Edward Leigh MP: speeches

Speeches

• 12 Nov 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  That is a very good point. I remember that rebellion very well—it was the start of my many rebellions. I suggest to Labour Members that they should not rebel if they want get on in this place. We had a rebellion and finally won on that issue, and my right hon. Friend makes a very good point about how we won the argument. That underlines how important it is to have a second Chamber that is not composed of elected politicians. I really do not see the point of electing politicians to a second Chamber, because it would just be like this place: full of people who want to become Ministers and who are completely subordinate to the Whips. What is the point of having an elected second Chamber? The whole point of a second Chamber is that it should be independent-minded, and the Lords are independent-minded. They regularly defeat the Government, and they actually have better debates than we do. The House of Lords is full of people who have tremendous experience in the professions, business and charities. I just do not see the point of getting rid of them lock, stock and barrel, but there is a perfectly good consensual argument that the number should be reduced. There are some people in the Lords whom we should remove either because they have not been appointed in an entirely right way or because they do not turn up.

• 12 Nov 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I am sorry to declare an interest, but why is my right hon. Friend so ageist? Some people are wonderful at the age of 80, and others are useless at the age 50.

• 12 Nov 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I think we can all agree that the other place, for all that it is seemingly undemocratic, works quite well. The Lords actually listen to debates, and they vote according to their conscience. They regularly defeat the Government, and they improve Bills again and again. If it works, why change it? Will the Paymaster General please think about the idea that I have suggested? We could get some sort of compromise by which all parties in the House of Lords are reduced by the same amount. We could reduce the Lords to around 600 Members, give more power to the House of Lords Appointments Commission and, in future, keep the number at about 600.

• 12 Nov 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I am a bit worried about what my hon. Friend is saying. Why do we need a comprehensive plan at all? Why not just leave it alone? As that great conservative, Lord Falkland, once said, “When it is not necessary to do something, it is necessary not to do it.”

• 12 Nov 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  It is an honour to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), such a well-loved, distinguished and senior Member—even if he has only served 27 years in this House. I have sat through the whole debate and I did not intend to speak, but I just want to reply to a few comments. By its very nature, the debate has been confrontational—that is what we do in this place. We tend to concentrate on what divides us rather than on what unites us, and I want to say something about what might unite us. First of all, on the ideas that divide us, we are debating whether to abolish the hereditaries. The Labour party says that it is in its manifesto and therefore it can do what it wants. We say that that is gerrymandering, that the bulk of these people are hardworking and that by nature they are Conservatives, so this is an excuse to get rid of a large number of Conservative peers. The Government will carry on and do it anyway. That is clearly very controversial. The next proposal, it seems, is to abolish the bishops. I heard what was said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson), but there are all sorts of objections to doing that, not least because this is an established Church. Do we really want to attack a faith community? It is part of our history. Are the bishops really doing much harm in the House of Lords? Incidentally, because of our canon law, the Catholic bishops do not want to be Members of the House of Lords anyway, although they are apparently quite willing to support distinguished laymen to help the Catholic cause there—but we all know that. I do not think that we will ever reach an agreement on abolishing the bishops in the House of Lords.

• 6 Nov 2024 · Engagements · Hansard source

  More

  Q8. As a good lawyer, the Prime Minister will want to listen to the evidence, so if evidence mounts from experts and organisations such as the National Farmers Union that smaller family farms of average size—250 acres—will be severely impacted by the tax changes, will he, in a spirit of compromise, listen to that evidence, keep an open mind and perhaps be prepared to raise the threshold in order to preserve our family farms?

• 5 Nov 2024 · Foreign National Offenders · Hansard source

  More

  21. How many foreign national offenders were removed from the UK through a prison transfer agreement in each year since 2010.

• 5 Nov 2024 · Foreign National Offenders · Hansard source

  More

  The previous Government negotiated a scheme by which we can deport Albanian prisoners back to Albania. It is an excellent scheme; Albania is a completely safe country, of course. Given that those crossing the channel are committing an illegal offence, is there anything legally to stop us arresting them and putting them on a flight straight to Albania? We do not even need to lock them up in Albania; they can just start their journey all over again—what a good deterrent.

• 4 Nov 2024 · Income Tax (Charge) · Hansard source

  More

  I warmly congratulate the new shadow Chancellor on his appointment. It is richly deserved, given his tremendous work as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in getting people back to work. In opening this debate, the Secretary of State said that she is only attacking wealthy people. My right hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) is talking about working people, so will he emphasise that our party stands four-square behind working farmers? These people, with only 250 acres, just want to pass on their business to their son, but they are being cruelly attacked by this Government.

