Nick Timothy MP: speeches

Speeches

• 2 Sept 2025 · English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill · Hansard source

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  The Government talk about devolution, but that is not what is going on with the Bill, or with local government reform. Power is not being handed down by central Government, but being sucked up from district councils to unitaries and from councils to mayoralties, governing enormous and very diverse territories from distant towns and cities. In West Suffolk, we face a Suffolk and Norfolk mayoralty —probably run from Norwich—and a new unitary council structure, with either one council run from Ipswich or three different councils. Given our place on the map, Cambridge is more important to us than Norwich or Ipswich, yet there is little in these proposals to help us to exploit the economic opportunities presented by better transport connections and business opportunities coming out of one of the most dynamic cities in the country. Of course, questions about the tax burden and distribution of revenues are fundamental. Given the state of the public finances, any savings made through local government reform might be snaffled by the Treasury. Services provided by district councils might be cut to subsidise services funded by the county council, such as adult social care. Council debt across Suffolk stands at £1.1 billion, but there is huge variation between the councils; in Ipswich, debt per person is nearly £1,800, while in West Suffolk, it is less than £50. There is a similar story with tax. Ipswich charges the highest council tax of any shire district in the country. To equalise tax across a single Suffolk unitary council would mean massive tax rises for people living in West Suffolk, tax cuts for people in Ipswich, which would retain services unavailable to my constituents, or a worst-of-both-worlds combination. Suffolk’s councils have their different proposals, but ultimately it will be Whitehall that decides. I am pressing Ministers and those advocating a particular model for us locally for the clear answers that we in West Suffolk need and deserve. First, will all the money saved stay in Suffolk? Secondly, will people in West Suffolk pay more in council tax as a result of this change? Will we end up funding services for Ipswich that we do not get? Thirdly, will town and parish councils be given a greater say in the planning process? Fourthly, will town and parish councils have greater powers over things such as road safety and speed limits? Fifthly, will we get an absolute guarantee that there will be no merger between Suffolk and Norfolk police forces? This whole process is too rushed and completely unsatisfactory. It was wrong to postpone our local elections this year. The proposed reforms have not been thought through and the consequences are not clear. There may be some upsides to reform and there may even be some upsides in principle to unitary councils, but unless we get convincing answers, I will oppose not just this Bill, but the changes to local government in Suffolk.

• 21 Jul 2025 · Asylum Hotels: Migrant Criminal Activity · Hansard source

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  I have been fobbed off with ridiculous non-answers to my written questions on this subject and an insulting letter from the Immigration Minister, the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), so I do not want to be promised yet another evasive letter that ignores the question. Will the Minister tell me what the legal reasons are that the Immigration Minister cited as justification for the Government and Serco refusing to tell MPs and local people when they move migrants into our constituencies and where?

• 17 Jul 2025 · Global Plastics Treaty · Hansard source

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  On this important point about the capacity of different countries to hit certain standards, the hon. Gentleman may have reprocessors—companies that take plastic waste and repurpose it—in his constituency. An important part of this debate has to be about packaging recovery notes and packaging export recovery notes, which provide an equivalence, but waste is often taken to countries such as Turkey that have much lower standards than in this country, which is bad not only for British businesses, but for the global environment. I think the Government are working on that, and I would love to hear a bit more about that from the Minister, but what does the hon. Gentleman have to say about it?

• 17 Jul 2025 · Strategy for Elections · Hansard source

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  The Prime Minister has previously talked about extending the franchise to include additional foreign nationals. Will the Government take this opportunity to rule out ever extending the franchise to foreign nationals beyond existing rules?

• 17 Jul 2025 · High Street Businesses · Hansard source

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  Labour-led West Suffolk district council now charges cafés and restaurants £500 for pavement licences for tables and chairs in front of their premises. Their justification for the cost is that the process for granting a pavement licence is more complex than it may initially appear as it involves a number of checks with highways authorities, the police and counter-terrorism advisers. Will the Minister look at pavement licences as an example of where we can deregulate?

