Student Loan Repayment Plans

Sarah Russell Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)]

I am pleased to see you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Jas Athwal) for securing this debate.

The system just is not fair; it does not make any sense and it does not set people up well for life. Realistically, a person makes a decision about whether to go to university when they are about 16 or 17 years old. We would not let banks lend money to 16 and 17-year-olds on these terms—we would think it wrong; people cannot enter into those contracts until they are 18—but when someone makes the decision to apply to university, unless they are from a very wealthy background, they are essentially signing up to a huge amount of ongoing debt.

Young people quite rightly aspire to own homes, start families and have the same sort of life and pension savings that the generations before them had, and I do not see how that is unreasonable. Yet we are allowing a system to persist in which many of them are paying 9% of their income, on top of the tax they already pay, spiralling house prices and the incredibly high requirements for childcare, if they wish to have a family. Of course, Labour has rightly helped with many of those problems, but the student loans system remains a barrier to opportunity.

We should have great aspirations for our young people. Education is a right, and should not be a privilege, but those privileged enough to have parents who can pay for their fees up front have a massive benefit over everyone else. That is wrong and it needs to change.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jack Rankin (Windsor) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I thank the hon. Member for Ilford South (Jas Athwal) for securing this important debate and highlighting one of the major challenges facing many young people in this country today: student loan repayments. Despite my youthful looks, I can clarify that I am on the last year of plan 1 loans, so this issue does not directly affect me. I have many contemporaries in that situation, though, and I think I understand it well.

When growing numbers of graduates are leaving university with mountains of debt and graduate recruitment is at a record low, there is an urgent need to address a system that is failing graduates. The hon. Member for Ilford South asked for broad agreement on that point. Although I did not agree with everything in his remarks, I think he has broad support across the House that the system as currently designed is not working. This issue affects a huge proportion of young people, given that over 50% of them now go to university. Combine that with a 30-year lifespan, and it becomes a generational problem.

Perhaps by coincidence, rather than design, this debate coincides with the announcement made by His Majesty’s most loyal Opposition of a new deal for young people. I acknowledge that it is partly responsive, but it has helped to bring the issue to the top of the news agenda. This debate could not be timelier. For young people, particularly those on plan 2 loans, there is not a moment to lose.

[Sarah Russell]

The hon. Gentleman has referred to plan 2 loans but plan 3 loans were also brought in by his Government. Plan 3 loans are for those with postgraduate qualifications—people who are definitely making an economic contribution to our society—and now kick in from when they earn £21,000. Does he agree that that was the wrong thing for his Government to do?

[Jack Rankin]

I do not want to talk about each plan individually, but this does need to be looked at in the round, as the hon. Lady is quite right to say.

Returning to the hon. Member for Ilford South, I am glad that he recognised—which some of his colleagues did not—that the beneficiaries of student loans should be asked to contribute. He called for fairness. I agree with him that, as it stands, the balance is not quite right. To my mind—the hon. Member for York Outer (Mr Charters) spoke to this—the main issue that we have seen is the breach of the promise on thresholds being frozen and on interest rates being increased. I acknowledge that we did that in government, but it has happened most recently in the recent Budgets. That is morally indefensible.

The hon. Members for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) and for York Central (Rachael Maskell), who I do not think are in their places anymore, made similar contributions from a left-wing point of view. I gently suggest that the mechanisms for mass debt cancellations, or even more, what they call “progressive taxation”, is not where we need to be. I am afraid I consider that to be the politics of the magic money tree. When we look at what is happening, one of the things that graduates are upset about is the unreasonable marginal rates of tax that they face as graduates when the student loan is included. More so-called “progressive” marginal rates of income tax would be part of the problem, not part of the solution.

I am aware that many a Conservative ex-Minister has stood at the shadow Dispatch Box and criticised the Government for things they themselves were doing in the recent past, so I say this with some self-awareness, but I say to the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Josh Babarinde) that the Liberal Democrats have to be careful on this issue—the faces on the Government Benches when the Liberal Democrats made some of their remarks were quite the picture.

The hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), who I believe is the Chair of the Education Committee, made a fair point about the balance in education between economic outcomes and the broader social good of education. I agree with her that the case for education is broader than just economic, but I suggest that there is a balance. We have to be careful about whether it is progressive to send working-class children on university courses that will laden them with debt, but not provide them with the economic outcomes that they might need. There is a balance there to tread.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chester South and Eddisbury (Aphra Brandreth) talked about the nuance here, between the oppressive interest rates and the 30-year repayment threshold.

--- Later in debate ---

[Josh MacAlister]

That is a very timely intervention, because when we were elected we recognised the pressures and acted. In this Parliament, the Government are lifting the plan 2 repayment threshold to £29,385, ending a four-year freeze. We have acted to ensure that the threshold rises to above average graduate salaries, because that was the right thing to do, despite the fiscal pressures we faced. Due to the enormous pressures on budgets and the need for fairness across the education system, especially in further education, and to support the long-term sustainability of the student loan system, we announced at Budget 2025 that the Government will freeze plans for repayment thresholds at £29,385 for three years from April 2027. I note that, even with that freeze, a borrower earning £30,000 will repay around £4 a month and the average plan 2 borrower will repay about £8 more a month.

The freeze will generate £5.9 billion—money that this Government are investing back into young people. We are making improvements to the education system, and the threshold freeze contributes to that. The improvements are happening both in higher education and in the wider skills landscape. We will be investing £1.2 billion more in skills training per year by 2028-29, ensuring that we develop and nurture the skills that many young people who do not go to university need for the future. We are supporting colleges, apprenticeships and technical training, areas that have too long been neglected by other parties, with record funding. I see the benefits of much of that in my constituency, where many young people choose to pursue education through vocational and technical routes. We are setting up technical excellence colleges, ripping out the red tape from the apprenticeship system, and ensuring that more foundation apprenticeships get young people into trades and careers that give them a brighter future.

Politics is about choices. When a Government come in and all public services are in a mess, they have to work through their priorities. Just this week, we have announced generational changes to the special educational needs system. Just today, the Government are announcing major changes to ensure that people can see timely justice in the courts. We are also making changes to improve the student finance system. First, from January 2027, the lifelong learning entitlement will enable learners to use student loans more flexibly than ever before. Secondly, from the 2028-29 academic year, we will introduce targeted, means-tested grants, which, again, were scrapped by the previous Government. Thirdly, to support students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, we are future-proofing our maintenance loan offer, with loans for living costs increasing in line with forecast inflation every academic year.

This Government recognise the strength of feeling on the student loan system, particularly plan 2, and we will always look at issues that are important to the public. We will continue to keep this system under review.

[Sarah Russell]

The Minister has spoken very well about plan 2, and we are grateful that he will be looking at it, but so far as I can tell, plan 3 thresholds have remained frozen for postgrads at £21,000 since their inception. That is deeply unjust. Will he commit to looking at plan 3 as well as plan 2?

[Josh MacAlister]

As the Secretary of State said earlier this week, we will look at these issues.

Across the board, we are acting as a Government to support people with the cost of living: investing in free childcare, freezing rail fares, cutting energy bills—there is welcome news on that today—and introducing measures on rights at work and protections for renters. We understand the pressures facing young professionals and young graduates. As the Secretary of State has made very clear, we will of course look at this system in the round and at how it can be improved. I thank hon. Members for their contributions to the debate.

Children with SEND: Assessments and Support

Sarah Russell Excerpts

Monday 15th September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) for opening this important debate, as well as everyone who signed the petition and those who filled in my survey on SEND matters this summer. The level of distress that the current system is causing to both children and their parents is difficult to overstate. The parents I see in my surgeries are so distressed, and so are their children.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

My constituent’s seven-year-old son has been waiting 13 months for an assessment, and she has had to give up her job to care for him. Does my hon. Friend agree that the issue has an impact on not only the children and their parents—as she rightly says—but the economy, if we are losing people who are already in work?