• 4 Nov 2024 · Income Tax (Charge) · Hansard source

  More

  Will my right hon. Friend give way?

• 30 Oct 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

  More

  The hon. Lady has tried to intervene again and again, so I will give way.

• 30 Oct 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

  More

  No; I have to keep going. I accept that some issues, such as hospital capacity, can only be dealt with by spending, but we do not need to reinvent the wheel; we need to learn from other countries. The Health Secretary, who I admire for his apparent radical zeal—although we have not seen much evidence of it—studied Australia, for instance. Let me break the national taboo on “our NHS”, our religion. There are other countries that are like ourselves but which deliver much better—incomparably superior—health outcomes. It is my personal belief, and I think I am about the only person who has said this year after year, that we should adopt Australia’s social insurance model. There is nothing wrong with encouraging private provision in health. Is that some great heresy? Is it some sort of right-wing philosophy? Well, it is followed by France, Germany, Australia and the Netherlands, and all those other countries produce much better health outcomes. Australia slowly developed a hybrid system of state and private health insurance. Everyone has universal public health insurance, but workers are encouraged to purchase private health insurance on top of that. My point is that, with a ballooning, ageing population, yes, we have to spend more on health, but we have to get people to put more of their own money into health; and they must be assured that, having put their money in, they will not just end up at the back of a queue, because they have personal rights and are committed to this health service. For instance, the average cost of a treatment-only plan for a 20-year-old in Australia is just £23.14 a month, and comprehensive cover starts at £31 a month. That cost rises to £109 per month for a 70-year-old. People earning less than £119,000 can claim rebates to reduce the cost of health insurance, and higher earners without insurance pay a surcharge of between 1% and 1.5%. Research commissioned by Australia’s Department of Health shows that the cost to the taxpayer would be greater without the rebates, because there would be increased stress on the public system. The health outcomes are noticeable. Australia has one of the lowest rates of avoidable mortality among the developed nations. Its cancer survival rates are several percentage points higher than the UK’s, and stroke and heart attack mortality rates are several points lower. It is not perfect, of course, and not everything can be imported from other countries, but Australia’s system shows that there are other models. We must have a national debate about how, with an ageing population, we can produce the kind of health outcomes that people desire. There is a cumulative effect: in 2022, the Australian Government debt was 70% of GDP. In other words, it is running a tight, well-run ship. That is a country much like us—but the UK has already, even before this Budget, reached a staggering 104% debt in the same year. We are going broke because we do not have the courage, on either side of the aisle, to think from first principles. I am making this argument as much to those on my own Benches as I am to the Government. This situation simply cannot go on and on, otherwise people will start talking about charging or giving tax relief for private health insurance. We have to have a fundamental debate about the whole structure of health, and the Health Secretary has the good will of people across the House and across the country to start thinking big and thinking of new ideas. If he can find a way forward and improve health outcomes, he will go down in history as one of the greatest Health Secretaries we have ever had. The second fundamental problem we have is the ballooning benefits system, particularly when it comes to incapacity. It is trapping more and more people in dependence. We need a culture of the necessity of work. We have 4 million people on incapacity benefit, and two thirds of them—recent joiners—are claiming mental illness. The situation is out of control. Work should always pay more than benefits. I would have liked to have heard more from the Chancellor about how she is going to attack the benefits system and incapacity, which is gradually reducing the Government into penury.

• 30 Oct 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

  More

  I must not give way too much, because I will prevent other people from getting in. A study of 18 developed countries shows that the UK is in the bottom three when it comes to survival rates for common cancers, strokes and heart attacks. Lord Darzi’s review found that 14,000 avoidable deaths per year were due to long waits in A&E. This drags our life expectancy statistics down and down. Meanwhile, even before the Budget, the NHS was eating up 44% of day-to-day public spending. We are paying more and more and the results are getting worse and worse. I predict that for the rest of this Parliament, the Government will keep on pumping more of our national wealth into this failed system and we will still fail to catch up with other countries.