• 15 Jul 2025 · Energy Costs: Businesses · Hansard source

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  When the price cap fell last month, the Labour party boasted, “£129 off your bills, delivered by Labour”. The Minister knows that energy bills fell as wholesale gas prices fell, and she knows that her policy is to take the country off gas and keep increasing policy costs on bills. That is why she refuses to repeat the claim. Will she take this opportunity to apologise for her party saying something that she knows is untrue?

• 14 Jul 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Can the Deputy Prime Minister guarantee that no Muslim Brotherhood affiliates will participate in the consultation on the definition of Islamophobia?

• 14 Jul 2025 · Draft Warm Home Discount (Amendment) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I am pleased to respond to the draft regulations on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition. Let me start by saying that if the Minister thinks that progress stalled under the last Government, this Government’s abolishing and then reinstating the winter fuel payment has been a funny way of getting around that. By expanding the warm home discount scheme, the Government are broadening its reach to 6 million households across the UK, up from the 3.4 million households that currently receive the annual £150 energy bill rebate. We should do everything that we can to tackle fuel poverty, but we must ask ourselves what the best way is to resolve the root causes of the energy bills crisis. Under the warm home discount scheme, the Government are funding support for people who cannot afford their bills by pushing up green levies on everyone’s bills. The impact assessment for this legislation clearly states that the scheme expansion will increase everyone’s bills by £15. The Minister did not mention that when the expansion was announced, but the Government should be honest with the public that they have deliberately take a decision that will increase everyone’s bills. Higher green levies will pay for an increase in the overall cost of the scheme from £600 million to £1 billion. It is hard to see how this expansion will achieve the Government’s solemn manifesto pledge to cut energy bills by £300 before the end of this Parliament. We are seeing this approach play out across energy policy: the Government raise the cost of energy with their unrealistic decarbonisation policies; energy-intensive industries then suffer under the highest industrial energy prices in Europe; and the Government step in with subsidies to help them cover the cost that they created to begin with. It is madness, and we are now seeing the same thing done for families. In public policy, the simplest solution is often the best. In the case of fuel poverty, the Government can help everyone afford their bills by delivering abundant and cheap energy, but they are piling on costs through their Clean Power 2030 plan. That will increase the price of carbon to £147 per tonne, which will, in turn, increase bills for every family in the country. We have already paid £700 million so far just this year to turn off wind farms when there has been too much wind. We now hear that we are going to pay solar farms just the same to turn off in certain circumstances. The National Energy System Operator forecasts that these constraint costs will hit £8 billion in 2030 because of Labour’s plans to build more renewables than ever before. Instead of rushing ahead to build a system entirely dependent on unreliable and expensive renewables such as wind and solar, we should be going further and faster with nuclear and expanding oil and gas exploration in the North sea. Instead, we are importing fossil fuels from Norway, drilled from the very same seabed that we could exploit, while insisting that we are too good and too green to do that for ourselves. All of this is a choice. The Labour party chooses to increase energy costs, including for people on low incomes, with reckless targets and arbitrary mandates. We will abstain on these regulations, but the unavoidable fact remains that this Government are increasing energy bills for the poorest when we ought to be making energy as cheap as possible for everyone.

• 14 Jul 2025 · Draft Warm Home Discount (Amendment) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  I will go first, then, and allow my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Lewis Cocking) to ask a superior question. The Minister is talking about fossil fuel prices and how the Government want to take us away from them. We have had an exchange in the past couple of weeks about when the price cap was lowered because of the fall in wholesale gas prices. When that happened, the Labour party put out literature saying, “£129 off your bills, delivered by Labour”. When I put that to the Minister, she disowned that language and used her own words. I understand why; she is an intelligent and principled person, and that poster from Labour was neither intelligent nor principled. Will she apologise for that and say that it was wrong?

• 14 Jul 2025 · Draft Warm Home Discount (Amendment) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  rose —

• 9 Jul 2025 · Trial by Jury: Proposed Restrictions · Hansard source

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  Over the weekend the Prime Minister rather pathetically told the BBC that he was “a hard bastard”. I think members of the public would find it surprising that letting criminals out of prison early is a way of showing that he is. The Minister has said, not unreasonably, that she wants time to consider Sir Brian’s recommendations, but it is the case that some things are clearcut. Will she take this opportunity to rule out reducing sentences by 40% for criminals who plead guilty?

