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Tag: Speeches

  • Julie Elliott – 2023 Speech on the Loyal Address

    Julie Elliott – 2023 Speech on the Loyal Address

    The speech made by Julie Elliott, the Labour MP for Sunderland Central, in the House of Commons on 7 November 2023.

    I would like to send my good wishes to the King on the first occasion of his Gracious Speech. It cannot have been an easy thing to do. We have to remember that it follows the long reign of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II. There will have been mixed emotions today, and it is important to recognise that; it is not just a job.

    It has been interesting listening to the speeches today. I have found myself agreeing with Members I do not always agree with. The right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) made some important points on net zero, and I agree entirely with the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) on the secondary legislation around deforestation. But the debate on the Humble Address has already signalled the difference between the two sides of this House. On our side, we have a Labour party that is a Government in waiting, with plans to cut the cost of living, improve education once and for all, and get Britain building again. On the other side, we have a Government who have simply run out of ideas. They have nothing new to offer to the people of Sunderland or to the country. My constituents expected the Government to finally understand the damage they have caused up and down the country—the damage they have done to our communities because of a lack of investment, to education through lack of care, and to household budgets as the country still reels from the disastrous mini-Budget of the previous Prime Minister.

    It is clear that the Government do not understand that. This was an opportunity for them to admit that they had got it wrong and let the country down, but they did not. There was a total absence of a plan in the King’s Speech. There was an absence of ideas and an absence of care—for the electorate, for the economy, and for the people of Sunderland. The city I represent is a thriving place, thanks to the work of local people and the city council. It has incredible new investment plans to regenerate the city, and it is full of people who work hard to provide for their families. But if we look at the situation that Sunderland is in thanks to this Government, we see that the total school block allocation since 2015 and funding for the local council since 2010 are down, and child poverty and central Government taxes are up. What do people get in return for the highest tax burden in 70 years? They get crumbling schools, rampant inflation and a Prime Minister who prefers to take a helicopter around the country to travelling on public transport.

    I agree with the Prime Minister that the public transport system is woeful and creaking at the seams, but it is his party and his Government who broke it. While the King’s Speech rekindles the idea of Network North, I am not sure how far north that goes, and whether it extends to Sunderland, which I represent. We know that the Government do not care about northern transport. They decided to cancel HS2 and then announce plans that included projects that had been completed, mainly in the south, with a flip-flop on the Leamside line—it was in, then two hours later it was out—although that project would have made a real economic difference to the north-east region. There was a total misunderstanding of the transport system, and we saw the Government’s real agenda.

    Today, we have seen the introduction of long-trailed legislation such as the Media Bill. I engaged in pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Media Bill as a member of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. Reform of the media landscape in this country is long overdue. The importance and prominence of public service broadcasters like the BBC, ITV and Channel 4—institutions that produce great British content and vital skills training for our next generation—must be protected, and I am glad that legislation has been introduced that brings us closer to where we need to be.

    Finally, I welcome the announcement of a football regulator, which is a matter of concern to people in Sunderland and around the country. Sunderland is a great footballing city that has produced inspirational stars such as Jill Scott and great programmes such as “Sunderland ’Til I Die”, which is based on our love of football and produced by the incredible Fulwell 73. The fanbase and the city care about sustaining the game for future generations and ensuring that the financial playing field is legitimate and fair. The Government have had ample time to formulate a new system since the publication of the very, very good Crouch review, and I am worried that there have been many delays. I am glad that the proposals have been introduced, and I can assure football fans that if there are any more delays and the Government fail to bring in a football regulator, a future Labour Government will act and introduce one.

    I also welcome leasehold reform. It is quite clear that the Government’s plans do not go far enough to fully protect homeowners, but I am pleased that they have taken action. After the Conservative mortgage rate hike and a total failure to build new homes, the Government are no longer on the side of homeowners, but the Labour party is.

    Although I welcome some measures in the King’s Speech, I am extremely concerned about the fact that the Government have brought back the Economic Activities of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill, which is designed to put undue controls on public bodies and limit their ability to express their beliefs. This is a time when language and actions matter—we have heard a lot about the horror that is unfolding in the middle east; about the horror inflicted on Israeli citizens by Hamas; and about the tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians who have died in the horror unfolding in Gaza—and there has never been a more sensitive time in the middle east, so to introduce the Bill at this moment shows a lack of sensitivity by the Government. It is adding fuel to the fire, and it is not sensible to introduce it at this time.

    The absence of measures to ban conversion therapy is extremely alarming, and is a sign of the Prime Minister’s inability to stand up to his Back Benchers—a weak Prime Minister at a time when we need the very opposite. What is clear today, and what has become increasingly clear over the past few years, is that the Conservative party is out of ideas. They do not know how to solve the problems that they have caused, and they are making the public pay for their mistakes. The King’s Speech was an opportunity to introduce legislation to improve the lives of ordinary people, to do something to bring down the cost of living, and finally to act to increase the hope, aspiration and life chances of our young people. Yet again, the Government have failed to do so.

    Today’s speech by His Majesty has raised many questions about the Government’s priorities, but it has answered three questions definitively. Can people really say they are better off after 13 years of Conservative Government than they were in 2010? No. Does the King’s Speech give them any hope whatsoever that the Government know what they are doing to the lives of working people up and down this country? No. Does this country need a general election to kick out the Conservatives? An emphatic yes. Labour has a plan to fix the economy; the Conservatives are happy to let the economy flounder. The people of my constituency of Sunderland Central and the people of this country deserve so much more.

  • Chris Grayling – 2023 Speech on the Loyal Address

    Chris Grayling – 2023 Speech on the Loyal Address

    The speech made by Chris Grayling, the Conservative MP for Epsom and Ewell, in the House of Commons on 7 November 2023.

    I rise for the first and last time to speak in a King’s Speech debate in this House. It is a moment of big change for us all. The fact that it is all too tempting to start talking about the Queen’s Speech is just a sign of how used we were to having the late Queen after her 70 years of incredible service to this country. It is a big year for her son in taking over as King, and in delivering his first King’s Speech. Although he has an incredibly hard act to follow, I pay tribute to him for the way in which he has taken up his responsibilities, for his first year in his position, and for what he has done today in starting the new parliamentary Session. He has clearly already shown himself to be a monarch we can be proud of.

    There are a number of points in the King’s Speech that I will pick up on. First, I echo the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg) about the importance of signing up to the CPTPP and the provisions in the King’s Speech for doing that. He is absolutely right to highlight the benefits of free trade for people around the world. It is a matter of deep distress to those of us who believe in free trade that so many countries seem to be taking a step away from it. In the end, that will not lead to a more prosperous world; it will not lead to fewer people being in poverty. If we revert to a world of tariffs, protectionism and subsidies, we will end up in a position where the world is a poorer place, not a richer place. I see our joining the CPTPP as a step in this country’s commitment towards the free trade environment that is needed around the world. It is, as my right hon. Friend says, a crucial part of the world for future economic growth. We are right to seek partnerships there, to do business there and to work closely with countries that are, after all, our friends.

    On energy, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset mentioned the Drax power station and, in doing so, drew attention to a really important issue for this country. The Government are absolutely right to seek to continue to exploit oil and gas from the North sea. The Climate Change Committee itself expects us to still need significant amounts by 2050, so why on earth is it better for this country to ship oil and gas from the middle east in large tankers with higher emissions than simply producing it off the coast of Scotland, creating and protecting jobs in Scotland? It baffles me as to why the SNP seems keen to destroy jobs in Scotland, but it is.

    At the same time, we see the continued shipping and burning of vast amounts of timber from North America as being somehow a renewable source of energy. In some respects, biomaterials can be and are a renewal source of energy, but I have increasing misgivings about the sheer volume of deforestation in the forests of the northern part of the world to generate the amount of energy that comes from the Drax power station. Over the next two or three years, as we move to the point where its contract for difference is to be reviewed, we have to ask, is this really the right thing to do? Are we absolutely certain that it is coming from sustainable sources and that the forests being cut down are being replanted and harvested properly? I have my questions. Before we continue to develop biomass in this country, we have to ask some hard questions about whether it is the right thing to do.

    I welcome the provision on leasehold and freehold in the King’s Speech. I have seen examples in my constituency of development companies and construction companies behaving in ways that are, frankly, among the worst practices in capitalism, exploiting those who have saved to buy their own homes and have ended up just about able to afford them. These people take pride in what they have, and then a few months or years later, the developer looks to put up the cost of not having the freehold—they put up the cost of the leasehold. My view is straightforward: if someone buys a house, it should be freehold. The application of leasehold tenure to what would in the past have been freehold homes is an unacceptable practice. It should stop, and I am very pleased that it is going to stop as a result of this King’s Speech and the legislation that lies ahead, which I hope will have support on both sides of the House.

    I would like to talk about a couple of things on which I want to see action in the Session ahead through secondary legislation and changes to the Government’s approach. The first is in relation to the measures that were put in place in the Environment Act 2021, 18 months ago, dealing with the issue of deforestation around the world. I chair the all-party parliamentary group on global deforestation. Deforestation is one of the great environmental challenges for our planet. We are losing forest at a rate of knots. It has a huge impact on biodiversity and on carbon emissions. It has to stop and to be reversed.

