Nick Timothy MP: speeches

Speeches

• 18 Dec 2024 · Immigration and Nationality Statistics · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered immigration and nationality statistics. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Mundell—happy Christmas to you, the Clerks and other House staff. I want to make clear my overall view of the rate and nature of immigration to Britain in recent years. To be frank, it has been a disgrace. Every Prime Minister since Tony Blair has promised control, only to oversee record numbers of people coming here. Immigration is the biggest broken promise in British politics, and probably the biggest single reason that British politics is so broken. This could not be more important, because mass immigration undermines our economy, capital stock, and cultural coherence and identity. It quite literally changes the country we are.

• 18 Dec 2024 · Immigration and Nationality Statistics · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

• 18 Dec 2024 · Immigration and Nationality Statistics · Hansard source

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  I am entertained by the idea that special advisers are so important that they might be able to control outcomes such as this. If the hon. Member thinks that is the case, he might ask the Minister to invite one of the Home Office’s special advisers to take part in parliamentary debates.

• 17 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Does the hon. Lady accept that it is not just the PISA rankings that show great advances in achievement in English schools, but the TIMSS—trends in international mathematics and science study—report published last week? That report said exactly the same thing: English schools are ahead of any comparable western country.

• 17 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Are there any left?

• 17 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I will avoid the temptation to start to read out the PISA statistics. It is important that the Bill that is published today is seen alongside this Bill, because together they chip away quite substantially at the academy freedoms that have been behind school reform. It would be good to hear the Minister acknowledge that fact.

• 17 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  On schools’ ability to deliver, my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater asked the hon. Gentleman a moment ago to acknowledge the significant rise in the performance of English schools in the PISA rankings and other international comparative studies. Will he clearly say whether he acknowledges or denies that rise?

• 17 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

• 17 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Fourteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I reassure my hon. Friend that the danger he is talking about is not just hypothetical. Special advisers in the Department for Education have briefed the newspapers, calling free schools a “Tory vanity project”. I find that absolutely appalling, as somebody who believes—

• 17 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Fourteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Perhaps we could, but I am trying to make the argument that, in the end, when we are talking about employment in the public sector—when we are talking about terms and conditions and things like that—yes, these things are obviously of huge importance to the employees themselves, but they are also important regarding the way in which employers set themselves up. The purpose of a school is obviously to educate our children, and the ultimate objective is to drive up those academic standards. That is the context in which we are discussing these particular academy freedoms and what this Bill therefore does. It is the case that free school and academy founders have been in the vanguard of reform, precisely because they have been able to use their freedoms from local council control—freedoms to develop the curriculum in their own way, to set things such as the school day and term dates, and to decide the pay and conditions for their staff themselves. We can see that in the data that is published: it is not just about things such the PISA rankings; it is also about things such as the trends in international mathematics and science study, an international comparative study, which was published a couple of weeks ago and showed that, despite the pandemic, English schools have actually improved and have outperformed almost all western countries. It is also the case that the progress data that the Government have published demonstrates that the best schools in the country have benefited from exactly those kinds of freedoms. The best school in the country, looking at performance data, is Michaela, which is a free school. Free schools and academies far outperform normal maintained schools when it comes to that data, and that is because of the freedoms that we are talking about trying to defend through our amendment. I know that this is a debate for another time, but I am very disappointed that the Government have cancelled the next wave of free schools, that they have weakened things such as Ofsted and its inspection framework, and that they want to water down discipline policies and so on. I am very disappointed as well that, through measures such as this, the Government are watering down the academy freedoms that have done so much to make our schools the best in the world.