• 8 Jul 2025 · Draft Electricity and Gas (Energy Company Obligation) (Amendment) Order 2025 · Hansard source

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  If it was clear for such a long time that infrastructure needed to be improved and that the right way to do that was increasing levies on bills, why was that not in the Labour manifesto? Why did the Labour manifesto instead promise that bills would be £300 a year cheaper?

• 8 Jul 2025 · Draft Electricity and Gas (Energy Company Obligation) (Amendment) Order 2025 · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I am pleased to respond on behalf of the Opposition. The draft order makes modest technical changes to the administration of the energy company obligation scheme, and we will not press it to a vote today. We agree that it is important for low-income households to get the help they need to save money on their energy bills and escape the hardships of fuel poverty. However, Ministers should reflect on how their policies are making energy more expensive for everyone by increasing dependency on costly and unreliable renewables. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, environmental levies will increase from £9.9 billion last year to £14.8 billion by 2030. That is a result of policy choices made by this Government, and the cost will inevitably fall on the vulnerable and make fuel poverty harder to escape. Last week, I raised with the Minister Labour’s claim on social media: “£129 off your bills, delivered by Labour”. Will she accept that that was wrong, because that fall in prices was driven by reductions in wholesale gas prices? The Government are trying to take the country off gas, while policy costs imposed by Ministers are actually increasing. She disassociated herself from those social media posts last week, so—

• 8 Jul 2025 · Draft Electricity and Gas (Energy Company Obligation) (Amendment) Order 2025 · Hansard source

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  I will just invite the hon. Lady to look at the bigger picture. Manufacturing jobs are being lost because of high energy prices driven by Government policy, the costs of which are increasing, so I invite the Minister to respond to my question. Instead of allowing policy to run faster than the technology will allow, Ministers should focus on how to make energy cheaper and more reliable. That is the real pathway to fighting fuel poverty.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Government Performance against Fiscal Rules · Hansard source

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  I find it highly alarming that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury does not seem to realise that the cost of Government borrowing is higher now than at any time since the last Labour Government. All of this comes back to decisions about spending, so why, when Labour’s manifesto said that it would limit spending increases to £9.5 billion a year, did it increase spending by eight times as much—£76 billion a year—three months later in its Budget?

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

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  The rigged Government consultation on Islamophobia is overseen by supposedly independent people who have already declared their support for a definition that will kill free speech in this country. An invitation to participate in the consultation was sent only to hand-picked organisations, the identities of which the Government refuse to disclose. One of them appears to be the Muslim Council of Britain, which is supposedly subject to a Government policy of non-engagement. Which organisations were invited to take part in the consultation? Do they include the Muslim Council of Britain? May we have an oral statement, to provide some badly needed transparency?

• 3 Jul 2025 · Phone Theft · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

• 1 Jul 2025 · Business Energy Supply Billing: Regulation · Hansard source

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  The Minister, as Ministers do, made a point about the volatility of gas prices. When wholesale gas prices fell and the price cap was lowered, the Labour party put out posters saying, “Labour have just cut your energy bills.” Will she accept that it was wrong for the Labour party to do that, when that fall was because of the reduction in wholesale prices and nothing to do with policy costs, which were actually increasing?

• 1 Jul 2025 · Business Energy Supply Billing: Regulation · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way on that point?