• 30 Oct 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

  More

  Well, let us see. Of course we can pump more and more money into this broken system and solve some of the short-term problems, but soon we will be not just a country with an NHS, but an NHS with a country attached to it. Is it 44% of total spending that goes on the NHS? It is growing all the time, which means that, as a country, we are gradually becoming poorer and poorer. The long-term result will be that we will have a worse health service. I say to the hon. Lady that, of course, it is totally unacceptable that people wait hours to be treated in A&E, and wait months and years for an operation. In Lincolnshire, 58% of people in A&E now have to wait more than four hours—four hours! I can tell the House horror stories of my constituents waiting up to 24 hours. That is not happening in any other developed country. It is totally unacceptable. Surely everyone in this House can unite around the a principle that those who have paid into the system for years should be treated with dignity and expeditiously.

• 30 Oct 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne). He said that Alistair Darling was his hero. My hero was Nigel Lawson, because I am personally convinced that the way to create growth and prosperity is to flatten and lower taxes. I think I have sat through 45 Budget statements in this House. They are quite exhausting, and I am quite cynical about the whole process. Normally, large amounts of good news are given out during the Budget statement when we are all sitting in the Chamber, but when we read the Red Book the next day we find that we are probably paying even more tax than we were before—everything has been taken back. However, this time, the pain has been loaded up front, so I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies. I am sure the Chancellor of the Exchequer would claim that she is just being honest, but the Budget is, none the less, a massive expansion of tax and spend. Governments who indulge in massive expansions of tax and spends are Governments who gradually impoverish countries. More and more people—even those just surviving on a state pension—will be dragged into tax. People on higher incomes will be dragged into paying ever higher rates of tax. The right hon. Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North made the classic attack on the top earners, but 1% of top earners pay 30% of all tax revenues. If we simply tax people more and more at the top end of the scale, we will get less enterprise, less growth, and those people will leave the country. It is a vicious circle, and it does not work.

• 30 Oct 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

  More

  The hon. Lady has made her point, although I was talking about incapacity benefit, so I am not sure how her point has addressed mine. The culture of people living off the state for years, when they are capable of doing some work, needs to be stamped out. We have to work together in the House to get people off benefits and help them. It is about not just reducing benefits, but having innovative schemes, like those that the former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride), was trying to bring about to encourage people back into work, making their whole lives better and more productive. Thirdly, tackling benefits is a vital ingredient of curbing immigration. What is the spur for mass immigration? It is that health and social care simply cannot get enough workers for the salaries they are paying. There are too many people on benefits, and we are dragging more and more people from all over the world into our system. We need to insist that anyone entering the country earns at least average UK earnings. We cannot go on undercutting our native workers with cheap foreign labour. We have to pay decent wages in our care service, and reform the whole benefits structure so that people actually want to work. We cannot solve our problems with mass immigration, and mass illegal immigration is part of the problem. It is gradually destroying the social contract and people’s belief in the system, and the Government must have a plan to deal with it, which basically means arresting people when they land illegally on these shores, and offshoring them. The other great problem in our national psyche that we have not really addressed is the whole pension system. I have to declare an interest: I am of pensionable age. [Hon. Members: “Never!”] Some Members will be very happy when I retire from this House, but I do try to tell the truth according to my own lights and to state difficult truths. The fact is that we have more and more elderly people, more and more sick people, and more and more people with multiple health problems. We are all committed to keeping the triple lock, and I would get into awful deep water if I said that doing so is becoming increasingly unaffordable, but of course if the portion of the state spending devoted to pensions increases every year in real terms, we will gradually ensure that the country cannot pay its way. This is a difficult truth that nobody yet has had the courage to address: we have to do more to encourage private pensions, and not—I say this to the Chancellor—seeing private pension pots as a convenient thing to raise taxes on. Many years ago, I served on the Social Security Committee under the late, great Frank Field, a man immensely respected on both sides of the aisle. We studied countries like Chile that were making explicit the creation of contributory pension systems. People were encouraged to put more into their pensions and plan for their old age. That is the only way, with an ageing population, that we can solve our problems. In addition to all this, I am afraid that wokery and human rights legislation are gradually eating away into our— [ Laughter. ] Government Members may all laugh, but it is true. Many people feel that they are not part of the way in which this country is run. These are just lessons that the Government have to learn.

