Jeremy Hunt MP: speeches

Speeches

• 14 Apr 2026 · Maternity Care · Hansard source

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  The Secretary of State and I are equally frustrated that more progress has not been made despite numerous inquiries dating right the way back to the Morecambe Bay inquiry in 2014, which I commissioned. Does he agree that one reform that could make an enormous difference would be full continuity of care for every pregnant mum, so that from the moment someone knows they are pregnant, a team of clinicians led by a named senior clinician would be responsible for that mother and child, from pre-birth to birth to post-birth, and no one would ever be in any doubt about where the buck stopped?

• 13 Apr 2026 · Middle East · Hansard source

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  In a crisis, Governments have permission to do things that are not possible in normal times, but I am worried that what the Prime Minister is going to bring forward will not meet the measure of the moment. Will he commit to dramatically changing energy policy so that it focuses as much on cheap energy as on clean energy? When it comes to the desperate need to increase defence spending, will he consider serious welfare reform to stop someone who earns the national living wage while working full time sometimes getting only half as much support as someone on the three main benefits?

• 24 Mar 2026 · Middle East: Economic Update · Hansard source

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  Could I gently ask the Chancellor to be less partisan at a time of crisis? If she brings before the House difficult measures that are right for the country, she will have the support of the whole House, but if she is partisan, she will not. I actually rise to support her basic instinct, which is for targeted rather than universal support. Four years ago, energy bills were heading to £4,000. We are at nothing like that now, and we do not know what the oil price will be next week, let alone this winter. Although we gave support to households and families last time by increasing borrowing, with her support, we cannot react to every single economic shock by further increasing our national debt. Will she confirm that when she comes to the House to announce targeted support, it will be fully funded in her Budget and not funded by increasing our national debt yet again?

• 10 Mar 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  One of the things that makes our economy less resilient is high levels of debt. The Chancellor and I have both followed fiscal rules that allowed us to claim that debt was falling, when in fact it continued to rise, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of GDP. Does she think it is time to consider a new fiscal rule that actually reduces debt—for example, a rule that public spending will not increase faster than economic growth?

• 9 Mar 2026 · Middle East: Economic Update · Hansard source

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  When I was doing the Chancellor’s job, the Treasury rule of thumb was that a 20% increase in energy prices meant 1% more on inflation and 0.5% less on growth. The truth is that it is much too early to know whether the Chancellor will have to find £78 billion to help households with energy bills, as I had to do in 2022, but we do know that the world is much more dangerous and that there are big problems in our defence budget. I welcome the fact that the Government are now committed to increasing defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, but nearly two years on from when the previous Government made the same commitment, it is clear that that is not enough. Will she unblock the arguments between the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence and outline a timetable whereby defence spending increases to 3% of GDP and we are able to defend our interests in the middle east and our allies in Europe, as the whole House would wish?

• 3 Mar 2026 · Spring Forecast · Hansard source

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  Given what the Chancellor has just said about gas prices going up by nearly 50% in the past week, her Budget promise to reduce household energy bills by £150 will ring hollow for many people. If the cost of living is the real concern, is the biggest mistake not to increase taxes by £66 billion, which is the equivalent of nearly £2,300 per household? If that money is needed for public services, nearly all of that—£54 billion, in fact—could be got by reducing the welfare bill to 2019 levels. Is it sustainable to keep raising taxes on people in work in order to pay ever more benefits to people not in work?

• 2 Mar 2026 · Middle East · Hansard source

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  British influence in the middle east is directly linked to the strength of our military and our willingness to use it. When he took office, the Prime Minister rightly increased defence spending, but that sum is now widely thought to be too little and taking too long. Will he unblock the argument between the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence, so that this House can always have confidence that we will maintain a military formidable enough to defend our borders, interests and values?

• 13 Jan 2026 · Nigeria: Freedom of Religion or Belief · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman for his excellent work as the FORB envoy and the extraordinary effort he is putting into the role. In a world in which geopolitics is becoming increasingly transactional—African Governments are increasingly focused on growth rather than on civil and political rights—and intolerance and bigotry are more widespread than ever, does he agree that it is vital that British foreign policy makes space for those without a voice, such as Christians in Nigeria, and that, however hard that is, we should redouble our efforts to do so?

• 8 Jan 2026 · Economic Growth: Transport System · Hansard source

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  Being able to commute to work easily is vital for economic growth, but my constituents using Ash Vale station have to climb the equivalent of two storeys of stairs, making it virtually impossible for people in wheelchairs, older people or young parents with prams to get up and get on to the main line to London. There is an excellent proposal under Access for All on the Secretary of State’s desk. When will my constituents find out whether there will be a happy new year for them?

