Edward Morello MP: speeches

Speeches

• 10 Dec 2024 · Rural Cycling Infrastructure · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Henley and Thame (Freddie van Mierlo) for securing this important debate on rural cycling infrastructure. Members present appreciate the unique challenges faced by cyclists in rural areas, and the need to ensure their safety if we are to promote greater accessibility for cycling as a mode of transport. Rural roads present unique risks: they are typically narrower, less well maintained, and shared with fast-moving vehicles. In places in my West Dorset constituency roads are also shared with horse riders, who are similarly desperately in need of safety infrastructure. The road conditions make cycling on roads disproportionately dangerous. Statistics show that cyclists are almost twice as likely to be killed on a rural road as on an urban one. For my constituency the challenge is clear: only 1.7% of people cycle to work, and that figure is well below the already appallingly low national average of 2.1%. Both figures reflect the deterrent effect of unsafe rural roads and the lack of cycling infrastructure, but also the wider picture of cycling in this country. Cycling can provide an affordable, sustainable and accessible alternative for shorter journeys, not to mention the benefits to the environment and to physical and mental wellbeing. In West Dorset, 50% of people drive to work, 14% of households do not own a car and 30% of residents travel less than 10 km to work. That distance is more than achievable by bicycle for most individuals. Between Bridport and West Bay, the old railway has been repurposed as a cycling and walking path, with many residents hoping that it can be extended all along the old line to Maiden Newton to avoid their having to use country lanes. Similarly, an alternative cycle route between Bridport and Chideock would mean that residents and tourists alike could avoid the main coast artery of the A35, with its heavy goods vehicles. Public transport in West Dorset is limited and irregular. Congestion on our few A roads and many country lanes causes delays and disruption in our villages. Cycling would reduce congestion, provide people with greater freedom to travel independently, reduce the environmental impact and support healthier lifestyles. I urge the Government to take immediate steps to address these issues and support rural constituencies such as West Dorset by making cycling a safer and more viable option.

• 4 Dec 2024 · Employer National Insurance Contributions · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman rightly points out the need to invest in the NHS. Does he recognise that imposing NICs on primary healthcare providers such as my constituency’s Weldmar Hospicecare, which provides vital end of life care to residents and must raise £26,000 a day to fund its service, will result—

• 26 Nov 2024 · ECHO 2 Programme · Hansard source

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  The ECHO 2 programme is crucial to delivering the new global communications network for the FCDO. The Minister mentioned that it is due for completion in January 2025, but will it remain within budget? What are the plans to ensure that it delivers its full technical and financial benefits? Does the Minister think that any additional support or adjustments will be needed to ensure its delivery?

• 26 Nov 2024 · ECHO 2 Programme · Hansard source

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  8. What recent steps his Department has taken to deliver the ECHO 2 programme.

• 14 Nov 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T3. Family farms across West Dorset fear closure as a result of the Government’s planned changes to agricultural property relief and business property relief, and I urge Ministers to rethink the policy. The Budget also included the announcement of a UK carbon border adjustment mechanism to be introduced on 1 January 2027. That will place a carbon price on goods imported to the UK, including fertiliser. A carbon tax on fertiliser will only increase the cost of production for farmers struggling to compete with cheap imports, and drive up costs for consumers. What assessment has been made of that?

• 4 Nov 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.

• 4 Nov 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  West Dorset has seen a 134% increase in the number of children requiring SEN support in the last six years. As of the latest data, more than 275 children are waiting for education, care and health plan assessments, with the average waiting time well in excess of the 20-week statutory limit. Will the Minister outline what specific measures the Department is implementing to ensure that the much-needed £1 billion investment announced in the Budget is used to bring down waiting times for EHCPs in places such as West Dorset?

• 29 Oct 2024 · Draft Vehicle Drivers (Certificates of Professional Competence) (Amendment) Regulations 2024 · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. With brevity in mind, I will just say that the Liberal Democrats support this measure to make training more convenient for drivers and small businesses. However, given the transition to e-learning, it is imperative that the quality of training is not compromised, and we urge the Minister to monitor closely the outcomes of the changes to ensure that there is no negative impact on road safety.

• 24 Oct 2024 · Flood Risk: Resilience Framework · Hansard source

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  Climate change means that West Dorset faces a growing flood risk, with increasingly frequent heavy rainfall flooding fields, making roads impassable and turning villages like Stratton and Maiden Newton into islands. Last year, 700 properties in my hometown of Bridport, including a school and a vital healthcare centre, were put at risk by flooding. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that the necessary funding and resources are available for flood prevention and emergency response in rural constituencies like West Dorset, where large geographical areas can create additional challenges?