    We were pioneers, through the Environment Act, in saying that we will take practical action to require companies that deal in forest risk products to do proper due diligence, to ensure that those products are not coming from areas that have been illegally deforested. That was the right thing to do. It was a pathfinding piece of legislation and a sign of this Government’s commitment on the issue of biodiversity and the environment. However, the secondary legislation that underpins the Environment Act has yet to materialise. It is complicated to do, and I know that officials are working hard to identify the right way to do it, but this has to happen before the general election. We need to have adequate measures in place on products such as palm oil and soy to ensure that we are not importing those products from areas of illegal deforestation. I ask those on the Front Bench to use all their efforts to ensure that that secondary legislation comes forward soon.

    There is a flipside to the issue, which is what we do about financial services and institutions that invest in companies that are involved in illegal deforestation. We had some good debates last summer, when considering the Financial Services and Markets Bill, about the need to extend the due diligence provisions to the financial services sector. The Government made some positive noises and agreed to start a consultation process to look at how that could be done. I hope we will see tangible progress during this Session, and potentially even legislation coming forward when there is a Finance Bill off the back of the autumn statement.

    These changes are needed, because the issue of illegal deforestation is not simply about the products themselves; it is about the finance that supports the companies that exploit those parts of the world. I want to see proper measures in place. The financial services sector already does due diligence on the investments it makes and the loans it provides, but I want to see it inserting into that due diligence process the knowledge that the companies it is lending to are not simply using that money to support the cutting down of rainforests.

    Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)

    I thank my right hon. Friend—or, rather, the right hon. Member—for giving way. He is making some very important points on due diligence and the need to ensure that consumers and companies know where they are investing and the impact of that on people who live in illegally deforested areas. Does he agree that City investors and companies are crying out for this secondary legislation to be in place as well?

    Chris Grayling

    Absolutely, and I hope the hon. Member does see me as her friend, because she and I co-chaired the APPG on global deforestation until she, sadly, had to give up the role; I congratulate her on her recent elevation on the Opposition Front Bench. I agree with her: there is demand from investors around the world and from consumers.

    This is the right thing to do. I speak as a Conservative who believes passionately in free trade and free markets, but we are also conservative with a small c, and we have always been conservatives who believe in looking after the natural environment and ensuring that we have the right balance and do not destroy the natural world. It is really important that we have in place the checks and balances to ensure that the rogue operations that sadly exist around the world cannot simply tap into financial sources that enable them to do their business.

    There is one other change that I want to see happen, or at least see significant progress on, during this Session, and that is around sustainable aviation fuel. We are going to see the aviation industry change to move towards a lower-emission environment. We are already seeing it, in fact, with the arrival of new engine technology that reduces fuel use and so forth. The development of aviation fuel is crucial if we are to see the step change that the Government in this country and Governments around the world are asking for from the aviation sector. Sustainable aviation fuel is now required by law in this country to play an increasing part in the future of our aviation sector. I very much believe—and I have listened to comments made on both sides of the House—that we need to produce sustainable aviation fuel in the United Kingdom, and we need to create a regulatory environment which enables that to happen.

    We had some good discussions in the latter stages of the last Session. The Government have started a process that I hope will lead to the incentives, support and structures that those emerging markets in sustainable aviation fuel will need, but we need to see further progress in this Session, so that by the time of the election we have a clear path forward to deliver in this country a product that will be essential to what is still one of our biggest and most important business sectors.

    There is a lot to do. We have a year until an election, and I listened to what the Prime Minister said about what we can achieve in a year—assuming it is a year. I heard a lot in the King’s Speech that will make a difference to this country, but there is a lot that we need to change and a lot we need to get on with, and the work starts now.

  • Alex Cunningham – 2023 Speech on the Loyal Address

    Alex Cunningham – 2023 Speech on the Loyal Address

    The speech made by Alex Cunningham, the Labour MP for Stockton North, in the House of Commons on 7 November 2023.

    Here we are in the 14th year of consecutive Tory-led Governments that have failed on everything from the economy to immigration. The number of children living in poverty has soared, the gap between the richest and poorest has continued to widen, the number of people homeless has increased and social housing construction has all but collapsed. Families, businesses and industry alike have been crippled by the huge hike in energy prices and some of the highest interest rates in the western world. Our NHS has been devastated through political mismanagement. Waiting lists are lengthening and people are struggling to get a GP appointment or to see a dentist. Health inequalities remain a blight on our communities, and many are desperate to access mental health services but cannot.

    Our asylum system is broken, with a never-ending backlog of claims still to be heard. Class sizes in schools have increased as teachers leave the profession. Serious crime and antisocial behaviour blight our communities as police numbers remain well below the levels of 10 years ago. The majority of people in our country know that life for them has got worse, not better, since 2010. Add to that the disgusting rhetoric from Ministers and others on immigration, protest, homelessness, benefits and unemployment, and we know our country is in a bad place.

    In my speech, I plan to concentrate on poverty, health and inequalities, crime and policing, and industry and growth, but first I must get the compliment out of the way. I am delighted at the decision to increase annually the age at which people can buy cigarettes, which cost our NHS billions. As vice chair of the APPG on smoking and health, I appeal to the Government to back up that policy with the resources needed to tackle the illegal trade and, more importantly, to invest in public health measures to help people quit and to stop young people starting. It need not cost them a penny—they can make the polluter pay by placing a levy on the tobacco companies, who know they can afford it. I welcome, too, the reference to the sale and management of vapes. Anything that can stop children taking up that habit has got to be good.

    The north-east has had the steepest regional rise in child poverty in the UK. In Stockton North, almost 7,000 are living below the poverty line. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation says that 1.8 million households—that is 3.8 million people—have experienced destitution in 2022. A million of those people are children; some are homeless. We need to do so much more on poverty and homelessness. The covid pandemic showed us that we do not have to have rough sleepers, but the Government lack the ambition to sort that out now. Instead, we have a Home Secretary who characterises homelessness as a “lifestyle choice”. The homelessness charity Crisis says that it is caused by a lack of affordable housing, poverty and unemployment; people leaving prison, care or the forces with no home to go to; or women escaping violent or abusive relationships. As the coldest winter nights approach and a growing number of people struggle to afford the most basic physical needs to stay warm, dry, clean and fed, I am appalled that the Government have not taken the opportunity to tackle that crisis.

    Nor is there anything in the Government’s programme to tackle the crisis in our NHS, with the most basic care simply not available and many waiting lists getting longer. That means that people are suffering, many with excruciating pain. People are anxious about when they will get their operation. Family members are beside themselves knowing that their loved ones may not get the treatment they need before it is too late. I know that the Government will troop out the usual excuses—the pandemic, and doctors and nurses striking—but they do not stack up. The covid inquiry has demonstrated not only a lack of preparation and incompetence by Ministers, but a “couldn’t care less” attitude from the Prime Minister of the day, and a Health Secretary who thought that he should have the right to say who lived or died. That failure continues today, nowhere more so than in Stockton. We are getting a diagnostic centre, which I welcome, but we actually need a 21st-century hospital.

    Let me address primary care. My constituent tells me that, despite being told of the importance of seeing a dentist after suffering multiple miscarriages, she has been struggling to see a dentist for over three years. She has searched within a 50-mile radius to no avail. She is at a loss as to how she is supposed to get any help when private practice is on the rise and NHS providers are facing recruitment problems. What is my constituent to do? The North East and North Cumbria integrated care board said she should continue contacting her local practice to ask to be put on the waiting list—that is not good enough. Last year, 1,095 people were forced to attend A&E at both North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust and South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust because of dental decay—885 were unable to get an NHS dental appointment for dental abscesses caused by tooth decay, and 210 for dental cavities.

    The inadequate system for getting a GP appointment is also a cause for despair. One constituent tells me of her struggle to get either a face-to-face or phone appointment for the past two weeks—neither is available. She is in need of a prescribed medicine. She has tried to use eConsult, but the system is only available after 1 pm. She logged on at exactly 1 pm several times, only to receive a message advising of no availability and saying to try again tomorrow. Another constituent had tonsillitis a few weeks ago and found it impossible to get an appointment. She said the practice procedure is to phone up at 8.30 am to make an appointment. She tried, but at 8.35 am she was told that all appointments were gone, and that she would need to phone 111 or go to urgent care.

    Many of my constituents are concerned about mental health services and support for people with dementia. They asked me to raise the concerns raised by the Alzheimer’s Society and to press the Government for change. Sadly, no change was indicated today.

    I will never forget the sight of two thugs attacking the home of a rival—actually, it was the home of the rival’s ex-girlfriend—near Stockton town centre. While one smashed in the windows, the other deployed a chainsaw to cut his way through the door. Who knows the fear that that woman felt? Sadly, serious crime of that nature is quite commonplace. The police do their best, but they are fewer in number and have increased responsibilities.

    Crime is on the rise: the number of police-recorded crimes in Cleveland in the year 2022-23 was 83,890—a 9% increase on the previous year, when the number of crimes recorded nationally went up by only 2%. The substantial rise is in violent crime, which also rose by 9% in Cleveland to 31,497. Cleveland recorded 25% more residential burglaries than in the previous year, and it has been reported that the number of home burglaries in Stockton has shot up by 42%. Based on the crime survey, the Office for National Statistics estimates that, in Cleveland, almost 45% of people over 16 have experienced or witnessed antisocial behaviour in the last year, compared with 34% nationally. For sexual offence cases being heard at Teesside Crown court, the average time from receipt to completion is 93 weeks, compared with a 59-week national average. That is not justice.