• 5 Jan 2026 · Venezuela · Hansard source

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  Most people’s thoughts on Maduro’s capture will be, “Good riddance”, and I would have liked the Government to have been more categorical in supporting US action to remove an illegitimate and evil dictator, but if the new US approach extends to the annexation of Greenland, the sovereign territory of a NATO member, it could mean the end of the alliance, with disastrous consequences. How much planning is going on at the Foreign Office to make sure that such a disaster does not happen? We understand that discussions between allies have to be private, but from the outside, it looks like Europe is weak and divided. Can the Foreign Secretary reassure the House that the right conversations are happening, and that we are not just hoping for the best?

• 26 Nov 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that we should look at the facts, which are very clear: the OBR upgraded growth for this year, and then downgraded it for every single year of the forecast thereafter. The overall size of the economy is shrinking as a result of the measures taken by the Chancellor in the previous Budget—and, I am afraid, made much worse in this Budget. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we need to go further on planning reform, but I do not think we have had any plan from the Government for the really substantive changes that would align incentives between local communities and national Government when it gets to things like planning approval for big infrastructure projects. I would cheer from the rafters if we heard that from the Chancellor, because it is urgently needed. Can the Government please not tell us that everything is going to be fine just because they are not the evil Tories? That is what I think is most disappointing of all, because those terrible Tories got inflation down from 11% to 2% and saw 4 million new jobs in the economy, as opposed to nearly 200,000 fewer. They grew the economy faster than France, Germany, Italy or Japan, and they attracted more greenfield foreign direct investment than anywhere in the world apart from China and the United States.

• 26 Nov 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  I will give way one last time to my right hon. Friend.

• 26 Nov 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  I am proud that I dealt with a real black hole of £72 billion, not a fake one of £22 billion, in my fiscal events, and I met the fiscal rules every time. If the hon. Lady is really concerned about that low headroom, why did the shadow Chancellor at the time—now the current Chancellor—not object once to the fact that headroom was reduced to that level? I will tell the House why she did not object: because if I had left headroom any higher, I would have had to cut spending more or increase taxes more, and that would have made the recession we were heading into deeper and worse, with more unemployment, fewer jobs and more poverty. That is why I am proud that I took the right decision. Even now, it may not be too late, because a Government who try to do the right thing with the time they have left are more likely to earn the trust of the British people than a Government who have given up. Please do not treat government as an exercise in survival. That would be a betrayal of the Government’s mandate. People with the broadest shoulders, as the Chancellor described them, will be rightly angry today. But it is the people who depend on public services, who are looking for a job and who are on the poverty line, who need a strong economy more than anyone else, and they will finish today feeling more scared than ever about their prospects.

• 26 Nov 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Chancellor makes a great play of fiscal responsibility—incidentally, I hope she will correct the record, because she said that she was reducing debt, when the OBR’s economic and financial outlook says that it is going up from 95% of GDP to 96% of GDP. On my hon. Friend’s point, yes: when the previous Conservative Government came into office, the Government were borrowing nearly £1 in every £4 that we were spending on public services, and we reduced that deficit from 10% to 2%, and Labour opposed us every single step of the way.

• 26 Nov 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman, but I profoundly disagree on the way the Government are choosing to do that. By expanding the welfare bill and expanding the number of large families living in poverty, they are making the root causes of poverty worse and not better. The Chancellor says that there is a growth plan, but it was very difficult to discern it at all in today’s Budget. We know, for example, that raising public sector productivity to private sector levels would add 0.4% to annual GDP growth. We know that proper planning reforms would add 0.4%, that proper welfare reform would add 0.3% and that getting energy bills down properly would add 0.3%. We know that AI could dwarf all that, according to Microsoft and Accenture, potentially adding 1% a year. We got none of that today. Instead, we had a Government arriving in office saying that they wanted “Growth, growth, growth” without knowing how they were going to get there. Growth needs a plan, not a soundbite, and it is that lack of a plan—or even a guiding philosophy—that has resulted today in a Budget that damages growth, damages investment, damages jobs and, most tragically of all, damages opportunities for young people, of whom there will shortly be a million not in employment, education or training.

• 26 Nov 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  I absolutely share the hon. Lady’s concern. That standard was introduced when I was Health Secretary. This could have been the Budget in which the Chancellor announced we would speed up treatment for people with mental illness and not park them on welfare. This could have been the Budget that said that we will eliminate fraud by stopping completely benefit applications by phone. It could have been the Budget that said that instead of relying on migration to help firms expand, we will make sure that people at home are fit to join the workforce. Instead, the welfare bill is going up by around £14 billion, not least because of the totally unfair abolition of the two-child cap, which I fear will see more children, not fewer, living in the structural poverty caused when there are no adults in the household at work.

• 26 Nov 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  I recognise that the hon. Gentleman’s concern about child poverty is sincere; I just have a totally different view as to how to reduce child poverty in this country. I think financing people to have ever larger families will mean more children growing up in poverty, not fewer. The evidence for that is that under the previous Conservative Government, we had a million fewer children growing up in workless households, and child poverty in absolute terms fell. The hon. Gentleman needs to look at that evidence. The price we are paying for this mushrooming welfare bill is rising taxes which are already starting to destroy growth: 180,000 fewer payroll jobs in the last year; unemployment up, inflation up and interest rates higher than they would have been. The tragedy is that absolute poverty—which, as I said, fell under the previous Conservative Government—is now likely to rise under Labour as jobs vanish and welfare rolls soar.