[Sarah Russell]

I agree with my hon. Friend; in fact, that is a matter I will come on to. The distress I see within this system is staggering. I see parents making decisions about taking their children to school, when they suspect that the school place might be damaging for their child, but they also strongly suspect that not taking their child to school is damaging that child—that is a horrific position for parents and children to be placed in.

I see two big points of problem in the system. The first is when children or their parents are seeking a diagnosis. In response to my survey, I heard from parents who had got into thousands of pounds—sometimes tens of thousands of pounds—of debt in seeking diagnoses for their children, because they were so desperate to get them some help. However, when they get that EHCP, after a great fight and sometimes legal confrontation, they often find that the support that it gives is not consistently maintained, despite schools doing their absolute best—I have never met a teacher who did not want to help children with special educational needs. Those parents are then incredibly distressed, and those children struggle to stay in school.

The second difficulty, I find, occurs as their children get somewhat older: the parents have the diagnosis that they desperately wanted, but their teenage child’s mental health goes down sharply. At that point, they often find that a neurodivergent diagnosis is a hindrance to getting their children the mental health support that they need. That is shocking; it is appalling that people appear to think, on a widespread basis, that autism inherently involves anxiety, and therefore children with an autism diagnosis do not need support with their mental health. That is what I am hearing from parents in my constituency.

I could give so many stories. I recently spoke to one parent who explained that her son had repeatedly gone missing from home. She has had referrals to CAMHS from the police, social services and other organisations, and her son is 13 years old and suicidal, but there is a two-year wait for a child’s mental health assessment in my constituency and he is not deemed to meet the threshold. This is life and death for our children, and it is really frightening.

These parents are terrified; as my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) mentioned, they are so frightened for their children that they cannot go to work and leave them unattended. I ask the Minister to please process as quickly as possible the applications for special schools at Westfields and Flag Lane Baths, previously flagged to her predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell).

Government Support for Ukrainians

Sarah Russell Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Martin Wrigley]

Absolutely.

I would like to give a couple of stories from Ukrainians here. I am keeping an eye on the time. This is from Anya Glebova in north Devon, who is hosted by Julie. I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker, for using the word “you”. These are her words:

“How do you live during the war? And can a person who has not experienced it understand us? I think not, because I myself did not believe that such a thing is possible in our time. But it turns out it is possible. That morning will remain in my memory for a long time, when I woke up to collect the children for school and a man who was in Odessa called and said that the war had begun, they were shelling us. To say that it was horror would be an understatement, but a completely different life began for us.

Since no one expected this, panic began: empty shelves in stores, lights going out and terrible alarm signals. My children and I went to bed dressed, so that at night during the alarm we could quickly run to the basement where we decided to hide. A suitcase with documents was constantly packed in the basement; there were warm things and blankets. When you hear a rocket, your thoughts are about the children and how to save them. Missile alarms become our daily routine: children playing hear the alarm and run to the basement or to the house where we made a small shelter. My husband was invited to the military registration and enlistment office, and taken to war. We were left alone at home without support and with constant worry.

Why did we decide to move? Because as a mother, I want a peaceful life for my children. I want them to sleep peacefully and study, so that they can see life. When I arrived here, not only the children but also I was afraid when a helicopter flew overhead. We saw a plane overhead when with my son in the garden, and it flew very low. I froze and when I turned around I saw my son, who was sitting by a tree, screaming at me. The horror of war cannot be put into words. It is when you go to sleep and don’t know whether you will wake up. It is when life can end in a minute. This is universal, since every day brought its own experiences, pain and despair. It cannot be described.

My husband made the decision for us to leave Ukraine, probably because he sees much more. For me, it was a difficult step, firstly, to leave my husband without support. He sometimes came home for two days, and it was always a holiday for our family. Secondly, to leave the home where the children grew up, where there were dreams, where every corner has its own story. But the safety of the children came first, so we decided to leave. Not knowing the language and taking a backpack with us, we set off for the UK, where our host Julie met us. A new stage in our lives began.