    Against that backdrop, we are seeing a failure by the Cleveland police and crime commissioner to recruit more police. The number of male officers has decreased since 2010 across the board. The number of constables is down by 242, sergeants by 68 and special constables by 99. There has, however, been a growth in the number of women police officers.

    Finally, on industry and growth, I welcome this week’s announcement by British Steel of its plan to invest in Teesside, which has both an amazing industrial heritage—iron ore from the Cleveland hills led to the foundation of our once extensive steelmaking industry—and a local workforce that is equipped with the skills and expertise needed to grow our local steelmaking base once more. Establishing an electric arc furnace in Teesside is a good step forward, but we need much more if we are to reverse the industrial sabotage of the Conservatives, who abandoned steelmaking in Teesside in 2015, and if we are to create more than a fraction of the jobs that were lost as a result of their disastrous decision making—more than 3,000 jobs were lost at that time. We need to be more ambitious, and the investment needs to be part of a sustainable industrial strategy that puts clean, green steelmaking at its heart.

    Several years ago, we were promised tens of thousands of jobs at the Teesworks site. Few have so far materialised and, because of secrecy and Tory politicians and others hiding behind company law, we cannot find out what is guaranteed to happen and what is a stream of hopeful promises. That is why I would like the Government to come up with a plan to extend the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to all boards, companies and organisations that spend public money. Maybe that would help us to find out how the bulk of the major assets at the Teesworks site and Teesside airport ended up in the hands of two private companies, and where the tens of millions spent subsidising the airport actually went.

    We could have the bright future that the Government talk about, we could see our health service restored to health, we could see transparency in the way Government agencies and companies do business, we could see a growing economy, we could see people getting a GP or dental appointment, and we could see millions of people lifted out of poverty, but not with this lot. It is time for a general election.

  • Nia Griffith – 2023 Speech on the Loyal Address

    Nia Griffith – 2023 Speech on the Loyal Address

    The speech made by Nia Griffith, the Labour MP for Llanelli, in the House of Commons on 7 November 2023.

    Even if we were not expecting a great deal, the King’s Speech is even more disappointing than we could have imagined. It is weak, empty and full of platitudes. To make matters worse, it builds on a very poor track record.

    The Government say that they want to create growth in the economy, but there is nothing in the King’s Speech to explain how. Their track record is abysmal. They have completely failed over 13 years to get any proper growth in the economy. Wages have stagnated while inflation has skyrocketed, leaving people struggling in a massive cost of living crisis.

    Creating growth in the economy really matters. It is about people having good jobs and wages that keep pace with inflation, and it is about our having the money to invest in improving our sorely overstretched public services. Labour would prioritise growth and invest in the green jobs of the future. That is why we need a change of Government, a Labour Government, and we need that change urgently.

    We saw just last week how big international companies are now making their investment decisions for the future. Although other countries are wooing companies for their investment in the green jobs of the future, this Conservative Government are letting down workers who worked hard, often in difficult circumstances, during covid and adapted rapidly to change.

    Take steel, which is a vital foundation industry. For years, this Conservative Government have been half-hearted in their support for the steel industry. They have failed to tackle the high energy prices that make our steel uncompetitive, and they have failed to invest in the future. Worse, there are 20-plus projects across Europe looking at how to decarbonise the blast furnace process, but there is not one project in the UK.

    The Conservative Government, in their so-called big announcement back in September, promised only £0.5 billion to invest in an electric arc furnace in Port Talbot, whereas Labour has recognised and committed £3 billion to decarbonise the steel industry. That is the sort of investment needed to get the necessary technologies to green the blast furnace process. Yes, we need electric arc furnaces to recycle more of the 800 million tonnes of steel that are currently exported for recycling, but we also need to develop the necessary technology to transform the blast furnace process for extracting iron from iron ore.

    Just yesterday, we heard the dreadful news that the Chinese-owned British Steel is closing down blast furnace steel production in Scunthorpe, replacing it with two electric arc furnaces. This comes hot on the heels of the devastating news in south-west Wales this past week that Tata Steel is planning to close down the blast furnaces at Port Talbot by the spring of next year, long before the electric arc furnace will be operational. This means a massive loss of income for thousands of workers and their families, and for the associated contractors, transport companies and businesses in the community. This affects not just Port Talbot but the whole of south-west Wales.

    Workers are fearful for the future of the Trostre tinplate works in my constituency. Trostre needs steel of a quality that can currently be produced only by the blast furnace process. We have assurances that, when the blast furnaces in Port Talbot close, Tata will import steel from abroad to feed Trostre. But it makes no sense to lose all those jobs here in the UK and then to import steel made in blast furnaces abroad, quite likely with much lower environmental standards than our own. That does nothing to cut emissions.

    Furthermore, if we lose the means to produce virgin steel in this country, we will be at the mercy of other countries for the price we have to pay. If there is a world shortage, we may even not be able to get the steel we need for our vital industries. The fear at Trostre is about the medium and long-term future. If we no longer have steel produced just down the railway track in Port Talbot, and if we have to import it from abroad, how economically viable will we be in comparison with competitor factories in the same company elsewhere?

    Tata’s timescale to close down the blast furnaces in Port Talbot by March next year has come as a massive shock for Port Talbot and for us in Trostre. The prospect of Port Talbot colleagues losing jobs and Trostre becoming dependent on imported steel is very worrying. We now need proper consultation between Tata and the unions, but I also urge the Government to do everything possible to ensure that we keep steel production in this country.

    We are at a turning point in our industrial history but, with this Government, we are in very real danger of being left behind. It is as if they are turning back to the horse and cart when everybody else is moving on to the steam train. I am sure many Members will remember the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony in which, alongside the celebration of our NHS, we saw a portrayal of the industrial revolution, for which the UK is globally renowned. Just as we took the lead on that industrial revolution, we should be leading the way now on the green industrial revolution. But with this Government we are not—we are being left behind.

    I have met representatives of international companies that have factories in the Llanelli constituency, and they are desperate to see cheaper energy and a proper industrial strategy from this Government. Car manufacturers and others are making crucial decisions about where to invest in new production lines and to build new factories. They recognise the loyalty of the workforce in Llanelli and other parts of the UK, who have adapted to many changes over the years, and they would be keen to invest. However, when companies have factories spread across the globe, and they see the USA offering incentives through its Inflation Reduction Act and the EU with similar programmes, and they compare the cheaper energy prices in competitor countries and the proper industrial strategies in other countries, but see nothing coming from the UK Government, will it be any surprise if they choose to invest elsewhere? We will be left just with the current production lines limping along until their products are no longer required, while the shiny new factories will go elsewhere.

    There is no time to waste. The rest of the world is forging ahead with the green industrial revolution and they are not going to wait for the UK Government when other countries are providing real incentives, as well as cheaper energy. It is all very well mentioning growth in the King’s Speech, but we absolutely need to see some flesh on the bones.

    This Conservative Government’s reference to energy in the King’s Speech beggars belief. While the rest of the world is going forward, making huge investment in green energies and technologies, we see the UK Government going backwards, promoting the issuing of more oil and gas licences, which, by the Government’s own admission, will not bring down energy bills for consumers. We have huge potential in the UK to produce cheap energy through renewables, slashing prices for households, businesses and industry, while also cutting our emissions to zero—this is a win-win situation. We have huge potential for wind energy, both onshore and offshore, and some of the highest tidal ranges in the world, with capacity around the UK to produce electricity 24/7, not to mention the potential for wave technologies, hydro and solar. By fast-tracking the development of renewables, we can both slash domestic energy bills and fuel a new green industrial revolution, with a massive roll-out of energy.

    That is precisely what we in the Labour party intend to do. We have a plan to supercharge investment in renewables, including with the creation of GB Energy. However, we are seeing an abject failure by this Conservative Government to develop renewables. What do we see on renewable energy in the King’s Speech? The Government are going to “seek to attract” investment in renewables. That went well in the Celtic sea offshore energy auction, didn’t it? Not a single bid was made because the Government failed to respond to the companies’ pointing out that inflation was driving up costs. The Republic of Ireland recognised the problem and got a successful auction; we got not one single bid, but it got a successful auction. The Government have to do better than just trying to attract investment.

    Of course, that comes on top of years of banning the development of onshore wind in England and a failure to lift that ban properly; stalling on solar; shilly-shallying and then cancelling the electrification of the south Wales mainline to Swansea; and long waits for connections to the grid. In contrast, Labour has a plan to supercharge investment in renewables. Time is of the essence, and I urge the Government to do much more to develop renewables, to develop an industrial strategy and to invest. That would give companies real incentives and the certainty that they need to invest in green jobs in the UK. Sadly, this Government’s record is abysmal, which is why we desperately need a change and the hope that a Labour Government could bring by investing in the jobs of the future, fast-tracking the development of renewables, improving our NHS, increasing opportunities for our young people and making our streets safer. That is why I urge the Prime Minister to think again about his King’s Speech and to put more in it to provide the investment that we need. If he cannot do that, we need change and we need an election as soon as possible.

  • John Redwood – 2023 Speech on the Loyal Address

    John Redwood – 2023 Speech on the Loyal Address

    The speech made by John Redwood, the Conservative MP for Wokingham, in the House of Commons on 7 November 2023.

    I have declared my business interests in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

    I hope the Government are listening to the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) on those important matters for Northern Ireland. It is vital that there are changes to the Windsor framework, so that Northern Ireland is properly a part of our United Kingdom and can accept our commonly agreed laws on everything from taxation through to the arrangements over products and trading.

