Jesse Norman MP: speeches

Speeches

• 14 May 2025 · Ministerial Code: Compliance · Hansard source

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  I am very grateful to the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) for raising this urgent question. As she has highlighted, there is a consistent pattern of failure to report first to this House, as is required by the ministerial code. She has rightly drawn attention to the farcical scenes that we had with the Trade Minister being required to deliver a statement, then having to be UQ’d the following Monday. He tried to give the same statement, without any recognition, and was rebuked by Mr Speaker for not knowing the difference. Back in October we had the embarrassing sight of the Chancellor announcing intended changes to the Government’s fiscal rules to the media before informing Parliament, and having to be publicly rebuked by Mr Speaker for doing so. The hon. Member for Aberdeen North has mentioned a number of other cases. I would highlight the Secretary of State for Education announcing tuition fees to the press before Parliament in November, the Deputy Prime Minister announcing planning reforms before the final national planning policy framework update was publicly available, and a Ministry of Defence leak on the global combat air programme in December. As we all know, the ministerial code—the Government took great credit for seeking to strengthen it on entering office—makes very plain what the rule is. It does not say, “Judgments are to be made.” It says, “The first announcement must be made to Parliament when the most important announcements of government policy are made.” It does not say, “By the way, you can prioritise these things.” Does anyone seriously think that an announcement on trade, on planning, on tuition fees or on the global combat air programme would not be of the first importance to this House? No, because every single one of those would be vital. It is not just a matter of the ministerial code and ministerial accountability. These decisions are made in breach of the Nolan principles of openness and the requirement for accountability, and they are made in breach of Labour’s own manifesto promise to “restore confidence in government and ensure ministers are held to the highest standards.” Will the right hon. Lady encourage the independent adviser to make an inquiry, and will she look to the Cabinet Secretary to do the same with civil servants? Will she and you, Madam Deputy Speaker, look to Mr Speaker for adequate enforcement of the present rules, which are being widely flouted?

• 13 May 2025 · Speaker’s Statement · Hansard source

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  Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. You have said much that was true and good, and it is hard to improve on what you said as well as the Chief Whip, but may I add a few words? Roy Stone went into the civil service at the age of 16 and served his entire life there and in this House. Twelve Chief Whips across extraordinary moments were the beneficiaries of his sage counsel and advice. I think the House will be aware that there were several occasions on which I was able to benefit from his advice in somewhat tumultuous times, having offended various senior politicians. I did not always get a meeting with the Chief Whip with coffee—as hon. Members know, that is the key test—but Sir Roy and his team were the models of professional expertise, diligence, discretion, care and candid advice throughout. The fact that he has been taken from us so quickly, so prematurely and so early into his long-deserved retirement is, I am sure, a source of the utmost sadness for every Member of this House. I am sure that I speak for all members of His Majesty’s Opposition. We will remember him with great fondness for a very long time.

• 8 May 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  This is of course the 80th anniversary of VE Day, when all Britain rejoiced at the defeat of fascism and the end of the war in Europe. I am sure I speak for the whole House in putting on record once again our profound thanks and our celebration of the immortal memory of that extraordinary generation who—through their courage, their selflessness and their sense of duty—made victory in Europe possible. Let us all pray that we can be worthy of their memory. If I may turn back from the sublime sweep of history to the mundane business of our politics, the Government have made valiant efforts to crowd the airwaves on trade this week, but the unfortunate truth is that they have had another dire week in office. The financial facts of life have not changed: growth is stagnant, as a nation we have to raise defence spending rapidly and the Government have made themselves a prisoner of their fiscal rules. Before the Leader of the House starts in on the local election results, may I remind her that, for all the horrors of last week, the Opposition still ended up with three times as many council seats as the Government? Let us look at those cost pressures a bit more closely. Just eight months after a 22.3% increase in pay for junior doctors—an increase described at the time by the British Medical Association as “a good enough first step”, the House will recall—the BMA has now announced it will ballot its members to strike for more pay. Meanwhile, the somewhat unlikely pairing of Tony Blair and Gary Smith, the general secretary of the GMB trade union, have both denounced the Government’s decision to ban offshore licences in the North sea. Blair described it as an “irrational” policy “doomed to fail”, the backlash to which threatened to “derail the whole agenda”. He said it was caused by Ministers afraid of being cast as “climate deniers”. He is not talking about the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, of course; he is talking about all the Ministers and MPs on the Government Benches who know better, but are too frit to say so. Gary Smith said that “climate fundamentalism”—that is the Secretary of State for Energy—would “accelerate the decline of domestic oil and gas production and increase our dependency on gas imports”, directly contrary to the Government’s supposed growth strategy. As he pointed out: “Across society, bill-payers will question why they are subsidising a domestic clean power sprint that is offshoring UK jobs and value.” Only today, we have had the news that Ørsted is mothballing its giant new offshore wind farm, as it has made it clear it is holding out for even greater subsidies, knowing that the Secretary of State has no choice, and has in effect said that he has no choice, if he wants to hit his targets. We all want a just and rapid energy transition, but does the Leader of the House not think that the words of Tony Blair and Gary Smith are simple common sense? There is one other issue that I think we should highlight. The Leader of the House has received universal condemnation for dismissing concerns about grooming gangs as “dog-whistle politics”. In response, she put out a tweet that conspicuously did not contain an apology for what she had said. The Secretary of State for Health said that her remarks were “indefensible”, but the truth is that she has talked in the same way about grooming gangs from the Dispatch Box, when she accused people of jumping on bandwagons on 9 January this year in business questions. I hope we can agree now that this is an extremely serious national issue and that no one, whether or not they hold public office, should be deflecting or denying its seriousness. I hope that in her response now, the Leader of the House will put aside party politics, avoid criticising others and speak from the heart. So I ask her: has she now watched the Channel 4 documentary, and if so, how does she feel about it? Does she agree that the dismissal of these entirely valid concerns has been one of the factors behind what even today remains a huge continuing national scandal. Will she now back the call of many victims for a comprehensive national inquiry into grooming gangs. Finally, would she like to take this opportunity to speak directly to the hundreds of vulnerable women involved, and say sorry?

