Oral Answers to Questions

Lee Barron Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Let me give the right hon. Lady a simple example. We had an example of green-belt land that was, in fact, a car park where building did not take place, and non-green-belt land that was an open playing field where building did take place. That does not make sense to me. That is why we have our policy.

[Lee Barron (Corby and East Northamptonshire) (Lab)]

Q11. Twelve-year-old Millie Blair from Oundle joins us today in the Gallery along with her mum, Gemma, her sister, Jessica, and her dad, Gordon. On Millie’s 11th birthday, she was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer, which led to her leg being amputated. Millie attends Prince William school, but she cannot access the lower playing field because the slope is too steep. Her parents, the school and I have asked the East Midlands academy trust to put in a ramp, but it has refused, claiming that it is not subject to certain parts of the Equality Act 2010. Does the Prime Minister agree that the trust has an absolute moral obligation to make those adjustments to give Millie full access to all the school, so that she can play and thrive with all her friends?

[The Prime Minister]

I welcome Millie to the Gallery—I appreciate that Members on the Opposition Benches cannot see her, but she is looking down at us and smiling with the courage and positivity that I know is everything to her. We absolutely salute that; we are humbled by it. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] I really do find it hard to understand how a school trust could make a decision like that in relation to the ramp. Rather than berate those in the trust from the Chamber, I would just implore them on behalf of everybody here and Millie in particular to look again, and hopefully, with the endorsement of the whole House, to reconsider that decision, put in that ramp and match the positivity and the courage that Millie has shown all of us. I thank my hon. Friend for raising that campaign.