    I welcome very much the emphasis in the King’s Speech on the United Kingdom’s producing more of our own oil and gas in substitution for that which we are currently importing. The logic of substitution is most obvious in the case of gas. We have gas pipelines already installed to bring gas from the fields to the mainland, with capacity in them because gas output has been declining; and, of course, if we deliver it directly through gas pipelines we have none of the extra cost and trouble of transit involved in importing liquefied natural gas, usually from the United States or Qatar. Those who are keenest on the road to net zero should recognise that having our own gas down a pipe greatly reduces the amount of world carbon dioxide because so much more carbon dioxide is generated if it is necessary to liquefy the gas, to transport it for long distances, and then to recreate it as gas when it arrives. All those are very energy-intensive processes which we do not need if we generate more of our own gas from the North sea.

    I have good news for Ministers. Let me remind them that although they say they think we need a bit of additional legislation for future licensing rounds, what we really need to do is concentrate on developing the existing fields and the new discoveries that have been well known about, in many cases, for a great many years, and maximising the output of what we already have so that the gas and the oil come more quickly and at lower cost, because we need it now. Most of our constituents still need gas for their domestic heating and will need it for the foreseeable future, most of our industrial plants run on gas as their main source of energy, and most of us have petrol or diesel cars, so we still need the fractions of oil to run our transport. It is important for us to get on with that—and, as the right hon. Member for East Antrim has said, another great bonus for all of us, including the Treasury, is that the sooner we get that oil and gas landed, the sooner we will secure a big increase in tax revenues from which we could benefit, enabling us to get the deficit down and support the public services that we wish to see.

    I am very pleased that the King’s Speech began with the mighty topic of the economy. I am sure that the Government and the Prime Minister would agree that what we do over the next year to get inflation down more quickly, to bring about faster growth to create more and better-paid jobs, and to secure the extra investment that we want to see is absolutely vital. Again, I have good news for the Government. I think there are measures that they can take in a future Finance Bill—which, I am sure, will constitute part of our proceedings over the next year—that would help to achieve all those aims. They are not incompatible, and we do not have to wait. Some people seem to think it is necessary to sequence it and to spend a year of misery—with a massive credit squeeze and an austerity Budget—to get inflation down before we can think about doing the other things, but if we cut the right taxes, we can bring forward the reduction in inflation, and that, of course, has a direct knock-on effect on the cost of running public services. One of the reasons we have seen such a big increase in public spending in the last year or so is the massive rise in inflation, because so many things are directly geared to the inflation rate.

    So, Government, let us have a year of temporary tax cuts on energy, because British energy is far too expensive. It makes us much less competitive, and it is a burden on household budgets. I would pay for that— because I do not want to increase the overall deficit—by selling all those NatWest shares that we still have. Interest rates have gone up a lot, and banks should be making a lot more money. Let us just sell all the shares and use that for a one-year advantage while the oil and gas prices are still very elevated, and to ease the transition from slow growth to higher growth and to a faster reduction in inflation, which will then help reduce the deficits.

    We also need measures to help small business and the self- employed. It is of great concern to me, as it should be to many other Members, that we have 800,000 fewer self-employed people today than were known about, at least, in February 2020. Some of that is due to covid and lockdowns or to natural retirements, but some of it is due to the sharp change in the tax system called IR35, which took place in two tranches, one at the end of the last decade and one at the beginning of this one. It is now very difficult for people to grow businesses, particularly if they want contracts from other businesses. This has put many people off, and we are not seeing the new generation of self-employed people coming through that we have seen in previous generations—and that is mightily important, because they provide much of the flexibility in our economy, and can also provide extra capacity. Such measures would also help to provide worthwhile things for people to do, because some will be currently without a job and will be on benefits generally. So, Government, change the tax system back to the pre-2017 one which allowed a phenomenal growth in the number of self-employed people, and helped the workings of not only products and services markets but the job market itself.

    We all have many small businesses in our constituencies and we know how important they are to the services and output of our local community. We know how flexible they are, how hard so many of them work and how prepared they are to go the last mile to win clients and to look after clients and customers. They need a tax break, and the first thing we should do—now that we no longer have to accept the EU rules on VAT registration —is to have a big increase in the threshold level at which businesses register for VAT, because this is now a major constraint. I am sure we all know small businesses that turn down work or close down for a month extra during the year because they do not want to go over the £85,000 turnover, with all the burdens of the compliance, regulation and paperwork that that would cause, as well as having to put 20% on prices and so forth.

    Let us allow small businesses to enjoy their flexibility for longer and to get to a bit bigger size—let them have one or two employees—before they have to go through all the hassle of registration and the legal pressures that that generates. I think that would generate more revenue from other types of taxes, and even on the strange Treasury arithmetic it would be quite a cheap item. For example, we could easily pay for it out of modest improvements in productivity, which we will need to ensure if we are to deal with the collapse in public sector productivity identified by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). There must be ways to do something about that, and I believe that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury is working on them.

    My final point relates to the Bank of England. The Bank is independent in the setting of the base rate and the work of the Monetary Policy Committee, but it is not independent in managing the mighty portfolio of bonds that it currently owns on behalf of the institution and wider taxpayers. The proof of that is the fact that successive Chancellors from Alistair Darling onwards signed a concordat with the Bank of England giving it permission to buy bonds and agreeing to pay any losses, should losses be made, when it came to sell them or when they matured. The Bank of England now wishes to sell £100 billion-worth of bonds over the next few months, now that they have crashed on the markets because of the Bank of England’s changes in interest rate policy and bond policy, meaning that huge bills are being sent to the Treasury. I believe that the bill was £24 billion of losses in the first four months of the current fiscal year, and the theoretical liability is over £170 billion of losses of that kind and of the kind of running losses due to the way in which the Bank holds bonds at the moment.

    I would like to advise the Chancellor and the Governor of the Bank of England to look at what the European Central Bank is doing. It too made the colossal mistake of overinflating, over-creating money and buying too many bonds at very expensive prices, just as the Bank of England did, and it too ended up with the predictable excess inflation that we have seen. But the ECB is not panicking out of those bonds; it is holding them until they repay, which will result in fewer losses for it. There will still be losses, because it often paid more for the bonds than their actual repayment value, but it is not incurring big losses by selling them at very depressed prices on the market, now that the central banks have decided to smash the asset values of the bonds that they spent quite a lot of time acquiring just two or three years ago in many cases.

    We need to do this because the Treasury should not have to make those huge losses and because money has now lurched from being crazily too expansive and likely to generate inflation to being far too tight and likely to overshoot in slowing the economy too much. So please, Government—listen, watch and on this occasion I say learn from the European Central Bank, which seems to be getting this just a bit more right than we are. Then we might start to make progress in bringing together the perfectly compatible aims of getting some growth, which we will not get if we have too severe a credit squeeze, and getting inflation down, which could be speeded up with the right type of tax cuts.

  • Sammy Wilson – 2023 Speech on the Loyal Address

    Sammy Wilson – 2023 Speech on the Loyal Address

    The speech made by Sammy Wilson, the DUP MP for East Antrim, in the House of Commons on 7 November 2023.

    I appreciate the fact that you have called me so early in the debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. Despite the fact that Mr Speaker has reset the clock so that it appears that my hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) has never spoken in the House—[Laughter.] I have been called before him, so thank you very much for that.

    May I first, on behalf of the Democratic Unionist party, congratulate the King on his first King’s Speech and the way in which he delivered it? Our gratitude also goes to his mother, who for so long served our nation. I also congratulate the proposer and seconder of the Loyal Address. However, when the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Sir Robert Goodwill) was being praised by some Members on the Opposition Front Bench, I must say that I wondered how they married up their commitment to net zero with the right hon. Gentleman’s pride in having three coal-guzzling steam engines and what that does to the carbon footprint in Yorkshire. Nevertheless, I am glad that some of the mad ideas—that we should change our lifestyles because of the threat from carbon dioxide being put into the atmosphere—have not put him off.

    I want to note three things about the Gracious Speech. First, there are the things that I am glad about. I am glad that the Government have once again restated their commitment to stand by those who are under attack from tyrants and from terrorism, with their commitment to Ukraine and their commitment to Israel, both of which are under huge pressure at present. Indeed, across the world there appears to have been a tiring in support for the war in Ukraine and for the Ukrainian Government as well as, almost immediately, condemnation of the nation of Israel for standing up and doing its duty by its citizens who were brutally murdered by terrorists. Many people—some of them may be well-meaning, and some may be simply reacting to the cruelty of war—are calling for an immediate ceasefire. While the Government of Israel have their citizens held captive and while Israel’s very existence is under threat because of a huge terrorist army on its doorstep, regardless of how strong the siren calls are from the UN, nations across the world and all the non-governmental organisations, it would be foolish to go for a ceasefire.

    It is a typical terrorist tactic: when terrorists are under pressure or the state comes after them, they call for a ceasefire. What for—because they want to stop the violence? No. It is because they want to regroup. We have seen it in Northern Ireland. When the terrorists in Northern Ireland were under pressure, they declared ceasefires. It gave them time to regroup, and I do not think the situation in the middle east is any different. There will be difficult days ahead—I am sure there will be pictures on our TV screens that will make us all sorrowful—but I hope our Government stand by the resolution in the King’s Speech and stand by the state of Israel in defence of its citizens.

