Category: Parliament

Gerald Jones – 2022 Speech in the No Confidence in the Government Motion

The speech made by Gerald Jones, the Labour MP for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney, in the House of Commons on 18 July 2022.

The very fact that we are having a debate on a motion tabled by the Government on the Government’s confidence in themselves shows how out of touch with reality they really are. Just 10 days ago, many Government Members were writing open letters to the Prime Minister telling him that they had no confidence in him. Nothing has changed—we still have the same Prime Minister in Downing Street, leading this Government—so I do not know how on earth they are able in all good conscience to vote for this motion this evening. It is bizarre.

We all know that the Prime Minister is unfit for office. Government Members all know it too, but rather than remove him from the position immediately, they have left him in No. 10 at a time when the country needs honest and respected leadership—something that he seems unable to offer. Last week, the Government blocked Labour’s vote of no confidence, and that was after the resignation of more than 50 members of the Prime Minister’s Front-Bench team. In blocking that vote and creating today’s spectacle, it is clear that the Prime Minister has only ever been interested in doing what is right for his own ego, rather than for the good of the country.

Many of the Prime Minister’s former allies resigned from his Cabinet, but rather than remove him, they are indulging in fantasy economics in the leadership contest, distracting themselves from the chaos facing the country with party infighting, and attempting to disassociate themselves from their time in the Prime Minister’s Cabinet of chaos. The Conservative leadership candidates are also trying to wipe the slate clean after 12 years of Conservative rule, but on their watch taxes are going up, food and energy bills are spiralling out of control, crime is rising, and many of the public services we rely on have simply stopped working.

The Prime Minister is squatting in No. 10, presiding over a zombie Government, while the country is gripped by a spiralling cost of living crisis and worsening backlogs caused by his Government’s economic policies and political failures. In just the last few days, I have spoken to constituents who are living through the Government’s cost of living crisis. A couple I met who are both in full-time employment get to the middle of the month and have to rely on the local food pantry to support them in putting food on the table for them and their young child. That is utterly depressing and shameful. Another couple told me that they visit the local baths at least three times a week for a swim at a reduced rate, thanks to the Welsh Government. That is great news for their health and wellbeing, but they also use it as an opportunity to have a shower to save on water and heating costs at home. We should not be normalising this in the 21st century.

We should have a Prime Minister and a Government who focused on dealing with these issues and others that are causing great hardship across the country. Instead, we have more chaos, which is why I simply have no confidence in the Government. Since the Prime Minister announced his intention to resign on 7 July, the Government have dropped legislation and called off a number of Bill Committees on issues of the utmost importance, from protecting people online and fraud to national security and levelling up. That is a direct consequence of the chaos engulfing the Government at this moment.

The country does not need a fourth Conservative Prime Minister in six years. Britain needs a fresh start and a Labour Government, which is why we will vote against the Government’s motion this evening.

July 25, 2022
Tony Lloyd – 2022 Speech in the No Confidence in the Government Motion

The speech made by Tony Lloyd, the Labour MP for Rochdale, in the House of Commons on 18 July 2022.

I am delighted to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms). Morality and probity in public life matters—it really does—and we need to establish that. I was proud to become a Member of Parliament, and I think we believed that and were right to believe it. During my lifetime there have been 10 Conservative Prime Ministers, the bulk of whom would have found the idea of lying to Parliament anathema. Yet I am afraid we have a Prime Minister who has broken that code, and that matters.

I have listened to Conservative Members extolling the virtues of the Prime Minister and the Government. There are things that I would agree with the Prime Minister about, such as Ukraine, on which this country now has a proud record. But across the world, we are now a laughing stock. This country, which was once the hallmark for probity, is now a hallmark for lawbreaking. We know there is potential lawbreaking in terms of the Northern Ireland protocol, because the Prime Minister has not got Brexit done. He has betrayed and made a fool of every Conservative Member of Parliament who stood up today, and in the past, and said, “We’ve got Brexit done.” Brexit has not been done.

