villages and three towns. At the last boundary review, I lost Wymondham because the rest of my patch has had 10,000 new houses built in the last 10 to 15 years. Very few constituencies, apart from possibly that of the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Terry Jermy), have had as many houses built as mine.

That is part of the issue, but another part of it is that developers are tending to build on the outskirts of villages and towns, because it is the easy place to dump commuter housing, but they are not upgrading the drains. Little villages that have happily existed and been able to drain themselves for years and cope with some growth, are now finding huge problems with the existing drainage infrastructure not being able to cope, which leads to the sewerage problem.