    The second thing that I am glad about is the Government’s willingness to grant licences to exploit the resources that we have in the earth and in the sea around our country. Whether we like it or not, we are going to use oil and gas for many decades in the future, so I cannot for the life of me understand why such a policy is even controversial. What is controversial about replacing imports with our own oil production? What is controversial about defending 200,000 jobs in that industry? What is controversial about ensuring energy security? We have already heard speeches today about the difficulties in financing our public services. What is controversial about promoting an industry that will pay billions in taxation, which can then be used to finance Government services?

    I am pleased that the Government have made a commitment to grant licences; the only thing I will say, given that the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) is in her place, is this. The one threat that I see to the ability to deliver on that pledge is that those who oppose it have been handed a sledgehammer, which they will be able to use in judicial reviews and court cases, and so on, because we still have a commitment in legislation to reach net zero by 2050. We have seen it already. Every time an infrastructure project is proposed that requires the use of oil and gas, it is challenged in the courts on the basis that to allow it will detract from the ability to meet our target of net zero by 2050.

    The Government can issue licences and invite applications for licences, but I have absolutely no doubt that every one of them will be challenged in court on the basis that we still have legally binding targets for 2050, and I suspect that it will be the same for some of the other measures that the Government have introduced. In fact, although there was a song and dance about how the Government were no longer banning the sale of diesel and petrol cars by 2030, I note that legislation has been announced—I suspect this is to create a defence in court—to ensure that, whether or not there is a ban on buying cars, there will be a ban on making them. The manufacturers will be obliged to increase the percentage of electric vehicles they sell every year, despite the fact that the demand side of the market will not be controlled in that way—unless, of course, we find that quotas have to be set for sales, as well as for manufacturing.

    The third thing that I am glad about is that the Government will introduce a trade and investment Bill that will enable us to benefit from leaving the EU. I know that there are those who will tell us that leaving the EU is the most disastrous decision we ever made—we get it every week in this House. The truth of the matter is that all the doomster forecasters have been wrong. I can remember debates in this place when we were told that people would be queuing up in the supermarkets, unable to get food. The Office for Budget Responsibility told us that our GDP would fall by 4% because our trade would fall, yet statistics this week show not only that our trade with the EU has increased by 13%, but that our trade with the rest of the world has increased by 14%. One reason is that we no longer have to rely on trade deals that require 27 countries to agree policy and arrangements, and we can do what is best for Britain.

    I am glad the Government intend to build on that. People think that we do not make anything any longer as a result of Brexit, but only this week we find that we are the seventh biggest manufacturing nation in the world, having overtaken France, so there are good things. I am glad the Government intend to build on that and I hope they do so. When I see how they back off when there is a little opposition to moving away from EU law, I sometimes wonder whether we are prepared to use the best of our freedoms.

    I am sad about one thing: the fact that in the King’s Speech the Government had to make a promise to promote the integrity of the Union and strengthen the social fabric of the United Kingdom. I am sad that such a promise even had to be made. It is only necessary because successive Prime Ministers have played fast and loose with the Union in negotiations with the European Union. Relations with the European Union were regarded as more important than relations within the United Kingdom. We even had Ministers defending their decision about the withdrawal Bill in court, admitting that when the Bill went through this House we impliedly removed article 6 of the Act of Union, the very economic basis of the Union that there should be freedom of trade and freedom of movement.

    During recess, the Government introduced yet another statutory instrument, on plant health regulations. As a result of the negotiations with the EU, Northern Ireland is now regarded by the EU as a third country in relation to the rest of the United Kingdom. In the plant health regulations introduced during recess, the Government of our own country are now, for the very first time, regarding Northern Ireland as a third country. So, there is much that needs to be done to promote the Union. The hon. Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) is a yoga specialist. I hope we will not see the same kind of yoga contortions from the Government when it comes to their position on the Union and Northern Ireland’s position within it.

    My last point is about one of those things that I think is mad, but others have praised: introducing legislation—albeit well meaning and everything else—to ban smoking. In 20 years’ time, some poor shopkeeper is going to have to decide, “Is that person who came in here asking for 20 fags 48 or 47? Is he going to have to send his 48-year-old mate in to buy the cigarettes for him?” Introducing legislation of that nature is just mad.

    I hope we will see delivery on some of the good things. I hope we will see the Government deliver on strengthening the Union, undoing the damage of the Windsor framework and the protocol, and restoring Northern Ireland’s position within the Union.

  • David Davis – 2023 Speech on the Loyal Address

    David Davis – 2023 Speech on the Loyal Address

    The speech made by David Davis, the Conservative MP for Haltemprice and Howden, in the House of Commons on 7 November 2023.

    It is a privilege to follow the Public Accounts Committee Chairman. She will understand that I have a certain affection for her in these debates because of her position.

    The hon. Lady made a comment about looking forward 30 years. The whole western world faces a paradox that goes back 30 years. In the 1990s, three massive things happened in the world: first, there was a dramatic reduction in tariffs, which led to a huge increase in global trade; secondly, there was the collapse of the Soviet empire; and finally, there was a dramatic acceleration in the creation and adoption of new technology. All those things raised well over 2 billion people out of oppression by starvation and out of political oppression. They changed the world dramatically for the better, but those dramatic changes have had a number of effects.

    Today, we face a series of challenges in the western world, not just in Britain, that are more complex and more difficult to deal with than any I can remember since 1979, whether it is Ukraine and the series of wars that are breaking out, whether it is the migration that results from that, whether it is domestic challenges such as the impact on the wages of the western working class—much of the impetus for Brexit was the result of working-class wages across the west being depressed by competition with the rest of the world—whether it is the impact on public finances, which derives partly from that, or whether it is the impact on public services, which are failing not just in Britain but in many countries, to some extent for the same reasons.

    That is why, unlike the hon. Lady, I welcome what I think of as the common sense in the King’s Speech. There are a number of sensible measures, including on crime and justice to promote safety, justice and closure for victims, which is important, and on net zero, where the approach is intelligent and measured, rather than headline driven. That is important—the old net zero strategy would not have survived the public reaction. Like the hon. Lady, I vehemently welcome the policy on smoking. We have done far too little for many decades to focus on public health, rather than patching people up in the last three years of their life, which is what our national health service has been reduced to doing. In education, we are building on some of our successes, including in PISA—the programme for international student assessment—and our international competitiveness. There is much to recommend in the proposals in the King’s Speech, particularly with respect to apprenticeships and vocational education. The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education is brilliant and is making a great difference.

    Broadly, the proposals are sensible, but the House would be surprised and disappointed if I did not find something to criticise in the Home Office proposals. I will not surprise the House—I am going to pick up on something that I think is a fundamental mistake. I hope that Ministers will think hard before they introduce the proposal, which has been aired in briefings in the last day or two, to allow the police to search homes without a warrant. This is one of the fundamental foundation stones of a free British society, along with jury trials and the presumption of innocence. The right not to have the state kick your door down and search your house without judicial approval is a massively important British value. If anybody has any doubt about that, I have two words to say to them: “Damian Green”. They should go back and look at what happened with the Metropolitan police’s handling of the case, as it were, of my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green). The Leader of the Opposition was then the Director of Public Prosecutions, and he in effect struck down the Metropolitan police’s behaviour. We have to think about that very hard indeed, because the judicial control of the police is vital and must be preserved.

    Beyond that, the education measures are good as far as they go—as I have said, particularly on skills—but I would go further, as I will explain in a moment. Indeed, all King’s Speeches are basically just frameworks, not the whole agenda for the coming year, and this one is the same. As a result, the last line of every King’s Speech is always the same:

    “other measures will be laid before you.”

    I want to talk about what I think those other measures ought to be.

    What should those measures be? I think most of them should be in areas where the state is struggling to cope with the worldwide problem I have talked about arising over the last 30 years. By the way, it is not an accident that I say “30 years”; that covers Governments of both persuasions, and neither have managed—in some cases, I might say they have failed—to solve the things I am going to talk about. The one advantage we have when it comes to the problems I am about to lay out in education, health and housing—the three critical areas on which we need to go further—is that for the first two, technology may come to our aid to some extent. I, like the Public Accounts Committee Chairman, welcome the move on AI. I thought it was quite risky to have that conference, but it worked diplomatically. It has not got a solution yet, but that has got us on the first step.

    Let me talk about health for a second. All parties have taken the approach for my entire lifetime, which is much the same as the lifetime of the health service, of putting more and more money into the health service. We are now talking about a huge amount of money; it swallows the entire amount of national insurance contributions, and what was supposed to cover health and pensions now simply covers health. We spend more money than the OECD average on health—that in itself is quite extraordinary—but it does not deliver. We can put all sorts of excuses in the way, but this is more about management than it is about money. Before we got to covid, from 2017-18 to 2018-19 we put about £3 billion extra into health in real terms—and what happened? Productivity went down by 0.75%. The next year, we put in £7 billion, and productivity went down by over 2%. That was before covid started.

    Those dry numbers sound bad, but they do not quite carry the terror of the actual effect, and I am going to give an example from my own constituency to explain what I mean. I had a constituent whose name was Richard. He had had cancer, and had been operated on and cured, and as a result he had regular six-monthly check-ups thereafter to watch for any outbreak. But through administrative failure, he did not get the check-ups, so was at least six months behind the timetable. We all know that the later we diagnose a cancer, the more difficult it is to solve. The operation he was supposed to have was then delayed as well, and it got to the point where basically there was no chance of recovery for Richard. He came into my life, as it were, as I was his constituency MP and his family wanted him out of hospital for Christmas so that he could die among his friends and family rather than surrounded by strangers. That is what we are talking about thousands and thousands of times over. That is the impact of this failure. I think there are a lot of things we can with respect to the re-management of the health service, but I will talk about one.