There was the attempt to keep Owen Paterson in office, and the overriding of Sir Alex Allan, the Prime Minister’s ethics adviser, who declared that the Home Secretary had broken the ministerial code of conduct. Of course those things are important and matter, but it matters even more that nearly 40% of children in my constituency are living in poverty. In some wards the figure is as high as one in two children. That matters, and the Government are failing abysmally to deal with such things. They should be ashamed. It matters that climate change—the biggest issue our nation faces—hardly got a mention by the Prime Minister or anybody else on the Government Benches. Climate change makes a difference to the futures of children in my constituency, and to children across the planet. The Government are failing on those issues on a day-to-day basis.

In the end, what is ironic about this debate is that we could almost believe that it was not Conservative MPs who decapitated the Prime Minister. They got rid of him—not us—but one would not think that was the case today, given the way they describe their loyalty to the now outgoing Prime Minister. Of course, Cabinet Ministers did not resign. Only recently, when they saw their own futures at stake, did they make a decision to get rid of a losing Prime Minister. Before that, despite all his incompetence and failures, they stuck with him.

July 25, 2022
Stephen Timms – 2022 Speech in the No Confidence in the Government Motion

The speech made by Stephen Timms, the Labour MP for East Ham, in the House of Commons on 18 July 2022.

I want to focus on one example of a specific problem with this Government that I think makes it impossible to have confidence in them. Between November last year and the end of March this year, the Prime Minister claimed 10 times at Prime Minister’s questions that more people were in work than before the pandemic. That was untrue. The figures show that total employment is still 366,000 lower than just before the pandemic.

The Prime Minister made that untrue claim twice on 24 November 2021, three times on 5 January 2022, again the following week and then again the following week. He claimed it again on 2 February and on 23 February. On 24 February, the exasperated chair of the UK Statistics Authority wrote to the Prime Minister to point out that the claim was not true. The Prime Minister claimed it again on 27 March.

On 30 March, I asked the Prime Minister at the Liaison Committee whether he accepted that his tenfold statements had been wrong. He replied:

“I think I have repeatedly—and I think I took steps to correct the record earlier.”

Well, he had not corrected the record, and he still has not. In his answer at the Liaison Committee it was clear that he understood what has actually happened since the pandemic, and that about half a million people—mainly older people—have given up on work, substantially reducing the number in work overall. However, four weeks after that discussion on 27 April, the Prime Minister said:

“Let me give them the figures: 500,000 more people in paid employment now than there were before the pandemic began”.—[Official Report, 27 April 2022; Vol. 712, c. 754.]

That was even though he had made clear to me on 30 March that he knew that to be untrue.

At the Liaison Committee two weeks ago, the Chair of the Justice Committee

asked:

“How important is the truth to you, Prime Minister?”

The Prime Minister replied, “Very important, Bob.” But it clearly isn’t important, and the record still has not been corrected for any of the 11 instances of the false claim that the Prime Minister knows he has made.

Other examples of a lack of truthfulness have been much more consequential. After negotiating customs checks between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Prime Minister went to the Democratic Unionist party conference and announced that there would be no such checks. That was obviously untrue, and the DUP has paid a very heavy political price for taking him at his word. Democracy does not work if Ministers routinely say things that they know to be untrue. Why did they not see through him before?

July 25, 2022
Wendy Chamberlain – 2022 Speech in the No Confidence in the Government Motion

The speech made by Wendy Chamberlain, the Liberal Democrat for North East Fife, in the House of Commons on 18 July 2022.

We are here today because we have seen a real decline in our standards in public life, and in particular in the Prime Minister. We have heard many Government Members talk about the positive things in their constituencies, and they clearly want those to continue, but we are here because the Prime Minister was put out of office by those on the Government Benches two weeks ago.

The Government had the opportunity to do things very differently, and I would argue that the rot set in in November last year, when there was an attempt to keep Owen Paterson from censure. I had the emergency debate on standards after that and, dare I say it, that was a much more collegiate and positive debate than this one, because I think there was recognition on all sides of the House that a stop needed to be put to the direction of travel. A constituent said that Mr Paterson’s resignation was not the end, but must be the beginning of an uncompromising campaign to end the corruption in our politics. We are here, and we have been where we have been in the last couple of weeks, because that corruption has not been stopped.