• 8 May 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?

• 24 Apr 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Could there be a local election coming up? I very much hope that you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and everyone here had a perfectly spectacular Easter. I am sure I speak for the whole House in recording my sadness at the death of His Holiness the Pope, who was, in his work and in his life, the embodiment of faith, hope and charity. If I may, I would like to start with something small but important. My hon. Friend the Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) recently asked the Secretary of State for Education, in a written parliamentary question, whether she had visited any private schools since July last year. The junior Education Minister, the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan), replied that “the Secretary of State for Education and the wider ministerial team visit a wide variety of education settings, including private schools. The Secretary of State for Education prioritises visits to our state schools, which serve 93% of pupils in England.” All that is no doubt true but it is not an answer to the question that was put. All ministerial visits are logged by the Department, so it would have been and remains easy to compile the numbers. The Leader of the House has made clear on many occasions her commitment and belief that Members of this House should receive proper answers to their questions. Will she take up the matter with the Secretary of State for Education and see that a proper answer is given? A few weeks ago I talked about how the Prime Minister was steadily being mugged by reality, and we have seen this again in the last few days with the Government’s U-turn on the ban on sourcing photovoltaic cells built with slave labour in China. The same can be said for the Government’s energy policy as a whole. It is important to put before the House the fact that Labour’s 2024 manifesto promised to cut bills, boost energy security and create cheaper, zero-carbon electricity by 2030, accelerating to net zero by 2050. It tried to allay public concerns by promising “a phased and responsible transition in the North Sea that recognises…the ongoing role of oil and gas in our energy mix.” Nine months on, we can see how that is going. The Government have already had to U-turn on their infeasible commitment to zero carbon electricity by 2030. Most recently, the situation with British Steel in Scunthorpe has underlined the deeper incoherence of their overall approach. By banning new oil and gas licences and preventing new exploration, the Government are committing the UK to greater dependency on imported oil and gas at higher cost, with higher emissions and under less democratic control. In so doing, they are not advancing environmental justice or economic resilience; they are accelerating a decline in energy sovereignty that will leave this country more polluting, less secure and, ultimately, poorer. If we do not produce our own oil and gas, we will have to buy it. The difference is that it will come from overseas, and imported energy is not only more expensive but has a far higher carbon footprint. I remind the House that, for example, importing liquefied natural gas involves cooling gas to 160° below zero, shipping it thousands of miles from Qatar and regasifying it at a port in this country. The net emissions are up to four times higher than those from North sea gas. Crucially, UK territorial emissions go down, but overall emissions, including imports, are higher than they would be. This is not an honest policy. Labour’s manifesto talked about the importance of energy security, but refusing to allow new exploration does not reduce our vulnerability; it increases it. Energy, after all, is national security. It is industrial strategy. It is heating our houses and fuelling our cars. The idea that a major economy should voluntarily give up control of its energy supply before alternatives are well advanced is not progressive—it is reckless. The problem goes somewhat wider. The Government talk about a green industrial revolution, but the more expensive imported energy we have, the harder that will be to achieve. Not just steel but chemicals, ceramics and fertilisers all require large amounts of gas and will do for years to come. If energy is unreliable or unaffordable, those industries will continue to struggle whatever the fond imaginings of the Secretary of State. Worse still, the Government’s policy will squander capital and skills that might have gone into safely managing the UK’s remaining hydrocarbon assets. The extra revenues that would have helped fund the transition will now be lost to the many other countries that welcome such investment, while the Government turn their back on a sector that still employs 200,000 people and contributes billions in tax revenue. I ask the Leader of the House whether she shares my view that we badly need some common sense here. We all want an effective and just energy transition, but that starts with one principle: control what we can and use our own resources responsibly and transparently while building the clean energy system of the future. Instead, the Government have chosen a path that will increase emissions, raise costs, weaken the economy and tie Britain’s future to foreign powers and volatile markets. That is not leadership; that is an abdication.

• 24 Apr 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?

• 3 Apr 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Will the Leader of the House give us the future business?

