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Tag: Mary Kelly Foy

  • Mary Kelly Foy – 2023 Speech on the Budget

    Mary Kelly Foy – 2023 Speech on the Budget

    The speech made by Mary Kelly Foy, the Labour MP for the City of Durham, in the House of Commons on 16 March 2023.

    I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton) on her wonderful and passionate maiden speech, and welcome her to her place.

    The Budget does not even come close to resolving the cost of living crisis faced by so many of my constituents right now. The Chancellor said that Britain will not enter a “technical recession” this year; that is of little comfort to my constituents. For more than 12 years, people in Durham and the north-east have suffered thanks to the austerity politics of the Conservative party. Child poverty is sky high in Durham, food bank use has rocketed, and people across the country face record-breaking waiting times for NHS services.

    Not just in my constituency or the north-east but for working-class people across our country, incomes are down, housing costs are up and public services have been trashed. What was the Chancellor’s response to this malaise? “Back to work.” He may as well have said, “On your bike.” There is nothing to sort out the cost of living crisis, nothing to sort out the housing crisis and nothing to sort out the crisis in our public services.

    We needed a people’s Budget; instead, we got a bankers’ Budget. We needed to see a pay rise for our workers, who have been forced to strike because of poverty pay, but we did not get one. We needed to see a long-term commitment on the energy price cap, but we did not get one. It is yet another Budget in which the Conservative party has not prioritised working people. In fact, our country is in the midst of the longest pay squeeze for more than 200 years—not that our multi- millionaire Chancellor and Prime Minister would know.

    Now, the Chancellor wants to force disabled people back to work with an even stricter sanctions regime. Sanctions are ineffective and harmful and have led to deaths. If only the Government went after the tax evaders who owe us billions with the same obsession.

    If the Government had wanted to encourage people back to work, and to stay in work, they could have increased the minimum wage, scrapped fire and rehire and taxed the rich—the sort of policies that would give people dignity in work and get our country out of the rut that the Conservative party has created; the policies that Labour will implement once we are in government. Instead, the Chancellor has given £9 billion in tax cuts to corporations and at least £2 billion in tax cuts for the pensions of the highest earners.

    Even the Government’s flagship childcare policy will require working parents to wait for more than two years to see it rolled out. As my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) has pointed out, the cost of childcare does not end when children go to school. Where is the funding for universal breakfast clubs? Where was the announcement for a real green industrial strategy? Where was the funding for our NHS—both for its workforce and for patients? Without proper investment, staff will continue to leave the NHS and health inequalities will worsen.

    This has been a dark week in our politics. On Monday, we debated the immoral Illegal Migration Bill—or the anti-refugee Bill, as it should be called. The Bill scapegoats refugees—people fleeing from climate change and from war. Now we have a Budget that fails to resolve the real issues that working people in our country face. Whether it is at home or abroad, the Conservative party does not care for working people or the most vulnerable people. The nasty party is well and truly back, with its divide-and-rule politics.

  • Mary Kelly Foy – 2023 Parliamentary Question on the Prosecution of Hate Crime

    Mary Kelly Foy – 2023 Parliamentary Question on the Prosecution of Hate Crime

    The parliamentary question asked by Mary Kelly Foy, the Labour MP for City of Durham, in the House of Commons on 1 February 2023.

    Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)

    What steps she is taking to ensure effective prosecution of hate crime.

    The Solicitor General (Michael Tomlinson)

    We are committed to delivering justice for victims of hate crime. All CPS prosecutors are trained about hate crime, and its specialist prosecutors help to lead that work. The latest figures show that the CPS has prosecuted nearly 13,000 hate crime offences, with a charge rate of 86% and, importantly, a conviction rate of 84%.

    Mary Kelly Foy

    As we mark the start of LGBTQ History Month, it was shocking to see in the year-end figures for hate crime a 41% increase in offences targeting people’s sexuality and a 56% increase in offences targeting people’s transgender identity. What are the Government doing to stop prejudice and fear, which led to that rise in crime, being stoked against the LGBTQ community?

    The Solicitor General

    In the hon. Lady’s area of the north-east, the CPS is particularly successful in getting uplifts to sentences in relation to hate crime. In the last rolling year to date, it has been successful in obtaining uplifts in 90% of cases. The question she raises is important and the CPS is working incredibly hard in that area.

  • Mary Kelly Foy – 2022 Speech on Access to GP Services

    Mary Kelly Foy – 2022 Speech on Access to GP Services

    The speech made by Mary Kelly Foy, the Labour MP for the City of Durham, in the House of Commons on 21 June 2022.

    There are many issues that my constituents are experiencing when trying to access GP services, but I will focus my remarks on the crisis affecting dentistry across England and the impact that is having on people in Durham. I want to start by paying tribute to the dentists, dental nurses and other key workers in practices in County Durham and across the country.

    Sadly, despite the brilliant work of dental workers, NHS dentistry is on the brink of collapse. Whether in Bowburn, Brandon or Pity Me, my constituents are struggling to access the dental services they need and deserve. Four in five people who contact Healthwatch say they have found it tough to access timely dental care, while tooth decay, as we have already heard, is currently the most common reason for hospital admissions among young children. In County Durham, 245 children under the age of 10 were admitted to hospital for tooth extraction between 2020 and 2021. Thousands of children are currently in pain, distracted as they learn, in pain as they eat and struggling to sleep because they cannot access vital treatment. Let that sink in.

    Why is it so difficult to access NHS dental appointments? Because dentists are being driven away from NHS dental services en masse. A recent poll of dentists in England found that 45% had reduced their NHS commitment since the start of the pandemic, while 75% were likely to reduce their NHS commitment in the next 12 months. Alongside that, an alarming 87% of dentists say they have experienced symptoms of stress, burnout or other mental health problems in the past year. In total, 3,000 dentists have moved away from NHS work completely since the start of the pandemic.

    As the British Dental Association has said,

    “This is how NHS dentistry will die”.

    The warning is not sensationalist; it is the reality that dentists and their patients in Durham are facing. This crisis is entirely avoidable. It is certainly not the fault of our rail workers striking today, as the Secretary of State would like us to believe—utterly disgraceful. What planet is he on when he talks about record funding? That is certainly not the case for NHS dentistry, which has faced cuts unparalleled to the rest of NHS services. In real terms, the Government’s net spend on general dental practice in England was slashed by over a quarter between 2010 and 2020, while the Government’s £50 million injection into dentistry will fund less than 1% of the appointments we have lost since March. In fact, the British Dental Association estimates that it would take £880 million a year to restore dental budgets back to the level when Labour left office.

    Let us be clear: these issues will hit the poorest in our society the hardest. For many, the fees for private dental treatment are simply unaffordable. As one desperate constituent put it to me, “I can’t afford private treatment, so what on earth am I supposed to do?” There will be terrifying delays for children, adults and the poorest among those in County Durham, and I am sure across the whole country. Children in deprived areas are already three times more likely to have hospital extractions, while oral cancer, which kills more people than car accidents in the UK, is significantly more likely to affect those in our poorest communities. Dentists are frequently the first to spot health problems. Without access to regular appointments, our least well-off constituents will continue to be more likely to develop serious health problems than the wealthiest in society.

    I take this opportunity to remind the Minister that it is the Government’s job to reduce health inequalities, not widen them. As elected representatives, we are responsible for protecting and improving access to key public services for our constituents. It is time the Government stopped treating dentistry as an afterthought and urgently took action to widen NHS dentistry. For my constituents in Durham, this crisis in healthcare is very much at the forefront of their minds.