    John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)

    Is my right hon. Friend aware that the Office for National Statistics published figures for the three years from 2020 to 2022, which state that public service productivity in general fell by an unprecedented 7.5%? That means that we needed to put roughly £30 billion extra into public services to achieve the same thing.

    Mr Davis

    My right hon. Friend is right: it is a systemic problem. It does not just affect Britain or the health service. Indeed, I think that numbers for those years for the health service were about 25%—so huge, huge numbers. I bring this back to the reality of the individual. If we delay diagnosis and treatment, we sentence people to death. It is as harsh as that.

    I would like us dramatically to increase the amount of diagnostic capacity we have. If we look at OECD numbers on CT scans, I think we are third from worst. This is why I say it is not a single Government problem—we do not get to be third from worst in one term; it happened over the course of the whole 30 years. On MRI scans, we are the worst in the OECD. How on earth a country such as ours gets to that position is astonishing.

    Dame Meg Hillier rose—

    Mr Davis

    I give way to the PAC Chairman.

    Dame Meg Hillier

    The right hon. Gentleman is making some interesting points, and the total amount of Whitehall day-to-day spending on health is phenomenal. On the point about scanners, I am afraid that lies directly at the door of his Government—well, I am not afraid; it does. The lack of capital investment in the big bits of kit has led to deterioration and lack of availability. Such investment would have saved money, and been better for the patient and better generally for the health of the nation.

    Mr Davis

    I agree with the hon. Lady on the saving money element, and I will come back to that in a second. The truth is that this Government have poured more money into the health service than anybody ever predicted, and more money than they intended over time, but decisions within the health service—I come back to management rather than money—led to some of those decisions. The hon. Lady is dead right that it is a waste of money not to do the diagnosis. I am talking about MRI and CT scans, blood tests, and all the other things that help us get ahead of the disease.

    I talked to Randox, one of the diagnostic companies, which is based in Northern Ireland, and asked about this issue. It has technology that it says will reduce a seven-day analysis of blood samples, for example, to 30 minutes. My view is that we should break clear of the ideology and look dramatically to increase the amount of scans and diagnostic procedures—when I say “dramatically”, I mean a multiple of what we currently do—and we should use the private sector to do it. I know that causes a bridling and a backing off, but the only way we can do this fast enough is to do that. That would save about £3 billion and reduce waiting lists for millions of people. Most importantly of all, it would save thousands of lives. If there were one thing I would do within healthcare, that would be it; there would be other things, but that would be that.

    Jim Shannon

    The right hon. Gentleman is talking a lot of sense in relation to cancer diagnosis and better treatment. One way of doing that is through research and development. For example, there have been advances in prostate cancer at Queen’s University, with that centre of excellence in Belfast, and news today of pills that can reduce the risk of breast cancer. Those are just two examples. Does the right hon. Gentleman feel that research and development is key to advancing and saving lives, and getting better results for cancer patients?

    Mr Davis

    That is exactly right, which brings me to my other health topic, and the whole question of national health service data and the use of data. It is widely accepted that we have one of the greatest information treasure troves in the world in the form of national health service data—data about all our citizens. There have been two or three attempts—certainly two in my memory—to bring that data together and manage it in one block, so that it is available for managing the treatment of patients and for research. A third attempt is happening right now, with contracts out to introduce a new data management system for the whole health service. The two previous attempts failed because the national health service executive and management do not understand the importance of privacy. Each time they tried to do it, the reaction from GPs and patients was, “We are not going to co-operate with this.” There was a vast waste of money, and the projects crashed and were over. More importantly than the money, we missed the opportunity to do exactly what the hon. Gentleman says: use that data for research to advance this country to the front of the world.

    The Government are doing the same again this time, because the contract has gone out, and it looks likely that the company that will win it is Palantir. For those who do not know Palantir, it started, I think, with an investment from the CIA. Its history is largely in supporting the National Security Agency in America. Bluntly, it is the wrong company to put in charge of our precious data resource; even if it behaved perfectly, nobody would trust it. The thing that destroyed the last two attempts will destroy this one: people will not sign up and join up. The health service has got to get its act together on this. If it does, and privacy is protected, we can do things like having a complete nationwide DNA database. If privacy is not protected, that will not happen. There is an opportunity there, and the Government should grasp it, not drop it.

    Technology also has a large possible application to education. I was lucky that when I was a teenager, social mobility in Britain was probably as great as it ever has been, for a variety of reasons, ranging from grammar schools, which I know are controversial, through to the fact that post war, there was huge growth in the middle classes, which expanded opportunities. Those combinations together created a massive social mobility advantage for people like me. I was very lucky in that respect. Today, while I think we are about No. 10 or 11 in the PISA—the programme for international student assessment—tables, we are No. 21 in the social mobility tables, and we should not be that far down.

    We need to do something about that issue. One reason it happens is that 35% of children by the age of 11—children going through their primary education—are unable to cope with their maths and English sufficiently to make progress in other subjects. In essence, they are failed by the age of 11. For free school meal kids—I am looking at my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) —it is 50%. Half of children on free school meals have been failed by the state by the time they are 11, and there are all sorts of reasons why. Even with vast amounts of effort, with committed teachers, headteachers and so on putting all their effort in, it still comes apart.

    One thing we can do about it—and the Department has begun to talk about it—is to start to use AI in the classroom, so that children can have tailored teaching. A kid who is falling behind gets diagnostic responses from AI, which then generates appropriate teaching patterns to pull them back up. We already have such technology. In fact, a British firm called Century Tech does exactly that. I saw it in action in Springhead Primary School in my constituency, where there was an intervention class for children who were falling behind, and they were pulled back up using this technology. If we applied such technology right across the board, it would raise the average performance in our schools by one grade per subject. That is an enormous change. That is my judgment, not anybody else’s. If we did that, our competitive advantage and our social mobility advantage would be enormous.

    We have to think very hard. The Department for Education has to be a lot more imaginative than it has been so far in this area, and it has to look hard at improving the options for all those children we currently let down. That is not because the Government intend it, or because this Government or previous ones have fallen down on it; this statistic has been going on for a long time.

    The last thing I want to talk about is not technology, but bricks and mortar. I have some sympathy with the comments of the PAC Chairman, in that it is as plain as a pikestaff that we have a supply problem, however we analyse it and whoever we blame for it. Our population has grown by about 10%— 6 million or 7 million—over a couple of decades, for all sorts of reasons; we can get into controversy on that, but the truth is that housing has not grown to match. One of the problems—I guess the primary problem—is the planning system. This is not the first time the country has faced this problem. We faced it after both the world wars, when “Homes fit for heroes” and so on were the slogans of the day. How did we deal with it? We had a movement to create well-designed and well-created garden towns and cities in the right places, not by trying to tack on 100 houses to this village, 100 houses to that village and 100 houses over there, in each case overwhelming the schooling, transport arrangements or whatever. We need to look hard at cutting this Gordian knot, and it seems to me that the only way we will do that is by creating well-designed, well-financed garden towns and villages, not by going through the mechanism we have been pursuing so far.

    Health, education and housing: if we add those to what we have now, we have a winning King’s Speech.

  • Meg Hillier – 2023 Speech on the Loyal Address

    Meg Hillier – 2023 Speech on the Loyal Address

    The speech made by Meg Hillier, the Labour MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch, in the House of Commons on 7 November 2023.

    Before I start, I must declare an interest—I am a leaseholder and, as per my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, I am a landlord—since I want to comment on both those issues.

    First, however, I congratulate the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Sir Robert Goodwill) and the hon. Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) on proposing and seconding the Humble Address. Both were entertaining, and it is one of the pleasures of the parliamentary year to sit back, relax and have a few laughs. I thank them both for giving us that as we move on to the serious business.

    It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May). I think she needs to join me on my campaign for slow politics, because clearly we have the same agenda here. Some of the best political decisions are those where we are looking 10, 20 or even 30 years ahead, and she is right that we need to be looking at net zero now and planning ahead. Unfortunately, though, this King’s Speech, and indeed the record of this Government led by the party of which she is a member, are thin gruel in that respect.

    We have in this King’s Speech the offerings of what has really now become a zombie Government. I do not use that word lightly—I am not just a soundbite woman—but in a Parliament, where we too often break early because there is not enough business to carry on, there are many things that could have been in this King’s Speech to deliver for the people of Hackney South and Shoreditch and for those up and down the country.

    It has to be acknowledged that this King’s Speech is not landing out of the blue in a new parliamentary term; it comes on the back of 13 years of this Government, who have led through chaos and created chaos. Austerity has left a long shadow and a lack of resilience in our public sector, and it is telling now. The wage freezes brought in by the former Chancellor George Osborne are now hitting and have, with the cost of living, created a perfect storm for our constituents up and down the country.

    On the handling of Brexit, which the right hon. Member for Maidenhead knows about only too painfully, it was poorly delivered in the end, in the hands of her successor, and none of the promises of the early days of that campaign was delivered. We on the Public Accounts Committee see that through our work. We have produced 12 reports on the delivery of Brexit, all of which found the Government wanting. We have seen gimmicks at Budgets. Again, the former Chancellor was one of the worst for that—or best, depending on our point of view. The lifetime ISA, for example, has withered on the vine as a novel financial product that was not kept up, either by that Chancellor or by subsequent Chancellors. I will touch on that in a moment.