Thanks to Julie, we gradually got to know, and continued to get to know, the local system. My daughter immediately went to school where she was happily accepted, and she began to meet new classmates. Recently, she saw a plane high in the sky, took a picture and sent it to her father, saying that it was a piece of peaceful sky. My son is preparing to enter college, is studying English and going to the gym. I was almost immediately offered a job, where I work without knowing English. A foreign country, unfamiliar customs, lack of knowledge of the language—all this is covered by the sensitivity and care of people around us. The Ukrainian diaspora supports everyone, learning the language, helping to solve problems and always being in touch. Thank you for giving a peaceful sky to our children!”

[Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He talks about children. There are children in my constituency who came here as very small children and have only ever been in the English education system. Their parents are deeply concerned about what will happen to them going forward, so it would be appropriate for us to look to put in place permanent measures as soon as humanly possible. I am sure he would also want to join me in thanking the host families in my constituency, who I am so proud of and grateful to, and Refugees Welcome, which continues to work to help Ukrainian families integrate in our community.

[Martin Wrigley]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention and I absolutely agree.

I want briefly to mention another story. This is of Mariia and Ksenia in north Devon, written by their host Helen. I apologise for my Ukrainian pronunciation. They said:

“On 21 June Oleh Yurash age 28 was killed in Sumy in a missile strike. He was the husband of Liudmyla Yurash also 28 and father to Roman, four years old. Liudmyla is the sister of Mariia and Ksenia Yurash, my adult guests. He was almost unrecognisable. Mariia and Ksenia travelled back to Ukraine to attend his funeral. Liudmyla was also carer for their mother, who recently had a stroke.

The girls’ father wants them to stay in the UK, where Mariia and her daughter are safe from the war, especially as Mariia is a single mother and the Russians have been kidnapping children. Mila is settled in the only school she has known, starting year 3 in September.

Ksenia is studying in order to be able to go to university. There is little education in Ukraine at the moment. They have already lost a brother and their father is fighting for his country. The thing that keeps him going is that his two younger daughters are safe. I hope that you can get the Government to see that we need to carry on supporting our Ukrainian family.”

I asked the Prime Minister last week about extending the scheme, and the Home Secretary was asked about it in a Select Committee on 3 June. However, the situation is changing. Ukraine’s Government publicly changed their position in late May, asking all Governments where Ukrainians have sought safety and sanctuary since spring 2022 to provide them with a choice: to remain where their lives are being rebuilt or to return to Ukraine when it is safe to do so.

Certificate of Common Sponsorship

Sarah Russell Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairwomanship, Dr Huq. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Neil Duncan-Jordan) for securing this debate.

Two sets of people are being abused and exploited. The first set are workers in the care sector. I agree with everything that my hon. Friend said about the extent of abuse in the sector, and I have seen it myself in my employment law practice. However, I have also always been aware that there was a need for more advice in the sector than we could ever provide, for exactly the reason that he raised: people are too scared to come forward.

The other set of people for whom this situation is deeply unjust are my constituents who receive care, who are spending their life savings on care, and who would be absolutely horrified to discover the circumstances in which many of the people who give that care are living. The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority has talked about this as a massive growth area of concern—I have spoken to the Minister about that previously, in this exact room, so I will not go into precisely the same points again.

The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority could potentially have a licensing scheme for care workers but, bluntly, it licensing schemes in other sectors do not seem to be eliminating abuse, so a certificate of common sponsorship is the way to get better rights and behaviours within the sector.

At the moment, some councils are putting out tenders for care at payment rates of around £17 an hour. Care representative organisations tell me that the actual cost of providing care with staff paid in a legally compliant way is £22 an hour. That does not include any management costs whatsoever; it is just the cost of the member of staff being provided. We have, at minimum, a £5 an hour gap between legally compliant care workers and what local councils are offering, although the gap is more than that because companies will, of course, want to make some degree of profit—that is not, per se, illegitimate—and will naturally need to charge for some management costs. A gap that big is enriching non-compliant employers in the sector. Compliant employers are withdrawing from the market because they cannot manage to compete, or provide services, for the amounts of money available.