If we look at partygate from a constituency perspective, other than trips to Barnard Castle, I have certainly had no higher volume of emails about anything from constituents, who told me some quite devastating stories. We know how that has gone; it has gone from “There were no parties” to “All rules were followed” to an admission that “There were parties, but we weren’t quite sure what the rules were.” The PM has indicated that he intends to remain as an MP if he remains sitting in this place. Therefore, I do hope that the Privileges Committee will continue with its investigation regardless of whether he is the Prime Minister. If the new Prime Minister, whoever they may be, fails to ensure this, we will know that there is no change to the approach to our standards in public life. Lord Evans believes there has been an erosion, and Lord Geidt clearly did so. Indeed, the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) made it clear in his resignation statement that standards have fallen.

To go back to what the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) said, the fact that we have ended up here because of a lack of candour about office appointments means that this place is not safe. We cannot with all confidence say that it is safe. That shames and should shame us all, and we should all be committed collectively to doing something about it. By failing to face up to this corrosion and failing to identify the battery acid at the core of their party, the Government have lost people’s confidence because they have lost confidence in their values, and our by-election victories over the last year demonstrate that.

July 25, 2022
Richard Graham – 2022 Speech in the No Confidence in the Government Motion

The speech made by Richard Graham, the Conservative MP for Gloucester, in the House of Commons on 18 July 2022.

I would have preferred, as I think my constituents would, these many long hours of debate on confidence in the Government to have been spent discussing the safety of our children and the Online Safety Bill. This is a difficult moment for Labour Members, as they all stood to make the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), who is aware of roughly what I will say, the Prime Minister of our nation. How would he have fared with his plan for a second referendum on the EU, which he did not even personally believe in? Would he have created the private sector-led vaccine taskforce? When Dame Kate Bingham was first appointed to it, there was no shortage of Opposition Members saying that it was a crony appointment. It was, in fact, a brilliant move, and she worked closely with our multinational pharmaceutical companies, which the right hon. Member for Islington North would happily have abolished, along with our intelligence agencies.

Sarah Owen

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Richard Graham

There is no time, alas.

Would the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) today be defending his Prime Minister’s record on standing up to Putin? We are talking about the man who gave Putin the benefit of the doubt when it came to the murder of a British citizen in Salisbury and the handling of Novichok, which could have killed hundreds, if not thousands. As I say, I understand that this is a difficult debate for Labour.

Nor did we hear any mention from the Scottish National party of the first ever dedicated, ringfenced funding pot for marine energy in the recent renewables auction, which provides £20 million a year for investment in Scottish companies such as Orbital Marine Power, MeyGen Ltd, and Nova Innovation. There was nothing from the SNP about the value of the Prime Minister’s 33 trade envoys, who tirelessly promote Scottish products abroad. None of us has ever lost confidence in Scotland, or in the quality of Scottish products, but we think it is sad that the SNP does not see the value of the United Kingdom promoting Scottish exports all over the world.

On what this Government have achieved, let me highlight first their strong record on the Indo-Pacific pivot, which has led to better relationships across south-east Asia, to the great benefit of those nations and our own; and, secondly, what has been done with levelling up, pride and regeneration in small cities such as my own of Gloucester. There, the levelling-up fund, the station improvement fund and a whole number of improvements have done things that under Labour’s tenure were never even dreamed of.

Let us be in no doubt. There are always things that a Government can do better. For example, I wish this Government were thinking closely and hard about insulation for some of our poorer families to help them through this winter’s energy increase, and maybe that will come. However, I am in no doubt that this is a Government who are delivering, and I have full confidence in them.

July 25, 2022
Gill Furniss – 2022 Speech in the No Confidence in the Government Motion

The speech made by Gill Furniss, the Labour MP for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough, in the House of Commons on 18 July 2022.

When the Prime Minister took office, he stood on the steps of Downing Street and promised to level up every part of Britain. He said he would close the opportunity gap and, in his words, unleash the power “of every corner” of the United Kingdom. In 2019, he came to Sheffield and made that same pledge. He continues to boast about levelling up as though it has been some gigantic success, but if we dig deep enough beneath the surface, we find that his legacy is one of broken promises, shattered communities and a failure to deliver. The public know that they cannot trust a word that the Government say. They have concluded that levelling up is just another empty slogan that will do nothing to help them in their everyday life.

