Oral Answers to Questions

Luke Myer Excerpts

Thursday 22nd May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Marsha De Cordova]

Oh my goodness! The hon. Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers) makes a really important point about the importance of interfaith working, and it happens at all levels—we have our local clergy but also faith leaders and advisers working across all different faiths to bring us together. What happened last summer during the riots was a good example of how interfaith leaders work together.

[Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

6. What progress the National Church Institutions have made on improving safeguarding.

[Marsha De Cordova]

I thank my hon. Friend for continuing to rightly hold the Church to account on this issue. As he knows, in February the General Synod voted to adopt a partially independent safeguarding model that includes an external scrutiny body and a commitment to carry out further work to identify the legal and practical challenges of moving towards a fully independent safeguarding model.

[Luke Myer]

Next month I will meet the Safeguarding Minister alongside my constituent and a group of survivors of abuse and safeguarding failure within the Church. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) for the work she has been doing to push the case for fully independent safeguarding processes. Will she continue to impress upon colleagues the need for full independence in terms of operations and oversight within the Church?

[Marsha De Cordova]

I reiterate that it is really important that Members, including my hon. Friend, continue to raise this issue and hold the Church to account. The Church is undertaking detailed work to look towards seeking to go with a fully independent model. In the meantime, the Church is getting on with setting up the external scrutiny body, which is likely to be on a statutory basis, in order to give it depth and may require legislation. As I have said on many occasions in Church Commissioners questions, it is so important that the Church seeks to restore and rebuild trust, and that begins with ensuring that we have a credible model for safeguarding.

Rural Broadband

Luke Myer Excerpts

Wednesday 13th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Chris Bryant]

That is an interesting intervention from the Chair! I think that Portcullis House is a matter for the Speaker and the Administration Committee. But there is a serious point here: in many cases if we could get to 5G standalone universally, some of these issues would not apply, because we would be able to do lots of things. The police, for instance, could have fully streamed services available through their 5G, and broadband might not be so immediately significant.

I am painfully aware that this is an issue I raised as a Back-Bench MP and baby MP all the time. Sometimes Ofcom’s reporting does not match people’s lived experience. It will say, for instance, that somewhere has 98% coverage from all four operators on mobile, but when people get there they cannot get a signal for love nor money. Often that is because of the way Ofcom has been reporting, which relies on 2 megabits per second. But with 2 megabits per second people cannot do anything. That goes back to the original point made by the hon. Member for Glastonbury and Somerton—I will think of her as the hon. Member for Glastonbury Tor now, because it is shorter in my head.

[Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

The data issue that the Minister is raising is precisely what we have been experiencing. Looking at it on paper, from the maps, the villages have fantastic signal and broadband, but that is just not people’s experience. I am grateful to the Minister for meeting me recently to discuss this and for the roll-out we are going to see from the Government in East Cleveland.

[Chris Bryant]

I do not want Opposition Members to think that I have had an audience with a Labour Member and not with others. There is a universal service obligation on the Minister here. For most of the issues that have been raised, I think the most useful thing would be to book in a time for officials from Building Digital UK to go through both the mobile and broadband issues that relate to Members’ specific constituencies. We do have more precise maps, and we are able to talk all those issues through.

My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Luke Myer) is right. One of the first things I did when I became the Minister with responsibility for telecoms was to write to Ofcom to say, “You have to review the way that you look at these issues of reporting.” I am glad to say that Ofcom replied recently, and I am happy to put a copy of that letter in the Library so that everybody can see the correspondence we have had. But it is a good point; apart from anything else, mobile operators would quite like to know where there is good coverage—and good coverage should mean coverage that is actually any use to anybody, rather than something that theoretically says 4G but does not feel like 4G at all.

Oral Answers to Questions

Luke Myer Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for raising that; it is obviously of huge importance to his constituents and he is right to do so. As he knows, we are reviewing the programme. The programme that the last Government put in place for 40 new hospitals had a number of flaws: they were not all hospitals, they were not new, and they were not funded, so we are reviewing it. He is right to raise this matter, and I will ensure that he has a meeting with the relevant Minister to discuss the development in his constituency. It will matter to his constituents who are listening to this, and it is important that they know where the failure lay.

[Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

I welcome the Government’s historic investment in carbon capture and storage technology for Teesside and Merseyside. This week I have been at the sector’s conference, and the feeling there is that this is a Government who are delivering after years of delay. Will the Prime Minister recognise the unique potential that Teesside has for jobs, prosperity and economic growth into the future?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, and you will have observed, Mr Speaker, that on Monday we had a very successful investment summit, with £63 billion coming into this country, jobs in every part of the UK, and a clear message from businesses that they are prepared to invest now under this new Labour Government. Part of that was a £22 billion commitment to carbon capture, usage and storage, creating the first clusters in the world including, as my hon. Friend points out, in various parts of the country. We will support those jobs and investment. We will grow our economy and rebuild our country.