There is an urgent need for a wider reform of the care sector, and pay within the sector. We are, of course, all looking forward to sectoral bargaining, to better protect workers and make it clearer to people what their rights are. However, unless workers have the capacity to enforce those rights, and unless they can move between employers as the rest of us can, they will continue to be exploited.

We already have a significant problem in the sector. The problem is getting worse and will continue to get worse but this is, I hope, one of a number of measures that could really improve working conditions for people in this country.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

We said five minutes each.

SEND Provision: Autism and ADHD

Sarah Russell Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Pippa Heylings]

Absolutely; I am here to pay tribute, as is everybody, to what teachers are doing, both with regard to the failure of the previous Government and with the current situation. Let us get to what is happening with the current Government.

Every child deserves access to education to get the best start in life and build a strong foundation that can provide valuable skills that allow them to thrive. That is not the case for all children across the country and particularly not for those with autism spectrum disorder and ADHD. Every professional I have spoken to agrees that early diagnosis and support are essential.

[Mrs Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)]

In respect of early diagnosis and onward support, in my constituency of Congleton we have two specific problems. First, although some children receive a diagnosis under the right to choose pathway on the NHS, others, often from more deprived backgrounds, face considerably longer waits than they would under that pathway. The impact of that on those children concerns me very much. Secondly, Cheshire East council sometimes goes for periods of time when it closes the education, health and care plan application pathway to new entrants because it is so overwhelmed by the number of applications it already has. Both those are serious issues for children in my constituency, and I thank the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire for securing this debate and giving me the opportunity to air them. Does she agree that it is a huge improvement to have a Government who are integrating SEND support and that there is so much more that we are all looking to do?

[Pippa Heylings]

I will come on to what I think is a postcode lottery. We see regional disparities in the care and provision given, so I thank the hon. Member for raising that point.

For many, the wait to get assessments for education, health and care plans can be months, if not years. Lord Darzi’s investigation of the NHS in England notes,

“Waiting lists for community services and mental health have surged.”

The report also mentions how

“Demand for assessments for ADHD and Autism have grown exponentially in recent years”,

with children disproportionately represented among them.

Recent research found that 200,000 children in England are struggling to get an education, health and care plan. That is 200,000 families left in uncertainty, desperate for help and struggling without the support they need.

Cambridgeshire currently has 8,033 students with EHCPs—a 51% increase in the last five years—and of those, 2,593 plans primarily address autism spectrum disorder. Indeed, I was told by the chief executive of Cambridgeshire county council that there has been an increase of 270% in the number of children presenting with autism. Requests for education, health and care needs assessments have risen faster than the national average. Why? We think that is driven by greater awareness of SEND and the statutory responsibilities of local authorities, the impact of the covid pandemic and the overall increase in mental health issues for children, even at a very young age. Those numbers help to underline the scale of the issue, but we should not get drawn purely into statistics and figures, because behind every number and every percentage there is a child, a family or a sibling being failed every single day.

I come to the issue of disparity that the hon. Member for Congleton (Mrs Russell) mentioned. Families who can afford to seek private neurodevelopmental assessments tend to receive help much faster than those who are reliant on public services. For the rest, it is a postcode lottery. NHS England data reveals stark regional disparities in waiting times for diagnosis. For example, the north-west region has the longest average wait of three years and four months, from referral to diagnosis. We therefore have a health inequality element to this too, as certain groups of children are less likely to have their needs identified or met, punished just because of where they live.

For some children, mainstream schools are simply not suitable, and parents and carers bear the brunt of that reality, managing reduced timetables, enduring repeated exclusions and watching their children receive only a few hours of education each day.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pippa Heylings]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. The Carers Trust has provided us with these stories and pointed out that we really need to collect this evidence. It would be easy to point the finger at local councils and say that this is their failure, but, as we have said, they are stretched to their limits by a chronic lack of funding. We have heard that f40, the cross-party local authority campaign group, has estimated that an additional £4.6 billion of annual SEND revenue is required to meet the current need, yet most of our county councils face a black hole in their budgets. One issue is the training and retention of educational psychologists, because they and council workers are overwhelmed. Turnover rates are high and burnout is common, which leads to an exacerbation of those waiting lists.