The effects of 12 years of Conservative mismanagement are plain to see. Only if we remove the Conservative party from power altogether will we see these trends reversed, and today’s vote is a chance to do that. To take just one example, our local authorities’ budgets have been cut to the bone by the Prime Minister and his two Conservative predecessors. Sheffield City Council’s central Government grant has been cut by more than £3 billion in real terms since 2010, which has put an enormous strain on its budgets. The impact has been stark. According to the End Child Poverty coalition, 45% of children in my constituency are in poverty. That really is a shameful statistic. One of the basics of levelling up needs to be ending child poverty once and for all, but in my region, child poverty rates continue to rise year on year. This is not levelling up; this is levelling down, and families across the country are paying the price.

The Conservative party is truly unfit to govern, as it has shown time and again. I am of course pleased to finally see the back of the Prime Minister, but it is clear that whoever takes over cannot be trusted to truly level up. Instead of focusing on the real issues facing people, leadership candidates are trying to stoke culture wars and divide communities. Today, the Met Office warns that unprecedented heatwaves pose a significant risk of death, but the leadership candidates are not prepared to step up to the serious threats posed by climate change. They instead want to water down net zero targets and roll back green initiatives. Perhaps that is not surprising, given that one candidate has seemingly accepted tens of thousands of pounds in donations from a notorious climate change denier. The Conservative party is out of touch, out of ideas and, I hope, soon to be out of power. A new leader will not change any of that.

July 25, 2022
Ian Levy – 2022 Speech in the No Confidence in the Government Motion

The speech made by Ian Levy, the Conservative MP for Blyth Valley, in the House of Commons on 18 July 2022.

I still remember the look on people’s faces when I first won my seat back in 2019—it was the look of hope for the future, because they had felt neglected for generations. To tell the truth, that is why I decided to stand for Parliament, represent the people of Blyth Valley and break the chains of Labour.

One of our first tasks as a Government was to deliver Brexit, which we did, and then to support the country through the pandemic, which we did with the massive vaccine roll-out, the furlough scheme and the support to businesses and individuals. Now we are supporting the people of Ukraine.

In Blyth Valley, people are starting to see the shoots of economic growth. The number of jobs set to come to the area is truly amazing, with Britishvolt, JDR Cable Systems, Merit, the Catapult, Tharsus, the offshore wind industry, the port of Blyth and Dräger, and we also have the towns fund and the future high streets fund. This is true levelling up with a Conservative Government, with an expectation of more than 10,000 jobs. Where once stood a coal-fired power station will stand a gigaplant. The 16th largest building in the world will make the batteries to power thousands of electric vehicles up and down the country.

Dr Luke Evans

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, because Britishvolt has its headquarters stationed at MIRA technology park. Is not such levelling up in the midlands and the north-east under this Government exactly why we should have confidence in this Government’s agenda?

Ian Levy

I totally agree, and we are levelling up across the country. The gigaplant will be like a phoenix rising from the ashes of neglect. Even today we can see work being carried out on the Northumberland line, which will connect Ashington to Bedlington station, Bebside, Newsham and Seaton Delaval, and will then connect to the Metro system and into Newcastle Central station.

I have every confidence in this Government. I am under no illusions about the fact that Opposition Members will say, “Well, he would. He is the first Conservative Member of Parliament for Blyth Valley”, but I know when I talk to people in the constituency that they feel there is a definite change and they have hope once again. That is why I have confidence in Her Majesty’s Government.

July 25, 2022
George Howarth – 2022 Speech in the No Confidence in the Government Motion

The speech made by George Howarth, the Labour MP for Knowsley, in the House of Commons on 18 July 2022.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mark Eastwood) even though I am not quite sure what his argument really was.

Most people in this country—in fact, overwhelmingly people in this country; indeed, even in this Parliament—have no involvement in deciding who the next Prime Minister is. However, I will come back to that. It is an important issue whenever a Prime Minister is switched mid-term. At the moment, as many of my hon. Friends have said, we have a massive crisis in the national health service; we have problems with energy costs and how they will affect people’s lives; and we have problems with inflation and how it affects people’s ability to put food on the table. Those things are more important than ever, yet here we are, switching Governments with no prospect, as far as I can tell, of any realistic plan to address those problems.

I will share a quote from Janice Turner, who wrote in Saturday’s Times:

“For the third time in six years, who leads us is being decided by the tiniest sliver of society.”