• 30 Oct 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

  More

  Well, if the hon. Lady thinks that, I wish her luck, but I fear that we are just going to gradually paper over the cracks—and I will criticise my own side in this regard. For 14 years, Ministers went along with the liberal consensus, talking about “our NHS”, papering over the cracks with more and more money, employing more and more nurses and doctors, and getting worse and worse outcomes. Meanwhile, productivity nosedived and mass immigration reached unimaginable heights to keep public services going. We have to be honest, as we are now in opposition. I welcome the fact that one of our leadership candidates is saying that we have to start from first principles. That is what I am trying to do: start from first principles on how to recreate the British state. That is what Mrs Thatcher did; I worked for her when she was Leader of the Opposition in the 1970s. We need a whole new intellectual drive. In opposition, Keith Joseph and the Institute of Economic Affairs created a new vibrant Conservative philosophy for how we could solve the deep-seated problems in this country. The Budget could have been such an opportunity, but I am afraid it reflects the old tax and spend instincts of the Labour party. I agree with the Labour party that housing is a great failure of our state. Of course we need a massive house building drive, or more appropriately a flat building campaign. The easy way out is to take good agricultural land and greenbelt land, particularly around London. Instead, we need to incentivise building in cities and on brownfield sites. I fear I have wearied the House, so I will stop now. [Hon. Members: “More!”] No doubt these difficult words about the national health service or the triple lock will be used by Labour party spokesmen for years to come, if anybody is interested. However, I hope that we have the intellectual courage to try to solve the real problems in our society. How are we going to get a decent health service that is on a par with what we find in France, Australia and the Netherlands? How are we going to get a decent housing programme? How are we going to get people to contribute more towards their old age? Unless we address the fundamental deep-seated problems in the British state we will just gradually become a poorer and poorer nation.

• 30 Oct 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

  More

  The right hon. Gentleman and I could have an argument about history, but I would still defend my mentor and, even more so, the Prime Minister at that time, Margaret Thatcher, until the day I die, and we would just have to disagree on that. That is our philosophical foundation. I could devote my speech to an attack on the Labour Government. There is plenty of ammunition to do so. The leader of my party has just given a brilliant exposé of their weaknesses. However, I want to take the debate a bit further and not be too party political. The British state has fundamental problems. Members can the criticise the previous Government for not having the time or the courage to deal with things, or they could say that we were thrown off course by the pandemic. There are a whole load of reasons why we were not able to solve the fundamental problems, but I believe very strongly that this Budget will not solve them either. My personal belief is that we have to create an entire new social contract. More and more people feel disconnected from the need to work and to take responsibility for their lives. There are four or perhaps five key failures in the state, and I do not think that the Budget has long-term solutions for them. I refer to the national health service, the pension service, benefits, immigration, and probably housing, and they are all interconnected. As successive Governments have not had the courage to go to the root causes of our failure as a state, we are gradually falling behind other countries. Pumping in more billions of pounds this year, next year and the year after that will not solve the fundamental problem of the national health service. This is a huge, inefficient, state-run monopoly that solves its problems with queueing. Somebody of my age knows all about the national health service and having to wait for non-urgent operations—not just for months, but for years, and I can speak about that with personal experience.

• 28 Oct 2024 · Housing Supply · Hansard source

  More

  With so much good agricultural land now covered by solar panels, how will the Government incentivise builders to build on brownfield rather than good agricultural land, thus ensuring regeneration rather than imperilling food security?

• 24 Oct 2024 · Business of the House · Hansard source

  More

  I have served for several years on the programme boards for restoration and renewal. The existential threat to this building is fire. I have raised on several occasions, as I know others have, the importance of installing a water mist system, installing more fire doors and making sure that they all shut. This is such an important issue. I do not demand an immediate answer, but will the Leader of the House try to persuade the authorities that rather than having endless debates on whether to decant, we need to protect this building with a water mist system? The modern systems are designed so that they will not even damage paintings, but they could save the building.

• 24 Oct 2024 · Horseracing · Hansard source

  More

  Order. Will the hon. Member now draw his remarks to a close?

• 24 Oct 2024 · Horseracing · Hansard source

  More

  Order. To get everybody in, we will start with an informal time limit, so please do not speak for more than five minutes. Keep an eye on the clock, please.

• 24 Oct 2024 · Horseracing · Hansard source

  More

  Does Nick Timothy wish to say a few words to sum up?

• 24 Oct 2024 · Horseracing · Hansard source

  More

  It has been a pleasure to chair this debate. I am only sorry that no one mentioned the best racecourse in the country—Market Rasen. Question put and agreed to . Resolved , That this House has considered Government support for the horseracing industry.

• 24 Oct 2024 · Horseracing · Hansard source

  More

  That is very impressive!