Oral Answers to Questions

Natalie Fleet Excerpts

Wednesday 4th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We announced £502 million to support local authorities to manage the changes in NICs. We have put in £3.7 billion in additional funding for social care, doubled the disabled facilities grant and introducing the first ever fair pay agreement for professional carers, including minimum standards for pay. I gently say to the hon. Member that her party opposed the Budget that provides the money for the funding. They cannot keep asking for more spending and oppose a Budget that raises the money.

[Natalie Fleet (Bolsover) (Lab)]

The first constituent to reach out to me was a brave Bolsover mummy who had waited four years and five months, from rape to prosecution, with three postponements and multiple suicide attempts. I will do everything I can to use this Chamber to speak out for women who are being so badly let down. How will the Prime Minister support me to ensure that when these survivors—these formidable women—across the country come forward, they will get justice and there will be space in our prisons for the perpetrators?

[The Prime Minister]

May I thank my hon. Friend for raising this issue so powerfully and for everything that she is doing on it? The case she has outlined is utterly shameful, and far too many victims are waiting too long for justice. We are delivering a record number of sitting days and reviewing criminal courts to speed up the hearing of these cases, and we have a mission to halve violence against women and girls.

My hon. Friend talks about the prison system. The Conservatives left the prison system on the brink of collapse and routinely operating at 99% of capacity, because in 14 long years they added just 500 extra places. We will deliver 14,000 new prison places so that the public are protected from these vile offenders.