• 3 Apr 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  It is some weeks away yet, but this is the last moment I will have to wish you, Mr Speaker, and all Members of this House and staff a very happy Easter; I hope I may do so. Easter is a joyous occasion, full of families and possibly inappropriate amounts of chocolate. I will be making the shadow Leader of the House’s legendary hot cross buns—not very much of the mix actually makes it into the oven, but that is part of the joy. It is lucky, however, that we have several weeks to look forward to Easter, because this week has not been one of joy. We will be debating tariffs later, and we have also had the impact of the national insurance rises, which have pushed up costs, raising inflation, making it harder than ever to hire a new employee and blocking routes into work for young people. My question, however, is this: what on earth is happening in Birmingham? As the House will recall, Birmingham city council is now in the fifth week of a strike with the union Unite over bin collections. Apparently this matter concerns just a few dozen out of some 9,500 city council employees. As the House has heard, 17,000 tonnes of rubbish has piled up so far, growing by a reported 900 tonnes a week. Let us not forget that Birmingham’s bin collections were reportedly three and a half times worse than the worst of other councils even before this strike. The public health implications are now so dire that the council has declared a major incident. The strike comes on top of two other recent fiascos. First, the athletes’ village in Perry Barr was built by the city council to host competitors during the Commonwealth games in 2022 but was never used, and has been sold at a reported loss to taxpayers of about £320 million. Secondly, Birmingham city council tried to install a shiny new Oracle IT system, resulting in a disaster whose costs are set to reach £216-odd million by 2026, according to a report by academics at Sheffield University. As a city, Birmingham is technically bankrupt. It has been controlled by Labour for well over a decade, but my point is not about the council—it is about the Government. The Minister for Local Government let the cat out of the bag in his statement on this topic on Monday, when he said: “Birmingham’s waste service has been in urgent need of modernisation and transformation for many years… Practices in the waste service have been the source of one of the largest equal pay crises in modern…history, resulting in costs of over £1 billion to the residents of Birmingham. This situation simply cannot continue.” —[ Official Report , 31 March 2025; Vol. 765, c. 45.] The Prime Minister went further in his own remarks yesterday, saying: “The situation in Birmingham council is completely unacceptable”. —[ Official Report , 2 April 2025; Vol. 765, c. 294.] However, neither the Minister nor the Prime Minister has yet offered any criticism at all of Unite, whose action is the cause of all this rotting refuse in the streets. Unite was Labour’s biggest union donor before the general election, giving £553,900 to a total of 86 MPs—although not to the Leader of the House, I am very pleased to say. Does she think there could be any relationship between the Government’s reluctance to call out Unite on the disastrous situation in Birmingham and the half a million pounds in donations their MPs have just received? Some Members of the House may see this whole situation as eerily reminiscent of the 1970s, especially Labour’s winter of discontent in 1978-79, when striking binmen caused refuse to pile up across major cities, including in Birmingham. My worry, however, is about not the past but the future. Labour consistently backed public sector union strikes when they were in opposition—a point the Prime Minister conveniently forgot to mention yesterday—but now they are in power they have thrown money at the unions hand over fist with little or no negotiated improvements. Let us not forget that Northern Rail negotiators have even said that their agreements with the union require them to use fax machines. There is a very serious point here, Mr Speaker. At this moment, the Government are abolishing NHS England and taking direct control of the NHS. Does anyone seriously think that a Government who are incapable of calling out their union donors over bin collections will have any ability at all to withstand pressure from the same and other union donors on the NHS? What will that do to cost control and productivity, to public spending and inflation? I would be grateful if the Leader of the House reflected on those issues in her remarks.

• 2 Apr 2025 · Clonoe Inquest · Hansard source

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  My right hon. Friend is giving an important and telling speech on a very important topic. As he rightly says, these soldiers were subject to well-defined rules of engagement. He has described the IRA as a terrorist organisation, but what he has not said is that at the time, it was the most sophisticated terrorist organisation in the world. The soldiers he talks about were operating under orders, in a chain of command and on the Queen’s business, and could not respond. Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is a grotesque double standard here, and that not only is this an injustice, but the Government’s position is potentially deeply corrosive of morale, as well as deeply unjust to the veterans?

• 2 Apr 2025 · Clonoe Inquest · Hansard source

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  Could the Secretary of State not simply say now to the House that he has a deep understanding and awareness of the trauma that has been caused, and that he takes the side—not judicially, but politically, in his own mind as a matter of human sympathy—with the poor people affected by these decisions and how they are playing out in the public realm? Could he not say that now, so that veterans and their families understand that a Government Minister in a senior position gets it and is on their side in his own mind, even if not judicially?

