Speeches by Fenton-Glynn.

“We have this problem of powerful men—and yet 90% of complaints go nowhere. Could you be doing more?”

“It is not simply taking licences away; it is about putting other conditions in as well.”

“I understand that is the civil standard, so it is the balance of probability.”

“To stick to that theme, from my FOI requests we found that 90% of complaints concluded with no formal sanction, but two thirds of those that you prosecuted ended up with a serious sanction. Does that suggest that you could perhaps prosecute more and you should think about a lower threshold for how many you prosecute?”

“Okay, but the scale is quite extraordinary. I do not think that you are sitting in front of this Committee saying that 94% of allegations are unfounded.”

“May I declare my interest?”

“It should have been answered yesterday.”

“To move on to that, would you commit to publishing slightly more data on sexual harassment and misconduct in the workplace?”

“In terms of the high level of numbers that I was able to get after asking FOIs, there is nothing in there that could not have been in the public domain.”

“Charlie, you said that you take sexual harassment and misconduct incredibly seriously—you said that it was unacceptable. From my FOI, we know that between January 2018 and August 2025, 997 complaints linked to sexual assault were logged, but only 53 resulted in suspension or erasure. Is that good enough?”

“Are you doing anything to check that you are not filtering out too many cases too early?”

“We can get that on the record before I get to my questions. I declare my interest that I worked for the GMC for five years. I found that everyone who worked at the organisation was committed to safe medical regulation, the best for doctors and the best for patients. My questions will primarily be about fitness to pract…”

“Thank you. To reiterate, I declared my interest earlier: I spent five years working for the GMC immediately before becoming an MP, although none of my role was about fitness to practise. Last year, I was interested to find out a bit more about how the GMC manages sexual harassment and misconduct claims, and I looked at…”

“I travelled through Manchester Victoria station on the day of the arena bombing and I saw the young people on their way into that concert. They were young, vibrant, excited, happy—all the things that they deserved to be, doing the most normal thing in the world: going to see a concert. It was one of the most shocking m…”

“I thank the Secretary of State for the strong statement she has made. I have been disappointed to hear so much politicisation of a national security issue in this House, but can she confirm that, just as the future of Ukraine should be determined by the Ukrainians, the future of Greenland should be determined by Denmar…”

“As a Yorkshire MP, I could not be more proud of the fact that it is a Labour Government who are delivering this change. I urge the Secretary of State to look again at the Calder Valley line. It needs electrification, perhaps as part of phase 3, which was promised by the Conservative party in 2015 but then dropped after…”

“When the Secretary of State was in front of the Health and Social Care Committee, he recognised that we will not solve the workforce problems in the NHS without solving the workforce problems in social care as well. There are 150,000 unfilled posts in social care—three times greater than in the wider economy. What are …”

“I will move you away from geriatricians in north Wales, because I want to get to the broader point. We have a workforce crisis. We have experienced staff leaving. We have what looks to be a postcode lottery in provision. We also have the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill coming down the pipe, which has an auto-c…”

“Just to pick you up on that, the problem with the postcode lottery, particularly because there are no minimum service standards in ICBs, means that we might have to have some form of direction on this to make sure that we are fixing that problem.”

“Okay. We will now move on to the workforce within that. There are currently 78 vacancies for palliative care consultants, or there were when the report was published, and that is on top of the 132 clinicians who are expected to leave the profession in the next five years. There have also been pretty bad training bottle…”