17 January 2025
Mikey Akers’ petition is being debated in the House of Commons on Monday, 27 January 2025.
NOTE – This story has been updated since first publication
In March 2024, Mikey Akers tabled a petition on the UK Parliament website calling for increased investment in speech and language therapy services. In 16 days, it secured over 10,000 signatures and a Government response.
Unusually, the House of Commons Petitions’ Committee decided the petition would be debated. The usual threshold for debates is 100,000 signatures. The calling of the General Election meant the debate did not take place.
Following the General Election, the Petitions’ Committee has now scheduled the debate for Westminster Hall on Monday, 27 January, starting at 4:30pm.
The RCSLT has worked with Mikey, Francesca Beard, Samantha Berry, Dave Harford, Georgia Leckie, Karen Massey, Sharon Oliphant, Gillian Rudd, and Pam Slater on a briefing for the debate. The briefing is supported by 46 organisations.
Update – 23 January 2025: Since publishing the briefing, two more organisations have expressed support for it: Dingley’s Promise and Speech Bubbles.
Update – 30 January 2025: Following Mikey Aker’s successful petition and our subsequent e-action encouraging RCSLT members to encourage their MPs to take part in the debate, on 27 January 2025, the Invest in SLT petition was debated in Parliament.
Attended by members of the campaign group including Mikey Akers and broadcaster Chris Kamara, the debate covered a number of topics including difficulties accessing speech and language therapy, how this affects children and adults and current workforce issues such as recruitment and retention of staff. MPs shared their own testimonies and those of their constituents.
The Minister of State for Care has committed to meet with campaigners to discuss the issues raised in the petition further. Visit our England Campaigns page for more details about the debate and any further updates