• 27 Mar 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  May I start by thanking the whole House for their wonderful messages of condolence during last week’s business questions? I could not be more grateful. I single out, in particular, the Leader of the House for her very gracious remarks. I turn from fathers to mothers, as this Sunday, of course, is Mother’s Day. The infant shadow Leaders of the House have been instructed—not that they needed it—on how to manage the occasion. I am sure that the whole House will want to join me in celebrating mothers at the weekend, and expressing ourselves in all kinds of ways to thank our mothers and the mothers we have among us for all the work they do. This has been the week of the spring statement. The House will recall the October Budget in November of last year. It was described as a once-in-a-generation Budget, with no tax rises to follow. This week we have seen that the Chancellor’s own growth forecast just four months later has been halved, and she has increased cuts to welfare benefits. That follows the interesting strategy of abolishing NHS England, having just fired all the team running it. The tax burden is on track to hit a record high in 2027-28. We should give credit where credit is due—the Chancellor has protected capital investment, which is a very important and correct decision—but there have also been wheezes. I am sorry to say that she has somewhat pulled the wool over the eyes of the Office for Budget Responsibility in relation to housing growth, which is the Government’s new “get out of jail free” card. It has never been included in an OBR estimate before, and it is very doubtful and unlikely that it will happen in any case, even at those levels—the target has already been downgraded from 1.5 million houses to 1.3 million houses—because of the planned upheaval in local government. Meanwhile, the immensely damaging Employment Rights Bill goes entirely unscored economically by the OBR. We will see what it says about that piece of legislation next time around. The brutal fact is that although the Government claim to prioritise growth, growth has halved since they came into power. They have talked about little else, but even their own forecasts do not show growth getting back even to 2% by the end of the decade, and every major independent expert forecast of the economy’s future growth is lower than that of the OBR. What do we see if we look more closely? The spring statement is not really about work at all; it is about moving people from welfare into lower-paying welfare. The cut to universal credit announced last week has been followed by a freezing of universal credit—why? It is because that appears to hit the Chancellor’s own fiscal headroom number to the decimal point. Last week we heard all the rhetoric about the moral case for nudging people back into work, but now it seems that this is actually an accounting exercise, and the economic and moral justification for the policy has been lost sight of. The second point is the question whether artificial intelligence, which the Government have greatly emphasised, will actually have the effect of increasing growth. The Chancellor suggested that this idea was somehow obvious and conventional wisdom, but that is very far from true. The Nobel prize-winning economist Bob Solow famously said that the effects of the IT revolution could be seen everywhere except in the economic numbers. Other countries are scaling and deploying artificial intelligence with massive speed, and many experts believe that AI could increase unemployment and inequality, and raise the costs of retraining people and reintegrating them into the workforce. Far from creating economic growth, the advent of AI could end up forcing a Government—possibly this Government—into even more spending than they presently contemplate. Finally, we get to the vexed and much-discussed issue of so-called fiscal headroom—or, to use a more technical phrase, the goolies-in-a-vice problem. It has been suggested that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing expecting a different result. So far, we have seen minimal fiscal adjustment at the statement, and meanwhile the Chancellor has managed to recreate the same constraining conditions that existed beforehand. This is a situation entirely of the Government’s own making. It was the Chancellor’s decision to choose these fiscal rules, and it was her decision then to take measures that undermined economic growth. She has staked her own credibility and that of the Government on those decisions. The result is that we will now have endless uncertainty and avoidable speculation about the fiscal position every week, through the comprehensive spending review and into the autumn Budget. The Chancellor has refused to rule out making more cuts to spending. Even so, she may have to impose tax rises, and those tax rises could come even sooner than anticipated if the US decides to go ahead with the tariff it has suggested. As such, my question is this: what will the Leader of the House feel in her own heart, and what will she say to her Cabinet colleagues over the next few weeks, as the full effects of these terribly damaging decisions become clear?

• 27 Mar 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?

• 20 Mar 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Hear, hear!

• 20 Mar 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Thank you very much indeed, Madam Deputy Speaker. I hope that you and the House will excuse me if I start on a very personal note. Almost exactly 24 hours ago, my father, Torquil Norman, died at the age of 91. He was an extraordinary man. He flew Seafires and Sea Furies during his national service in the Fleet Air Arm. He created Polly Pocket, a toy that has brought unbelievable joy to many young people around the House and around the world. He rebuilt the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm in London, not just as an incredible performing arts centre, but as a creative centre for young people from whatever background to be able to find their way into jobs. The reason I mention that now is that my father stood for values that bear a wider consideration in this House and in our own lives—values of positivity and creativity. He always said that the secret to success in the toy business was to have a mental age of seven and an eye for detail. He had incredible energy but also amazing resilience and focus on the long term. “Turn up at the finishing line” was one of his maxims. Even in his 80s, he was building and creating a new enterprise to develop flat-pack trucks, if you can imagine such a thing, Madam Deputy Speaker, that could be sold to countries around the world at low cost, supporting businesses and people. I think the whole House would agree with me that we need these values today. At a time of difficulty, stagnation and international conflict, we need these values of creativity, ambition, drive, respect for others and, above all, capability —a focus not just on the head, but on the hand and the heart as well. That is something I feel very strongly about. We are trying to build a new specialist technical engineering college in Hereford, precisely to bring those different aspects of the human personality together in the service of better jobs and better possibilities. I also think that it encourages us all, as a House and as a Parliament, to ask the right questions and to support long-term solutions, even when those questions and solutions may not be ones that we are ideologically or politically drawn to. We are in a world where welfare costs are rising higher than anyone could have wanted; civil service effectiveness is perhaps not as great as we would like; productivity in the NHS is not what we would all want, for whatever reasons that may be, over a very long period; and we need a rapid boost to our defence and security. Those are crucial questions that we, as a House, will need to continue to develop and discuss over the next few years. I want to ask the Leader of the House whether we and other Members of the Modernisation Committee cannot expand our thinking about those long-term issues and try to push for more scope for co-operation between the parties on them, more consultation and debate on key legislation before it is brought to the House, and more ways to develop closer personal engagement between Members, so that we can build respect and co-operation across the House for the longer term. One of my father’s maxims—you will have discovered that he had many—was, “The secret to success is to take a large bite and then chew it.” I think that we could perhaps do that more as a House and as a country.