• 24 Oct 2024 · Flood Risk: Resilience Framework · Hansard source

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  18. If he will take steps to ensure that the UK Government resilience framework helps communities mitigate against flood risk.

• 23 Oct 2024 · Water Companies: Regulation and Financial Stability · Hansard source

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  To my hon. Friend’s point about the need for a regulator with teeth, West Dorset saw 45,000 hours of sewage released into our rivers and beaches last year. The River Lim last year was declared “ecologically dead”. Does my hon. Friend have a view on whether the regulator should be able to impose fines on the water companies that reflect the damage they are doing to our natural environment?

• 16 Oct 2024 · Access to Primary Healthcare · Hansard source

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  In my constituency of West Dorset, as across the country, community pharmacies are being asked to deliver more and more primary care services, increasingly acting as an alternative to GP surgeries. They are delivering vital healthcare services such as health consultations and vaccinations; however, the funding model for community pharmacies is outdated and insufficient, and does not reflect the expanded role that they now play in our healthcare system. Community Pharmacy England reports that one sixth of pharmacies could close within a year, and the National Pharmacy Association estimates that the average pharmacy will lose £43,000 this year. This is being played out writ large in my constituency. Lyme Regis has recently lost its last remaining high street pharmacy. Our Beaminster and Sherborne pharmacies are reporting six-figure annual losses due to the unsustainability of the funding framework—a funding model that, as the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee suggests, does not account for the higher operating costs in rural areas, as well as wild fluctuations in medicine prices that can result in pharmacies losing money on every prescription issued of certain drugs. Community pharmacies also have to operate within a system whereby they get compensated only for consultations that lead to prescriptions being issued. That leads to a perverse focus on patients where a medicalised outcome is most likely. I urge the Government to re-evaluate the funding model for community pharmacies. We need a system that recognises and rewards the broader role that pharmacies now play, particularly in rural areas. Pharmacies are delivering critical health services, yet they are being financially penalised because the funding system is still based on an outdated model. If we continue on this path, we risk losing these vital community assets. Pharmacies in rural places such as West Dorset cannot survive on the current funding framework. They are a lifeline for many of my constituents, and without immediate action we could see further closures, which would leave vulnerable populations without access to vital healthcare services.

• 14 Oct 2024 · Gibraltar-Spain Border Checks · Hansard source

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  The Minister has told us that a local border official unilaterally imposed the restrictions. If that is the case, can the Minister outline exactly what guarantees the Government have received from the Spanish Government that such powers will not be localised and that local officials cannot impose powerful restrictions on Gibraltarians and Spanish people seeking to work in Gibraltar?

• 7 Oct 2024 · Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage · Hansard source

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  The Secretary of State will know that it is vital that we reduce our global greenhouse gas emissions if we are to avoid the worst ravages of a climate crisis that is already manifesting. Given that this deal risks incentivising hard-to-abate businesses to continue with business as usual, will he outline what steps the Government intend to take to ensure that those industries also invest in reducing their emissions?