• 26 Nov 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  I would be happy to tell the hon. Lady which Government were responsible for 11% inflation: the Russian Government were responsible for 11% inflation. I will happily look in the eye the 200,000 fewer children in absolute poverty after a succession of Conservative Governments because of the 4 million jobs created on our watch. Let me say this. Those dreadful Tories also increased the number of doctors and nurses in the NHS by a third, and those posh Tories increased standards in state schools to have the highest reading standards in the western world. That, Madam Deputy Speaker, is because progressive instincts do not pay the bill for good public services—a strong economy does.

• 26 Nov 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  I do not want to leave the hon. Lady out, but I promise that this will be my last intervention.

• 26 Nov 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  Labour Members might find that hard to hear from a former Conservative Deputy Prime Minister, but they might want to listen to the Resolution Foundation, which has been saying exactly the same thing on the airwaves today. No one disputes the progressive credentials of the Resolution Foundation. It has been warning against this rise in the minimum wage and all the extra workers’ rights, which it says could lead to a crisis in youth unemployment.

• 26 Nov 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  Budgets are not easy for Chancellors, because there are so many things beyond their control, but being forced to make trade-offs reveals priorities. I am afraid today’s priority was not economic growth, but political survival. That is because there was one central call the Chancellor had to make today: do we reform welfare, or do we raise tax? Getting our welfare bill down to pre-pandemic levels would save about £47 billion a year within five years. It would not have been easy, but it would have meant no tax rises and plenty of headroom in public finances. Instead, welfare spend is going up, and jobs and growth are going down. In every single day of the Government’s first year, around 2,200 people have been signed off not just work, but from even having to look for work. That is 1 million more people on universal credit just in the last year. Most of those claimants cite mental ill health, but every doctor I spoke to as Health Secretary said that people with anxiety and depression need social contact. That means being at work, not being at home.

• 24 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for Housing and Planning for his constructive meeting last week on the community infrastructure levy. Could he tell the House whether Liberal Democrat-controlled councils such as mine in Waverley should be charging the community infrastructure levy to private householders who do a straightforward extension on their house?

• 20 Nov 2025 · Bus Services · Hansard source

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  My constituents in Cranleigh, Shamley Green, Bramley and Shalford find it very difficult to get to their local hospital in Guildford, and to the community hospital in Milford. There is no direct bus service. A quarter of older people do not have cars. What will the Government do to help them solve that problem, which is becoming more and more difficult?

• 19 Nov 2025 · Myalgic Encephalomyelitis · Hansard source

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  It is a privilege to speak under your chairship, Mr Mundell. I thank the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills (Tessa Munt) for calling this debate. I would like to use my short time to tell the story of a young man who made me understand the tragedy of ME six years ago. He was a very promising first-year student at Durham University called Tom. He was on track to get a first in maths. He was a big hockey player, but in his second year, he started struggling, first to walk upstairs and to climb hills, and eventually he found that he could not wash himself, eat by himself or even read. Then, to his enormous frustration, he dropped out in his third year. When all his friends were starting a new life with their first job, he had to stay at home and go through the nightmare of first trying to get a diagnosis and get someone to agree that he had a problem, and then trying to get treatment for it. Tom felt that he was going in circles: doctors were not really persuaded and he was not getting any answers. He was very lucky because he had two remarkable parents, Alex and Denise, who could afford to go to America. In fact, they moved to America and they got him enrolled on clinical trials. This story has a positive ending, because six years on, he is doing incredibly well. He is actually thriving; he has a job and a partner, and his life is back on track—except, sadly, in America rather than here. As the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills said, there are 400,000 people with ME or with long covid symptoms that are like severe ME. For some of them, it is already too late. Maeve Boothby O’Neill and Sarah Lewis tragically lost their lives, and coroners issued prevention of future deaths notices.

• 19 Nov 2025 · Myalgic Encephalomyelitis · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Lady for talking about that very sad case. I actually think that the NHS is better than it was because of long covid. The real cause for hope is Edinburgh University’s DecodeME study, which the chief executive of Action for ME, Sonya Chowdhury, described to me as being like a treasure hunt map with eight crosses where there is a genetic code that matches ME, but where we then have to go and dig up that treasure. That is what is now waiting to happen, and why funding is so important. Ultimately, with the quality of research in this country, there should be no need for anyone to have to go to the United States or Germany for their treatment. During the pandemic, more lives were saved through treatments and vaccines discovered in this country than any other country in the world. We have amazing research happening here. My plea to the Government is this: the last Government started the process by ignoring some of the scepticism in the medical community about whether ME was really a serious condition. It would be fantastic, and it would give so much hope, if this Government could now finish the job and invest in research that will transform the lives of so many people like Tom.