• 20 Mar 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  indicated assent.

• 20 Mar 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Will the Leader of the House give us the business for next week?

• 13 Mar 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  I am sure the whole House will want to join me in recognising and thanking the salvage and nature recovery specialists who are even now scrambling to clear up after the disastrous collision in the North sea. They say a conservative is a socialist who has been mugged by reality. If that is so, we are witnessing the extraordinary sight of a Prime Minister who is being visibly mugged by reality in slow motion before our very eyes. The Government’s brand of socialism started well from their point of view, if disastrously for the country: we had the union pay-offs, the rapid settlement of pay disputes in the public sector—for zero apparent efficiency benefits—and a heavily tax-and-spend Budget. The Chancellor was even so bold, as Members will recall, as to announce to the CBI that she would not be raising taxes or increasing debt over the course of the Government. As she said: “I’m clear…I’m not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes”. However, the Budget started to unravel almost as soon as it was published. We had the bizarre sight of a Government who were ever more committed to talking about growth while clubbing growth to death across a variety of sectors: through the national insurance rise and the £5 billion burden of the Employment Rights Bill, of course, but also through their loss of credibility in the markets, which has pushed up gilt yields by 25% since September. Great British Energy was announced, and did nothing. The Government made an unsuccessful attempt to claim credit for the achievements of the newly rebranded National Wealth Fund, which had been set up only weeks before. The system of infrastructure monitoring and planning has been dismantled, and there has been no news for three months on the decision on small modular reactors, which was due on 1 December or thereabouts. Can the Leader of the House update the House on when we can expect that decision? Then President Trump got elected, despite—or perhaps because of—the special SWAT team of Labour activists sent over to campaign for his rival, and then the mugging by reality really began. The Energy Secretary was forced to pare back his ruinously expensive zero-carbon energy plans; the Prime Minister had to announce his plan for change; the Government were forced to accelerate their defence spending plans in order to address the situation in Ukraine; and so it continues. This week, we have heard of the Government’s so-called Operation Chainsaw—or should that be butter knife?—to reshape the civil service. Next week, we will have hasty and almost certainly ill thought through cuts to welfare. Labour was red under the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), became a gentle cerise for voters at the general election and, now that reality is setting in, it is a pleasing shade of purple, with more and more patches of blue. The Prime Minister and the Government are becoming more Conservative by the day. In sharp contrast, it is the Government’s policy towards rural areas that is most striking. We have seen the family farm tax and the disproportionate effect on hospices and social care services in rural areas arising from the rise in national insurance. Now, in the same week, we have seen new compulsory purchase powers to seize farmland and the abrupt and unexpected end of the sustainable farming incentives scheme. The Government are simultaneously reducing farm incomes, threatening farm holdings and forcing the sale of family farms through their inheritance tax changes. I am sad to say that even the £35 million allocated by the previous Government to clean up the River Wye—one of the natural glories of this country—has been cut to just £1 million. The Labour message is clear: do not be a farmer. Do not feed the country. Do not give us food security. Do not work every hour God sends, whatever the weather—we do not care. The Leader of the House has been very clear that it is her policy not to answer Opposition questions, or even to answer questions about her policy of not answering questions. She ignored my questions yet again last week, but perhaps she can have a go at these questions now. Why have the Government taken such a punitive approach to the countryside? Are they doing so deliberately, or is it just by accident? Finally, will she come to visit some farmers in Herefordshire with me so that she can see the actual effect of these policies for herself? We will throw in some magnificent Shepherds or Rowlestone ice cream, as well, if that will make any difference.

• 13 Mar 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?