• 1 Jul 2025 · Business Energy Supply Billing: Regulation · Hansard source

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  I am pleased to respond to the debate on behalf of the Opposition. I congratulate the hon. Member for Tamworth (Sarah Edwards) on securing it. She gave a serious and passionate speech about the injustices experienced by too many businesses, and I commend her campaign and encourage all small businesses to visit her website so that they can tell their stories and give their evidence. Every Member’s speech confirmed what a significant problem this is. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) reminded us of the effects on our high streets. With his usual journalistic flair for arresting language, my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper) questioned Ofgem’s wide remit, which ranges from regulating careless errors, such as mix-ups between night and day meter readings leading to intimidating demands for bills as high as £18,000, to systemic failures and cynical malpractice. We need the Government to act. Even apparently innocent mistakes come with a terrible burden for small businesses. We all know the pain and stress of the bureaucracy we have to handle when there is a problem, and sometimes that bureaucracy feels like a deliberate hurdle that has been constructed by the businesses in question. Small firms have to contend not just with high costs, but with lost time, which is a highly precious commodity for them. We must also consider the systemic problems. The hon. Member for Tamworth mentioned kickbacks for brokers who push more expensive contracts, and she rightly asked about the powers available to deal with errant companies. I thought her comparison with fines for breaches of data laws was apposite. Will the Minister tell us when we can expect the review of Ofgem to conclude? Can we expect increases in the fines levied against companies when they fall short? As the hon. Member for Stevenage (Kevin Bonavia) suggested, high energy costs themselves are a huge problem. It is not just about the conduct of businesses; we must explore the effects of wider Government policy, too, because no country in history has ever made itself richer by making energy more expensive. First fossil fuels and then nuclear powered the industrial and technological revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries, and yet it is the policy of our Government to increase the price of energy and make its supply less reliable. They are defying common sense by pushing up demand for electricity with their ideological targets for decarbonising the grid and rolling out heat pumps and electric vehicles. Large-scale electrification is pushing the grid to its limits; it is already struggling to supply new homes, factories and data centres. We can clearly see the effect on energy bills for businesses. The Climate Change Committee—an unelected and unaccountable quango against which Ministers offer little or no resistance—says the cost of electrification must be shifted on to bills for gas and oil. For years the climate lobby insisted that renewables were cheaper than gas, but now that they have to put their money where their mouth is, they want to put the public’s money where their mouth is—now that the world can see the truth, they want to transfer the massive cost of renewables on to gas bills. The renewables obligation, feed-in tariffs and the capacity market are all direct costs to business. Environmental levies are already projected by the Office for Budget Responsibility to increase from £9.9 billion last year to £14.8 billion by 2030. Those hidden costs support the complex web of public subsidies that prop up wind and solar. Wind and solar generators are given billions of pounds in subsidies paid through green levies. Without those subsidies, most of them would not be commercially viable. The levies are not the only costs created by a dependence on unreliable renewables; customers also bear the balancing costs that are paid to generators to switch their power on and off. As wind and solar expand, those costs will triple to £8 billion by 2030. Grid decarbonisation will create a carbon price of £147 per tonne of CO 2 , which is 2.7 times higher than the current level. Ever-rising carbon prices will be locked in under the EU reset deal, which will keep us aligned with the EU emissions trading system. We already have the highest industrial energy prices in Europe. Our energy consumption fell last year by 0.1%—we were the only G7 country where that happened, apart from Japan and Germany. Despite global energy demand getting ever higher, our energy supply fell by an average of 2.1% per year between 2014 and 2024. Output from energy-intensive industries has fallen to its lowest level since the 1990s. Decarbonisation is undoubtedly fuelling deindustrialisation. Just last week, it was announced that a facility in Teesside, one of the largest chemical plants in the country, will be permanently closed. The Grangemouth oil refinery stopped processing crude oil last April. British Steel has been brought to its knees. Yesterday, we heard the sad news about the Prax Lindsey oil refinery. The Energy Secretary wants to blame international gas prices for our insane energy prices, when he has been throwing policy costs on to British industry to subsidise expensive and unreliable renewables. Now he says he will subsidise heavy industry to counter the cost of the renewable subsidies he is making it pay. There are countries, such as the United States, that rely much more on fossil fuels and have lower energy costs than we do. Labour is trying to con the public by blaming global prices, when it is the one that is piling on policy costs.

• 30 Jun 2025 · Welfare Reform · Hansard source

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  Is the problem for the Government not the failure of the Prime Minister to even seek a mandate for what he is trying to do? He said that he would limit spending increases to £9.5 billion a year, but he has increased spending by eight times as much, and the effect on the fiscal rules is the root cause of this problem. He also won the Labour leadership by promising to “abolish Universal Credit and end the Tories’ cruel sanctions regime”, but then he masqueraded as a welfare reformer. Does the Secretary of State now realise that to win a mandate, one needs to be straight with people, including one’s own MPs?