    Of course, we cannot look at the King’s Speech without mentioning the premiership of the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), who crashed the economy and has caused havoc in the lives of our constituents. In this Chamber, on these green Benches, it can sometimes seem that we are remote, but week in, week out I am on doorsteps in Hackney South and Shoreditch seeing the reality of people struggling to pay for the food that they need, living without food, going to the food bank when they can, and living in massively overcrowded conditions.

    It is not long covid that is leading to a lot of those issues; it is long austerity—that lack of resilience in public services and the public sector; that lack of investment in schools, hospitals and other areas such as defence. Basically, most capital spending was frozen or reduced, and that has led to a growing problem. Whichever party is in power after the next general election, which cannot come soon enough, will have—to borrow the words of Laurel and Hardy—another fine mess to deal with in so many areas of the public sector. The Public Accounts Committee, which I have the privilege of chairing, regularly examines capital spending, as well as day-to-day spending, and we see the problems. Report after report highlights that issues were missed or not dealt with, and that we are now reaping the problems.

    This King’s Speech and this Prime Minister promise change, but we see nothing of that in what has been announced. There is no real hope here for renters or those who want to buy their own home, and no plans to tackle poverty and to really level up. In Hackney South and Shoreditch—in fact, across the whole borough of Hackney—one in two children lives in poverty. In London in 2023, we have that level of poverty. In the borough of Hackney as a whole, which comprises two constituencies, 28% of people are private renters, 28% are owner-occupiers and 44% are social renters, while 77% of properties—nearly four in five—were leasehold properties, which means that leasehold reform is of particular interest to me and my constituents. The median house price in Hackney South and Shoreditch is £600,000. That is more than 16 times the median Hackney household income, so home ownership is out of reach for generation rent and for the people living in social housing, which is massively overcrowded, often with four children to a bedroom and many teenagers sharing bedrooms with their mothers because there is nowhere else to sleep. They have no opportunity to get on the housing ladder or to rent privately.

    That brings me to the lifetime ISA. I have not seen the detail of the King’s Speech because I came here to talk about it, but the lifetime ISA cap for first-time buyers is still £450,000. The average first-time buyer in Hackney paid £595,000 in August this year, so that cap does not reach anywhere near what is needed. Even the Government’s proposed solutions do not keep up with demand, and their complete detachment from the reality of the choices that people have to make is a real issue.

    Sir Peter Bottomley

    I have two brief points. First, will the hon. Lady join me in commending Martin Lewis for spelling this out on MoneySavingExpert.com? Ministers ought to pay attention to it. Secondly, through her, may I say that I too am a leaseholder? I do not think I am affected by the Government’s proposals, but I should have put it on the record.

    Dame Meg Hillier

    The Father of the House and I obviously share support for the work that Martin Lewis does in bringing these consumer finance issues to the mainstream and managing to explain things that people think are complicated in an incredibly simple way.

    No Chancellor should make these policies up at the Dispatch Box, because they wither. The Chancellor themself loses interest, as do subsequent Chancellors and the Treasury. The child trust fund has not kept up since the Government withdrew it, and there are many other examples like that.

    I have a lot of constituents who are trapped in the private rented sector, with no security. The average two-bed rent in Hackney was just £2 shy of £2,000 a month this year. We have a huge challenge in that there is no security for those residents, including the security that is needed to bring a family up, because they get moved on far too quickly, yet we have seen the lack of the promised abolition of section 21 evictions in the Renters (Reform) Bill, which was introduced just before the King’s Speech and is expected to continue in this Session of Parliament.

    The reason is that the courts are backed up. That is a valid reason, but whose fault is it that the courts are backed up? It is due to a lack of investment by this Government over the years. It is not just covid, because as we have highlighted on the Public Accounts Committee, the delays in the courts were there before covid hit; covid had an impact, but the delays were there. We will not be back to pre-covid court delay times until 2025. It is no wonder that private renters are living in despair. The promise of this measure being delivered has been dangled repeatedly, and once again we see it whisked away, leaving tenants with no security and no knowledge of whether they can make a house a home.

    We have a big shortage of social housing in Hackney. We have 8,351 households on the wait list for council housing in Hackney. That is after stringent rules were brought in to reduce it, so that people had some hope. The current waiting time for social housing in Hackney is about 12 years for a three-bedroom property. It is simply unacceptable.

    Renting is out of reach, home ownership is out of reach and there is not enough house building, which is why I welcome my party’s proposal to build significantly more homes. The Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) is on the Front Bench. He knows, because he does the maths and he has been a member of the Public Accounts Committee, that even the Government’s downward revised targets for affordable housing have not been met. They set a target and had to reduce it, and even that reduced target has not been met. That is happening while people are living in overcrowded and difficult conditions.

    Leasehold reform is oft promised, but nothing has yet been delivered, and I would like to see it voted through. As a Labour and Co-op MP, I would like to see a move towards commonhold. There is work being done on that in other countries that we can build on. It is not a quick path—it is slow to deliver this—but that is another reason we need to get moving and start on it now. I commend the Father of the House for his pioneering work to champion the issues of leaseholders in this place.

    The King’s Speech talks about delivering on the NHS workforce plan. Of course, the Public Accounts Committee took an interest in that as well. I welcome the NHS workforce plan, because it is a good start, but it is only funding the training of people listed in the NHS workforce plan for the first five years. There is no plan or long-term strategy for how we fund those health professionals who are working in frontline healthcare and hospitals, delivering for patients, which will cause a problem down the line. It is another fine mess waiting for any future Government.

    I welcome discussion about how artificial intelligence is handled. I agree with the right hon. Member for Maidenhead about making sure that we keep the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 up to date with how the modern digital world is working. We need to do that in a calm, professional, cross-party way, because this should not be a political football. There will be difficult choices at the margins about—rightly—protecting civil liberties, rights and access to data and about protecting the most vulnerable in our society. We need to make sure that, in the heat of an election year, that discussion is had sensibly.

    I also welcome the Prime Minister’s personal commitment to reduce smoking, which I think will be a game changer in public health for our children’s generation. I was pleased with the proposal on safeguarding of the future of football. It sounds like a bold promise, but I would like to see more detail. As a Co-op MP, I am a long-standing champion of Supporters Direct, which enables fans to part-own their club. If we go down that route, I am happy to support the Government, but we will wait to see the exact details. I am pleased that unlicensed pedicabs will finally be dealt with. I have worked with the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) to tackle that issue, and it is time that it is dealt with.

    We have had too many broken promises from the Government. We now need delivery, but the King’s Speech does not do that. We have chaos in this country. People are struggling with the cost of living and we need change. Frankly, we need a general election. We need opportunity and hope, and the only way we are going to get that is with a Labour Government.

  • Theresa May – 2023 Speech on the Loyal Address

    Theresa May – 2023 Speech on the Loyal Address

    The speech made by Theresa May, the former Prime Minister, in the House of Commons on 7 November 2023.

    I draw the House’s attention to two entries in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I am director and chair of the Global Commission for Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking, and I chair the Aldersgate Group, which brings businesses, non-governmental organisations, academics and others together to champion a prosperous, net zero emissions, environmentally-sustainable economy. Both of those roles are unpaid.

    I am sorry that the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern) is no longer in his seat. I wanted to take the opportunity to welcome him to the House, despite the fact that I worked to make sure he did not get here. The reason I wanted to welcome and congratulate him is that he is my first cousin once removed. I am not sure whether that connection will do more damage to his career or mine. In case hon. Members are wondering about the family, we share a relative who, I am told, toyed with communism in his youth and another relative—my cousin, the hon. Member’s uncle—who was the former Liberal Democrat leader of Brighton and Hove City Council, so we cover all bases.

    I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Sir Robert Goodwill) and my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) on what I thought were witty, incisive, thoughtful and excellent speeches proposing and seconding the Humble Address.

    There are things in the King’s Speech that I welcome, some of which may not have been spotted by other Members of the House. I welcome the fact that it is proposed to amend the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, which was important groundbreaking legislation when it was brought through when I was Home Secretary. As things have developed, it is right that we look at it again, so we ensure we have the right legislation to keep us safe.

    I also welcome the important references to taking more action on child sexual abuse, including grooming. Having seen T-levels introduced and having long thought we need to ensure an equivalent between academic and technical or vocational qualifications, I welcome the Government’s intention to do just that. Indeed, I welcome the long-term ambition that the Government have expressed. They need to take long-term decisions because good government is not about grabbing at short-term decisions to get a headline, but about doing what is in the national interest and the long-term interest of the country.

    On that point, I was surprised to receive an email in the name of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, sent out, I think, by the Conservative party, that read:

    “From net zero to HS2, smoking to education, we are going to tackle the challenges that other politicians have been afraid to even talk about.”

    Since I read that, I have been racking my brains as to which Prime Minister put net zero in 2050 into legislation. Answers on a postcard, please.

    As I say, I welcome the long-term approach that has been taken by the Government, but some elements should have been in the King’s Speech and I am concerned that they are missing. The first is on modern slavery. Back in 2022, the legislative reform agenda published by the then Prime Minister’s Office for the late Queen’s Speech outlined plans to reform the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and, in particular, to introduce stronger measures in relation to businesses and their supply chains. Businesses can be transformative if they really look into their supply chains and take action if they find forced labour and exploitation in those supply chains. So I am very sorry that we have not seen amendments to the Modern Slavery Act brought forward in this Gracious Speech.