• 6 Mar 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Mr Speaker, may I first associate myself very strongly with your kind remarks about Peter Hipkins and his service to this House? We join all colleagues in celebration of International Women’s Day this Saturday. I am sure the whole House will also share my deep concern at the latest news in relation to Ukraine and will wish to send all of our best wishes to the Prime Minister and other European leaders in doing everything they can to support that country. It is now three months or so since I became shadow Leader of the House, and I am sad to say that these joyous Thursday morning sessions seem to have fallen into a little bit of a rut. [ Interruption. ] “No, no!”, I hear you cry, “Business questions are still as fresh, lively and engaging as they ever were, if not more so,” but sadly I fear that is not true. It is our function on the Opposition Benches to press public concerns and raise questions about the Government—indeed, as His Majesty’s loyal Opposition, it is not only our function, but our constitutional duty to do so. It is the Government’s job to respond to those questions and concerns and, in so doing, to make the case publicly for the policy choices and decisions they have made and to say whether they have an underlying strategy. Unfortunately, as you will have noticed, Mr Speaker, the Government are not doing that in our sessions. In fact, the Leader of the House rarely, if ever, responds to the important public questions and concerns that I raise. Instead, I am sorry to say that we get the same endlessly reheated mishmash of standard party political lines, personal jibes and irrelevant comment. Hon. Members will recall that I first raised this issue at business questions on 5 December, when I highlighted a series of occasions on which the Leader had been unwilling to answer or even address some obvious examples of Government economic incompetence. As I pointed out: “Many different responses were open to her. She could have said, ‘I agree with you.’” —[ Official Report , 5 December 2024; Vol. 758, c. 458.] She could have said, “The shadow Leader is wrong for the following reasons,” or even, “I don’t know.” If she did not want to respond at that time, she could have said, as so many other Ministers do, “I will look into it,” “I will reply to you,” or, “I will ask a colleague to investigate and respond”. We just heard the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster say those things. In fact, on none of those occasions did the Leader of the House bother to give any kind of proper answer at all. Instead, her approach was to change the subject and attack the previous Government, rather than to defend the record of her own Government—which is, after all, the whole point of these exchanges. More troubling still is that she herself has so often called for transparency from Ministers, and that a failure to be accountable is itself a breach of the rules of this House, of the Nolan principles and of the ministerial code of conduct. I wish I could report that anything has changed since December. If anything, however, I am afraid that matters have got worse. A recent low point was at business questions on 13 February, when I raised five important issues relating to the Government’s approach to the rule of law, including the potential clash between domestic and international law, the level of risk that the Government sought to take and their attitude towards judicial review. I am sorry to say that the Leader of the House did not bother to respond to any of those questions: instead, we had yet another series of irrelevant political attacks. We need a better way to track and monitor those evasions, so, in the spirit of openness and transparency, I propose a new approach, which we can call “Leader’s bingo”. Colleagues get a point every time the Leader of the House blames the previous Government, attacks Members of the Opposition, changes the subject or uses the words “gently remind”, “take no lectures” or similar in her response. I would not for one second suggest that colleagues shout “Bingo!” in the Chamber, but there may be other ways in which they can indicate when they have filled their card. That is a light-hearted suggestion, but it has a serious purpose. I know how strongly you, Mr Speaker, feel about the importance of parliamentary accountability, transparency and the proper scrutiny of Government decisions. I ask the Leader of the House again if she will reaffirm her commitment to those values and engage properly with the questions I ask in the future.

• 6 Mar 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?

• 27 Feb 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker— [ Interruption. ]

• 27 Feb 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Mr Speaker, I am not quite sure what mental obfuscation is filling my head this morning, but I thank you again. It is my happy task to open by saying that today sees the retirement of Dawn, a stalwart of the Tea Room. I am sure that I speak for the whole House in wishing her a very happy retirement. On a very different note, this week also marks the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We wish the Prime Minister every success in his meetings at the White House today. The Government have come in for some fairly punishing criticism from me at the Dispatch Box in recent months, and rightly so. They came to power loudly advertising their virtue and careful planning, but instead, as the House will know, we have seen a series of entirely avoidable resignations, blunders and mishaps. The Government have talked about growth, but their decisions have managed to reduce the Bank of England’s forecast from 2% to 0.75% growth for this year. It is little wonder when one considers the £25 billion increase in national insurance contributions and the imposition of an Employment Rights Bill with an up-front cost estimated at £5 billion, among much else. Most bizarre of all has been the lack of foresight in financial planning. The Chancellor talked grandly in her Mais lecture last year about “securonomics”—whatever that is—and the importance of economic security, but as many commentators have noticed, her fiscal rules and other decisions have left her very little room for manoeuvre. After all, it was obvious in the autumn that there could be tariffs on trade and, as Ministers have since acknowledged, an inevitable rise in defence spending. It is almost as though Labour never imagined, or perhaps never wanted to believe, that President Trump would be re-elected. As a result, the Government may be forced to have a mini-Budget next month and then a spending review, which has been so delayed that they will have gone a full year from their election without having any settled spending plans. Meanwhile, they prefer to import oil and gas from abroad, rather than use less expensive domestic energy supplies. Forget securonomics; this is a recipe for insecurity, as well as increasing carbon emissions. However, it is important to give credit where credit is due. I reported in December that genuine signs of reality were starting to break through in the Government’s so-called plan for change. In it, the Prime Minister said: “In 2010, the incoming government inherited public finances in desperate need of repair.” He said that the UK needed “a profound cultural shift away from a declinist mentality, which has become so comfortable with failure”. Finally, and most notably, he said that “we cannot tax our way to prosperity or spend our way to better public services.” The Prime Minister was right on all three counts, and he is right now to increase defence spending. It is not untrue to say that he is visibly becoming more conservative before our eyes. Unfortunately, the real numbers in the defence statement were in fact half what he claimed, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies quickly made clear, and I am sorry to say that the statement was insulting in other ways to this House. It appears to have been leaked to the media, who ran the headline before the Prime Minister had even stood up. Perish the thought that the statement was deliberately redacted so that MPs would be kept in the dark and could not hold the Government to account. The Prime Minister has emphasised all the planning that was involved in this decision. Even so, he was repeatedly unable to answer the simple “yes or no” question of whether funding for the Chagos Islands deal was included in the total. What is worse is that, in his statement, the Prime Minister tried to aggregate the intelligence services budget into the defence budget. That is grossly misleading, because those budgets are, and have long been, kept separate. What is worse still is that the Prime Minister’s claim that the combination of the two budgets would be 2.6% of GDP seems to imply a cut, not a rise, in the budget for the intelligence services, which currently stands at over 0.15% of GDP. This cannot be correct. Even if the Leader of the House cannot address my question now, I would be grateful if she could write to me with the details in order to answer it for the record and for the benefit of this House.