She refers, of course, to the 150,000 Conservative party members. Margaret from Knowsley made a similar point. She said:

“It is like watching a criminal gang choose its leader. The rest of us have no say in the matter but have to live with the consequences daily in our lives. Except this is about our democracy and who is in charge of our country.”

I think she put it very well.

I have not got time to talk about how we could handle this situation better, but I refer those who are genuinely interested to an article by the noble and learned Lord Sumption that was in The Sunday Times eight days ago. He set out why, without a written constitution in a parliamentary system, this problem must be resolved before we get into this position again, because it threatens to undermine the stability of our democracy.

July 25, 2022
Rupa Huq – 2022 Speech in the No Confidence in the Government Motion

The speech made by Rupa Huq, the Labour MP for Ealing Central and Acton, in the House of Commons on 18 July 2022.

I have no confidence in this Government. The public have no confidence in this Government, and nor do Government Members, 59 of whom put in their own letters to say they had no confidence in this Government. They need to vote with us accordingly tonight.

All political careers end in failure; that is a truism. Unlike past demises, however, this one is based not on policy, but on probity. The degradation and debasement of standards should be about not left and right, but right and wrong. This Government have got all the big calls wrong: we have the highest inflation in 40 years and the biggest tax take in 70, while these leadership contenders who have spent years defending the indefensible now out-vie each other to disown the past 12 years.

The moral is that not every fairy tale has a happy ending. This was not just about ambush by cake; it was about a pattern of behaviour that resulted in the first ever lawbreaker Prime Minister. One misjudgment alone might have been ride-outable, but the cumulative effect of partygate, Paterson, the redecoration of the No. 10 flat, the promotion of an alleged drunken groper to a post that included reporting MPs’ misconduct and the Prime Minister’s saying he had had a memory lapse about that individual’s previous history just proved to be one implausibility too far.

As we have seen today, the PM who as a child wanted to be world king has become King Canute, still defiant and partying to the end, characteristically skipping Cobra meetings—if not quite fiddling while Rome burns, then partying while the country roasts. It brings to mind those suitcases being wheeled down Whitehall on the eve of Prince Philip’s funeral. Meanwhile, our fellow citizens face huge challenges: climate change-induced heatwave, looming strikes, inflation, cost of living crisis, energy crisis, record NHS backlog, passports backlog, Home Office backlog, courts backlog—backlog Britain.

If we are trying to define exactly what Johnsonism is, we would have in there the idea that the rules do not apply to those at the top, self-advancement, Government by slogan and, as Dominic Cummings put it, a “shopping trolley” modus operandi. Remember the pro-EU and anti-EU columns, or the one-time fan of an amnesty for illegal immigrants who now wants to ship off asylum seekers to Rwanda? Multiple signs were already there: those costly London Mayoralty vanity projects, the Jennifer Arcuri improprieties, which are still unresolved, with new people appearing out of the woodwork making similar claims, and even indifference to groping and grabbing. It was all part of a pattern. I was in the now PM’s presence in Acton in 2015—there is footage of it out there—and I was grabbed from behind by one of his aides for wanting to speak to him.

If we consider Imran Ahmad Khan, Neil Parish, Charlie Elphicke and Andrew Griffiths, it does not feel as though sexual misconduct is being stamped on, or out. When an entire Government are rotten to their core, all politicians become tainted and tarnished. It is time to call time on the lot. The first step is today’s vote, but the country is crying out for change. There is a democratic deficit if those of us who are not among the small number of Tory party members have no say in our next PM. We need a general election as soon as possible, to have a say on the next, unelected Prime Minister who emerges from that process, and refresh all 650 of us.

July 23, 2022
Shaun Bailey – 2022 Speech in the No Confidence in the Government Motion

The speech made by Shaun Bailey, the Conservative MP for West Bromwich West, in the House of Commons on 18 July 2022.

The past few hours has been—well—an experience, hasn’t it really?

There are two elements to a confidence motion. The first is a lack of confidence in the Government, and the second is the alternative to that Government. I have lived under that alternative, because I live in Sandwell—Labour-controlled Sandwell, socialist Sandwell. Let us take a journey to what life would be like under the Labour party: special educational needs and disability contracts doled out to their mates; dodgy land deals; backhanders to their mates, because they feel like it; dodgy contracts for the council; and no scrutiny. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) does her usual thing. She does not have anything to say, but she chunters from a sedentary position. She failed in Hastings before she went to Luton, because, let us face it, they did not like her there.