• 17 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Fourteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am doing my best to remain in scope, Ms Vaz. If I may say so, the hon. Member asks a characteristically precise and intelligent question. I suggest that members of the Labour party who want to move away from academy freedoms look first at what Labour figures such as Tony Blair and Lord Adonis say about why those freedoms matter. It is a bit like with the Bill overall: just because some employers choose to hit certain standards, that does not necessarily mean that those standards must then be imposed in a uniform manner through legislation. The point about academy freedoms is that, a little like labour market flexibilities, they are cumulative. If we look at the list of academy freedoms—whether in respect of the terms and conditions that schools are able to employ staff on, the relationship with councils and how admissions are decided, or the policy of having to respond to school failure through academisation—we see that they are all being picked away at, partly through this Bill and partly through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which we discussed briefly earlier and is being introduced today. While that Bill has not been published, as the Minister corrected me earlier, there is a description on gov.uk of the measures in that Bill, and it is quite clearly a reversal of policy when it comes to academisation. The reason that school reform has worked over this time is not just because of particular measures about things such as the promotion of a knowledge-rich curriculum, or didactic teacher-led instruction, or anything like that. Those are the means by which lots of schools have chosen to use their academy freedoms in order to improve standards—

• 17 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Fourteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Yes, and free schools have the academy freedoms that we are talking about undermining with this and other legislation. I just wanted to draw that example to my hon. Friend’s attention.

• 17 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Fourteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I should warn the Committee that I have a frog in my throat and a bit of a cough, but I think it is known that I used to work for the former Prime Minister, Baroness May, and I have seen how to get through a speech with a cough. The amendment is important because it seeks to protect one of the academy freedoms that have made English schools the best in the west. I say English and not British schools advisedly, because education is devolved and, in Scotland and Wales, standards have gone not forward but backward. In Wales, the average pupil reaches about the same level of attainment as the average disadvantaged pupil in England, yet it is the Welsh model that the Government seem to be intent to follow. So the amendment is all about seeking to protect the academy freedoms behind the success of the school reforms of which the Conservatives are rightly proud. According to the programme for international student assessment—or PISA—rankings, English primary school- children are the best readers in the west. On 15-year- olds, they say that schools in England are 11th in the world in maths, up from 27th in 2009; 13th in science, up from 16th; and 13th in reading, up from 25th. That is an unqualified success story. Yet I am afraid the Education Secretary and Ministers in the current Government repeatedly claimed that standards fell under the Conservatives.

• 11 Dec 2024 · Border Security: Collaboration · Hansard source

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  The Home Secretary has not answered very many questions today, so can she answer this very clear question: which metric should we use, and by which date, to allow us to judge whether the Government have succeeded in smashing the gangs?

• 11 Dec 2024 · Responsibilities of Housing Developers · Hansard source

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  I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) on securing this debate. I echo his comments, especially on early consultation and problems with maintenance companies. In West Suffolk the population has increased by 5.3% over the last decade. The population of Haverhill, the biggest town, has nearly doubled over the past three decades, and the size of Newmarket has grown by 50%. Some of the developments have been contentious but, on the whole, people are not opposed to new house building in West Suffolk. We have had around 3,000 new homes built in just the last five years, and one of the things that our whole area has in common is the relationship with the economic geography of Cambridge, which is obviously only going to develop in the decades ahead. Most of the residents I speak to support the need for new, attractive family homes in the right places. Recently, I had a very constructive meeting with small developers in West Suffolk who are keen to grow their market share, and who often provide homes that are more attractive and sensitive to the community than some of the bigger companies. That is part of a new approach that I would like to see, but a new approach should go wider than that. I want to cite some examples of the experience in my constituency. In Mildenhall there is a proposed development of more than 1,000 new homes to the west of the town. We are going to need a relief road there to help manage the extra traffic that will inevitably follow the development. There are similar issues in communities such as Kentford and Red Lodge, where residents are worried about the growing volume of traffic because of the number of houses that have been built nearby in recent years. In Haverhill, residents have felt let down because the relief road that was promised with the large development that was constructed over the past few years is still not open to use. I will quickly make a few points in principle. First, we need new homes in this country. My points are not about nimbyism, but about ensuring that homes are sensible and in the right places. We should be building for families, not just transient tenants. Secondly, developers should be required to contribute more to the communities that they profit from building in. Thirdly, new infrastructure should arrive in advance of expansion; residents should not have to wait years for the benefit. Fourthly, we need to build communities, not just “units”, which is the dreadful word used too often by council offices. We need communities that build a neighbourly spirit and encourage trust—not antisocial behaviour and crime. The quality of the housing needs to be much better than some of what has been thrown up in recent years. There should be no more building on floodplains, and we need proper accountability, so that when developers do not do what they promise, there are proper consequences for them.