• 27 Feb 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Touché, Mr Speaker. Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?

• 25 Feb 2025 · River Wye (Cleaning) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require the Secretary of State to publish and implement a plan for cleaning and improving the water quality of the River Wye; and for connected purposes. As shadow Leader of the House, I am rarely allowed to speak on behalf of my constituents from the Back Benches, so this ten-minute rule motion is a priceless opportunity for me to highlight a vital issue of both local and national significance—the plight of the River Wye. The Wye is one of the most beautiful and ecologically significant rivers in the UK. Rising from the slopes of Plynlimon in mid-Wales, it winds its way via Hay-on-Wye and Hereford on to Ross-on-Wye before heading down to Symonds Yat, Monmouth, Tintern and the Severn estuary. The Wye valley, too, is renowned for its beauty. It is a special area of conservation with two sites of special scientific interest. The river is thus a vital part not only of the local economy in Herefordshire but of our landscape, our culture and our heritage as a nation. Admired since Roman times, the river is one of the birthplaces of British tourism, the origin of the movement known as the picturesque and the inspiration for some of the finest poetry in the English language, yet in recent years it has faced huge environmental pressures, particularly from high phosphate levels, which have harmed water quality and aquatic life. The rapid growth of certain farming sectors, including poultry, has brought economic benefits but also placed additional strain on the river. As well as agricultural run-off, sewage and waste water discharges and changes in land management have contributed to the problem. Those pressures have been compounded by rises in water temperature and changes to seasonal water flow. Many of those specific problems and their interactions are still not fully understood, so there is a real need for proper research. Building on the work of Councillor Elissa Swinglehurst and the Wye and Usk Foundation among many others, I first highlighted this issue in September 2020. From the start I pressed the agencies—the Environment Agency, Natural England and Natural Resources Wales—for a collective response and called on them to produce a cross-border, all-catchment long-term action plan. In June 2021, working with other catchment MPs at the time, I invited the national agencies and the local councils on both sides of the border to a special meeting devoted to the issue. In October 2021, I co-ordinated a letter from Wye catchment MPs to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury calling for a specific spending package devoted to the Wye in the 2021 three-year spending review. The result, notwithstanding lockdowns and other pandemic delays, was the Hereford Shell Store meeting of July 2022 and the setting up of the Wye phosphates working group, whose terms of reference were then adopted—very much with my support—by a phosphates commission established by the four local authorities. All those things helped to bring people and groups together. In the course of that work, I am pleased to say we also had one major win of substance. I had called for the proceeds of fines on water companies to be ringfenced and devoted to a new national rivers recovery fund. In November 2022, the Government accepted that ringfencing. In relation to the Wye, it is important to be aware that much good work has been done on the ground. The cross-border nutrient management board has carefully assessed and assembled a range of potentially useful measures. Thanks to detailed assessment work with Welsh Water, it now looks as though local sewage and waste water discharges will be brought within national standards—though only by the early 2030s, which is still far too slow. The community response on both sides of the border has been magnificent, with hundreds of volunteer citizen scientists actively taking weekly water readings under the aegis of the Friends of the Wye and other organisations. At the national level, I am sorry to say that progress in addressing these issues has been painfully slow. For years, the creation of a high-level catchment-wide plan, essential to managing this cross-border issue, was impeded by political differences between the Welsh and UK Governments. Meanwhile, the regulatory agencies struggled to enforce existing environmental protections effectively. Finally, after three ministerial visits, including one by the then Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to Hereford in June 2023, we managed to secure publication of the River Wye action plan last year. That at least covered the English part of the river, and £35 million was reallocated from within existing DEFRA budgets to fund mitigations and the development of an integrated long-term recovery strategy. The then Government also announced that they had appointed a new river champion, whose job it was to lead the detailed planning work in collaboration with key stakeholders on both sides of the border. The plan for the Wye was by no means perfect, but for the first time it provided a framework, badly needed money to support projects and research, and a named person to help drive things forward on the ground. It was therefore deeply disappointing when the plan was dropped by the new Government after the general election, alongside the idea of the river champion. It is still more disappointing that the Treasury is also now rowing back on the previous Government’s commitment to ringfence money from fines on water companies and use them for a river restoration fund. That is a massive step backwards. Water companies have paid many tens of millions of pounds in fines since 2022 alone. That money should go back into saving our rivers. What is to be done? Protecting and restoring the Wye requires a long-term, collaborative approach, as I have highlighted. The UK and Welsh Governments, the agencies, farmers, businesses, local authorities, environmental groups and local people all have a role to play in developing a strategy that balances economic sustainability with environmental responsibility. While I am very glad that my colleague the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Ellie Chowns) is sponsoring the Bill, it is a great pity that other Wye catchment MPs have chosen not to. Indeed, I do not notice a single Wye catchment MP in the Chamber; a great sadness. The Bill is clear and simple in its intent. It would for the first time require the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in law to publish and implement a plan for cleaning and improving the water quality of the River Wye. That is a measure that every MP of every constituency inside or outside the Wye catchment should be enthusiastic to support. Solutions must include better land management, improved water treatment, effective incentives for sustainable farming and stronger oversight and enforcement. The Wye catchment 2025 management plan is designed to cover not just water quality but biodiversity loss and flood and drought vulnerability. The nutrient management board provides an important framework of public accountability in relation to measures affecting nutrients and water quality. In other words, many of the key clean-up measures and mitigations are well understood. What we need now is action. We need an end to delay. We need political leadership from Ministers on both sides of the border, a shared determination to address this vital national issue with the seriousness it deserves, and the funding—the £35 million cut from the plan for the Wye—to make it happen. The River Wye is a true national treasure. It requires not just short-term measures but a sustained, collective effort led by the UK and Welsh Governments to ensure that this magnificent river is fully restored to health as swiftly as that can be achieved. Question put and agreed to. Ordered, That Jesse Norman and Ellie Chowns present the Bill. Jesse Norman accordingly presented the Bill. Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 4 July, and to be printed (Bill 186).