    I am also concerned about the lack of commitment to a new mental health Act. It was back in 2017 that the review into the Mental Health Act was announced. That was completed in 2018. There was a White Paper in 2021 and a draft Bill in 2022. The Joint Committee finished its legislative scrutiny of that draft Bill in January this year. Several months on, we have not seen a Government response to that report and, from 2017 to 2023—six years on—we have not seen a commitment to a new mental health Act. It is important that we do this. Many voters will want to see it being done. I hope that, in the other measures that the Government bring forward, they will consider including a mental health Bill.

    Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)

    I am extremely grateful to my right honourable Friend for making that powerful point about a mental health Act. Does she agree that ending the archaic elision of conditions such as autism and neurodiverse conditions with mental health would be another benefit of bringing that legislation forward? The legislation is needed now, not next year.

    Mrs May

    My right hon. and learned Friend has been a champion for those on the autistic spectrum. He has long raised the issues in relation to autism and neurodiversity. He is absolutely right that these changes are needed now—they should not be delayed further. I sincerely hope that, in the other measures, the Government will consider bringing that new mental health Bill forward.

    A couple of weeks ago, I spoke to pupils at Cox Green School in my constituency. We talked about various issues. The teacher asked them to raise their hands if they were concerned about mental health—the majority did—and then to raise their hands if they were concerned about climate change and the environment. Again, the majority raised their hands. In relation to the King’s Speech and the Government’s programme on climate change and environmental degradation, the Government are missing an opportunity. What we need to do now is to press the accelerator on transition to a green economy, not try to draw back. The King’s Speech says that

    “my Ministers will seek to attract record levels of investment in renewable energy sources,”

    but I fear that that ambition is not sufficiently strong to make sure that the Government make that transition quickly enough to ensure that we reach net zero in 2050. It is no good waking up on 1 January 2045 and saying, “We have five years to do something, let’s do it now” because that will be even more costly for members of the public.

    Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP) rose—

    Mr Speaker

    I call Jim Shannon.

    Jim Shannon

    This is my maiden intervention in this term.

    I commend the right hon. Lady for what she is saying. In Northern Ireland, we do not have the contract for difference scheme, but people have it here on the mainland. I have been keen to pursue this matter with the Government. It would help the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to meet its net zero figures if Northern Ireland were part of that. It needs to be a part of it, but the contract for difference scheme—

    Mr Speaker

    Order. Mr Shannon, sit down for a second. We know that this is on net zero, but the point is that this is a speech, not a question, so quickly come to the end.

    Jim Shannon

    Does the right hon. Lady agree that we in Northern Ireland want to be part of the net zero scheme? Is it not right that we should do that through the contract for difference scheme?

    Mrs May

    I am tempted to say to the hon. Gentleman that, when he was called to speak, it was only 4.23. Of course we want to make sure that all parts of the United Kingdom are part of our plans. I do not know the contract for difference details that he talks about, but we want to make sure that every part of the United Kingdom is able to contribute to the work to reach net zero, and there are things the Government must do to enable that.

    Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)

    My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech and I completely agree on the need to keep focused on the pathway to net zero. I am a member of the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, and we are told that unlocking the grid and making faster approvals for new energy schemes to come on to the grid is most vital in that pathway. Does she welcome what there was in the King’s Speech about transforming the speed at which decisions can be made about new power coming on to our grid?

    Mrs May

    My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that getting those grid connections right and making it easier and faster for people to make them are critical for us to reach net zero. I am pleased that the reform of grid connections was in the King’s Speech; we wait to hear the details of what the Chancellor and the Secretary of State will bring forward on that.

    There is one other aspect of the move to the green economy that the Government need to address now, and not in 10 years’ time when the advanced British standard comes on board: the green skills agenda. We must ensure that the young people of today are being trained in the skills needed for the green economy and that people already in work are being retrained. Gas engineers must be retrained to deliver heat pumps, for example. There are many areas where we must make sure that we have a workforce fully trained to meet the needs of that new economy. I hope that the Government are going to press the accelerator on that.

    Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD) rose—

    Sir Robert Goodwill rose—

    Mrs May

    I am being inundated. I will give way to the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) first.

    Jamie Stone

    The right hon. Lady is making a most interesting contribution. In years gone by, we had the skills to construct massive structures for the North sea. If we can pass those skills on to the next generation, they can contribute to the green economy. The trouble is that the people who did that in the past are getting old and near to retirement, so surely time is of the essence.

    Mrs May

    The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I think time is of the essence anyway, regardless of whether we are looking at people who have had those skills in the past. We must look at our training and skills and at our education system to make sure it is training people up for those future requirements.

    Sir Robert Goodwill

    I am sure my right hon. Friend will be pleased to know that, in Scarborough, a green construction skills village was part of our town deal, and those skills are already being delivered to young people and to older people who need to reskill.

    Mrs May

    That is absolutely excellent and I thank my right hon. Friend for informing me of it. I am sorry, Mr Speaker, but yet again it would seem that Scarborough is leading—I am reliably informed it is not in Lancashire.

    Green skills are important, but I also worry that we are sending mixed messages to investors. They need to have the confidence to invest in our transition to a green economy and we need to show that the Government are pressing the accelerator on that. The best long-term decision we can make is on climate change. The long-term future of this country and its people depends on us dealing with climate change and environmental degradation, so I want the Government to press the accelerator, not to roll backwards.

  • Ed Davey – 2023 Speech on the Loyal Address

    Ed Davey – 2023 Speech on the Loyal Address

    The speech made by Ed Davey, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats, in the House of Commons on 7 November 2023.

    May I, like others, start by paying tribute to His Majesty for delivering his first King’s Speech? It was clearly an historic moment, but for our King it must have been an emotional one. He made reference to his late mother, our late, amazing Queen, and many of us listening to him felt that he delivered that speech with grace and aplomb, and we are very grateful to him.

    May I also pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Sir Robert Goodwill) and the hon. Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) for their speeches? I have always rather admired the right hon. Gentleman, for many reasons. His speech today was extremely entertaining, but I have always liked the fact that he, like many on our Benches, opposed the third runway at Heathrow and that he was a constructive, if unfashionable, Conservative in his views on a constructive relationship with our European partners. But perhaps what makes him more at home with the current Government is his romantic enthusiasm for the steam engine, as we have heard: more noise than substance and going nowhere in the modern world.

    My mother-in-law, an expert beekeeper and honey producer—and the swarm officer for North Dorset, no less—would join the seconder of today’s motion in congratulating Stroud on being the world’s first bee guardian town. I am sure that Stroud has a real buzz about it, but the House will be pleased to hear that I do not intend to drone on and on. Given your strictures at the beginning of this debate, Mr Speaker, I should like to clarify that I was not referring to any other Members in talking about droning on.

    Today’s Gracious Speech is overshadowed by horrifying events around the world, with the monstrous terrorist attacks by Hamas on Israel one month ago—more than 1,400 Israelis were slaughtered and hundreds were taken hostage, and they are in our thoughts today—and now the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza. Innocent Palestinians have been cut off from food, water and medicine. Their homes have been destroyed, and more than 10,000 have been killed.

    We also have war on our continent, as the brave Ukrainian people continue to resist Vladimir Putin’s war machine. At times of global crisis such as this, the UK can be a force for good, when it stands tall in the world. But the British voice can be at its strongest only when we have a Government that are strong and united. I am afraid that that is sadly lacking now.

    As the Gracious Speech shows, we do not even have a Government strong and united enough to take real action here on the challenges that people face at home. These are very tough times for the British people. They are working hard, showing remarkable decency and strength, but people are finding it harder and harder just to make ends meet. Instead of helping, what have this out-of-touch Conservative Government done in this King’s Speech and over the past few years? They have put up taxes, energy bills and mortgage payments. They have been adding to the pain, instead of soothing it.

    Let us look just at energy, where today the Government could have brought forward plans to ensure Britain’s energy security and to bring down energy prices, with sustainable energy price cuts, for the long term. The Government could have announced plans to insulate homes to cut people’s energy bills and to invest properly in cheap, clean, renewable energy for the future. Instead, the Conservatives are choosing, once again, to shackle us to the expensive, dirty fossil fuels of the past.

    Today’s Speech is yet more proof that this Government simply do not care. Just last week, the covid inquiry heard that during the pandemic the Government thought that older people should just “accept their fate”. That callous approach reveals an attitude that stretches far beyond the pandemic. By failing to address the cost of living crisis, the NHS and care crisis, the sewage crisis and many other crises like them, this King’s Speech, in essence, tells families and pensioners struggling to get by to “accept their fate”. This Government tell the pensioner, waiting weeks to see her GP, to accept her fate, and the cancer patient, waiting months just to start treatment, to accept his fate. They tell communities who are seeing their rivers polluted and their countryside destroyed to accept their fate. They tell the British people, fed up with being taken for granted by an out-of-touch Government, to accept their fate.

    However, whatever this Government might want, the people of our great country—the British people—have never been ones to sit back quietly and accept their fate. They will not accept a Government who are so weak and divided that they cannot tackle the country’s challenges. They will not accept a Conservative party that is out of touch and out of ideas; they will kick it out of office. They will get that chance soon. No matter how long the Prime Minister delays it, an election is coming, so the British people do not have to accept the miserable fate of this tired Conservative Government. They can choose a better future and I believe they will.