• 11 Dec 2024 · Responsibilities of Housing Developers · Hansard source

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  We are sent here not to consider anecdotes and individual case studies, but to consider legal frameworks and systems. If the hon. Gentleman wants to remove some of the systemic barriers to house building, which regulations—particularly pertaining to the environment and biodiversity—might he be interested in seeing removed?

• 10 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Would my hon. Friend give way?

• 10 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I should probably make reference to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I am an unpaid trustee at the Index on Censorship, which may be relevant to this debate. I do not think anybody here is a free speech absolutist. My hon. Friend is trying to test scenarios, but he is in no way talking about issues such as incitement of hatred, which are already criminal matters. We are talking about the codification of things that may be subjective in the light of the law of unintended consequences. To bring some colour to the conversation, I thought I would make reference to a recent Independent Press Standards Organisation ruling. I cannot imagine that that was ever the kind of ruling that was intended at the time that IPSO was created. Gareth Roberts, who sometimes writes for The Spectator , was writing about a third party who had, in turn, written about issues relating to gender, and referred to them as “a man who claims to be a woman”. That person then complained to IPSO, which ruled that it was not wrong as a statement of fact, but still upheld the complaint on account of its being a prejudicial or pejorative reference to that person. I do not think that that is the kind of thing that was ever intended when IPSO was created, but it is the type of example that we may be talking about right now. I would love to know what my hon. Friend thinks about that.

• 10 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Will my hon. Friend give way just one more time? I have an excellent example that I would like to share.

• 10 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It has just been drawn to my attention that the Health Secretary is the subject of an official complaint to the Labour party for his jokes about the former Transport Secretary at The Spectator party last week because his comments were considered “bullying and uncomradely” according to the complaint. That may be another example of this kind of subjective test.

• 10 Dec 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T8. One in 50 Albanians in Britain is in jail, and foreign nationals such as Jamaicans, Iraqis and Somalis are also disproportionately likely to be criminals. We need better data to inform immigration, asylum and criminal justice policies. Will the Government publish the nationality, visa and asylum status of all offenders in prison—if yes, can we have a timeline, and if not, can we have a good reason why not?

• 10 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Tenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I have absolutely no intention of correcting the record, because the record will be correct. I think the hon. Member misunderstands my point, which was not to say that in that case the conduct was an example of harassment; I am fully aware that the IPSO ruling said that it was not harassment. My point was about the laws of unintended consequences. When IPSO was established, I do not think anybody thought that there would be cases such as this, where a journalist would be penalised by IPSO for saying something that IPSO acknowledges was a statement of fact on the grounds that it may be offensive.

• 10 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Tenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

• 9 Dec 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I assure the Education Secretary that we are very positive about schooling in this country. I am sure that she will want to thank all school leaders for their work to help English schools to soar up the rankings for the programme for international student assessment and programme for international student assessment rankings—PISA and TIMMS—but will she join me in sending personal congratulations to Katharine Birbalsingh, whose approach to discipline, the curriculum and teacher-led instruction makes her school Michaela the best in the country?

• 9 Dec 2024 · Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is making an eloquent speech about the “protect” element of the counter-terrorism strategy. It is clear from the Manchester attack inquiry report that the asylum system is a big part of the story. Salman Abedi and his brother Hashem—who planned the attack and prepared the explosives, and was as guilty of the attack as Salman—were born in Britain to Libyan asylum seeker parents. Their father, Ramadan Abedi, was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an Islamist militia. He was granted asylum in this country, but travelled back and forth between Britain and Libya throughout that time, which is a story that we often hear about people who are granted asylum here. Given the number of people who come here illegally and across the channel, whom we have no ability to investigate and on whom we cannot make checks, how does the hon. Gentleman think we might reform the asylum system to prevent such things from happening again?