• 13 Feb 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Like some of our leading podcasters, we love a storm cloud or two in business questions. Sure enough, the poor Government have been desperately hoping that recent events in America would drive the storm clouds away from the UK economy. Even though the news from Washington DC has been startling, to say the least, it has not been enough to dispel yet another week of adverse economic headlines. Both the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Bank of England have reportedly downgraded their growth forecasts, the latter cutting its by half, to a measly 0.75% for the year. So much for the Chancellor’s much-vaunted dash for growth. Meanwhile, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research has reported that “zero fiscal headroom remains” to deal with any shocks, in the same week that President Trump has announced 25% tariffs on steel. It is easy to see what has happened here: Labour never expected President Trump to win. It sent a team over to campaign for his opponent. The Government passed an anti-growth Budget, and they did not build enough leeway into their financial planning. Indeed, the Chancellor promised no new taxes or spending. Now we are having to live with the consequences. It was also hard to miss the continuing controversy that the Attorney General is creating, and harder still not to notice the extremely critical words of his Labour colleague, Lord Glasman. I do not propose to repeat those words here, but they point to two issues that demand this House’s full and proper attention. In both cases, the concern is not over the legal positions taken by the Attorney General as such, but the contradictions that they offer to the rest of Government policy. People can agree or disagree about the policy, but the contradictions cannot be fudged. They cannot be blamed on others, and they require explanation. The first contradiction is in relation to international law. On 3 February, the Attorney General told the Council of Europe that the Government would “never withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, or refuse to comply with judgments of the court”. In doing so, he was simply restating settled UK policy for many decades, a fact that he somehow neglected to mention. The difficulty arises, however, because the Government’s new legislation on small boats appears to retain a measure banning migrants from claiming protections under the modern slavery laws. That is a ban that the Prime Minister went out of his way to denounce when it was first introduced in 2023. In his words: “It is a crying shame that…we face legislation that drives a coach and horses through our world-leading modern slavery framework, which protects women from exploitation.” —[ Official Report , 8 March 2023; Vol. 729, c. 295.] That is quite a U-turn. You see the deeper problem, Mr Speaker. Which is it to be: will the Government abide by international law in this instance and protect women from exploitation, as the Prime Minister said, or will they reverse his newly adopted position in support of the ban? The second problem relates to domestic law. Last November, the Attorney General strengthened his official guidance to Government lawyers on possible legal risk. He specifically cautioned against offering legal support for policies that have only a tenable case. Elsewhere, he has pledged to restore checks on Executive—that is, Government—action. This comes at a time when the Prime Minister has specifically pledged to end vexatious litigation while building a huge amount of new housing and infrastructure. You see the problem, Mr Speaker. It was the problem that the noble Lord Glasman was pointing out when he praised the rule of law, but not of lawyers. This edict will have a chilling effect on what I think we can already agree is pretty sluggish decision making by Ministers. Will the Government now take less legal risk, as the Attorney General requires? Will their lawyers now require Ministers to act only when they can defeat a legal challenge, or will they curb the judicial reviews and other legal cases that will otherwise inevitably disrupt their building plans? I do not expect the Leader of the House to tell us how the Government plan to resolve those obvious problems today, but the House would be grateful for a debate in Government time on what on earth the Government’s approach will be to resolving them.