Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Jonathan Davies

Tuesday 20th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I am very sorry for everything that Nicola and her family have been through. The hon. Member will know that the UK National Screening Committee guides the Government in screening decisions. It has looked at newborn screening and concluded that there is not yet enough evidence to include MLD in the test. However, it is awaiting evidence from pilot studies looking into screening for MLD and from the recently implemented Norwegian screening programme. I will look further at this issue and ensure that the hon. Member gets a meeting with Ministers to talk about MLD.

[Jonathan Davies (Mid Derbyshire) (Lab)]

T2. My constituent Audrina Hatton-Wright is a 12-year-old cancer survivor. She has spent a huge amount of her childhood in hospital, where she has found that the food is sometimes not of a nutritional quality to support people’s recovery. She is running a high-profile campaign on this issue, which has taken her on to the BBC and ITV’s “This Morning”. Will Ministers meet me and Audrina to see where we can work on this issue together?

Middle East

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Jonathan Davies

Tuesday 17th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

We have taken a different approach to the US and to Israel over this conflict, and that has been guided by our principles and our assessment of the UK’s national interest. But I would also say to the right hon. Gentleman that there have been Iranian airstrikes against our partner countries—countries that were not involved in those initial strikes and countries where 300,000 British citizens were either visiting or resident—and strikes on hotels as well as on energy and civilian infrastructure in places across the Gulf. If the UK had done nothing, when we had the ability to take out the missiles and the drones while they were in the air, I think people would have found that extremely difficult to understand.

[Jonathan Davies (Mid Derbyshire) (Lab)]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for her wide-ranging statement, including the support she outlined to protect British nationals in the region and to ensure that humanitarian aid gets into Lebanon, and the efforts to ensure that British consumers with heating oil are protected from price rises. Over 1,500 properties in my constituency depend on that.

May I ask specifically about Iran? Iran has been a threat to the UK, around the world and to many of our partners. It has been a destabilising force directly and through its proxies for many decades. Is it her assessment now that whatever the circumstances of how this war came about, we have an opportunity to permanently de-escalate and neutralise the threat from Iran so that the whole world can benefit from more peaceful circumstances without it?

[Yvette Cooper]

Iran continues to be a long-standing threat to international security through its attempts to develop a nuclear programme and to regional security through its proxies and its ballistic missiles programme, but also to its own people in some of the brutal repression that we have seen. It will be important as this conflict subsides and as we come out of it that there is a medium and long-term containment plan to prevent the threats in all these different areas from Iran to its neighbours, so that we cannot see this kind of threat again.