• 12 Sept 2024 · Sir David Amess Adjournment Debate · Hansard source

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  I am extremely honoured to be giving my maiden speech in a debate named after the late, great Sir David Amess. I am grateful for this opportunity. I thank all Members who have given their maiden speeches today. I enjoyed the lot of them. It has been wonderful to learn about the many famous former residents of Lichfield, and I wish the hon. Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) the best of luck in adding his name to that pantheon. Special mention goes to the hon. Member for Southampton Test (Satvir Kaur) for providing the answer to the pub quiz question: what links Craig David and fishfinger sandwiches? We all know better now. I am the first non-Conservative MP for West Dorset in its 139-year history—something I am extremely proud of. That notwithstanding, I will start by paying tribute to my Conservative predecessor. Chris Loder’s family has farmed West Dorset for over 100 years, and he should be deservedly proud to have served as its MP. We are both successors to Sir Oliver Letwin, an MP who was so well respected by the residents of West Dorset that they would stop me at every opportunity to tell me what a fantastic constituency MP he was. I can only hope to leave this House as fondly remembered in the area as he is. Although each of us has been proud to be the Member for West Dorset, we are not West Dorset’s proudest member. That honour goes to the Cerne Abbas giant, a 55-metre-high chalk fertility symbol whose presence stands proud over the Cerne valley for all to see. West Dorset is the best constituency in the country. I know that for a fact because the towns of Bridport, Dorchester, Lyme Regis and Sherborne have, at various times over the past few years, been described as the best towns in Britain by no less an authority than the Dorset Echo , a newspaper that shares my unrivalled objectivity when it comes to the virtues of West Dorset. West Dorset is home to the world-famous Jurassic coast, a UNESCO world heritage site, where Mary Anning helped to revolutionise our understanding of prehistoric life. She was long overlooked by historians, but her contribution is now recognised with a beautiful statue in her home town of Lyme Regis. At the other end of Chesil beach is the Fleet lagoon, the UK’s largest saltwater lagoon, on which sits the Abbotsbury swannery, which is home to over 600 swans and is a fantastic day out, especially if you love swans. As well as the swans, one can also see, rather incongruously, a prototype of Barnes Wallis’s bouncing bomb. Quite what the swans of Abbotsbury thought about their home being used as a replica for the Ruhr dams is still unknown. Sadly, our beaches and rivers saw over 45,000 hours of sewage released into them last year. The River Lim, which exits at Lyme Regis, was declared “ecologically dead” due to the levels of pollution in it. It is shameful that I and my family, before we go swimming at the nearby beach of West Bay, must log on to the Surfers Against Sewage app to check whether it is safe to swim. I committed during the campaign to using my seat in this House to pressure the Government to take serious action on the issue of sewage, and I promise to do so. West Dorset is Hardy country. Thomas Hardy is renowned the world over for his poetry, and novels such as “Far from the Madding Crowd” and “Tess of the d’Urbervilles.” His works famously deal with themes of melancholy, sadness and moral conflict—emotions that I am sure are familiar to Members voting in the Tory leadership contest. In his lifetime, he was also highly critical of the declining status afforded to rural Britain. For even more than its beautiful towns and coastline, West Dorset is a constituency defined by its countryside—a landscape managed and maintained by our farmers and food producers, who are the beating heart of our rural economy. We desperately need a national food and farming strategy that will deliver sustainable living for our farmers. Far from being cut, the farming budget must be significantly increased if conversations about food security are ever to be anything other than fine words. As an environmentalist, I am delighted that we now have a Government who seem to understand the importance of tackling the climate crisis and who recognise the vital part that renewable energy will play in achieving net zero. Having spent a large part of my career in renewable energy, I will be urging the Government to go further and faster if we are to avoid the worst ravages of the climate emergency, which is already unfolding. The Liberal Democrats will continue to champion the need for action in this House. On the subject of my party, I pay tribute to our party leader, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey). I and many of my colleagues owe our seats in no small part to his fantastic, if unorthodox, campaign. I must also pay tribute to another leader of the Liberal Democrats. My political journey began in 2015, with Nick Clegg’s resignation speech. He said—I summarise here—that in the face of the politics of identity, nationalism and “us versus them”, it has never been more important to keep the flame of liberalism alive. It was true then and it is true now. I knew then that it was not enough to stand on the sidelines and watch the country that I love so much be eaten by the self-interest of those who seek power only for power’s sake or for self-enrichment. Sadly, over the summer we saw that there are those who would seek to use the misery of people who have come here seeking refuge to further their own aims. I mention that because it will come as no surprise that the Morellos are not originally from this island. The Morellos of Italy became the Morellos of Spain—with apologies to both countries for my pronunciation—before coming to Britain at the beginning of the 20th century. One of my forebears died fighting in world war one for the country that adopted him, and is buried in a Commonwealth war grave cemetery in northern France. My own father served in the Royal Navy. Even more than Morellos, my family are Mazierskis. My maternal grandfather came here from Poland at the end of the second world war, fleeing another type of political tyranny. He arrived as a child, speaking no English. He became an engineer and set up a building company. His children became nurses, teachers, artists and architects. His grandchildren are doctors, civil servants, lecturers and environmentalists, and one of them stands here today as a Member of Parliament. In my experience, immigrants do not forget the debt they owe the country that offered them a future. We must not let hate win. We must champion hope. That is why it is more important than ever to fly the flag for liberalism, liberal values and a rules-based international order. I would also like to mention my amazing wife. She is far, far cleverer than me and would make a far better politician. Without her, I certainly would not be here today, not just because of the love and support she has shown me, but because it was her suggestion that I run in the first place—something I find myself reminding her of with increasing frequency. Finally, I thank the voters of West Dorset for putting their faith in me. It is a huge honour to represent them, and I look forward to doing everything I can to deliver a better deal for West Dorset.