[Mrs Russell]

I thank the hon. Member for allowing me to intervene again; I appreciate it. Cheshire has some of the lowest per-pupil funding in the country. There is a direct link between schools that receive relatively low levels of funding and councils that have relatively high levels of SEND diagnoses, because there is not the same support in mainstream classrooms as when there are higher staffing ratios, which we find in areas that have better funding. We need to look at equalising that funding as best we can in the current environment to improve support at an earlier stage, as the hon. Lady was mentioning.

[Pippa Heylings]

I agree with the hon. Member. My constituency of South Cambridgeshire also has among the lowest per-pupil funding, which exacerbates the fact that, even though we have EHCPs, most of them are not funded to the amount that is required for each of those students. That compounds the situation that our amazing schools are trying to deal with.

Let me return to educational psychologists. Cambridgeshire county council has 17.5 budgeted educational psychologist roles, but 6.4 remain vacant due to a national shortage and the fact that psychologists can get better pay in other jobs and other places. We are seeing an inability to fill those roles and to support psychologists.

The Liberal Democrats are calling for a national body for SEND to end the postcode lottery faced by families of children with the highest needs. That would include looking at immediate Government action to prioritise early diagnosis and support for children with SEND, and to increase funding for diagnostic services.

Indefinite Leave to Remain: Healthcare Workers

Sarah Russell Excerpts

Monday 18th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) for securing this debate.

There is a significant and ageing population in my constituency. There has been a 25% increase in the number over-65s since 2011 and, accordingly, a huge increase in the need for care. Prior to coming here, I was a solicitor specialising in employment rights. I worked in a law centre and saw at first hand how the issue plays out when it goes wrong—and it does go wrong. Typically, we would be approached by a care worker who was very concerned that they were being treated horrifically at work, in ways that were clearly unlawful. Unfortunately, once we gave them advice, they would not go forward with any form of complaint. They were too frightened that they would lose their visa status and their employer would create untrue allegations about them in order to have them thrown out of the country, rather than dealing with the underlying problems in the care sector.

The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority reports that 61% of all reports made to it in the first quarter of 2024 concerned labour abuse in the care sector. Many, many people work in the care sector in my constituency and many, many more spend their life savings on care. They would all be rightly horrified to experience or receive care from people who work in the circumstances that I saw at first hand in practice.

The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority website lists common signs that indicate the exploitation of care workers. It asks that if someone is visiting a loved one or a loved one is receiving care at home and they spot the signs, they contact the authority. The common signs listed are scavenging for food or eating leftovers, working excessively long hours, not being dressed adequately for the role—having insufficiently warm clothing or not having personal protective equipment—being in fear of the authorities, showing signs that their movements are being controlled, or having injuries. That is the reality of working in care in this country. That is what we all accept day to day in order to have our older people or people with disabilities looked after. Any of us would find that idea completely abhorrent. While we continue to do nothing, that is what we perpetuate in our society and all around us.

There are two things that we could do. Irrespective of the subject of today’s petition—even if there was a two-year wait for rights—we need to look at the relationship between employment rights and visa status in the intervening period, because people in those first two years would still be subject to widespread abuse. The other thing that we could look at is the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority licensing scheme, which does not currently extend to the care sector. That is a significant omission that we could review.

I thank Members for listening to me today. Finally, I want to pick up on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton Test (Satvir Kaur) about hate crime against NHS workers. When I visited Congleton War Memorial hospital recently, the chief executive made the point to me that his staff are habitually and regularly subjected to racial hatred. In raising that issue again with the House, I echo my hon. Friend, and I thank all NHS workers and all our care staff—it is appalling and we need to do something about it.