The truth of the matter is that I have seen that alternative and it terrifies me. What worries me even more is that Labour Members go along with it. They are all complicit in that corruption in Sandwell, because it is their party that sits there and does it. It is their party that denied the need for commissioners to go in. We now have commissioners controlling that council. It is those young people with special educational needs who are put at risk by them because they failed to do a proper procurement on those contracts. When Labour Members talk about standards in public life, I sit here and I laugh, because it reeks of double standards.

Geraint Davies

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for the hon. Member to accuse Opposition Members who have no connection to the council that he is talking about? He is abusing his privilege to talk about corruption and then pointing at us and saying that it is our fault. It is completely out of order.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)

Order. I would have brought Mr Bailey up. I am listening very carefully to what is being said. It would help if people did not chunter so that I can hear both sides clearly.

Shaun Bailey

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. As a point of clarity, my understanding is that they are all members of the Labour party. It is the Labour party that controlled that local authority. They are all comrades in arms together. Labour Members could have intervened at any point. They promised that they would get grip on this.

Sarah Owen

Will the hon. Member give way?

Shaun Bailey

No, I will not.

Labour promised that it would get a grip on this, and it did not. So when Labour Members sit there and talk about standards in public life, I tell them to come to Sandwell. Come to Sandwell. If Members want to see the horror that is the alternative, we can show them.

Jonathan Gullis

It will not shock my hon. Friend to hear Members of the Labour party shouting down the fine people of Sandwell and Tipton just as they shout down the people of Kidsgrove, Talke, Newchapel and Stoke-on-Trent North. That is why my hon. Friend will share with us why Labour is going backwards and Conservatives are gaining in his local council as well as in Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council—the No.1 target in the west midlands in May, which Labour lost.

Shaun Bailey

I am grateful to my hon. Friend because he is right: we are scalping Labour councillors all over the place. As one lady put it to me on the doorstep during the local elections, “I have been Labour all my life. I am Labour through and through, but I cannot vote for that shower.” The truth of the matter is that, when we look at the alternative, it is horrific.

I also want to touch on what this Government have done. What we have is £22.5 million possibly coming into Tipton. We have seen £25 million for Birchley Island in Oldbury dealing with our congestion and transport issues. We have seen £50,000 for the horrendous route between Burnt Tree and Dudley Port, which will mean that, finally, we can start dealing with those horrendous congestion issues and those road safety issues, which is vital to keep people safe. I know from my constituents that they are sometimes spending 45 minutes on our roads, and that messes with their businesses and messes with their standard of life because of how long it is taking them to commute to work and the difficulty that it presents them. It is this Government who have put that money into Sandwell.

It is quite interesting, Mr Deputy Speaker, because I will quite often go to Ministers—my hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench—and say, “Look, we need money. We need investment. This is what we want.” They then say to me, “Well, the problem is, Shaun, your local authority has not applied for it.” Then I go to the local authority and say, “What plans do we have on the shelf?” I am referring in particular to the levelling up fund. I then get told, “Oh, well, we don’t have any.” They cannot be bothered. That is the truth with them. They cannot be bothered. For 50 years my communities put their faith in the Labour party, and they were betrayed—it is as simple as that.

I always remember at the general election a man breaking down to me in Tividale in my constituency. He told me he had been Labour all his life, but he realised that the Labour party had lied to him and misled him for most of his life. He felt lied to. He broke down, and that really affected me. When someone feels that their life purpose and their belief system have been mis-sold to them, what do they do? [Interruption.] I am sure there are some quips; Labour Members may find it funny, because Labour has led Sandwell for 50 years. It is their arrogance and their thought process. When I look at the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), he is typical of the Labour privilege that we see. How he can sit there pretending to represent working people is beyond me.

As I round up my comments, the truth is this: my communities have confidence in the Government, because they have seen the difference after 50 years of Labour misrepresenting them. They have seen the investment that has come in, and they have seen the shambles that is the Labour party and the way it has mismanaged our local area. I have total confidence in this Government, and I would not want Labour.

July 21, 2022