• 30 Jun 2025 · Draft Contracts for Difference (Miscellaneous Amendments) (No. 3) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  Sir Desmond—I apologise; I will announce my resignation later this evening. I am pleased to respond to the draft regulations for the Opposition. Under this legislation, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero will be given new powers to view anonymised CfD bids before setting the budget for the next auction of contracts, due to take place later this year. That means that he will know ahead of time exactly how much will be procured if he sets the budget at a certain level, and therefore what the strike price will be. That poses questions about exactly how much the next round of CfD contracts—AR7—will end up costing the taxpayer. Already, the process has been delayed. The previous allocation round was a record-breaking £1.5 billion, after the Secretary of State turned on the money machine. Everyone in industry—and, I suspect, Ministers too—believes that AR7 will be even more expensive. Ministers have made clear their intention to extend the CfD contracts to 20 years in an attempt to get strike prices down. Whether they succeed or fail in that respect, let us be clear about what it all means in the end: more expensive bills for the public—the very opposite of what the party promised before the election. I note that the Minister, in her opening speech, talked again about the volatility of gas prices and repeated the soundbite about the rollercoaster of gas prices. I would appreciate it if, in her response to me, she explained why the Labour party has taken credit in its campaign materials for the reduction in bills caused by the fall in wholesale gas prices, when policy costs have actually increased. Why are Ministers having to pump so much more money into CfD contracts? It is because of the Government’s ideological rush to decarbonise the grid within five years. That requires a massive expansion in wind power over the next two auctions, and the result will be higher prices forced on to households and businesses. We know that not just from experience and an understanding of how renewable technologies work, but because it has come from the horse’s mouth, too. Behind closed doors, a senior RWE executive has admitted that there would be “spikes in prices” and predicted that the “consumer risks losing out”. In other words, bills are going up. It would be nice if we could have such honesty from the Government. This is the reality of net zero. Last January, a combination of dark skies and low wind—what has now become known as Dunkelflaute—brought Britain to the brink of blackouts. That was avoided only thanks to our remaining gas fleets, which the Government say they want to run down. The Prime Minister has promised categorically that decarbonising the grid by 2030 will not cause any power shortages, blackouts or energy rationing, yet unreliable solar contributed to a lack of inertia in the Iberian grid that could have prevented their power outages. In Britain, customers have paid over half a billion pounds already this year for power generated by wind, with which the grid cannot cope. The OBR says that the costs of all these subsidies, and the hidden costs of renewables, will rise by 60% over the course of this Parliament. Wind is more expensive and highly unreliable, but the Government want more of it, instead of more reliable energy sources, such as gas and nuclear. I hope the Minister can take this opportunity today to explain in clear terms what this legislation will mean for the future of our energy system. Can she provide a date for when the allocation round 7 administrative strike prices will be published? Can she confirm that the budget will be kept as low as possible to keep strike prices as low as possible? How will Ministers ensure value for money when they are trying to procure record capacity? Can the Minister tell us now that strike prices for offshore wind will be lower than those in AR6, and can she confirm that strike prices will be lower than the price of gas-powered electricity last year? If she cannot answer those questions, how can she possibly say that this legislation will cut bills? The public deserve the truth about how the Government are using their money to chase the ideological and the unachievable. Pushing policy to run faster than technology will allow, which is exactly what this Government are doing, will only lead us further away from genuine energy abundance, and leave our country not only poorer but less secure.

• 30 Jun 2025 · Draft Contracts for Difference (Miscellaneous Amendments) (No. 3) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this sweltering evening, Mr Swayne.

• 30 Jun 2025 · Draft Contracts for Difference (Miscellaneous Amendments) (No. 3) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  One of the questions I asked was, why, given that the Minister and other Ministers keep talking about the rollercoaster of volatile fossil fuel prices, when wholesale costs fell, causing the price cap to fall, did the Labour party put out posters saying, “£129 off your bills delivered by Labour”? Will the Minister confirm that that reduction reflects the reduction in wholesale prices and has nothing to do with what the Government have done with policy?

• 26 Jun 2025 · G7 and NATO Summits · Hansard source

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  Under the 5% defence investment pledge, resilience spending appears to include energy infrastructure. Given the evidence about Chinese-made cellular internet modules and kill switches, will he say categorically that China must be kept out of all critical infrastructure, including wind turbines and solar panels?